New Nuclear Reactor Approved For First Time In 34 Years

Great. Let’s hope for more.

It’s been 34 years—and several nuclear accidents later—but a divided federal panel on Thursday licensed a utility to build nuclear reactors in the U.S. for the first time since 1978.

Waterproof your Phone

This is cool, I hope it works. Courtesy of Wisconsin’s own Bill Weir.

The camera phone age

My column for the Daily News is online. It’s called, “The camera phone age.”

Congress must not pass SOPA

My column for the Daily News is online. It’s called, “Congress must not pass SOPA.”

“Lady Chinky Eyes”

Good for Papa John’s for responding so quickly. Oh, the power of social media…

Customer Minhee Cho posted a message on Twitter along with an image of the receipt from a Manhattan location describing her as “lady chinky eyes.”

Several hours later after the message had gone viral, the Louisville, Ky.-based company formally apologized on its Facebook and Twitter pages for Cho’s experience.

The company says the employee was dismissed.

Spokeswoman Tish Muddon told the Louisville Courier-Journal ( http://cjky.it/ADcaKs ) that the company was attempting to reach Cho to apologize.

Verizon Reverses Course

Never mind.

NEW YORK (AP) — After a customer backlash, Verizon Wireless on Friday dropped a plan to start charging $2 for every payment subscribers make over the phone or online with their credit or debit cards.

In a statement on its website Friday, the company said “customer feedback” prompted the decision to drop the “convenience fee” it wanted to introduce on Jan. 15.

Iran Produces Nuclear Fuel Rod

Lovely.

TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian scientists have produced the nation’s first nuclear fuel rod, a feat of engineering the West doubted Tehran was capable of, Iran officials said Sunday.

The announcement comes after Iran has said it was compelled to manufacture fuel rods on its own since international sanctions banned Tehran from buying them on foreign markets.

Econ Blogging

Interesting.

“LET Truth and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?” asked John Milton in Areopagitica, his rousing defence of a free press, in 1644. But in an era when a blog can be set up with a few clicks, not everyone agrees that more voices and more choices improve the quality of debate. Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor, has argued that by allowing people to retreat into “information cocoons” or “echo chambers” in which they hear only views they agree with, the blogosphere fosters polarisation—a fear widely shared by politicians. Forbes once called blogs “the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective”.

Previous publishing revolutions, such as the advent of printing, prompted similar concerns about trivialisation and extremism. But whatever you think about the impact of blogging on political, scientific or religious debate, it is hard to argue that the internet has cheapened the global conversation about economics. On the contrary, it has improved it.

Social Seating

Interesting.

Using a new feature called “Meet & Seat,” KLM allows passengers to browse the Facebook profiles of other passengers in hopes of making each flight a bit more intimate. The romantic angle of the new option isn’t explicitly stated — and you could just as easily pick a potential seat neighbor based on their favorite TV show or other interest — but singles could definitely take advantage by turning a plane ride into a bite-sized date.

Of course, if you have no interest in who you’ll be sitting next to and prefer to drift into a fog of in-flight cocktails and iPad entertainment, you can opt out of the program entirely. Of course, doing so may cause you to be matched up less socially adept seatmates, so choose wisely.

I’m one of those who would prefer to bury my nose in a book or sleep than engage in airplane chatter, but that’s just me…

Live life where you are

My column for the Daily News is online. It’s called, “Live life where you are.”

Eliminating Email

This story is kind of funny when you look into it a bit more.

You’ve got mail–not. Employees of tech company Atos will be banned from sending emails under the company’s new “zero email” policy.

CEO Thierry Breton of the French information technology company said only 10 percent of the 200 messages employees receive per day are useful and 18 percent is spam.  That’s why he hopes the company can eradicate internal emails in 18 months, forcing the company’s 74,000 employees to communicate with each other via instant messaging and a Facebook-style interface.

Caroline Crouch, a spokeswoman for the company, told ABC News the goal is focused on internal emails rather than external emails with clients and partners. Atos has already reduced the number of internal emails by 20 percent in six months.

When asked how employees have responded to the policy, Crouch told ABC News the overall response “has been positive with strong take up of alternative tools.”

Breton,  the French finance minister from 2005 to 2007, told the Wall Street Journal he has not sent an email in the three years since he became chairman and CEO of Atos in November 2008.

“We are producing data on a massive scale that is fast polluting our working environments and also encroaching into our personal lives,” he said in a statement when first announcing the policy in Feburary. “At [Atos] we are taking action now to reverse this trend, just as organizations took measures to reduce environmental pollution after the industrial revolution.”

OK, so far I’m on board. I get a lot of email and most of it useless or just informational. I’m all for cutting down on email in favor of less blunt forms of communications when appropriate. Sign me up!

Crouch said Atos is evaluating a number of new tools to replace internal email including collaborative and social media tools. Those include the Atos Wiki, which allows all employees to communicate by contributing or modifying online content, and Office Communicator, the company’s online chat system which allows video conferencing, and file and application sharing.

Hey… wait a minute… they are replacing email with their own products? The cynic in me says that this move may have more to do with promoting their own products than in any kind of leading edge cultural shift. I can see the ad now… “Cut down on email by buying Atos communications products!” 

Well played, Atos… well played.

Still Waiting

Error Between the Chair and the Keyboard

I call BS. This is the message on United Wisconsin’s website (they are the collection of lefties who want to recall Walker):

A United Wisconsin to Recall Walker

Wow, there sure is a lot of excitement to get the recall going. Due to a surge in traffic we have been forced to scale back our site.

But no worries, recall petitions will be available Nov. 15 2011 at 12:01 am

When your site has been crashed due to traffic, it’s very hard to estimate when it will be back up - especially to the minute. I know. I’ve been there. This very site was down for about four days when Janet Jackson flashed her boob at the Super Bowl and we had no idea when it would return. If United Wisconsin’s site was really down due to traffic, there’s no way they would be able to predict that it would be online at 12:01 AM. If they could, then every IT guy in the country wants to know their secret.

I suspect this is just one of many little publicity stunts that they plan to pull over the next few months and the MJS fell for it.

RIP Steve Jobs

Our nation is shy one brilliant entrepreneur today.

Steve Jobs, the mastermind behind Apple’s iPhone, iPad, iPod, iMac and iTunes, has died, Apple said. Jobs was 56.

Toll Roads in Wisconsin?

Hmmmm...

A new report from the right-leaning Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, which favors limited government and free markets, says “modest tolls” would be enough to pay for modernizing the state’s highways over the next 30 years.

The report asserts that new sources of revenue are needed to offset an ongoing $1 billion annual shortfall in highway funding.

[...]

Wisconsin is facing an estimated $4.8 billion in costs to rebuild its rural interstate highways over the next 30 years. Tolling on the rural system would raise $5.2 billion, the report says.

The study also looked at two options for immediate tolling on urban interstate highways in the southeastern part of the state. Tolling only new express lanes would raise $1.5 billion, or 17 percent of projected modernization costs. Tolling on all lanes would raise $6.2 billion, or 70 percent of the costs.

The work could be financed up front with long-term “toll revenue bonds” based on future collections.

If, and only if, the tolls are offset by a reduction in the taxes and fees that are already allocated to transportation, then I would support putting in tolls. They really are easy to use nowadays. But if the tolls are just an additional revenue source for transportation funding, then no thanks.