Things I'm wondering about this week

I called my mother the other day and caught her in the middle of watching Starship Troopers. I could just as easily say I'm wondering why my mother would be watching something like Starship Troopers. But let's not get existential. I mentioned to her that some people complained that the Heinlein source material was antisemitic, or at least that is what I remembered. We both agreed that clearly there is nothing about the movie that struck us that way unless Denise Richards is Jewish which would be an embarrassment to Jews everywhere.

I googled this and couldn't find a lot. One was a comment on a far-right wackjob site that I'm not going to link to (apparently, liberals want you to believe that it's racist. He's totally right too. It's all part of my brilliant liberal conspiracy to take over the country and kill Jesus by convincing dittoheads that Paul Verhoeven films suck. Bwah ha ha. Except for Showgirls which is totally awesome. I'm erect, why aren't you erect?)

The evidence in the Wikipedia article is pretty flimsy. They just say basically that "bugs" sounds an awful lot like "Jews" (really? How are you pronouncing that?) And Verhoeven's uniforms looked kinda Nazi-ish but Verhoeven says he didn't even finish the book-it was boring and depressing. Hah! I love you Paul Verhoeven. All is forgiven.

I read Stranger in a Strange Land and HATED it violently so I will not be reading anymore Heinlein but it's interesting how jingoistic Starship supposedly is while Stranger is so hippy dippy-and sexist. I've heard The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is interesting but a really tedious read. Everyone speaks in some kind of patois that is difficult to pick up on. No thanks.

So, I dunno on all that. Onto other matters. Namely, my co-worker Herb came into my office today and was admiring my periodic table. He mentioned that thorium is being looked at as a reactor fuel that is better and more stable than uranium. We wondered why, if that's so, it hadn't been considered before.

I wondered if it was rare but that's not the case. Apparently, it's been known for a while that thorium is a good alternative and will produce less waste. The reason it's not being used is mainly to do with the existing infrastructure, which is set up to use uranium. The decision to use uranium was originally driven by Cold War expediencies. India and Australia have huge thorium reserves.