It has been a while since I did a “Vines” column: so here goes. As I always caution, this type of column is a bit different to my regular columns, and as such, it should not be held up to the same rigorous scrutiny (and standards) as the others. Here I do a bit more speculating than I normally do: so keep that in mind as you search for ways to jump my blog-bones (lol).

The tragic events in Japan may in the long run help improve the world economy. Right now you have centers of industrial output around the world. All our eggs are in a few baskets.

The centers in Japan have come to a grinding halt because of the disasters there driving down economic recovery. In order to avoid this in the future businesses should turn to a risk allocation model.

This model can easily be seen in mutual funds where instead of putting all your money in one stock you spread it around to a diverse portfolio of stocks.

Proponents of nuclear power, back in the days of anti-nuclear protests following Three Mile Island, believed that people feared nuclear power because they feared the unknown. With the current disaster unfolding in Japan, however, I’m beginning to think that I didn’t fear nuclear power because of what I didn’t know. I didn’t know you couldn’t turn it off.

Here is the standard education in nuclear power provided to someone who got a pretty good education by 1970s standards, and has a very good long term memory. The nuclear reaction is controlled by control rods. You pull them out to start the reaction, and put them in to shut it off. You are safe, because of the control rods. Well in Japan, the reactors survived the earthquake. They survived the tsunami. The control rods were inserted. But the tsunami knocked out power to the plant, shutting it off. And when it shut off it went into self destruct mode.

The Beach Boys have finally finished SMILE (sort of).

Though this may be the most distasteful title of all time, it is still less distasteful than its subject.  

TNR: “No publication is going to stop aggregating. But journalists might, as a collective whole pause to think about where our priorities ought to lie….Maybe we can establish a rough norm for ourselves: that we will continue to treat aggregation as a side project to what we really do…"

It was with deep regret that I read of Frank Rich’s departure from the Op Ed page of the New York Times. Its hard to imagine who will fill the center of that Sunday page. Perhaps it will be more than one columnist.

I think I speak for many bloggers when I say I am always waiting for the phone to ring with the New York Times to be on the line asking me to join the paper. Its not an ego thing and its not that I think I am a great writer.

Recently I had dinner with a political prospect from the far reaches of one of those areas of Brooklyn where my political knowledge is limited, and my reporting is mostly a matter of faking the funk.

During the dessert, he laid a bombshell in my lap.

“You can use this one: Diane Gordon told me she was running for the City Council.”

Governor Andrew Cuomo should grab federal super train money that short sighted Republican governors have rejected so as to build a bullet train line from New York to Albany to Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo.

The rejected funding could overcome hurdles that the New York to Albany run is too curvy for a super train. Perhaps running it along the Thruway would help.