According to the BBC:

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Nuclear clean-up costs 'to soar'

The cost of cleaning up the UK's ageing nuclear facilities, including some described as "dangerous", looks set to rise above £73bn, the BBC has learned.

A senior official at the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said the bill would rise by billions of pounds.

Nineteen sites across the country, some dating from the 1950s, are due to be dismantled in the coming decades.

A spokesman for the Department for Business said it was ready for an adjustment in the clean-up costs.

In January, the National Audit Office said that the cost of decommissioning ageing power sites had risen from £12bn to £73bn.

The consensus is that Obama's speech yesterday was about race. He certainly talked about race a lot, but I'm not quite convinced that race was the main message, or necessarily the main intent. Let's pick apart the themes and see how this is an election winning speech which will do more to eliminate both Hillary and McCain than any number of primary wins.

Theme 1: The Patriot

Google 'Obama speech', and you'll see this is his regular backdrop. It's been used time and again, with the number of flags apparently increasing directly with the intended importance of the speech.  

Last night (first photo) there were at least four flags, and probably more out of shot - an impressive display, which I don't think even Bush has equalled on camera.

A slippery little gem from Paulson, being interviewed on a round of US breakfast shows and quoted by the BBC.

BBC NEWS | Business | US admits economy is in downturn

"We know we're in a sharp downclimb and there's no doubt that the American people know that the economy has turned down," he said.

He said that policy was focused on calming the financial markets.

"The big focus on the part of all policy makers is to minimise the spillover to the real economy," he added.

The UK has just had a relatively small one, which I felt - barely - some 150 miles away.

After an ambiguous creak, the giveaway was realising that my inner ear was telling me I'd just been moved - which is not usually something you expect to feel indoors, especially not when the house is moving around you, and which was a queasy experience I'd prefer not to repeat.

The magnitude was around 5.3 or so, epicentre near Market Rasen, which is about fifteen miles north of Lincoln - a bit less than half way up the UK, near the eastern coast.

There's likely to be some light structural damage around the area, possibly including lost power, which won't be revealed until daylight tomorrow, but it doesn't sound as if there are any casualties.

So - quite the non-event, almost...

Or why I finally lost patience with Dawkins, et al.

A key point - based on a comment made by asdf - which I think is worth bringing out more, because it's not just a footnote, it's the main event.

This is a very sketchy bullet-point diary, but I think it's worth bringing out these ideas because they matter to anyone who's planning a long term campaign for more civilised values.

The BBC is reporting that Gore has ruled out a run.

In an interview with Norwegian broadcaster NRK, he said he would not run for the White House again.

Mr Gore told NRK he wanted to focus on his climate change campaigning, which won him a Nobel Peace Prize last week.

It's hard not to see this as yet another example of Democratic wetness. It's nice that Gore wants to concentrate on climate change, but I'm having some difficulty imagining that being Mr Gore would have a more positive effect on that than being President Gore.

I am somewhat angry, in fact - and I suspect I won't be the only one.

For a noob, the most distinctive thing about Second Life is its banality. While the hype promises a virtual community celebrating every possible form of creativity and diversity, the reality is mostly virtual suburban sprawl. Flying across the mainlands reveals identikit malls alternating with acres of virtual McMansions, and open plots or shops for rent speckled with garish levitating FOR SALE signs.

Although you can rummage around Second Life for free, staying in-world costs money - quite a lot of money for a significant presence. So the losers are out to make a buck, while the winners can live out the perfect virtual white-picket fantasy of a beach house with a virtual speed boat that can't go anywhere.

From the diaries - whataboutbob

The Famous Unbelievable Diary from last month gave me an excuse to put down some ideas about the status of science in general at the moment. The comments made by our self-styled environmental-atheist bouncing Czech are indicative of a deeper issue with science which I've seen evidence of everywhere - including ET.

The conclusion is:

Most people hate it.

Here's why:

From the diaries ~ whataboutbob

I'd like to suggest some, but I'm having the busiest week of the year here so far, and it looks like I'm going to be somewhat distracted for the next week or two.

Sorry.

However - as a side thread to ET-TV^TM perhaps we can use this as a space to talk about what's available and/or secure, and settle on something that can be used for future off-line project work.

There's a new magazine in town. I picked up a copy of Sublime on the off chance it might be worth trying to write for.

Billing itself as The First International Ethical Lifestyle Magazine, the omens were - shall we say - not auspicious. I'm pretty much against having a lifestyle on principle. It seems to be a lot like not having a life, but rather more expensive.

I don't have time to write more about this, but I've been following with some interest the aftermath of this Summer's terror hysteria, with the suspicion that there was really no serious plot of any sort.

So I'm not entirely surprised to see that the BBC is reporting that a Pakistani judged has ruled that there is not only not enough evidence to convict the alleged ringleader, there is no real evidence at all.

The arrest of Rashid Rauf in Pakistan triggered arrests in the United Kingdom of a number of suspects allegedly plotting to blow up transatlantic flights.

The Pakistani authorities described him as a key figure.

But an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi found no evidence that he had been involved in terrorist activities or that he belonged to a terrorist organisation.

As well as forgery charges, Mr Rauf has also been charged with carrying explosives.

But his lawyer says police evidence amounts only to bottles of hydrogen peroxide found in his possession.

Hydrogen peroxide is a disinfectant that can be used for bomb-making if other chemicals are added.

Peroxide can also be used as a mouth wash. I have some bottles (plural) in my bathroom. I suppose it's lucky the police don't know this.

It looks like London Mayor Ken Livingstone is about to make himself very unpopular with the rich and feckless. Plans were announced today to raise the London congestion charge to £25 for 4X4s and other high-end cars with high-end emissions. Budget cars with low emissions will have the charge waived. The charge area itself is being extended early next year to include more of West London, including some poorer areas, and also a section of the Westway, which is the main access road to central and northern London from the West.

From the diaries - whataboutbob

BushCo seems to be drifting further and further into madness. According to the Washington Post, sexual abstinence isn't just for teens any more.

The federal government's "no sex without marriage" message isn't just for kids anymore.

Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.

The government says the change is a clarification. But critics say it's a clear signal of a more directed policy targeting the sexual behavior of adults.

There's not much to say about this, because it speaks for itself. Cspan has the video of of Rumsfeld morphing from soft-spoken speechmaker into gesticulating loon when asked a hard question about Iraq about five minutes in.

Remember - it's complicated. And complex. And even multidimensional. And just back off with the questions, okay?

You can almost feel the press corps squirming in their seats with embarrassment.

There's more entertainment around 25 minutes in, when Rumsfeld explains to the press that "He didn't just fall off a turnip truck."

And later at 32:30 when he answers a question with "The problem is the word 'It.'"

Snark is pretty much redundant.

If you don't have a Mac and can hack rtsp in RealPlayer, you can see the entire video, in all of its ghoulish pumpkin-headed Halloween madness, at:

rtsp://video-cspan.org/project/iraq/iraq102606.dod.rm

(RealPlayer on my Mac won't play this, for some reason.)

If you do have a Mac there's a highlight online with a transcript at Think Progress.

...Just some random thoughts about revenue sharing in a Scoop-like setting. These are more about the alleged ThatBritBlog project, which is still happening (or at least being thought about) quietly in the background, than anything that's happening here and now. But it's an interesting subject so some debate could be appropriate.

Some interesting facts about the state of party politics in the UK from Charter 88, which is part of the New Politics Network.

20% of Conservative Associations and 40% of Lib Dem Local Parties have fewer than 100 members per constituency. Conservative Associations in the North of England typically have fewer than 50 members per constituency.

34% of Conservative Associations, 50% of Constituency Labour Parties and 73% of Liberal Democrat Local
Parties received less than £5,000 in income in 2005.

32% of Conservative Associations, 44% of Liberal Democrat Local Parties and 50% of Constituency Labour Parties distributed less than 1 leaflet per household in the 2005 general election.

At least 67% of the population received no personal contact from any of the three main parties in the 2005 general election. In solid Labour seats, this figure increased to 82%.

You can read the full report here.

(from the diaries --poemless)

In the silly (or possibly delusionally grand) thinking stakes, this idea has to be one of the silliest, or possibly one of the grandest.

It's certainly Orwellian - welcome to Oceania - but is it it really all that insane a suggestion?

The advantages of economic union would be obvious. Ignoring the false rhetoric about sclerotic European economies, the EU and the US together would become the biggest trading bloc in all of history. But that would be just the start of the benefits.

Readers of a certain age will have fond memories of this satirical show - which was a lot like Monty Python, but based on real events.

As it happens, it's also a good lead in for black comedy news stories you won't find being reported by the mainstream media in the UK.

For example, this one, which I'm shamelessly stealing from this Kos diary.

Rocket launcher `found at dentist's house'

A retired Grange dentist is accused of being part of a bomb plot after a record number of explosives were seized in a Lancashire town [...]

Police found rocket launchers, chemicals, British National Party literature and a nuclear or biological suit at his home.

From The Register:

The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear the arguments in the case of Massachusetts vs the Environmental Protection Agency.

The suit, brought by Massachusetts and eleven other states, along with a few cities and environmental lobby groups, accuses the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of failing to regulate CO2 emissions from motor vehicles.

The legal action was brought after the EPA denied a petition asking it to intervene and set limits on vehicle emissions in 2002. It argued that it had no obligation to regulate CO2 emissions. It must oversee gases that represent an "endangerment to public health and the environment", but said that CO2 did not necessarily fall into this category.

Eighteen scientists filed a "friend of the court" brief arguing that the court had "misrepresented the findings in Climate Change Science", a 2001 report. The brief says the court used selective quotes from the report to suggest that the science on climate change is uncertain.

Professor John Dernbach of Widener University Law School's Harrisburg campus, one of the four lawyers who worked on the brief, told Patriot News: "EPA really blew the science" because it ignored the findings of the main scientific source it quoted.