Wedded to Nuclear Power

One happy Czech couple tied the knot last week at the Temelín Nuclear Power Plant near the German border a couple days ago.

As the article notes, 55% of Czech continue to support an increased nuclear power capacity, standing in stark contrast to their German neighbors to the north and west, where huge protests recently against nuclear power have rattled Angela Merkel's already frail government. The German press is deeply anti-nuclear as well, and it is interesting to compare Czech and German reports from the Fukushima crisis. Nevertheless, the article linked above points out that since Chancellor Merkel's moratorium on building of new nuclear plants, Czech energy exports to Germany have increased fivefold. The fact of that matter is that Germany, or any other nation, cannot run on good feelings and so-called "clean energy." But if they want to pay for other people's energy, so be it. What would be interesting, cynical, and wholly expected, as the article notes, is German efforts to make it more difficult for other nations (including those that aren't on the world's most active fault lines) to build their own nuclear plants and sell the power to Germany. This will obviously result in higher prices for energy for everyone, higher consumption of fossil fuels, and more subsidies to solar plants in cloudy nations.

So congratulations to the elementary school teacher and her new husband. May they live long, happy, warm, comfortable lives in the shadow of the cooling tower, and may those towers continue to keep them warm and comfortable, if not always happy.

Gagarin's Night

50 years ago this week, Yuri Gagarin spent 108 minutes in orbit, and when he came down, he had one of the biggest smiles in the world. What's interesting about this particular landmark is the way it has been commemorated here in Brno. There was a parade-cum-performance by one of the local theaters down what used to be Gagarin Street (changed in 1990), and a play was performed later that evening. All in all, it was a fairly light-hearted, amusing event. People wore silly costumes and waited for the grand spaceman to take flight to the stars (using Brno's new rocket-shaped clock, obviously).

What was interesting was the fact that most of the participants were young people. The older generation, as one of my students explained, had "had enough Gagarin. It was always Gagarin as propaganda," Gagarin as a Hero of the Working Class, Gagarin as our Soviet brother. "After 1990, we never heard about him again, and I don't really mind." The younger generation certainly views him as a benign, or possibly ironic reminder of the past, but it's safe to say that his identification with socialist progress has been dialed down a bit.

It is not completely surprising that politics as well as time has changed the nature of the appreciation for Gagarin's legacy. (For an interesting article, click here.) As a symbol, he was certainly an "unpleasant shock" for the West, as one columnist put it yesterday in Mladá fronta Dnes; as a person, he was probably a relatively non-political person who just wanted to fly really fast airplanes. After his parachute landing in a field on the steppes of Russia, he flew experimental jets for the Russians until his MiG-15 crashed. There weren't that many places for a guy like that to get a normal job, and his daughter pointed out that after 1961, neither he nor his wife ever had a moment's peace.

"When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear. I told them, 'Don't be afraid, I am a Soviet like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!'"

For young people, he has become a spaceman, rather than a Communist. That's probably not such a bad thing, and it's likely that he himself would have wanted it.

Stuff to look at from Michael Yon

The last two posts by Michael Yon are excellent. This one is simply excellent reporting, with some fantastic pics thrown in. The latest post is less writing, and more pictures, but also very good, especially at the end, when he links to his Gigapan site, which features an amazing interactive panorama of a citadel built by (we think) Alexander the Great. Well worth your time.

The perils of modern interdependency

Apparently, Armenia lost internet for a few hours last week. The whole country.

Let's have a thought-experiment, shall we? We often discuss our dependency on commodities, particularly oil. But what about our dependency on timely (indeed, instantaneous) information? One of the nice things about our technology infrastructure is that its very nature is built in nodes and is decentralized. Nevertheless, there continue to be ways to threaten a significant portion of our information infrastructure (can we coin the expression "Infostructure?" Doesn't it sound modern and progressive?) through such things as electromagnetic pulses, attacks on our satellite systems, or cyberattacks. Protecting this infrastructure may be as important as any physical bridge or securing a supply of cheap and reliable energy.

Fortunately, the internet in the US (and in most of Europe) has back-ups, duplications, and special software to protect against this. But it never hurts to be reminded of our vulnerabilities.