| Thursday,
February 22, 2007 Subj: NRC Chairman hopes
"not to be an impediment to the licensing of new reactors"
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2007/07-023.html
NRC: News Release - 2007-023 - NRC Chairman Addresses
Growth Issue at Platts Nuclear Energy Conference
=He also said he hopes to reduce the time necessary to
process new reactor applications. “We’re still looking at ways to reduce the
review time required for early site permits and combined operating
licenses,” he said, “with no compromise on safety. That is not an
unrealistic goal if industry does its job at the beginning of the licensing
process” with standardized designs and applications.=
Rod Montgomery==monty@sprintmail.com
We can sure hope he means it!
========
Virgil and others always did say that Troy
founded Rome, and Etruria was from Asia Minor...
Track human movements by sequencing cow mitochondrial
DNA?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11174-
on-the-origin-of-the-etruscan-civilisation.html
Excerpt:
The team found that almost 60% of the
mitochondrial DNA in cows in the central Tuscan region of the country -
where the Etruscan civilisation is thought to have arisen - was the same
as that in cows from Anatolia and the Middle East. There was little or
no genetic convergence between cows from the north and south of Italy
and those from Turkey and the Middle East, the researchers say.
==========
A dialogue:
Subject: Florida judge
Your observations about the judge in Florida
"presiding" over the Anna Nicole Smith matter are entirely correct - he is
an idiot thrown into a situation where he can get on national, nay,
INTERnational, TV and achieve some measure of fame. I heard one talk show
host suggest that the judge wanted to be the "next Judge Judy," and it is
entirely possible that he is correct. What is occurring is a travesty almost
as bad as the OJ trial debacle.
As to child porn, the jurisprudential theory is that,
while the pictures themselves may do no particular damage, the producing of
them and the attendant victimization of children is quite damaging to both
them and society as a whole. Having seen, in court, the nature of those
producing child porn and having also seen the damage done to their victims,
I would tend to agree with that theory.
Highest regards,
Professor Tim Pleasant, Esq. Albuquerque, NM
To which I replied
But cartoons? Or adult actors pretending
to be children? Electronic images not involving any humans at all?
I understand the theory, but I am not sure it works very well. There seems
to be no shortage of kiddy porn, none of it originating in the US. Allowing
electronic images made in USA might actually cut down on the amount of stuff
involving real children. Same for adult actors. I'm no fan or advocate of
adult porn either, but it's not illegal unless they pretend to be children.
Not to defend it, but to attempt to explain and
explore it a bit - one of the simultaneous advantages and disadvantages of
the law, I've found, is that it tends to be rather slow moving. We still
have a lot of judges (including federal ones) stuck in the typewriter and
carbon paper age. They have no concept of digital imagery, and wouldn't know
how to surf the Internet if they tried. (I hasten to say this not true of
all of them, but it is certainly true of some, given lifetime tenure).
Combine that with the various legislators' penchant for wishing to appear
"tough on crime," particularly on sex crimes against children, and you get
just the result you've observed.
One of the biggest advantages, perhaps the only one,
of a slow-to-change, slow-to-react legal system is that it provides
stability and predictability, at least in theory. However, that, in turn,
depends on the actors within the system sticking with it.....which leads us
back to the idiot judge in Florida who, like a number of his colleagues on
the bench, figure that their role is to change things to match their own
sense of enlightened (usually, but not always politically liberal)
sensibilities rather than to act to preserve and maintain that stable,
predictable system. It is NOT the job of the judiciary to give the populace
what it wants, but this guy figures they want a show, and he's going to
provide it. After a decade now working in the system, I'd have to say that
kind of attitude in the judiciary scares me a lot more than a degree of
foolish overkill in how it treats child porn. (Admittedly, perhaps I'm too
close to it to be an objective observer).
And I wish I had a solution to all of this, but I
don't. I just try to teach my law students how to NOT head down that
particular path, but I strongly suspect it's a losing battle.
Tim
Alas, some of that foolish overkill
regarding kiddie porn can result in 10 years in the pokey for someone who
has never molested a child or indeed done anything but look at pictures. Or
so I am told; certainly there are people jailed for whom it was never proven
that they did anything else.
I confess that my sympathy for those who
collect child pornography has some severe bounds, and given the limits on my
time and attention I don't spend any efforts on their behalf, there being
more worthy causes; but still it bothers me that having electronic images on
a disk drive can send one to be raped in prison and probably to die of AIDS.
=========
Subject: The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids
-- New York Magazine
The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids
Dear Jerry,
Apparently we have raised a generation of "Praise
Junkies":
"...For a few decades, it's been noted that a large
percentage of all gifted students (those who score in the top 10 percent on
aptitude tests) severely underestimate their own abilities. Those afflicted
with this lack of perceived competence adopt lower standards for success and
expect less of themselves. They underrate the importance of effort, and they
overrate how much help they need from a parent.
When parents praise their children's intelligence,
they believe they are providing the solution to this problem. According to a
survey conducted by Columbia University, 85 percent of American parents
think it's important to tell their kids that they're smart. In and around
the New York area, according to my own (admittedly nonscientific) poll, the
number is more like 100 percent. Everyone does it, habitually. The constant
praise is meant to be an angel on the shoulder, ensuring that children do
not sell their talents short.
But a growing body of research—and a new study from
the trenches of the New York public-school system—strongly suggests it might
be the other way around. Giving kids the label of "smart" does not prevent
them from underperforming. It might actually be causing it... "
http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/
Cheers,
Rod Schaffter
-- "To try to reconcile, into a single view, a country
that contains Houston, New Orleans, San Francisco, Nashville, Washington,
Los Angeles, and New York City, before we even go for a walk in the country,
is beyond the usual boundaries of human comprehension. We simplify by noting
they have only one President." --David Warren
=========
Subject: Phasers, fire!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6380789.stm
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6380789.stm>
Steven
=========
>Subject: A rival for NASA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9TBgkJC3co
>Regards Norman
Alas, by 8:57AM Thursday morning, the video had been
yanked with a note about a copyright complaint by the BBC,
-- Cecil Rose alabama@earthlink.net
Apex, NC
Ah, well.
===========
Pictures on your hard drive.
Dr Pournelle,
You mentioned the subject of being jailed for what the
Feds may find on your hard drive. We have similar laws in the UK, and it has
always worried me that you can go to jail for years because of images on
your disk. Obviously we are talking about paedophiles here. People with a
mental illness/abnormality which makes them the new witches. Now if a paedo
acts out and commits an offence against a child I have no problem with
locking them up until they are no longer a danger to the public. But to
assume that everyone who looks at the pictures is as dangerous as an active
criminal is a long stretch. If I look at movies about bank robberies does
that mean I should be locked up as a potential bank robber?
I can only assume that the courts will consider the
possibility that somebody other than the computer owner downloaded the
images or left them in cache before they lock the owner up. But even if the
pictures were downloaded with the intention of looking at them, then it's a
sad thing, but it harms no further person to look at them. The Feds would
say that the harm is done when the picture is produced, and of course
anybody involved in harming a child to make a photo for sale is guilty as
hell. But the law does not distinguish those photos from any other made by
simulation or indeed CGI or just plain art, where no direct harm takes
place. And yet the witchhunt continues.
Adrian
========
Subject: Virtual Child Pornography
In your reply to Tim Pleasant, you wrote: "But
cartoons? Or adult actors pretending to be children? Electronic images not
involving any humans at all?" Don't fret. The S.Ct. (and the 9th Circuit)
got this one right. See Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-795.ZS.html)
.
Pursuant to that decision, the Court held that
provisions of the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 that outlawed any
visual depiction that appears to be of a minor involved in sexually explicit
activity was unconstitutionally overbroad. The Court's opinion reflects that
laws prohibiting child pornography are valid not because child pornography
is obscene (a notoriously difficult basis to prove), but rather because the
state has a valid interest in protecting real children from the production
of child pornography. Since real children are not involved in the creation
of virtual child pornography, there is no valid state interest. Virtual
child pornography could still be unlawful if it was obscene, but as I
referenced above, it is a very difficult standard to prove (which doesn't
mean an abusive prosecutor wouldn't press charges to ruin a possessor's
life). I'm surprised that Prof. Tim Pleasant, Esq. failed to advise you of
the Ashcroft opinion.
Rene Daley
Well that makes more sense than a lot of
modern court decisions do. Thanks. Of course 9th Circuit gets overruled
about 10 times more often than any other circuit, usually for pretty good
reasons. So it's not settled...
Actually, the S.Ct. affirmed the 9th Cir. in Ashcroft v.
Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234. The district court originally upheld
the constitutionality of the Child Pornography Prevention Act and the 9th
Cir. reversed the district court. On appeal to the S.Ct., the S.Ct. upheld
the 9th Cir.'s opinion.
Thanks.
=================w
Subject: Modeling Gone Awry-
Dr. Pournelle,
Subj: Modeling Gone Awry
The engineering office where I work is designing the
heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems for a 10-story
building near Denver, CO. An energy consultant is modeling the building for
annual energy use to achieve LEED certification for identifying it as having
certain energy conserving features.
Over the last few months, every time the energy
consultant runs a simulation on the building virtually none of the energy
reduction features designed for the HVAC systems are showing any cost
savings. Discussions ensue and we provide clarification how the systems will
work to reduce energy consumption when compared to a baseline configuration.
In fact, their first report on energy consumption basically implied that we
should scrap every energy saving feature and design the lowest first-cost
HVAC system. With each report, we inquired into how they constructed their
model. Although refinement occurred, each discussion revealed a lack of
understanding on how the HVAC systems interact with the environment inside
and outside the building during occupied and unoccupied cycles throughout
the year.
Heck, if an energy consultant can't figure out how to
model a simple 10-story office building, it doesn't bode well for them
understanding a planet.
Stan Fuhrhop
It is fascinating how badly people model
systems where there is immediate feedback on the accuracy of the
predictions, and how much confidence the same people have in models of
systems where it will take years and years to validate the predictions. The
further away the validation, the more confidence the "consensus" seems to
have in the model. There is no "consensus" on a model that tells me the
weather next year, or the average rainfall in Southern California over the
next five years, or the amount of snowfall in the High Sierra (very
important for energy production projections) for the next year or an average
for the next decade; but there is a consensus about the temperature of the
whole Earth after a century even though there is no actual consensus on just
how to DEFINE the "temperature of the Earth."
The arrogance of modelers who now have
computers that let them get numerical solutions to hideously complex models
never ceases to amaze me.
When I was in Operations Research (which
over the years decided that the fancier name Systems Analysis would get us
more consulting jobs) we were always careful to build models with the least
sensitivity to the variables (we chose regions where the curves were pretty
flat) and to use equations we could actually solve (and in doing so see
something of just how sensitive the outputs were to the assumptions). Now
almost any model can be solved by brute force; but if the output depends
heavily complex inputs then the model is no better than the input
predictions which are themselves often shaky Ah, well. Consensus is
important. And Peer Review certainly build consensus.
=========
Subject: A rival for NASA
Dear Dr Pournelle,
Try this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTvCwVYFLww .
At the time of writing it was still working.
Actually quite a few viewable copies of this video
have now appeared on YouTube. Some of them are quite long at 10 minutes but
the launch and ultimately disastrous flight are worth watching.
Cheers,
Simon Woodworth.
=======
Hello Dr. Pournelle,
Subject: Pop-up ads send teacher to jail
The witch hunts continue and become ever more wacky.
You cannot make this stuff up.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17134607/
Best regards,
Clyde Wisham
The world is well served by jailing that
teacher. Anarcho Tyranny.
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