Uh...?

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee said in October that the agency and ElBaradei were honored for their "incalculable importance" in promoting nuclear nonproliferation and ensuring safe, peaceful use of nuclear energy."

Don't get me wrong, ElBaradei is doing important work, but this takes me back to one of my pet peeves, the words, "rules of war," which I find to be as perverse and oxymoronic a phrase as was ever uttered. Why is nuclear warfare so much worse than our lovely tradition of hand-to-hand (or bomb to bomb) combat? Because it slaughters hundreds of thousands at one swell foop? Well, damn. Let’s just slaughter those hundreds of thousands one person at a time. Let’s give them lingering deaths or, even better yet, lingering lives. Yup. So much kinder, don’t you think? Phooey!

"Ensuring safe, peaceful use of nuclear energy"?

As of this writing, there ain’t no such bird, unless it’s the extinct dodo. Peaceful, sure. Safe? Who wants to hop into a barrel of nuclear waste and ride it over Niagra Falls with me? Or even sit in the damned sludge barrel and sunbathe with me on a substantial piece of ground. No takers? Thought so.