| Thursday,
June 2, 2011 Letter
from England
A quiet week. There's a bank holiday on Monday.
Trains are not running between Scotland and London. <http://tinyurl.com/3mvhep6>
UK is training snipers to help put down the unrest in
the Arab world. <http://tinyurl.com/3qfe35k>
Twitter rolls over. <http://tinyurl.com/3nu9egn>
UK economic forecast bleak. <http://tinyurl.com/3zos4sd>
And I have marking to do.
-- Harry Erwin, PhD
==
A Few Midweek Stories in the UK Press
Funding crisis threatens the UK NHS. Cum grano salis.
<http://tinyurl.com/3njedu8> . The
point is valid with the ageing UK population. Medical care is
manpower-intensive, so it doesn't respond well to economies of scale. The
NHS isn't the most progressive user of technology, nor the most efficient
organisation in the world, but the Government needs to pay attention to the
real requirements. Barry Boehm used to say, "Don't start walking until you
know where you want to go."
Chinese attack on Gmail. <http://tinyurl.com/3e72b54>
<http://tinyurl.com/3qpr7ca>
These webmail services have always been a security concern.
UK asylum backlog cleared by an amnesty. <http://tinyurl.com/6efwrmq>
-- Harry Erwin
=============
odd mail
Hi Jerry
A new take on cold fusion, time will tell
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7942
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer
"Quick" climate change
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC34304/
since I have honeybees, 10 or 15 years ago I believed
in (man made) climate change, but not now. I have seen how "competent" that
the scientific world is by the response to CCD (colony collapse) since, alas
my bees have it. IMO it is a very nasty virus, and not anything else (this
is 95% likely to be true).
be well dave
I have no opinions on bees, although I do think
it is unlikely that cell phones are killing them. As to "cold" fusion, I
am always interested in data points. And I note that the Navy continues to
fund low level research.
==============
John
============
Immigration Redux
Jerry,
You have long been a rare voice of sanity in the
immigration debate<?>, and ,after enough gnashing of teeth and deliberation,
I have seldom found myself in disagreement with you.
However: you lately stated (again), that control of
our borders is a necessary but not sufficient condition.....actually, I
believe that over the long haul, it would in fact be a sufficient condition.
But later you went on to state that "Deport them all and deport them now
will not work".
This may be true, but on what evidence do you base the
assertion? To the best of my recollection, this is a policy which (just like
border control) has NEVER been put to the test.
Now, with a change in subject so dramatic that
whiplash may be a risk: The mention of the poll concerning the best SF books
never made into a movie leads me to ask:
Have the screenrights to any of your books been
optioned or purchased? Many of them, like Footfall, seem nearly designed for
a screenplay.
Hope you recover soon, and the warmest regards to you
and yours,
Larry Cunningham
I thought I made it clear enough: it's just
impossible to round up, detain, find a place willing to accept, and
transport twenty million people in any reasonable time. It's legally
impossible without such drastic changes to our court system that the
debates on making those changes won't last for years and be both divisive
and disruptive. It's financially very expensive. It's politically as near
impossible as makes no never mind as soon as you run out of tattooed
gangsters, serial killers, and general lowlifes and have to start
contemplating people who have committed no known crime other than being
here; particularly in the cases of those brought here before the age of
consent and who have clearly assimilated.
There are clear cases for deportation: think
those who came in after Katrina, lived ten to a room (or slept under
bridges) and who took the emergency cleanup jobs that a great many
unemployed Americans. But sorting those out from the local gardener can be
expensive and non-trivial. We can and should set up procedures to make it
easier for potential employers to verify legal status of potential
employees. We can and should conduct more random raids just to encourage
self-deportation. I have often advocated a reward, say $3,000, for taking
someone across the border after they sign a "I won't ever fight
deportation" certificate (this can include yourself). The problem with
that is finding a suitable punishment for coming back: given what it costs
us to imprison someone it's cheaper to let them stay here and collect
welfare!
But until we close the borders discussions may,
like the promise of amnesty, encourage a flood. It's hardly a simple
question.
We get periodically get option money for most of
our major works, but so far no one has picked up the options and I think
they have all run out.
===========
Pain Announced
Jerry,
Here it is, as we said it would be:
<.> The last month has been a horror show for the U.S.
economy, with economic data falling off a cliff, according to Mike Riddell,
a fund manager at M&G Investments in London. </>
http://www.cnbc.com/id/43239586
<.> Wall Street is having a hard time figuring out
what to do now that the U.S. economy appears to be sputtering and yields are
so low, Peter Yastrow, market strategist for Yastrow Origer, told CNBC. </>
http://www.cnbc.com/id/43236764
------- Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Wall Street is always happy to have the Fed print
money and hand it to them. When that stops the panic comes.
We might try things that have worked in the past.
Anti-trust (banks, communication companies, etc.) to prevent
concentrations and encourage competition; cutting back on regulations (let
competition work; stop doing needless things like paying grown people as
federal inspectors to investigate stage magicians who use rabbits in their
acts; make it easier to start jobs and hire people); and developing energy
sources. Cheap energy plus freedom brings prosperity.
A totally unregulated market will end up with
human flesh sold in the market place. Growth of regulation leads to
concentrations of wealth and the kind of "Permit Raj" that kept India and
China in the dumps for so long. All that is obvious -- but it's obvious to
those who issue the permits, too.
==========
Subj: E. coli outbreak in Europe
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/06/02/new-strain-e-coli-in-europe/
It has been determined that the particularly virulent
strain of E. coli currently impacting Europe contains genes from at least
two previously known strains of the bug plus genes from at least one
additional source making it more toxic.
The article emphasized natural gene transference
mechanisms. But as the victims (and body counts) increase, non-natural
mechanisms may begin to be considered, particularly as there is still a lot
of question about vectors.
I saw the first suggestions of the latter from a
correspondent yesterday. We'll see how things develop today.
Jim
Coincidentally -->
Considering that the E.coli has got to be one of the
most studied and documented bugs around, I was wondering......
How long would it take for a determined garage
microbiologist to breed a strain of e. Coli that is particularly virulent
and resistant to common antibiotics. "Distribution" wouldn't be a problem as
e.Coli is also a pretty hardy bug.
Hardly an original thought I'm sure. Frank Herbert did
it some thirty years ago with The White Plague.
Chuck
Fortunately that's likely to be harder than you
think; on the other hand, Mother Nature is pretty good at that sort of
thing. MRSA anyone?
=========
TSA at High School Prom???
What???????
http://www.koat.com/r-video/27979990/detail.html
I said they were going into the streets, now they are
in the schools? When are people going to say no? Will they come in your
house and grope your daughters next? What is wrong with these junkies?
-------- Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
This seemed puzzling enough that I tried to
follow it. It led to an earlier article:
Saturday night, a certified TSA official will be
at the Santa Fe High School prom to oversee student searches.
This all comes after two Capital High School
students, sisters, filed a lawsuit saying they were groped by a security
agent at Capital High School's prom last month. On Friday, the court
ordered Santa Fe Public Schools and the security company ASI to provide
at least one TSA certified person at the Santa Fe High School prom and
the Capital High School graduation.
The restraining order also spells out the specific
ways security can perform searches. It says a pat-down is only to be
used if there are reasonable grounds and that pat-downs should not be
used as a first approach for every student.
http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S2122102.shtml
and then to this from TSA:
While we enjoy power ballads and disco balls more
than anybody, TSA has not conducted pat-downs at any proms. Some are
getting the story right, but others are predictably getting it wrong and
we wanted to clear things up.
Here's the scoop: A school in Santa Fe that uses
contract security (unrelated to TSA) is being sued over how it screened
two female students. In a ruling stating that the Santa Fe School System
needed to change its screening procedures, a judge initially ordered the
school system to provide a “TSA certified” person to “supervise the
searches.” While we appreciate the Judge’s confidence in TSA screening
procedures, TSA’s transportation security mission does not allow us to
provide pat-downs at the prom. The judge later allowed the School System
to use state police officers instead.
As to why conditions in Santa Fe are so awful
that a judge would order them to submit to the
TSA, I have not a clue;
perhaps some Santa Fe reader would enlighten us?
I found a number of assertions that this was an
order by a Federal Judge, but I have found no citation of the case or
ruling so I can't look that up nor discover why it would be a Federal
matter to begin with. Apparently the school system tried to impose some
security searches as part of Prom Night, one supposes in response to a
perceived need. I fear I never thought about any of this. I never heard of
being searched on prom night, not when I was in school and not when my
four boys were in school. It just didn't happen. There must have been
incidents, either in Santa Fe or nationwide causing enough concern to make
it look like a good idea to the Santa Fe school system. My neighbors
daughter goes to her Prom this weekend; I'll have to ask whether they do
this kind of thing in Los Angeles schools. I'm pretty sure they don't at
Notre Dame, but again I may be well behind the times.
In any event the Santa Fe school system mandated
searches and hired a private security firm to conduct them, and some of
the Prom ladies sued the private agents, and a judge -- all the reports
say a Federal judge but it seems unlikely -- ordered that future searches
be supervised by TSA or TSA supervisors or some such, presumably on the
grounds that TSA is expert on how to do effective but non-tort-injurious
searches. (I presume the court has some evidence for that presumption.)
But all this is speculation and is taking more time than it is
worth. This isn't a national plot to have TSA
take
over high school Prom searches. It might be a local judge not too familiar
with TSA trying to settle a perplexing matter. But that's a guess.
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