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Wednesday, November 09, 2005

"Would you like 500 tons of 'concentrated uranium' with that, sir?"

"The documents purport to show that Iraq tried to buy 500 tons of 'yellowcake' uranium from Niger. Yellowcake is a type of concentrated uranium that can be used to make nuclear weapons." - Salon, November 9, 2005
Here is yet another example of how poorly edited and fact-checked Salon.com is these days. Let's see if I can quickly hit on the main bells that should start to go off in the mind of any educated person who reads this statement.
  • "500 tons" - How could this possibly refer to a quantity of refined uranium? (The "Little Boy" bomb dropped on Hiroshima contained 140 pounds of uranium.)

  • "yellowcake" - Why would "concentrated" uranium (a metal) be nicknamed "yellowcake"?

  • "concentrated uranium" - Uranium is a chemical element. This is like referring to "concentrated gold."
Put bluntly, only an idiot could write something like this. This has been written by someone covering the yellowcake beat. What does that say? Any fact-checker or editor should have flagged it. What does that say?


posted at 2:49 PM

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree that Salon is pretty sloppy these days.

But "Here is has been written by someone covering the yellowcake beat"??? Where's a good editor when you need one...

November 09, 2005 5:27 PM  
Blogger MWR said...

Thank you. So many good thoughts and ways of expressing them are always bubbling to the surface that I sometimes make a scrivener's error.

It's cerainly a good thing that you remain anonymous and I don't know where you live, what kind of Scandinavian cars you and your spouse drive, what kind of rare dog you own, etc.

November 09, 2005 5:40 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ack, Big brother! But damn it, man... get yourself an editor! ("It's cerainly...")

November 10, 2005 3:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Donn't lett them get yoou dwon. Poker thiis weak?

November 11, 2005 11:54 AM  

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