Scripting News: 10/26/2005

I’m listening to Richard Clarke on Fresh Air. He’s fantastic. They should give him his own show.

Well, they’re giving him his own novel…

Bush Admin. Drops ‘Bunker-Buster’ Plan:

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has abandoned research into a nuclear “bunker-buster” warhead, deciding instead to pursue a similar device using conventional weaponry, a key Republican senator said Tuesday.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said funding for the nuclear bunker-buster as part of the Energy Department’s fiscal 2006 budget has been dropped at the department’s request.

The nuclear bunker-buster had been the focus of intense debate in Congress, with opponents arguing that its development as a tactical nuclear weapon could add to nuclear proliferation.

An administration official, speaking on condition on anonymity because negotiations on the department’s spending bill have not yet been completed, confirmed that a decision had been made to concentrate on a nonnuclear bunker-buster.

Gone black.

Scripting News: 10/26/2005

I’m listening to Richard Clarke on Fresh Air. He’s fantastic. They should give him his own show.

Well, they’re giving him his own novel…

–
Posted by wfzimmerman to What’s New for Book-Lovers at 10/26/2005 05:03:52 PM

Bush Admin. Drops ‘Bunker-Buster’ Plan:

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has abandoned research into a nuclear “bunker-buster” warhead, deciding instead to pursue a similar device using conventional weaponry, a key Republican senator said Tuesday.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said funding for the nuclear bunker-buster as part of the Energy Department’s fiscal 2006 budget has been dropped at the department’s request.

The nuclear bunker-buster had been the focus of intense debate in Congress, with opponents arguing that its development as a tactical nuclear weapon could add to nuclear proliferation.

An administration official, speaking on condition on anonymity because negotiations on the department’s spending bill have not yet been completed, confirmed that a decision had been made to concentrate on a nonnuclear bunker-buster.

Gone black.

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Posted by wfzimmerman to Proliferated at 10/26/2005 04:38:37 PM

CNN.com - Where’s ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ creator? - Oct 24, 2005:

Where’s ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ creator?
Bill Watterson remains private, 10 years after strip’s end

CHAGRIN FALLS, Ohio (AP) — Maybe someday, officials will put up a statue marking this quaint village as the birthplace of “Calvin and Hobbes.”

Just don’t expect cartoonist Bill Watterson to attend the unveiling ceremony. It’s been nearly 10 years since he abruptly quit drawing one of the most popular comic strips of all time. Since then, he’s been as absent as the precocious Calvin and his pet tiger, err, stuffed animal, Hobbes.

Some call Watterson reclusive. Others say he just likes his privacy.

What an incredible shame that Watterson stopped feeling the urge to write Calvin and Hobbes. And gee, he looks a lot like Dad!

George R.R. Martin’s Official Website:

no words can express how miserable, angry, and depressed I am feeling this morning over the results of yesterday’s election. …

Winter is coming to Westeros, but it has already come to America.

He took this down almost immediately after the election, so the Wayback Machine is the best way to find it.

Salon.com News | The strange saga of Cheney and the “nuclear threat”:

Yet, within four days of his return to Washington, there he was on the Sunday TV shows assuring the nation’s viewers that Iraq was indeed “actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time.”

Did he then acquire new information, perhaps from Iraq’s neighbors, during his trip to the Middle East, or had he simply decided by then that the “facts” really had to be “fixed” — or more precisely in Wilson’s case, ignored altogether — if the American people were to be persuaded that war was the only solution to the problem of Saddam Hussein? In any event, one can only describe his sudden lack of curiosity combined with his public certainty on the subject as, well … curious.

Too bad Jim Lobe doesn’t answer these questions in his article.

Publishers Marketplace:

“THE GREATEST: The American University and The American Way of Life, showing how the university is at risk of losing its dominant status and why a threat to the university is a threat to the health and wealth of our nation, to Peter Osnos at Public Affairs, for publication in spring 2007,”

This will sell a zillion copies … in university towns.

Google Search:

Many visitors have been interested in Joan Didion’s latest book. Here is a link to recent reviews found by Google News.

A debut novel straight out of the blue (state) (LA Times)

Sen. Barbara Boxer’s ‘A Time to Run’ is about a politician who battles a controversial Supreme Court nominee.

By Anne-Marie O’Connor, Times Staff Writer

It may come as a surprise to many of her constituents, but for seven years California Sen. Barbara Boxer has been moonlighting from what she calls her “day job” — as an elected official from the state that boasts the free world’s fifth or sixth largest economy — to write a novel. “A Time to Run” is a for-whom-the-bell-tolls story of a liberal blue-state senator who braves the political mud wrestling in Washington for the sake of her ideals. It is, of course, co-written, with San Francisco author Mary-Rose Hayes.

In Boxer’s fictional world, a liberal California senator with views very much like hers goes to bat to defeat the Supreme Court nomination of a woman whose most conspicuous qualification for the job seems to be her conservative credentials — a plot twist Boxer said she added a year and a half ago.

“It’s crazy, the parallels,” the Democrat said on a recent day as she whizzed across Los Angeles in a chauffeured SUV to a Hollywood party honoring herbook. “It’s just remarkable that this all happened,” she said, referring to the controversial Supreme Court nomination of conservative Harriet Miers. “My book seemed to be so prescient.”

“It’s practically psychic!” Peggy Northrop, the editor of More Magazine, told Boxer when the senator pulled up at a More party to unveil the book. “It’s so … prescient.”

Ouch. I’ll bet Harriet Miers will be too busy to read this.