Is this security, or just putting all your eggs in one, government-approved basket

I don't like the look of this. The calming voice tells me it's all voluntary, but I suspect that's merely for the initial period. Besides, as the title question poses, where is the guarantee that somebody's one ID doesn't get stolen or misused? Also, what happens it gets switched off for whatever reason? All of a sudden you don't exist: the computer says no.

The governments of the world keep muscling in on information technology, usually by trying to scare us about terrorists, criminals and sexual deviants, but I'm still far more wary of the governments. I know there are bad people out there, but I also know some of them are within the system I'm told is to protect me.

Hat tip: Infowars

Thorium: the fuel of the future... maybe

The Telegraph reports that China is pushing forward with the development of thorium-fueled nuclear power. This is very interesting, as thorium has the potential to provide cheap and relatively safe energy. It would, amongst other things, mark something of a turning point for China, which has been developing by copying the West, but with this, they would be pioneering a technology that has largely been deglected, due in part to vested interests in the established nuclear industry. When, and if we ever, learn the true state of affairs regarding the Japanese nuclear disaster, thorium may look even more attractive.

Thorium: fuel of the future?

The Telegraph has an interesting article on the use of thorium as fuel, and it sounds too good to be true. Apparently:

A tonne of the silvery metal produces as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal. A mere fistful would light London for a week.

Thorium eats its own hazardous waste. It can even scavenge the plutonium left by uranium reactors, acting as an eco-cleaner. "It’s the Big One," said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA rocket engineer and now chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering.

"Once you start looking more closely, it blows your mind away. You can run civilisation on thorium for hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s essentially free. You don’t have to deal with uranium cartels," he said.

Thorium is so common that miners treat it as a nuisance, a radioactive by-product if they try to dig up rare earth metals. The US and Australia are full of the stuff. So are the granite rocks of Cornwall. You do not need much: all is potentially usable as fuel, compared to just 0.7pc for uranium.

Reading further, we learn how the usual problem of vested interests has held back progress. Let us hope that, for once, the interests of humanity can come out on top.

Update: Apparently this is old news, at least to sci-fi buffs (see above). Well, hell, we're living in the 21st Century, after all. (Hat tip to the Sniper).