Steven Aftergood at the Federation of American Scientists presents
Fifty Years of Space Nuclear Power
"A plutonium fueled RTG that was deployed in 1965 by the CIA not in space but on a mountaintop in the Himalayas (to help monitor Chinese nuclear tests) continues to generate anxiety, not electricity, more than four decades after it was lost in place. See, most recently,
"River Deep Mountain High" by Vinod K. Jose,
The Caravan magazine, December 1, 2010." (
MeFi previously)
posted by HLD
on Jun 28, 2011 -
8 comments
"Through the quarter-century in which China has been opening to world trade, Chinese leaders have deliberately held down living standards for their own people and propped them up in the United States. This is the real meaning of the vast trade surplus—$1.4 trillion and counting, going up by about $1 billion per day—that the Chinese government has mostly parked in U.S. Treasury notes. In effect, every person in the (rich) United States has over the past 10 years or so borrowed about $4,000 from someone in the (poor) People’s Republic of China."
James Fallows on how the trade deficit between China and America works and what it means for the future.
posted by afu
on Sep 30, 2008 -
41 comments
Now we're faced with a supposedly
democratic Russia where the opposition parties are
established, crushed, united, their leadership changed, all at the behest of the president. China, now clearly
a capitalist state, albeit one without the democratic trimmings, still calls
itself communist. Vietnam has
gone much the same way.
Some things remain the same, though. America's still
meddling in Latin America,
just like it did during the Cold War. The US Army is also fighting a guerilla resistance in Iraq, its leaders apparently ignorant of
the lessons of history, yet accusing others of
exactly that. It's just like the 60s, when it was just as obvious
who had learnt lessons and who hadn't.
posted by imperium
on Aug 30, 2006 -
48 comments
Ling Chan gave up everything to come to America. "Chan arrived in the United States with no knowledge of English, no support network, and a dependent child...she was happy to land a janitorial job with AXT Inc., a Fremont, California semiconductor manufacturing firm...on a four-person cleaning crew, scrubbing the boxes used to ship semiconductor wafers around the factory...after a few weeks, her colleagues -- mostly Chinese immigrants, like herself -- whispered that this was no ordinary dust: It could give you cancer."
[via Fark, of all places]
posted by mr_crash_davis
on May 8, 2004 -
17 comments
I like it when
Chinese pigs say "hu-lu hu-lu," it's so exotic. Stupid American pigs just say oink. Also, horses in Thailand say "hee hee (with high tone)"!! How cool is it that, first, they even HAVE horses in Thailand, and second, that they sound like Betty Boop?
posted by luser
on Apr 22, 2003 -
5 comments
Is
Gavin Menzies the Stephen Wolfram of history? That's the question
today's New York Times (login:
dr_mabuse, pw:
mabuse) suggests in a Menzies profile. Menzies has a new book out,
1421, which claims that the Chinese discovered America seven decades before Columbus did.
Some people have made similarly precise claims about this planet's developments.
Others have seen their amateur claims initially mocked and later proven to be correct. Is Menzies onto something or is he a crank? And how do we place the passionate amateur within the realm of scholarly pursuits?
posted by ed
on Jan 5, 2003 -
17 comments
Am I the only one who doesn't think
this is news? This story also showed up
here a few days ago. (more inside)
posted by kate_fairfax
on Nov 4, 2002 -
54 comments
US China relationship risked by brinkmanship , says a new analysis. White House advisers on China policy grow hawkish, but may not have a well-worked out strategy for dealing with China in this new light. Beijing loses patience, and coincidental events may force a crisis. Allies are expressing concern; everyone expects choppy waters through the fall economic summit.
And that was written two weeks ago. If they're bad now,
how much worse are they today? Is there an even hand on the keel?
posted by dhartung
on Apr 2, 2001 -
13 comments
