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blogging at the speed of life
Sometimes it’s a very tough thing to do to blog consistently, and as I’ve shown over the past few months I’m quite poor at it. It seems when you blog at the speed of life the number of blog posts works in an inverse proportion to the amount of free time I have. Who have thought it? Anyways, I have today and tomorrow off (well I left work early today, and batman premiers tomorrow, so I’ll be sleeping all day waking up at 4 PM and then going to stand in line) so life is at a standstill for me. Thus I am able to post a few quick thoughts before things start to pick up again.
Iran
First, it seems that the Bush administration is backing down from its previous condition that it will not talk to Iran unless if fully quits its nuclear program. (link) Our third highest ranking diplomat (how do you rank diplomats anyways?) will be meeting with an Iranian envoy (and other nations) on Saturday. This coming after Iran test fired their new long rang missiles capable of hitting Israeli targets, so I’m going to guess the two events are related.
I see this going one of two ways… It can turn into a foreign policy victory for the US (Iran agree’s it stop nuclear proliferation), and show that preconditions are not needed to diplomatically resolve issues. Or the talks can fail to produce results and open the door for the next President (or the current one) to say that diplomacy does not work and live war is the only solution to the disengagement of the Iranian nuculear program.
With the sucess of the North Korea anti-nuke campaign acheived through talks rather than force, it is my deepest hope that the same can be acheived here, and if we do reach such a point, we need to take a look at all the other “unstable” countries who carry around nukes (cough Israel, Pakistan, India) and furthur deconstruct and destroy our own minutemen nuclear brigade. I’m doubtful that these latter actions will happen as it seems that our Big Stick policy is firmly implanted in our heads, but we shall hope for the future.
Oil and such
So the news that oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens is throwing in with those crazy environmentalists by building the worlds largest wind farm, with enough energy to power 1,000,000 homes. Yes, One Million Homes. (Link), thats a pretty good sounding chunk of renewable energy. At a 6 billion dollar price tag there is a chance that the deal could fall through, but the news that an oil tycoon is seeing the potential of renewable energy is great news indeed.
Mass Transit (and a wag of the finger to my state)
So, while CNN reports on the massive increases in the number of mass transit in other cities and states nationwide (link), in a straw poll placed in yesterdays primaries in Georgia, the expansion of our Mass Transit system (MARTA) was shot down. The vote was split deeply along party lines, from what I heard on the local news last night Republicans shot it down by a 55 to 45 percent margin, while the democrats voted in favor by 70 to 30 percent (note: more Republicans turned out that Democrats). It’s a travesty that the ninth largest state in the US has such a pathetic mass transit system. The good news from the vote is that actual percentage difference was much closer to 50/50 than when the straw poll had been set up several times prior, perhaps an official November poll question will yield different results.
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5 Responses to “blogging at the speed of life”
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North Korea anti-nuke success? What does that definition look like/ They have over 300 bombs, all made in the past six years. Some how you don’t think that will be enough? Success….closing the door after the cows are out! Right! As to the ranking….the third reported to the second, who reports to the first, who reports to the Secretary of State, who…. You see how it is done? And finally the Republican were actually listening to their voters, who don’t want to “wrong” kinds of people coming to their homes….You know who “they” are don’t you????? I always thought they would like those kinds better seeing how they carry guns too….BUT NOOOOOOO!!!!
In this case I’d term success as stopping the proliferation of weaponry by NK, every step in the right direction is a victory of sorts.
The wrong type of people seemed to be the same conclusion that a local talk show host came to, and I think it’s probably close to hitting the mark. It’s a shame that local biases against lower income workers continues to keep those workers down.
if the oil tycoon is smart, I guess he’s bound to diversify into other forms of energy. But you do have to bear in mind the numbers: 1m homes is not that many, as a proportion. And it doesn’t cover vehicles, nor business use, … [I'm inferring from your blog; I don't know the story] And this is the world’s biggest wind farm you’re talking about. I’m all for diversification, but you do have to get this stuff in perspective. It’s doubtful that wind can ever supply a particularly large proportion of our needs. (or are they wants?!)
Oh, and I meant to say, well done on keeping up the blog at all. Hang on in there.
Having enjoyed Japan’s clean, safe, and amazingly efficient train system, the idea of setting foot on a MARTA train absolutely horrifies me since from what I hear MARTA is just about the opposite of that. Public transportation is a great idea I endorse (since even though it’s not necessarily cheaper than driving, you don’t have to go to the trouble of dealing with car insurance, parts, and breakdowns, among other things), but it’s really hard to build good public transportation in a pre-existing city. I think the reason why Japan’s works so well is that it was essentially built into the cities as they were constructed, but Atlanta probably missed its opportunity (General Sherman?) As a result I suspect that, as with gas crisis, an entirely new alternative is necessary to fix things. I just don’t know what it is yet.