Since the debate topic is “Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially reduce the size of its nuclear weapons arsenal, and/or substantially reduce and restrict the role and/or missions of its nuclear weapons arsenal,” the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation has put up “some resources”:http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/policy/nuclearweapons/articles/college_debate_09-10/ for debaters.

Get to work.

Josh Pollack has a “new column”:http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/joshua-pollack over at the Bulletin. I think that’s pretty cool, especially because he’s splitting his salary with me.

Check out his “first effort.”:http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/joshua-pollack/getting-back-to-basics-missile-defense

Slate “got rid of”:http://www.slate.com/id/2225909/ the only thing they had that was worth reading: Today’s Papers. That was the third thing I read every day. Replacing it with a news aggregator is a terrible idea because, well, Slate’s judgment is generally poor; I would rather the staff would just stick to summarizing the 5 major papers.

Attention enterprising bloggers: there’s now a niche to be filled.

A FoKerr tells me that NPR has “Hot Iran Action”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112119429 going all week.

My friend and old colleague Wade Boese has a “new gig,”:http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/08/19/tauscher_sworn_in_t_bureau_takes_shape according to L Rozen. Congratulations to him.

But I feel compelled to remind people that “George Tenet and Ron Jeremy were high school classmates.”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1430/jeffrey-on-tenet-and-libya

I have yet to listen to it, but my old debate coach and former fellow WRUV DJ posted “this radio show”:http://collegeofmusicalknowledge.blogspot.com/2009/08/1984-08-17-atomic-mixpost-nuclear-party.html from 1984 that’s all about nuclear weapons.

I am thinking seriously about making this blog mostly about WMD and heavy metal.

At least we can have some Iranian death metal:

At least for now, because of Michael Rubin. It’ll go black when Hexive makes it happen. It’s been fun.

A bit overshadowed by the “news of the day”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1991/nk-boots-iaea-again, but I had two questions about the recent North Korean missile launch that I wanted to get down on, um, paper:

1. I have not read every report that there is to read, but no one seems to say that the second two stages of the missile separated. That is interesting, given that the last two stages of the TD-1 that was tested in 1998 also failed to separate. Is North Korea having the same problem with this missile?

2. On the same day in 2006 that North Korea tested the TD-2, Pyongyang also tested “six other missiles.”:http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2006_09/NKMissileTest Why just the one this time?

And speaking of “said news”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1991/nk-boots-iaea-again of the day, it’s worth remembering that North Korea tested its nuclear explosive device about three months after the failed July 2006 missile test. Just saying.

*Update:*

Josh and I are really “good”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1991/nk-boots-iaea-again at “coordinating.”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1992/nk-can-this-bad-marriage-be-saved