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Friday,
July 9, 2010 .
The Blacklist
Greetings, sir.
Thought this excerpt and commentary might be of
interest.
Regards,
Tim Elliott
FRANK TIPLER: Writing for PJM Helped Make
Me Enemy of the State #38.
The National Academy of Sciences, in its
official journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has
just published a list of scientists whom it claims should not be
believed on the subject of global warming. I am number 38 on the list.
The list of 496 is in descending order of scientific credentials.
Professor Freeman Dyson of the Institute
for Advanced Study, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a
fellow of the Royal Society, is number 3 on the list. Dyson is a friend
of mine and is one of the creators of relativistic quantum field theory;
most physicists think he should have shared the Nobel Prize in Physics
with Richard Feynman. MIT professor Richard Lindzen, a meteorologist who
is also a member of the National Academy, is number 4. Princeton physics
professor William Happer, once again a member of the National Academy of
Sciences, is number 6.
I’m in good company.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/writing-for-pjm-
helped-make-me-enemy-of-the-state-number-38/
Freeman Dyson blacklisted. My, oh my. Really makes the National Academy
of Sciences look -- well -- uh -- like -- foolish?
To go with that:
: A rational editorial on AGW
Jerry,
Is one of your pseudonyms 'Roger Helmer'? If not, he
must be a reader of this site....and should have given you credit:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/8/
climate-change-a-collective-flight-from-reality/?page=2
Warm regards, Larry Cunningham
I will be content if rational discussion replaces blacklists. Not likely,
of course.
================
DNA, technology, and the
constitution
The Los Angeles Police Department cold case unit
has arrested a man charged with being "the grim sleeper", a serial
killer who has operated since 1985. They tracked him through DNA left at the
crime scene.
The innovation is that they didn't find him through his own DNA because
they didn't have any: the alleged perpetrator had never been convicted (or
even charged) with any crimes, and thus no DNA was on file. However, his son
had been convicted of something or another, and his DNA collected; and a
search of the DNA data base for DNA similar to that found at the crime
scenes turned that up. Given the relationship, and that the address of the
father was right in the middle of the crime area, the police decided that
Mr. Franklin was in fact their unsub, and began surveillance, eventually
getting through ruse a discarded pizza crust which yielded enough DNA to
allow analysis, and lo! the match was perfect. The arrest of
Lonnie David Franklin Jr., 57 ,
followed.
The response of the community where the murder were still being committed
was universal cheering, which was for the most part the same statewide, but
there are those who raise constitutional questions. Is this guilt by
association? Is this an unconstitutional technique?
It's hard to see how it's unconstitutional. The California Constitution
is so complicated that it's nearly impossible to determine what is and is
not unconstitutional -- constitutional amendments passed by big majorities
in state initiatives have been ruled unconstitutional by California courts
-- but I know of nothing forbidding it. As to the Federal Constitution,
objections would probably have to rest with the privacy doctrine, which
exists in the Federal Courts although the word never appears in the
Constitution of any of its amendments.
We will, of course, see lawsuits brought in both State and Federal courts
alleging that this "guilt by association" exceeds the powers of government
and violates Mr. Franklin's civil rights. This will provide a lot of work
for the lawyers, more than half of it paid for by taxpayers, and be more
work for the courts which are already far behind in trying real cases, but I
wouldn't think the issue to be in much doubt. Moreover, now that the police
have good reason to concentrate on Mr. Franklin, they are likely to find
some other clues pointing to him. His lawyers (probably paid by the people
of California) will argue that all the new evidence ought to be thrown out
as fruit of the poisoned tree, but given the heinous nature of the crimes
there will be a lot of pressure on the courts to reject that defense.
The question is, is there anything to the defense? We know that this
'guilt by association' is hard on Mr. Franklin, but so is being denounced by
an anonymous tip, or for that matter being caught in the act. We know that
the accuracy of DNA evidence has been well and repeatedly tested, and so far
seems pretty conclusive -- so much so that many long ago convicted people
have been released when DNA evidence indicated that someone else -- known or
unknown -- did it. The question is, do we have some expectation of privacy
when we father children? That is, by bequeathing our DNA to a future
generation, we inevitably expose ourselves to being suspected if DNA similar
to ours turns up in a crime scene. Is that scary?
Given the procedures used by LAPD -- there was no hint that they had
identified the unsub until they had obtained Mr. Franklin's DNA and matched
it to that found at the crime scene -- the precedents set are pretty sound.
The scary part comes if this guilt by association is abused, as it
inevitably will be in some future cases. "City Councilman Has DNA Similar to
Serial Killer, Attorney General Announces", followed by a retraction on page
32 three days later when it is found that the similarity was very slight and
might be a 4th cousin twice removed, is not beyond the realm of possibility.
The new technique poses some danger to the freedom of the innocent, but
it certainly increases the freedom of Mr. Franklin's future victims not to
be murdered.
Most will see this as an artificial dilemma, and be cheering with the
majority in their congratulations to LAPD. I'm one of them. Technology may
limit some freedoms, but it sure expands others. I'm alive because of new
high technology. The richest man in the world in 1945 did not have some of
the real freedoms we all, including the poorest, now have. Hurrah.
====================
Aren't You Glad You Get the
Government You Pay For?
In Bishop California they are going to have a referendum on whether
residents of this isolated Owens Valley town can keep chickens as pets.
The City Council can't decide because most of them either have chickens or
did have some. In Studio City where I live the businesses in a small
strip mall not far from the first (and former) LASFS clubhouse must remove
their business signs, since they violate some city code or other. Tom
Huerta, Senior City Inspector, and Joe Brenek, City Inspector, are doing
their jobs, getting those businesses to tear down their signs or go to jail.
If this something the people of Los Angeles want to pay Huerta and Brenek to
do, they should be commended; but perhaps there are some who think there are
other things to be done with public money, and here are two jobs that could
be eliminated in our quest to balance the city's budget?
Meanwhile we pay a lot of Federal employees to threaten airlines with
fines of $27,000 per passenger if they are kept on the tarmac for more
than three hours. Now none of us likes being on one of those flights from
hell -- somewhere on this site is my account of it happening to me once
after a PC Expo in New York -- but really, does anyone think the airlines
want this to happen? Or that if they don't compensate the passengers in
some way they risk losing the business? Do we really need highly paid
civil servants going about concerning themselves with matters that are
adequately managed by the market? And in
California the State is paying $20 million in compensation to a kidnap
victim because parole agents interviewed her and one of her children
(fathered by her kidnapper) without doing anything to end her 18 years of
captivity. None of the parole agents is named, none has been fired or
removed from office, but the state would have been a lot better off if
they'd slept through their term of office. We really don't want to pay
civil servants for doing nothing. That's a waste, But then some of the
things they do "for" us may cost even more than we'd have to pay for them to
lean on their shovels or watch Internet porn at their desks. We're told that
government can't be cut because all the jobs are important. Perhaps we ought
to be collecting examples of people whose services we might be better off
without? ==============
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