Friday, December 3, 2010
Arizona senator Jon Kyl, the number-two Republican in the Senate, said on
NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday that he believes a debate on the merits of
New Start would take at least two weeks. That pushes a vote on the treaty
into 2011, putting it before a new Senate with more Republicans, making it
less likely to be approved. The debate Kyl hungers for is less about New
Start than it is about the state of our nuclear complex. How will decades-
old nuclear weapons behave if they are ever used? Plutonium suffers from
self-irradiation and tritium has only a 12.3 year half-life. Kyl implies
that weapons scientists are ill-equipped to analyse and diagnose such
problems in the nuclear arsenal, but these are exactly the problems that
the Stockpile Stewardship program, including the $1.2 billion National
Ignition Facility, was designed to handle. Kyl seems to align himself with
ultraconservative Strangeloves who call for return to underground testing
and development of a new "reliable warhead," even as we demand that Korea
and Iran give up their nuclear ambitions.
Most endangered species owe their precarious existence to the destruction
of their habitat by the spread of a single invasive species, Homo sapiens,
which now numbers about 7.0 billion. Aided by technology, Homo sapiens
thrives in almost any habitat, and has spread to almost every region of
Earth, including the surface of the ocean which has been a particularly
rich source of protein. A story in today's Washington Post by Juliet
Eilperin, however, say the globe has run out of new fishing areas and that
current fishing methods are not sustainable. We have destroyed the great
cod fisheries This is why farmed fish now account for about half of the
world's seafood production. An article in today's Science says the FDA is
now considering approval of a genetically modified Atlantic salmon that
contains an inserted growth gene from Pacific Chinook salmon.
Pres. Obama is in Afghanistan today. I think we can guess why he's there:
Leaked US diplomatic cables covering recent years of Afghan corruption
which goes to the very top, are disheartening to Americans who have borne
the cost. "Leak" does not do it justice; it was a tsunami. No one, however,
has been arrested for leaking information and in spite of demands by
members of Congress who should know better, I dont believe anyone will be.
We do not have an official-secrets act in this country. Government
employees willing to risk their careers by leaking classified documents may
be the only check on government excesses carried out in the name of
national security.
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