Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 83 Editor's Choice: 1
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Plutonium in, plutonium out
[Read the article: Skepticism toward Bush claims about Syria and North Korea]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Way upthread, Arne objected to a quote from the press about the anonymous sources on this fishy story at least admitting that they didn't have any evidence of Syria obtaining plutonium to feed the reactor. Arne asserted that plutonium comes out of a reactor, it doesn't go into it.
It was always my impression that fast breeder reactors require an initial feedstock of plutonium, from which they generate more of the stuff. That seems to be borne out by the Wikipedia article on breeder reactors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor
"...fast breeder reactor or FBR. The superior neutron economy of a fast neutron reactor makes it possible to build a reactor that, after its initial fuel charge of plutonium, requires only natural (or even depleted) uranium feedstock as input to its fuel cycle. This fuel cycle has been termed the plutonium economy."
After a bit of googling, it's still unclear to me what sort of facility exists at Yongbyon. Press reports tend to glide over such boring technical details. Can the ever knowledgeable UT community set the question to rest?
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@good celery yesterday
[Read the article: John McCain's serious foreign policy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I never miss Glenn, but often don't scrape up the time to be edified by the commenters. So I just caught up with yesterday's request for a Wilfred Owen reprise.
And it's no skin off my beak if the niceties aren't observed when someone types my handle. "Nicteis" was already a double error anyway. I was adopting a snowy owl for my avatar, and summoning decades old memories of scientific names from the vasty deep. Nyctea scandiaca came out as "nicteis". Plus, the genus got folded in to another one since then, and Old Snowy is now bubo scandiaca. Who knew?
Dulce Et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori. -
"unlike you God blessed me"
[Read the article: John McCain's serious foreign policy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm just a dumb goy, but last time I read Genesis, it kind of indicated that nobody gets God's blessing just because of who their ancestors were. Having the right foremothers can help, but in the end if you want that baruch, you gotta rassle Him for it.
And to stray on topic, McCain doesn't swallow that "gotta support Israel to bring on the end times" crap. He's a lapsed Episcopalian. (At least he had the self-preservation instincts to link up with a church whose founding principle was putting a divine stamp of approval on nasty divorces.) Dubya's evangelicalism is an ill-digested lump of half-heard scriptures and shibboleths that will never make the journey from his paunch to awaken his bowels to compassion, but at least it's been internalized. Any religiosity Saint McCain displays is for the rubes. Like the wayward wind of fond C&W memory, he was just born to pander, born to Rove.
Good rasslin' to you, Derbig. Not too hard around here to tell the heavyweights from the bantams.
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@Orville
[Read the article: John McCain's serious foreign policy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm starting to hear this a lot. It's important to note that Hillary did not say she'd nuke Iran if they attacked Israel. She said she'd nuke Iran if they attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.
I share your concern that she is too enthralled by IAPAC. But in this particular sound byte, she was soothing the Israel lobby without really giving them so much as the time of day. In point of fact, Iran would never attack Israel even if it got nukes, which Hillary knows as well as you and I. It was like promising every American a personal 20,000 dollar check the very instant that the Moon is destroyed by a giant asteroid: a feel-good statement (for a certain low IQ constituency) with no practical consequences whatsoever.
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There is no text, there is only pretext
[Read the article: NYT front page reports on McCain's reversal on spying, executive power]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]" ... to the extent that the comments of members of our staff are misinterpreted, they shouldn’t be read into as anything otherwise."
Not to take anything away from Chris C's impeccable gloss, but I read this as:
"Our position is and always has been firm. It's only words that are slippery. To the extent that any statement issuing from our campaign fails to be what you want to hear, please regard it as inoperative. It is our policy to agree with whatever you want to believe, and when you hear us agreeing with the opposite of what you believe, rest assured that it's just a misunderstanding."
Ladies and gentlemen, your postmodern Republican Party.