As the title of this post suggests it is time to kick-off the Virtual Book Club! With the new year about to start I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to introduce the two books we picked. So, if you are interested in reading along here they are:

1. The Ominvore’s Dilemma: A Natural History in Four Meals by Michael Pollan

2. Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations by Michael Waltzer

I had first planned to create a loose timeline for the VBC to complete reading but alas, I have changed my mind. I want this to be more fluid, more open and more individual - and structured deadlines are anything but that. So as you, the reader, begin reading one or both of the books feel free to comment, to question and to remark in Sid’s Forum section. These titles were chosen to encourage discussions so anything you want to talk about is “fair game”.

The Forum will be routinely monitored and if conversation begins to slow we will offer up new titles for the club to select from.

Thanks to all and Happy Reading!

Bunnies4Buddha

It’s been nearly 60 years since Isaac Asimov’s Foundation was released. The future world Asimov set up was powered by advanced nuclear power. The key difference between Asimov’s nuclear reactors and ours is scalability. The reactors in Foundation could be of any size, according to the need. Some of them were small enough to behave as uber-batteries. That’s a far cry from the giant cooling towers required for today’s reactors.

Toshiba is one step closer to realizing that ideal. They have just introduced a new nuclear power plant that is 100 times smaller than the ones we are used to. At 6 feet wide and 20 feet long, this baby could fit into your garage. This dramatic size reduction is accomplished with the use of liquid lithium-6. Lithium-6 is highly efficient at absorbing neutrons, an important step in nuclear fission that keeps the reaction going. Furthermore, the reaction takes place at much lower temperatures, obviating the need for large cooling towers.

This new reactor produces 200 kilowatts of electrical power and 5 megawatts of thermal power (so I wouldn’t suggest keeping it in your garage). The outlet, molten sodium coolant is 510°C, which could be used to power a steam generator, further increasing the electrical power output, and/or it could be used to produce pure hydrogen as a transportable fuel. Alas, those features are not built into the Toshiba model. What their model does promise is 40 years of nearly maintenance-free, safe power. The main safety feature is a thermal feedback loop that decreases the reaction rate as the temperature rises. This prevents the possibility of a meltdown. Finally, at an operation cost of $0.05 per kilowatt-hour, this energy source is less than the cost of traditional coal-fire power plants and comparable in cost to diesel generators. Finally this nuclear generator has, of course, zero carbon emissions.

The new micro-nuclear reactor is being marketed as a power source for office buildings, small businesses, remote neighborhoods, apartment buildings, and even city blocks. The first is to be installed in nuclear-friendly Japan in 2008. Don’t look for them here in nuclear-phobic (although less so now, thanks to global-warming fears) America until 2009.

You can read the reference materials here.

Hello Dear Readers,

I’ve made a few enhancements to the blog today. Most notable to the readers is the ability to edit your comments for a limited time after submission. I know I always hate it when I click ‘Submit’ on a comment only to realize a moment later that I made an embarrassing mistake. On many blogs, I am stuck with that error or have to issue a clarifying comment. Not so anymore for my readers! When you submit a comment, you will see a black line at the top of your comment that says: “You may click on your name and/or comment to edit.” Followed by a time limit. Once the time limit expires, you’ll be stuck with any errors (or you can ask me really, really nicely to edit it for you).

Another enhancement is more intuitive URLs for post permalinks. Instead of post numbers, I now use post titles for the URL. For myself, I’ve added a plugin that will provide me with basic stats about my blog.

The final two changes are related. First, I’ve made my blog visible to search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!. To combat the increase in spam this change may cause, I’ve also enabled a robust spam filter. Now, these spam filters can sometimes be a bit… overzealous. If you submit a comment and do not see it, it may have been filtered. Just shoot me an email and I will rectify the situation. Of course, the best way to ensure that your comments are not filtered is to register for an account on my blog, and once you have an account, login.

Bunnies4Buddha recently had me send a question suggestion to Janet for her TITMT series. The question was picked up and appears this week on The Art of Getting By. From Janet’s post:

In trying hard to keep with my Christmas theme of the season today’s question comes to us courtesy of Sid Faiwu or more accurately, Sid’s wife. The question is simple and yet the answer is what you make of it.

Sid, his wife and myself all want to know..

What comforts you?

Even though I helped suggest this question, I have no idea how to answer it. B4B does all the time. So does something as simple as lying down. Slow breathing is another comfort. Going on long walks in the cold can comfort me as well. There is really no one thing. It’s very much situation dependent.

John Edwards has a lot to say on the issues this presidential primary season. Thus I’m on Part III of my The Issues According to a Candidate’s Website and I’ll probably need more. If you would like to catch up, you can read Part I and Part II.

In Part III, I’m going to look at his second (of three) categories of issues: “Restoring America’s Leadership Role In The World”.

Iraq: Edwards plan is to end the occupation of Iraq within a year. He wants to start with an immediate withdraw of 40,000-50,000 US troops. General chaos would ensue. The country would be splintered by a three-way civil war between Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. The war would be prolonged by interference from Iran. And if you think for a second that Turkey will simply stand by as Kurdistan is set up on their southern boarder, think again. We would then be in the uncomfortable position of having a NATO ally at war with our best allies in Iraq. Good times. To be fair, Edwards does talk about engaging the nations of the region to stabilize Iraq.

I’m not sold on the idea that things will be better off without US troops there than with. It may be the case. We, as a nation, have to decide between bad, worse, and worst scenarios, without knowing which is which. Edwards is probably right that it is best for our country to withdraw, but we destroyed Iraq’s stability. We cannot ignore our moral responsibility to repair it to some degree.

Iran: Who’s everyone’s favorite vigilante-cum-president? Why Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, of course. Edwards, like most rational people, does not want a nuclear Iran. His tools would include sanctions, isolation, engagement, and incentives. He also wants to utilize moderates in Iran who are unhappy with their government to marginalize extremists. He also wants to leverage the interests of other Security Counsel member states Russia and China, who have more sway over Iran. If Bush has proved anything, it’s that go-it-alone tactics is an ineffective means of diplomacy. I’m glad Edwards has learned that lesson.

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Late this afternoon, I was enjoying my favorite video podcast. It’s created by TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) and features prominent speakers. This talk features Larry Lessig, a professor of Law at Stanford who specializes in copyright law. He is also the chair of Creative Commons, a nonprofit group that helps artists license their creations in a sensible way. (We should chat about this when you have time, chopdeli).

In his talk, Lessig proposes a sensible and market-based solution on how we can protect the business interests of artists while simultaneously allowing fair-use rights for private individual. Like many a TED talk, this one was extraordinarily interesting. Aside from the intended content, it got me quite excited about the potential for creativity, especially for todays kids. Anyway, enjoy the talk!

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The Art of Getting By has another Christmas themed question up this week.

What would the ingredients be in your recipe for a perfect Christmas?

This was partially answered by Santini and myself on last week’s TITMT. The main ingredient in both of our Perfect Christmases would be family; a full day with the family. Stir in some friends, sprinkle in some classic family recipes, heat to 75 degrees with a fire place, and wrap in some good Christmas Music. It’s important to get the best music possible. A great way to check if you have some bad music is to see if any of the songs ever appeared on Billboard’s Hit lists. If they have, replace with ‘fresher’ music.

Sid’s Perfect Christmas is best served with generous amounts of alcohol, especially wine, and winter ales. A spicy whiskey also works. The Perfect Desert would be to spend a similar day with my wife’s family.

Here’s Part II of many. I last left off in the middle of his list of issues under the heading “Standing Up For Regular Families”. Next up, Trade.

Trade: According to Edwards, “our trade policy has been bad for working Americans.” Oh no, I feel the slow, cold creep of American isolationism creeping in. After outlining some problems with our economy and subtly implying that free trade is the cause, he describes the goals of his ‘smart trade’ policies. He wants to help workers and corporations by changing NAFTA and the WTO, building a global middle class (which is exactly what free trade is accomplishing), strengthening unions, and implementing his other economic policies mentioned under other issues.

Edwards would like trade agreements to be ‘regular’ family-oriented. He believes that the considerations of trade agreements should not be corporations or investors, but things like the agreements impact on jobs, wages, and prices. He fails to mention which of these are most important. For instance, off shoring our manufacturing base has resulted in loss of jobs and lower wages in that sector while greatly reducing prices. He talks about wage stagnation, but not the purchasing power difference in the dollar. I’d be curious to see those numbers as well.

Edwards wants to include labor protections, environmental standards, and currency manipulation restrictions in every trade deal. While this sounds great, what is often overlooked is that such requirements would preclude most, if not all, developing nations will be unable to enter into the agreement. This would result in higher prices for us and continued very low wages for the developing nations. The better plan is to insist on these requirements incrementally as the nation is able to meet them.

Working Families: This section is a rehash of elements of other issues John Edwards addresses. See his stance on poverty, tax reform/simplification, and trade.

Predatory Mortgages: This too was addressed in a previous issue. However, this one goes into more details. Edwards proposes regulating all lenders, not just banks, strengthen underwriting standards, and ban broker kickbacks. This would effectively end the practice of brokers creating excessive risk loans and then selling them off to third parties. He also wants to change bankruptcy laws to make it easier for filers to keep their homes. The last two goals he mentions is creating a fund for local non-profit agencies that provide foreclosure relief and urging the FDIC to mitigate foreclosures.

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Recently, Scott of Spiritual Tramp tagged me with with an astrology related game. Participation had the following rules:

1. Mention the person who tagged you and create a link back to them.
2. Copy-paste the traits for all the twelve months (see below).
3. Pick your month of birth.
4. Highlight the traits that apply to you.
5. Tag 12 people and let them know by visiting their blogs and leaving a comment for them.
6. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve done it!

Being the curmudgeon skeptic that I am, I can’t in good conscious spread this game, so I will not participate in step five. Also, instead of highlighting the traits that apply to me, I’m going to highlight the traits that do not apply to me. I’ll also offer commentary (of course). To be fair, Scott participated for the fun of it. As far as I know, he certainly doesn’t believe astrology in any form is legitimate.

My month is November. Here is a list of November’s traits with the ones that do not apply to me highlighted:

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Sid seems to have taken a Holiday Break and given up on his blog, although he will tell you it is year end and he is busy (that is said with ferocious sarcasm). Anyways, Janet of The Art of Getting By has decided to devote the next few weeks of TITMT to holiday related questions. But that still doesn’t mean you should stop submitting ideas for future TITMT questions to her, so please, email her your suggestions if you haven’t already done so! So this weeks (really it’s last weeks but who is counting!) is

I want to know what gifts you want the most this year. Also, if you want to take it that extra step, feel free to tell me what you’d want if you could have anything.

In addition, I want to know what you’re getting for your closest loved ones this year. The more creative the better!

I read this question last week and patiently waited for Sid to post it. Obviously, he didn’t, so I had lots of time to think about it and I came up with two different categories of answers. My first category is non-material gifts and the second is material gifts.

First, let me say, I can’t really answer the part about what I am going to get those closest to me because most of them read this site and that would ruin the surprise!

I can answer the second category much easier than the first, all I have to do is name those things that I think of everyday that I want. GPS Unit in my car, a new car stereo with an IPod adapter, Guitar Hero III for the Wii (that game rocks!), a palethora of CDs (I can think of about 50 of Sid’s that I need copies of), so on and so forth.

The second category came to mind when I sat down and thought, what do I really want for Christmas and it took sometime but it finally came to me. I realized that this is the first year that I have yet to have a holiday spent with my whole family. With our mother going to Texas this year and brother and sister-in-law being in NC we didn’t get a holiday together this year, nor will we with Christmas. So what I really want is a full day and evening with the whole family starting with breakfast and gifts in the morning, relaxing in the afternoon to dinner and beers in the evening. A night when we don’t have to consider the better half’s family, a night when we can just close off the rest of the world and eat drink and be merry into the evening with our various games and arguing and pouting cause we lost (that is usually me by the way!). I think that would be the best Christmas gift for most of the family.

Although that would be my ideal Christmas, I would still be extremely happy with the new Guitar Hero set…just so you know!