Another News Article Roundup: South Korea and eBooks

I had a couple more news articles I emailed home to blog about, but forgot to. So here they are...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/world/asia/14seoul.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

The opposition to nuclear fuel reprocessing really gets on my nerves.  Anti-nuclear activists criticize nuclear power on the ground it generates dangerous waste that will remain dangerous for thousands of years, but then they turn around and criticize nuclear reprocessing, which will cut short the "dangerous period" immensely.

South Korea is even less able to afford this than the US can, since their country is much smaller than ours and they can't let nuclear waste pile up to the same degree we can.

Plus, the 1974 treaty is out of date.  Back then, South Korea was a ramshackle military dictatorship, "the land of almost-right" and the U.S. had legitimate concerns about how they might use nuclear technology.  South Korea is now a wealthy democracy that is, if anything, rather passive in the face of gross provocations by that loony-tune Kim Jong-Il.

Were I the South Koreans, I would want to greatly revise the treaty to permit nuclear fuel reprocessing or toss the whole thing in the shredder.  The whole "it will give Kim a pretext" business is in my opinion a bunch of nonsense--Kim is going to misbehave regardlses of what the U.S. or South Korea do.  Besides, this isn't something like South Korean testing its own nuke that could well seriously provoke North Korea--the only people who seem really upset are the anti-nuke crowd.

The following article is a bit more light in content.  Apparently Kindle eBooks have exceeded hardcovers in sales on Amazon.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/technology/20kindle.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

I'm rather leery of eBooks as opposed print editions of the collection I'm working on with Daverana because I don't know how to promote eBooks beyond posting "buy my book" on web-sites I frequent a lot, as opposed to organizing signings of physical books at bookstores and other places.

However, eBooks look like they're becoming more popular, so perhaps my fears are unfounded.  After all, Amazon.com has the "customers who like this might also like this" option, which could contribute to eBook sales.