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Politics : Support the French! Viva Democracy! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (2473)	8/11/2003 4:36:39 AM
From: zonder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7841

This will be fun: Bush Impeached? Wanna Bet? By Leander Kahney wired.com 02:00 AM Aug. 04, 2003 PT Though there was an outcry over the Pentagon's terrorism futures market, a similar online exchange is in the works to predict what the U.S. government is up to. The American Action Market [www.americanactionmarket.org] will offer various Washington "futures" that can be bet upon and traded. Examples include: •Which country will the White House threaten next? •Who will be the next foreign leader to move off the CIA payroll and onto the White House's "most wanted" list? •Which corporation with close ties to the White House will be the next cloaked in scandal? [Other examples: -the next White House lie to break into the news -the next country to which the White House will issue an ultimatum, and when -the next foreign leader to move from the CIA payroll to White House "most wanted" list -the lifespan of various DARPA projects, such as Total Information Awareness [site] and Babylon [site] the first White House staffer to resign in disgrace, and when -the President's approval rating on the day before Saddam is captured or killed...] The AAM will begin registering traders in September and plans to open for business Oct. 1 -- the same launch date proposed for the Pentagon's terrorism market, until it was shelved. Like the Pentagon's scrapped Policy Analysis Market, the AAM lets traders "bet" on future events by buying and selling futures as though they were stocks. The higher the price, the more likely the market believes the event will occur. But instead of predicting terrorist strikes, the AAM will predict things like the next White House staffer to quit. "The idea is to answer some of the most pressing questions in the world: What will the White House do next?" said one of the founders, Andrew Geiger, an American programmer living in Paris. The AAM market is the brainchild of a half-dozen academics from various colleges, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, New York University and the University of Montreal. Most, however, are keeping their identities quiet until they get an institutional go-ahead. "It's quite amazing, the Pentagon and the White House are very fertile imaginative fields these days," Geiger said. "(The AAM project) sounds humorous, but that just shows how far things have gone. We've entered the realm of fiction. Things really are Dr. Strangelove." The AAM project complements another academic project, the Government Information Awareness project. The GIA was built in response to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Terrorism Information Awareness program. Its organizers hope the market will attract academics, politicians, civil servants and other insiders to provide accurate predictions of White House behavior. Geiger said even those who read the newspapers are qualified to be traders. "Our goal is to have people with insight into how the White House works," said Geiger. "There are a lot of people who spend a lot of time thinking about what's going on in the world these days. A lot of that thought could be transferred into the system, giving you trading data that will tell you what's really going on." Geiger added, "Who knows whether it will reveal stuff? Anyway, it will be engaging." The public, he noted, will be able to follow trades on the market's website. David Pennock, a senior research scientist at Overture Services, said futures markets have proven to be very good predictors of many different kinds of events, from the weather to election outcomes. "It's one of the best, if not the best, way to predict the future," he said. "It's a good, well-known method for getting information that's distributed around the world." Bob Forsythe, a University of Iowa professor who helped organize the Iowa Electronic Markets, which speculate on election results, agreed that futures are reliable indicators of what's going to happen next -- if the traders are knowledgeable. "You have to have informed traders or they don't work very well," he said. "Who are the informed traders in an assassination market, for example? The same's true for predicting the White House."

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (2473)	8/11/2003 10:51:33 AM
From: Glenn Petersen	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7841

Heat threatens safety of nuclear reactors as France girds for electricity rationing By Alex Duval Smith in Paris 11 August 2003 news.independent.co.uk The French government is considering national electricity rationing after engineers warned that they can no longer guarantee the safety of the country's 58 nuclear power reactors because the heatwave is defeating efforts to cool them. A crisis meeting this morning at the Prime Minister's office will be told that France - which depends more heavily on atomic energy than any other European country - faces the prospect of shutting down half its power grid. Eléctricité de France (EdF) says the temperatures of reactor casings in some plants are approaching the 50C safety limit and attempts to cool them by spraying water from the outside have largely failed. Environment campaigners say the fragile ecosystems of rivers such as the Rhône and the Garonne - whose levels are already low - are threatened because nuclear plants are discharging cooling water at more than 30C, compared with the usual maximum of 24C. Nicole Fontaine, an industry minister, said the poistion was serious. "Usually, when one country needs to reduce production, it can import power from a European neighbour, such as Britain, Germany or Switzerland," she said. "This is what has happened in the past. But production is low everywhere because the heatwave and drought is affecting everybody. We need to look for solutions at home and find a balance between consumption, production capacities and environmental constraints.'' Environment campaigners say the present crisis proves the safety rules of the French nuclear industry do not allow for extreme situations and that the electricity and atomic energy authorities are acting with impunity. Stéphane Lhomme, spokesman for the pressure group Sortir du Nucléaire (Get out of nuclear), said: "EdF is currently applying left, right and centre for dispensation from safety rules - and obtaining it. This proves that French environmental protection rules are seen by EdF to be only of use when everything is going well.'' Since the end of July, the French nuclear safety authority has granted three plants exemptions from rules limiting the top temperature of cooling water discharged into rivers to 24C - Bugey on the Rhône, Tricastin on the Drôme and Golfech on the Garonne. Each has been allowed, temporarily, to discharge water at 30C. This morning's ministerial meeting will be told that each is exceeding the new limit. A further two plants have reduced their output and have applied to discharge water at more than 24C - Blayais on the Garonne near Bordeaux and Saint-Alban in the Alps. Le Monde reports that a plant at Cruas, south of Lyons, has been discharging water at 29.8C without permission. Last week, amid much criticism, EdF sprayed Fessenheim nuclear power station, in Alsace, with water drawn from the water table below the power station but failed significantly to reduce the 48C temperature of the reactor casing. M. Lhomme said: "This crisis comes as the government is preparing to announce the launch of a new generation of nuclear reactors. What we should be doing is cutting consumption and freeing up some money to invest in renewable energy sources, rather than deepening this country's dependence on nuclear energy.''