Of all the things there are to talk about and discuss within my section waiting for work or in between lately one of the topics has been Root Beer. For some reason we have been talking about root beer like it is some precious commodity. One person likes it so much he setup a taste test some time ago to figure out which is the best root beer. I think he may have started something because now on this upcoming holiday weekend we have decided to hold our own taste testing contest. Why? Who the fuck knows for sure, but I am sure we will turn it into something more. It sounds like we have no life but, well, yeah we don’t. Keep checking back here for the results of the taste test and other interesting things related to “Root Beer”. God, this makes my life sound so pathetic.

My ex-roommate has been talking about getting a dog for some time now. He asked me about a week or two ago where there is some pet stores around here so he could buy things for the dog they had picked out to buy in the states. I told him that the best place for pet products in Korea is Chungmoro. Chungmoro has rows of pet stores all lined up and down the street. However convenient it may be, this is not the place to buy a pet. The stores allow anyone to come in and handle the puppies without need for assistance, they breed large quantities where they can not give each puppy the attention and assistance it needs. They are not the cleanest stores, and they are only after making money not for the love of the pet. It is rumored that 50% of the pets from there die.
I told all of this to my ex-roommate before he went there. To my surprise he comes back with a puppy. I explained to him again that it was a bad idea (along with the fact he was keeping it in the barracks), and he said it was OK, yet his wife told me that I didn’t know what I was talking about. They got a “good deal on a healthy puppy”. The definition of healthy scares me now cause it died today. Not just they woke up and it was dead, they saw it was acting funny and took it too the vet and ran around trying to save its life and it died while they were waiting at the bus stop to go to the vet in Yongsan.
The only thing I have left to say is “HA HA FUCKING HA, I told you so!!!!”. Yeah, I’m an asshole ain’t I? But I guarantee before they leave they will ask for my help and ignore it again, and it will bite them in the ass.

France to Be Site of World’s First Nuclear Fusion Reactor - New York Times
PARIS, June 28 - France won an international competition today to be the site of the world’s first nuclear fusion reactor, an estimated $12 billion project that many scientists see as essential to solving the world’s future energy needs.

“It is a great success for France, for Europe and for all the partners” in the reactor project, President Jacques Chirac of France said in a statement after an international consortium chose the country as the site for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.

Japan, which had lobbied hard for the project, just dropped out of the bidding. The six-member consortium, which includes the United States, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea and the European Union, agreed in Moscow to build the reactor in the southern French city of Cadarache.

Nuclear fusion is the process by which the atomic nuclei are forced together, releasing huge amounts of energy, as with the sun and stars or, in manmade form, the hydrogen bomb. The process has long been studied as a potential energy source that would be far cleaner than burning fossil fuels or even nuclear fission, which is used in nuclear reactors today but produces dangerous radioactive waste.

While the physics of nuclear fusion have long been understood, the engineering required to control the process remains difficult and the logistics of coordinating construction among a six-member consortium presents an even bigger challenge.

The reactor project was started in 1988 but quickly bogged down in bickering over where the reactor’s design team would be based. A compromise split the team between Japan, Germany and the United States, but the inability to decide on a single site foreshadowed the consortium’s struggle over agreeing where the reactor would be built.

Canada, Spain, France and Japan were originally in contention to host the reactor, but a December 2003 meeting to pick a winner ended in a deadlock, with the United States, Japan and South Korea backing the Japanese site and the other three consortium members pushing for the site in France.

Japan finally agreed to relinquish its bid in return for the consortium’s commitment to build a $1 billion materials testing facility in that country.

The consortium also promised Japan that any subsequent fusion reactor would be built there, a significant concession as the first reactor is a development project meant to solve the various technical problems involved and prove that fusion can be harnessed as an economically viable energy source. A second reactor would likely be a prototype meant for commercial power generation.

The standoff put the project on hold. With today’s agreement, the consortium can proceed with the drafting of an agreement on the construction and operation of the reactor. Officials involved in the reactor project said they hoped the agreement would be signed by the end of the year, allowing work on the reactor to begin next year and ground to be broken at the Cadarache site in 2008.

Current plans foresee the reactor operating in 2015.

Construction of the reactor is expected to cost $5 billion with its operation is expected to cost another $5 billion over twenty years, according to officials of the reactor project. Those numbers are based on present-day dollars, however, meaning the actual cost of the reactor will be much higher by the time it is completed.

Many experts also predict that construction could take much longer than currently foreseen, given the difficulty of coordinating multiple suppliers of costly and highly technical components in many countries. Today’s agreement leaves open the possibility that still more countries may participate in the project. India, for example, has expressed interest in getting involved.

The final agreement on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is expected to include provisions that would require consortium members that cause delays to pay compensation.

The fusion project has stirred controversy since it was first considered in the 1980’s, with many scientists arguing that “big science” projects like the multibillion-dollar experimental reactor would divert money from the “little science” of individual researchers who have often produced the most striking scientific breakthroughs.

But such criticism has been drowned out by the growing recognition of fusion’s potential as a solution to the world’s growing energy needs.

“We all know oil and gas depletion will start in 2030 or 2035,” said Peter Haug, secretary general of the European Nuclear Society.

He said most experts agree that because of technical difficulties, renewable energy sources like wind or solar power are unlikely to provide more than 15 or 20 percent of the world’s energy needs. There is enough coal in the earth to keep the world running for centuries, but at an unacceptable environmental cost because of air pollution. As the world’s oil and gas fields become exhausted, the world is expect to increase its reliance on nuclear energy.

“We don’t think fusion will remove fission from the production scheme,” Mr. Haug said. “But it will probably be used along with fission because of the growing energy needs of man.”

Still, few scientists expect a fusion reactor to generate commercially viable electricity before the middle of the century, if by then.

In the meantime, the fusion project means money for the industries and scientific communities that will contribute to it.

“It’s brings great joy and great pride,” said Pascale Amenc Antoni, director of the Cadarache Center, which is run by France’s Atomic Energy Commission.. She said it also recognizes the work on nuclear fusion at its research facility.

South Korea wants to make its beaches more user friendly and thinks a good place to start would be by removing enormous stretches of barbed wire from its shores.

The Maritime Ministry said Tuesday it will start removing barbed wire, used to slow down a possible North Korean landing, from some of its eastern coastal areas next year in order to make the sandy shores more inviting to South Korean tourists.

This is great I haven’t been to any beaches in a long time. Now I can go to one here that is hopefully closer to where I am. Too bad the US is antagonizing North Korea saying that they can take them out regardless of how many A-bombs that they have.

Source

U.S. and South Korean forces can deter and defeat North Korea regardless of whether the reclusive communist state has one or several nuclear weapons, a senior U.S. military officer said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday.

Why don’t we all go to the DMZ next and stick our thumbs in our ears and chant “nanny, nanny, boo boo”. Some people just need to shut the fuck up.

Source