After a gap of three decades in orders for nuclear power plants, two companies interested in building new ones announced Thursday that they had formed a partnership intended to create a new business model for the industry.

Its about time something starts happening in the nuclear energy space again. its time to build new plants and decommission old ones.

Partnership Formed to Build Nuclear Plants

Three mice infected with the bacteria responsible for bubonic plague apparently disappeared from a laboratory about two weeks ago, and authorities launched a search though health experts said there was scant public risk.

The mice were unaccounted-for at the Public Health Research Institute, which is on the campus of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and conducts bioterrorism research for the federal government.

Health officials say 10 to 20 people in the United States contract plague each year, usually through infected fleas or rodents. It can be treated with antibiotics, but about one in seven U.S. cases is fatal. Bubonic plague is not contagious, but left untreated it can transform into pneumonic plague, which can be spread from person to person.

Decius informed me of this earlier today. Its not as serious as it sounds.

Update: DefenseTech has a roundup of links about this.

Mice Infected With Bubonic Plague Missing in Jersey

Could a new plant, designed and built to current standards, be licensed on the same site today? With the growth of Ocean County, which continues today, it is not certain that a nuclear plant would be permitted there today.

The design of Oyster Creek's reactor has been prohibited for nearly four decades. Does that reactor conform to today's standards? Would Oyster Creek receive a license today with that reactor?

In light of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, would Oyster Creek's storage system, which is located close to Route 9, be acceptable today?

Is the evacuation plan realistic in today's Ocean County?

Every few months something about Oyster Creek comes up. I've blogged my thoughts about this several times. This plant is known for its accidents and union disputes with workers who blow whistles about the plant's many problems.

I am of the opinion that they should update the plant rather than shut it down. Remove the current reactor, encase it in solid concrete on the western part of the site, and install something new and modern. They already have a very significant amount of waste storage on site, might as well go for broke. It is Jersey after all, home of the Toxic Avenger. The plant would not be a problem if it was safe and efficient. Currently, it is neither.

Joseph Scarpelli, Mayor of Brick Township, NJ, Petitions against Oyster Creek Nuclear Powerplant (Cryptome)

Supreme Court Chief Justice nominee Judge John Roberts listens to a question from Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) during the second day of his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington September 13, 2005. Roberts was pressed by senators for his views on the strength of established legal precedent with regard to the controversial issue of abortion rights and the landmark Roe vs. Wade abortion case. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

I think this is an edited photo. Otherwise, its worrying. The eyes are looking in different directions and have different pupil sizes. The left eye is focused on the camera, the right eye is focused on something off axis and upward in the distance...

The Crazy Eyes of Supreme Court Nominee Judge John Roberts on Flickr

At first glance, auction giant eBay and net phone firm Skype seem to have little in common apart from the fact that both do almost all of their business online.

I figured Google would have picked up Skype. Screw first glance, this does seem strange. It seems like a big stretch out of eBay's space. The deal was worth $2.6 billion. They couldn't have built what Skype has for a fraction of that? That seems like an insane valuation. The Skype name isn't worth that much. 53 million users isn't worth that much to someone who already has 100 million users and a $51 billion market cap. Skype must have something else going on in development we don't know about. To put this in perspective, the deal for Paypal was only valued at $1.5 billion.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Portal bid drives eBay Skype deal

An administration whose tax policy has been dominated by the toweringly selfish Grover Norquist - who has been quoted as saying: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub" - doesn't have the instincts for this moment. Mr. Norquist is the only person about whom I would say this: I hope he owns property around the New Orleans levee that was never properly finished because of a lack of tax dollars. I hope his basement got flooded. And I hope that he was busy drowning government in his bathtub when the levee broke and that he had to wait for a U.S. Army helicopter to get out of town.

The Bush team has engaged in a tax giveaway since 9/11 that has had one underlying assumption: There will never be another rainy day. Just spend money. You knew that sooner or later there would be a rainy day, but Karl Rove has assumed it wouldn't happen on Mr. Bush's watch - that someone else would have to clean it up. Well, it did happen on his watch.

Besides ripping away the roofs of New Orleans, Katrina ripped away the argument that we can cut taxes, properly educate our kids, compete with India and China, succeed in Iraq, keep improving the U.S. infrastructure, and take care of a catastrophic emergency - without putting ourselves totally into the debt of Beijing.

Thomas Friedman checks in on Katrina and 9/11.

Osama and Katrina - New York Times

In an apparent Sept. 11 communiqué broadcast on ABC News, an al Qaeda operative threatens new attacks against cities in the U.S. and Australia.

"Yesterday, London and Madrid. Tomorrow, Los Angeles and Melbourne, Allah willing. And this time, don't count on us demonstrating restraint or compassion," the tape warns. "We are Muslims. We love peace, but peace on our terms, peace as laid down by Islam, not the so-called peace of occupiers and dictators."

No September 11th would be completely without a threat tape. Apparently the speaker in the tape has been identified.

Only a few years ago, Adam Gadahn was a southern California teenager with interests in the environment and heavy metal music.

As I recall, John Walker was from northern California and liked rap. Tomorrow I look forward to reading an op-ed piece by some blithering idiot linking terrorism to Heavy Metal music. I'm sure there will be one, somewhere.

ABC News: Tape Released: American al Qaeda Member Warns of Attacks

Let me introduce you to the six dumbest ideas in computer security. What are they? They're the anti-good ideas. They're the braindamage that makes your $100,000 ASIC-based turbo-stateful packet-mulching firewall transparent to hackers. Where do anti-good ideas come from? They come from misguided attempts to do the impossible - which is another way of saying "trying to ignore reality." Frequently those misguided attempts are sincere efforts by well-meaning people or companies who just don't fully understand the situation, but other times it's just a bunch of savvy entrepreneurs with a well-marketed piece of junk they're selling to make a fast buck. In either case, these dumb ideas are the fundamental reason(s) why all that money you spend on information security is going to be wasted, unless you somehow manage to avoid them.

This is a great read for anyone who knows they know nothing about computer security. Its also a good read for people who think they know about computer security. For those who do know about computer security, its a good laugh.

The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security

Its been awhile since I had a good old fashioned unstructured rant..

As I recall, Let's Roll was offered by Neil Young as a free download when released. I'd assume that should still be the case, it being freely available, but I can't find it anywhere I can link to.

I'm sure a place exists.. But Young's label doesn't appear to be doing anything link/search engine friendly. And all search results are pretty much spammed out.

I give you, ladies and gentleman, a perfect example of how the record industry has failed to use the Internet to do something culturally significant. Its a small example, but a perfect one. "Out of the sky, into the dirt."

I have a copy of the mp3, but color me reluctant when it comes to making it available online. I'd have to take the statement a level further and publicly offer to burn CD's outside my recording industry classes. If I want that kind of heat, I might as well just go for broke get a few bumper-sickers for my car that say things like "Officer, yes I'm speeding, fuck off.", "I break for nothing.", and a few of those yellow triangle signs you stick on the inside of your windows that say "Guns on board" and "Drugs on board". To make room, I'll just leave off the stickers for the ACLU and the EFF because I don't expect them to ever be helpful any time I'm the one getting screwed over.

But don't worry, the right to be a cantankerous asshole still exists thanks to it being upheld in ways ranging from Bill O'Reilly to myself. Just don't expect it to be done in a way that might actually change or provoke anything with its hands on the reigns of power. The terrorists couldn't change that.

So, as we graduate terror high school and get our diploma, what have we learned? I'll give you a hint, it has something to do with that fact that they did not prepare us for the real world. Take a look at hurricane Katrina.

When viewed through the right lens, the response to this hurricane, a biological attack, a major earthquake, a nuclear detonation in a major city, and a host of other real threats, all begins to look exactly the same. Its a good lens to look through, but right now it might make you nausious. In the last election the people trusted the Bush administration to prepare America to handle this type of thing. They made it an election issue, and the people embraced it. We can't blame the hurricane being able to strike on our intelligence agencies, but the rest of the analogy -- pardon the pun -- holds water.

If all we know how to do is fight fire with fire, we are not positioned well for the long term, as some of mankind's recent wet tragedies allow to be spille... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

NEW ORLEANS is battered and submerged today. But it will rise again because it is — and always has been — the single most important cog in the nation's economy.

Hurricane Katrina left the port pretty much intact, and the river seems navigable. But you can't have a port without people, and the commercial facilities will be needed in two weeks, when Midwest farmers begin harvesting. Their harvest will be handled this year and, if civilian workers cannot be found, the Army units cleaning up the storm damage could be expected to stay and work the ports.

But in the long run, the economic health of the nation depends on developing a port city about where New Orleans sits — a port surrounded by workers and better protected from nature. That city will be called New Orleans. It will be rebuilt for the same reason it was built in a malarial swamp in the first place: because it is where a city must be built.

George Friedman, founder of Stratfor and strong advocate of Open Source Intelligence, checks in on the New Orleans situation.

George Friedman, on New Orleans' raison d'être