Nuclear Ester, nuclear Alaska

Jamie Smith sent me this cartoon back in 2005, when Galena was considering Toshiba's offer of a small-scale, self-contained nuclear power plant. More recently, when John Reeves started a bit of a ruckus out here by proposing to install a similar underground self-contained nuclear power plant on his property near Ester, Jamie sent me another cartoon. One of the hazards of living in Alaska is that we are on the Ring of Fire—and that same summer, coincidentally, Ester was plagued with a LOT of earthquakes.

So, it may be of interest to Mr. Reeves and various Esterites that the Alaska Center for Energy and Power is holding a community lecture at the Blue Loon next Tuesday (January 18 at 6 pm) on the very subject of nuclear power in Alaska. Here's their blurb:

The lecture is titled “The Nuclear Option: Are Small Scale Nuclear Power Plants an Option for Alaska.” It will provide an overview of small-scale nuclear technology and its potential applications in Alaska. Design and permitting considerations, safety and security, economics, ownership, resource and environmental issues will be discussed.

Ought to be entertaining, at the least…
ACEP conducted a workshop on the feasibility small-scale nuclear power in Alaska in early December. The link provides some more info on the presentations, including both summaries and a full transcript.

Ester, contrary to previous thought, is not officially a nuke-free zone. The Ester Community Association has never revisited the question. Perhaps we'd best make it so?

TTY scam: Yorkies for Sale

Or perhaps it's English bulldogs, or terriers to give away. Sound familiar? It should: it's exactly the same scam as that run by those arseholes sending e-mails requesting ad placement. Same phrasing, and a curiously insistent person wanting to know when, exactly, the credit card will be run, and can it be run today, right now, in fact? I received one of these calls a couple of weeks ago, and it was so suspicious that the only thing I could think of was that the person on the TTY machine (also known as a TDD) had stolen somebody else's card. They gave me a name and residence address (Juneau, and I looked it up on Google--it appeared to be a local church). Took 45 minutes to get exactly nowhere.

Then Leah got another call yesterday. What a waste of time!

The scam may not be in the ad placement, but in the dog end (so to speak). Free or cheap dogs, but shipping that costs a lot and somehow the dogs never arrive.

I get requests for ads all the time, usually by e-mail, that reveal that the person placing them has no real interest in the periodical in which they are to be placed and no conception of English grammar. There are often mistakes in spelling and grammar, but not the kind a native speaker of English would make. They also clearly know nothing of the periodical they have contacted (for example, how often the Republic comes out!) The same is true of this new TTY version of the scam.

I'm not sure if it's a hearing shyster taking advantage of the TTY phone, a deaf shyster abusing a TTY phone, or a person posing as a TTY operator but who is in fact a scam artist. No matter the case, newspapers and magazines should watch out.

Luke vs. Tammie?

Hoo, boy. The Fairbanks North Star Borough voters strike again. It's a runoff between Tammie Wilson and Luke Hopkins.

Yet another reason to institute IRV or something similar.

You read it at the Frontiersman first

I laughed out loud when I read this. Talk about confused people! Here's the Frontiersman interviewing doofuses Adam and Kelly Hullin of Wasilla:

F: How do you respond to the criticism the president has had on race issues or that those who take him to task are racist?

A: I’d say that’s a cop-out. That’s ridiculous. He’s not even black. The fact that he’s black is a lie. He’s only 6 percent black. He’s actually 69 percent Muslim.

K: That’s just a way for them to get us to fight with one another. He’s really only 6 percent black.

Yep, you read that right. Apparently former religious affiliation is a racial attribute.

Hoo, boy.

Senator Baucus: bought and paid for?

Well, this is one possible answer to my question on why, if Senator Baucus thinks we have such a terrible health care crisis in this country, he isn't (as chair of the hearings) allowing single-payer advocates a seat at the table:

One of the Baucus 13, Kevin Zeese, recently summarized Baucus’ career campaign contributions:

“From the insurance industry: $1,170,313;
health professionals: $1,016,276;
pharmaceuticals/health-products industry: $734,605;
hospitals/nursing homes: $541,891;
health services/HMOs: $439,700.”

In other words: his campaigns have been financed by the for-profit health industry.

Interesting, wouldn't you say?

Let's just take a look at WHY single-payer reduces expenses so dramatically. Here's the United States' system as it currently stands:



Rather messy, no? Convoluted, even.

And here's Canada's single-payer system:



Much simpler. It's the complexity of the US system that breeds an expensive wastefulness, and the profit motive that creates an incentive to whittle away people's coverage and endurance through (again wasteful) quantities of paperwork, etc.

These graphic representations of health care systems are from Neil Davis' book, Mired in the Health Care Morass, which I published last year. Reading that book made it very very clear just why Congress' and the White House's approach on this is so wrong-headed, and doomed to failure--from a health care standpoint. It will work beautifully from an investor's profit-making standpoint, so long as you don't care that people will be dying and sickly and going broke as a result.

Funeral today

Lee Schauer's obituary is now on line at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

The thing about obits is that, although they tell you the facts, it's hard to get a good sense of what the person was like, just from reading the obituary. An obituary is written so as to be kind to the people left behind, usually, so they don't have to hurt more than they already do. Lee called it like he saw it, blunt sometimes. Not an in-your-face kind of guy, at least when I would encounter him, usually at a party or at the Eagle, but damn direct when he spoke. He struck me as honest, solid, a bit wild too. A good laugh. I imagine that if he'd written his own obituary, it would sound quite different. I can't see him being easy on himself...

Hans and I went to his and Star's wedding, at Hartung Hall. Lee was in a tux, which was shocking. I was used to him in blue jeans and leather jackets. Yet, he didn't wear it as though it was uncomfortable--a man with a wide sartorial range.