June 16, 2011

The Half-Life Of Other News

“Ft. Calhoun is the designated spent fuel storage facility for the entire state of Nebraska…and maybe for more than one state. Calhoun stores its spent fuel in ground-level pools which are underwater anyway – but they are open at the top. When the Missouri river pours in there, it’s going to make Fukushima look like an x-ray.”

—Tom Burnett on the underreported story of Nebraska's Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant, currrently submerged beneath a national wave of weiner jokes. Presumably Burnett is concerned that the flooding Missouri River, adjacent to the plant, will wash away some, or even lots, of the spent nuclear fuel stored in outdoor pools around the plant, where an electrical fire in the control room interrupted the regular order of business a week ago.

Bloomsday! For Reals!

It's all aligned now, you see, the proper anniversary of Bloomsday, when the calendar comes round as it will from time to time, with the day of the week, Thursday, and the month, June, and its sixteenth day, all three essential components matched up once more, identical to those canonically given in the famous book "Ulysses" by James Joyce.

Here's the fabulous RTÉ Radio dramatization, courtesy of the Internet Archive:

I'll be over here leafing through the thing as is my way on Bloomsday.