Stop those witches’ knickers flapping: Discussion of various approaches to cutting use of plastic shopping bags in Europe. Evocative title. (Guardian.UK)
Daily Archives: 4 Aug 06
A Close Call with Catastrophe in Sweden?
Did I miss something? Here is a Der Spiegel report on an incident at a nuclear plant in Forsmark, Sweden last week triggered by an electrical short. A power outage compounded by the failure of two out of four backup generators ultimately led to the closure of the plant (and, as a “precautionary measure”, half the nuclear plants in Sweden) in what plant workers described to Swedish media as a near-meltdown. Assessments call it the worst nuclear mishap since Chernobyl. Did this get any coverage at the time in the US press? If not, why not?
A Planet?
Maybe It’s a Star: “A tiny star with a giant planet is further muddling astronomers’ notion of what a planet is. The planet is one of perhaps only two or three planets around other stars to be photographed directly, but it may be more like a star than a planet.
The tiny star, known as Oph1622, is so small that it never lighted up, a failed star known as a brown dwarf. Even among brown dwarfs, it is small, with a mass equal to 14 Jupiters, or about one-seventy-fifth that of the Sun” (New York Times )
R.I.P. Arthur Lee, 1945-2006
Self-styled “first so-called black hippie” dead at 61 after a battle with leukemia. (BBC) Lee was the founder and frontman of the short-lived but compelling ’60’s West Coast progressive rock’ band Love, which, apart from a small number of aficionados, never received the recognition it deserved. Forever Changes, the band’s third album, is one of the greatest albums of all time, certainly still as fresh and listenable whenever I put it on as it was when I bought it upon initial release. Here (BBC) is a more extensive profile of his musical career. Sad news indeed, I’ll miss him; going off now to listen to Forever Changes.
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