Readers know that I yield to no one in my love of atomic schwag. A colleague, who sadly must remain anonymous, snapped this picture of a giveaway from the IAEA General Conference held last month. Yes, the Islamic Republic of Iran distributed laser pointers in the shape of a centrifuge — sort of stubby for …
An IAEA Conversation with Rafsanjani
by | 2011-10-18 | 63 Comments
In February 2004, senior IAEA officials led by then-Director General Mohamed ElBaradei held a one-off meeting in Tehran with former President and parliamentarian Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Based on an assessment of Iran’s nuclear program which the IAEA is currently preparing for the Board of Governors, after that report is completed it might be appropriate at some point for Director General Yukiya Amano …
Career Counseling
by | 2011-10-18 | 1 Comment
Critical foreign languages won’t make or break a career, but they can help aspiring wonks gain comparative advantage in the job market. Learning a critical foreign language can also lead to great travel opportunities, and travel, as Mark Twain once said, is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. My sense is that the least successful …
DPRK Nuclear Tests
by | 2011-10-17 | 9 Comments
Jack Murphy and several colleagues at SAIC have released a very interesting paper that uses a variety of geospatial and seismic data to locate the 2006 and 2009 nuclear explosions conducted by the DPRK, as well as estimate the yield and depth of burial. (Murphy et al, Exploitation of the IMS and Other Data For …
