Wednesday-Night

It seems we are stuck in a topic rut and not only in terms of frequency, quantity and quality of snowfall. The news appears to be same old - same old, with one outstanding exception (see below).
There are the U.S. economy (tanking) and the markets, which are looking for any excuse to rejoice and […]

If ever there were two categories that we would not wish to identify for the same topic, they would be nuclear and politics. Regrettably, the controversy over the AECL Chalk River facility and oversight by the Nuclear Safety Commission falls into both. We believe that the public and partisan attack on a career civil servant […]

Feb 7th 2008 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition
George Bush’s fiscal plan will set off an epic fight
APART from its record-breaking size—over $3 trillion, for the first time ever—the most memorable novelty of George Bush’s budget proposal was the method he used to submit it to Congress. On February 4th Mr Bush held […]

This does not bode well for transparency under a Clinton II White House. We are curious whether there may be a Georgetown Foreign Service School connection here.

After Mining Deal, Financier Donated to Clinton
(NYT) Late on Sept. 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque […]

January 22, 2008

Masdar City will be constructed in the desert on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi. The aims are to use only renewable energy sources, and to eliminate 99% of the waste stream. This artist’s impression shows wind turbines on the edge of the city and public transport links running through.
(Reuters) ABU DHABI - Gulf […]

Light Bulbs to Light Trucks, Efficiency Shapes New Energy Law
WASHINGTON, DC, December 19, 2007 (ENS) - Congress on Tuesday passed a new energy bill and sent it along Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House in a hybrid Prius car. Today President George W. Bush signed the measure, which includes the first increase in […]

How to design a future-proof nuclear waste bunker
Every now and then, we find an item that intrigues and/or amuses us but does not fit easily into a category. The delightful and thought-provoking piece from The Economist is one such, reminding us of the opening of the  cult science fiction book of the late ’50s […]

 
26 oct 2007
L’industrie nucléaire canadienne devrait jouer un rôle plus actif pour résoudre les problèmes liés à l’entreposage des déchets nucléaires sous la terre, selon un environnementaliste américain.
Le directeur du programme nucléaire du Conseil américain pour la défense des ressources naturelles, Thomas Cochran, croit que le Canada, comme tout pays producteur d’énergie nucléaire, devrait développer […]

26 September 2007
This is National Biotechnology Week which we would have expected to produce great chest-thumping from our city, given that Montréal is [not only] a highly regarded biotechnology R&D centre, [but also] home to the Biotechnology Research Institute (BRI) of the National Research Council (NRC) . Absent the expected municipal chest-thumping vaunting the region’s […]

We are very happy to introduce this week two heretofore-unknown cousins of Diana’s from Louisville, Kentucky, Laura Thébaud Gibb and her husband Gary. Neither has ever been to Montreal and this unfortunately will be a 24-hour flying visit. Laura was the director of a Kentucky county public library near Louisville. Gary, a native Louisvillian, was […]