Debunking the Nuclear Renaissance

ok I rustled this up for you tell me what you think

The nuclear industry was economically dead for decades. In 2005 the American Congress breathed 12 billion tax payer dollars to bring it back from the brink, and where there is nuclear power the same state-capitalist croneyism follows the world over. Without free money from the public sector, the nuclear industry does not survive. No one would insure a nuclear powerplant on a free market because it simply wouldn't be worth the risk. Instead states take liabily.

Nuclear power was never really introduced to produce energy as such, it was used in the 50s as a front for producing plutonium for nuclear weapons and to offset the cost somewhat. Time and time again it's proven itself be the most expensive form of energy production.
The anti-greenhouse argument for nuclear energy is very weak. Fossil fuel energy is needed to mine uranium and transport it, produce the cement and transporting that too, build the reactor, deal with the waste and many other processes. Then there is the processes of purifying what comes out the ground (which is becoming increasingly inpure.) This itself create a lot of carbon emissions and puts poison chemicals into the ground. The radioactity that was released from uranium mining in into the environment many decades ago still poisons the landscape, the water, and damages health - when the Uranium-235 is split it gives off polutants that affect the air, water, ditches... Mining for the fuel has been an environmental disaster which has destroyed the lands of native peoples like American Indians and Aboriginies. As supplies become rarer and rarer more sites need to be located for aquiring it at the expense of natural landscapes and indigenous peoples.

Conservation of Energy bests producing more every time. In one study students found that every pound spent on energy efficiency saved seven times as much carbon as every pound spent on nuclear power. In 1993 the book Energy Without End by Michael Flood featured a house built in British Columbia, which has a climate similar to South England, that received an Annual Electric Heating Bill of £12. It was four times the size of an average British house.

Heat is thrown away from our powerstations, poured into the sky as flue gases and steam. Instead this "waste steam" could be piped in order to heat homes an workplaces,  afterall, what is the best way to eliminate hypothermia which kills many elderly people in their own homes evey winter? To produce more energy at great cost and hope they can afford it or to insulate their houses so that they retain heat at less expense? The government should spend money on grants for insulation instead of nuclear power. Energy efficiency also creates more jobs.

We have a lot better chance of making solar and wind work now than we have of isolating the enormous amounts of nuclear waste that are being created every day. Plutonium 239, just one of the bi-products, has a half-life of 24,400 years - 4 times longer than recorded history! It could takes over 500,000 years for even a small quantity of it to become harmless. The lethal dosage is a thousandth of a gram.
Wasting money on the irresponsivle act of producing pqwer through nuclear fission inhibits us as a society from making the leap to sustainables. Perhaps future generations will never forgive us for leaving them our nuclear legacy to manage but perhaps we can stop adding fuel to the nuclear fire.

Music - visceral vs. intellectual

An interesting thing about music is that it is often very much seen as a largely visceral creative outlet and, by non musicians, there is some kind of sorcery or magic involved - I remember a key moment when I was in primary school and the teacher split the class in four to sing the canon: "London's Burning." I was utterly astounded, that these four simple melodies could be superimposed to create such a wonderful and hypnotic cacophony! (It certainly seemed to resemble wizardry!) Yet the more we learn about how music works the more we appreciate the fact that a musician is simply just someone who has heard music and loved it enough to want to understand how to do it. Songs and compositions are designed much in the way an architect designs a beautiful building: with an eye for aesthetics, but based on certain principles steeped in science and always built out of the correct materials for the job. In our case these materials are rhythmic and melodic features which merge with harmonic and timbral choices. Having quite an analytic mind, the aspects of music that I have seen myself to be particularly apt for, I have often noticed while teaching, are breaking elements that seem rather complex down into their constituent parts so that they can be more easily assimilated and then reconstructed. Sometimes when a student is having trouble learning part of a piece it can help to create "easier versions" that go through graded stages of picking up certain melodic or rhythmic features of the music that lead up to being able to play the piece as it is written, also understanding what each of these elements contributes to the concrete totality of the piece. I always refer to myself as a "better teacher than player," as I know I am not the most virtuossic player to be found.

My Facebook Song

Don't want to engaged to you on Facebook
Don't ask me why
It's complicated

And just because I like your status
That doesn't mean that we are
In a relationship

Why wont you just quit poking me
Please don't take this comment personally
Don't want to get engaged to you in Facebook
May I suggest we just be friends

I've seen your profile
I've even liked your page
You've switched to timeline
We're not at the same stage because I

Don't want to engaged to you on Facebook
Don't ask me why
It's complicated

And just because I like your status
That doesn't mean that we are
In a relationship

Why wont you just quit poking me
I can't be LinkedIn definitely
Don't want to get engaged to you in Facebook
I'm anti-social media

I've checked your news feed
It says you want to chat
Please get the message
I won't install that app because I

Don't want to engaged to you on Facebook
Don't ask me why
It's complicated

And just because I like your status
That doesn't mean that we are
In a relationship

Why wont you just quit poking me
No I won't approve you as family
Don't want to get engaged to you in Facebook
May I suggest we just be friends

I'm tagged in pictures
I'm in all of your groups
Your application requests a second look because I

Don't want to engaged to you on Facebook
Don't ask me why
It's complicated

And just because I like your status
That doesn't mean that we are
In a relationship

Why wont you just quit poking me
Won't you take my update seriously
Don't want to get engaged to you in Facebook
I'm logging off for the last time

Excerpt from Quinny on Honesty

        “Look, would you just be honest!”

I have to take a moment to think here… Be honest... Hmmm... What would being honest entail? I suppose outright lies are out of the question, but where do you draw the line? Are you allowed to be selective with the truth, but still be completely forthright about whatever you do choose to share? That’s a pretty good start surely. You’re not telling any lies and you’re showing a firm commitment to the veracity of your statements. That’s not dishonest at least. But how about telling leading truths? Like, things that aren’t exactly the whole story, just certain parts of it which are correct in themselves, but still suggest a certain point of view which isn't necessarily the precise picture? It’s not wrong, it’s just inaccurate, and you’re not necessarily responsible for that because it was them who chose to draw the conclusion. You were scrupulous insofar as the words you actually chose to say... but not really. Then there are half-truths. Two halves still make a whole don't they? No, probably not to be fair, that would be stretching the whole definition of the honesty thing too far.

More importantly what would being honest right now mean to me? What would I be saying that would depict what is real for me in this very moment? Now that's tough, because I don’t really know. And what I do know I don’t really want to say.

What do I think and feel?... Words don’t really give enough context. We have a whole history going on here. Little resentments have accrued. Little animosities that create a lack of ability to feel secure while being candid. And then there are all the former feelings of warmth below them, some of them not entirely obscured. Little burning embers of love for good times shared which don’t light up the dark but still glow enough through it to fall into consideration. And it’s bizarre because the two are strangely related, you know? If we hadn’t had good times then there would be no love, and if there was no love it would be harder to be resentful. The resentment wouldn’t be so strong. So there you have a whole layer of obstructions to being completely sincere. Not wanting to hurt the other person’s feelings. Or the other side of the same coin, which is not wanting the other person to feel unduly good about themselves either.

And then what about myself? Let’s not forget about little Quinny here, she’s the real victim in all this after all. Supposing you were in my shoes and you didn’t want to give off a certain picture of yourself you didn’t like. Say that you’re emotionally needy, or that you’re too judgemental, or too forgiving for that matter, or that you’re petty or irrational, or a hundred other things. You know you’re not those things but you might end up suggesting that you are by the lack of context given to expressing yourself in the moment. Or, you know that you are some of those things, and that making the fact clear to the other party would give them too much purchase to use them against you.

So that’s being honest out of the question for the time being. Don’t know how to do it. Don’t have the capacity to do it properly. I’ve always thought there’s no point doing something if you’re not going to do it well and this is no exception. Don’t know how to do honesty properly and don’t want to fuck it up trying.

I know that's Free Will

They say we don't choose who we love
They say our trains are set on mechanistic lines.
They say that we're all bound to die
Spare no thought for if we've ever truly lived...

Because they split the atom!
Put a man on the moon
Wrote symphonies and...
if that's really true

I know the stars need not shine
I know the earth could stand still
I know we choose who we love...
...I know that's free will!

And it makes no sense at all
But we decide and we fall
And here we are standing still...
... I know that's free will.

I know that's free will!