An
explanation,
in everyday English, of the Supreme Court decision
in Bush v. Gore.
(Scroll down past the URLs.)
Technology and ideology alike are exercises in applied imagination.
--Phil Agre
An
explanation,
in everyday English, of the Supreme Court decision
in Bush v. Gore.
(Scroll down past the URLs.)
Four years after the spectacular "Martian fossil" claims,
researchers have completed a detailed analysis of
magnetite
crystals
from meteorite ALH84001, and found them
"indistinguishable" from crystals produced by terrestrial bacteria.
A new spray makes
envelopes
transparent long enough for the contents to be read. It
was developed so police could check packages for bombs, but
there would certainly be a temptation to read people's mail: 15
minutes later, there's nothing to show that the spray was used.
The manufacturer's promise to sell this only to law enforcement
agencies fails to reassure me.
Over on Usenet, Bruce Baugh explains why and how
pruning
his book collection is part of his love for books.
Marie Cocco
analyzes
the "irreparable harm" that Justice Scalia said could come
from counting the ballots in a democracy, and points out that
Scalia would then, surely, be irreparably harmed. He might not have in the White House the candidate who'd singled him out for high praise during the campaign. The candidate, who, if all the votes are counted, might never become the sympathetic president who might just elevate Scalia himself to the chief justice's chair.
Scalia is the judge who took the trouble to write a concurring opinion in 1993 to place on record his belief that the Constitution does not bar the execution of an innocent man. The scary thing, though, is that Scalia is almost the least of our worries:
The candidate headed for elevation has sought and mostly succeeded, in the days since the election, to block votes from being counted. He has done this with the help of his brother, who heads the state where the votes were cast and where his various political cronies act so that the wishes of the brothers are carried out.This is the novel we live. I would very much like to skip the movie.
While exploring the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, researchers on the
submersible Alvin have found a new kind of
hydrothermal
vent system. The new chimneys are the largest known. They
are composed of carbonate rocks instead of the more usual iron
and sulfides, and seem to lack the shrimp, tube worms, and other
animals we now expect to find in such places.
Twenty-five years ago, we were astonished to find life at the bottom of the sea, in extremely hot water. Now, we're surprised not to.
State governments will spend millions of dollars trying to
execute somebody for murder. Sometimes, other people
spend a lot of time and money showing that Death Row inmates
are innocent. But nobody does much
after
those people are exonerated, and a lot of their
neighbors refuse to believe in their innocence.
Once again, Americans seem a bit
confused
about the First Amendment: far more people say they agree
with generalizations like "people should be allowed to express
popular opinions" than with statements
about specific unpopular or offensive opinions.
For years, people have been telling me that the United States is
"a republic, not a democracy." I always figured this was rather like
Dr. McCoy claiming to be "a doctor, not a Starfleet officer."
I suppose if you believe that democracy is dangerous, you might
not mind so much that the Supreme Court is
s telling us that we don't, in fact, have
the
right to vote, if those votes are for the wrong candidate.
When a Peruvian president stole an election, he was forced out of office, and is now claiming foreign nationality to avoid extradition. Somehow, I don't think Dubya is going to wind up overseas.
If you're reading this in California,
stop.
The state electrical grid only averted rolling blackouts last
night by shutting off the pumps that supply Southern California
with water, and Weblogs aren't worth risking your drinking water.
Not exactly high tech: the latest weapon on
the Israel-Lebanon border is
mirrors,
an appropriate technology with which to counter surveillance cameras.
Sex, bondage, and cannibalism
among
spiders, with a discussion of the evolutionary implications.
If your computer breaks for the third time, and your word
processor crashes every other hour,
it's not an accident: it's
company
policy.
The Guardian is questioning the future of the British
monarchy, although--or maybe because--
this
editorial could be grounds for deportation.
If you were
wondering why we don't see more discussion of republicanism in the
British press, this is one reason why. Another is
the law barring members of Parliament from discussing "the
conduct of the sovereign, the heir to the
throne or other members of the royal family."
The question, though, isn't "the present Queen, who has behaved throughout her reign with considerable dignity and quiet common sense," but the office itself, and the centralization of authority that has continued as the powers of the monarch have been gradually transferred to the prime minister.
An illegal gambling case is going to be the first test of
whether the FBI can legally break into someone's business and
plant
a keystroke recorder on his computer. The purpose of this recorder
was to defeat the suspect's encryption software. The FBI's theory seems
to be that anything not explicitly forbidden is allowed, as long as
they're the ones doing it.
The US Postal Service proves remarkably
tolerant
of unwrapped and often questionable mail: a bottle of spring water
never made it into the mailbag, but an unwrapped $20 bill
arrived in four days.
The researchers note that
The USPS appears to have some collective sense of humor, and might in fact here be displaying the rudiments of organic bureaucratic intelligence.[via Robot Wisdom]
A reasonable discussion of drug policy has to include the fact that
drug
abuse treatment doesn't always work. [via
Follow Me Here]
This plan to breed
blight-resistant
American chestnut trees looks promising. The plan is long-term:
breed hybrids that are 15/16-American chestnut and resistant to
the fungus, then plant them all over the country, where they can
spread, and where they will (with luck) pick up genetic
diversity by interbreeding with the few surviving wild American
chestnuts. (There's quite a bit of background here,
including a discussion of an approach to controlling chestnut
blight that worked in France, where it
was tried as soon as the infection was seen, but isn't
effective enough in an already-contaminated forest.)
Copyright 2000 Vicki Rosenzweig. Comments welcome at vr@redbird.org.
If you like this, you might also like my home page.