Tying Up Loose Ends

I don't have anything new to write about today. I was just going through my old postings and saw that I have two corrections to make.

First is the one about Red/Blue states. Turns out my long thesis was unnecessary. I searched a little more and found a simpler and more direct explanation. All one has to do is look at the county-level (not state-level) electoral map. The picture is truly astounding - instead of Red or Blue states, what you have is a sea of Red and some Blue dots here and there! Those dots are, of course, the big cities of USA: New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc. The 'Blue' states happen to be Blue because their big city population outnumbers that of the rest of the state. The 'Red' states are states in which this does not happen. For more details (and a passionate argument for liberal/urban politics) click here.

The other is the one about the India-US nuclear deal. I said,"The N-deal is as good as dead" when the Dems won the House and the Senate. Well, time for me to eat my words. The N-deal was passed on the Hill (with overwhelming bi-partisan support) and signed by Prez Bush into law, thank you very much. This subject received a lot of coverage in the Indian media, especially the Indian Express. I somehow never took much interest in it; I don't know why. How important is this deal for us really? What it basically means is that we'll now have fuel for our reactors from the US (and other countries in the NSG). Fine. But what percentage of India's energy needs can be met by nuclear power? I don't have any numbers, but I don't think it will be much. Nuclear energy will be just one of the many sources we have to tap if we want to satisfy our growing hunger for power.