Jurors found former Enron executives Kenneth Lay and Jeffery Skilling guilty of fraud and criminal conspiracy yesterday, in what the New York Times hailed as “a verdict on an era.” In fact, the Times chose a comment made by Sean Berkowitz, director of the Justice Department’s Enron Task Force, as their quote of the day: "The jury has spoken and they have sent an unmistakable message to boardrooms across the country that you can't lie to shareholders, you can't put yourself in front of your employees' interests, and no matter how rich and powerful you are you have to play by the rules," said Berkowitz.
Yet, yesterday’s verdict comes just weeks after the GOP pushed a shamefully diluted lobbying ethics bill, which failed to ban lavish gifts like exotic free trips, increase lobbying transparency, require ethics training for congress members, or even provide any means of enforcement for old and new rules. Despite the repeated dishonesty and wanton corruption of officials like Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, and Tom DeLay, most Americans seem apathetic to the fate of the previous bill, which would have put a significant damper on corruption.
Oh, the American hypocrisy! While our politicians parade around, demanding corporate transparency and responsibility, they feel little guilt when the accept bribes, lie to the constituents, and "stay the course" when every sign indicates a giant u-turn is necessary. One can only wonder what happened to doing the right thing; American Democracy has never been more of sham.
While in Washington, D.C. three weeks ago, an interesting opportunity approached me. General Motors was giving test drives of their HydroGen prototype vehicle, which runs on compressed hydrogen gas. The fuel cell powered auto is a bit smaller than the average sedan, comparable in size to a Prius, but higher off the ground with more headroom and larger windows. There are no mechanical components of the vehicle besides the front and rear axles. There is no drive shaft. There is no shifting assembly. The stearing wheel is not physically connected to the front wheels, lacking tie-rods and a pitman arm. Everything in the vehicle is controlled electronically. There are "forward," "reverse," and "park" buttons located on the center console between the two front bucket seats. The "gas" and "brake" are still in the form of pedals on the floor, however.
Today, the New York Times published an 
The debate for nuclear power in the United States has been an ever-inflamed issue since the Three Mile Island incident in 1979 at the plant's Unit 2 reactor. Since then, no new nuclear power generating stations have been built in the U.S. leaving us behind countries like France, who produce close to 90% of their power from nuclear energy. The American public has been pumped with anti-nuclear stigma for thirty years and is extremely reluctant in accepting nuclear technology of any type. The public idea of nuclear power associates a mushroom cloud to the technology. The idea can't be farther from the truth. The only "explosion" (if you even can call it that) that can occur is a steam flash event, or the effect of a steam-pipe leak within the reactor containment dome. The superheated steam rapidly expands once hitting ambient air temperatures within the reactor dome. The dome is specifically designed to contain this swift air expansion. The dome has near five-foot-thick, concrete walls reinforced with steel rods that form a woven steel grid. These steel woven "baskets" build on top of one another within the poured concrete. The result is a containment dome that can withstand never-before-seen tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, nuclear blasts, and specifically, direct impacts of military aircraft or missiles. 
The Devil may be shivering in his boots, but at least now he can run Windows on his Macintosh computer.