The "god" thing is certainly legal, as the right of religious expression is certainly a protected right both within the U.S. and Utah constitutions. As to if you think it is appropriate for an elected official to mention their religious preferences or divine object of adoration in communication to their constituents, that is what the ballot box if for. If you don't like that to happen, bring it up and make it a campaign issue.... perhaps even running for that public office yourself if the issue is important enough to you.
And no, this is not only contrary to law, but it enshrined in law. Considering the nature of the constituents of Mark Shurtleff, he would be greatly amiss and not really be representing his voters (in general) if he had not invoked the name of God.
You are certainly welcome to bring up the issue like you have here, and express your belief that such behavior ought to be regulated. I, for one, would not want to live in a country or land that prohibits the expression of religion or prohibits speech of this kind in general as well... even if they are a public official. I and public officials are free to say what they will, and you are free to listen or ignore us if you choose. This is especially true for political speech (of which I think this clearly qualifies).
Does it seem juvenile because as a kid you never heard somebody using Twitter to express serious news? It sounds more like you are getting old and aren't relating to the younger generation.
More importantly, politicians who don't use Twitter and other social media (particularly in Utah... for a whole bunch of reasons) simply won't get elected to public office. Especially in this particular election cycle, I've seen electronic social media used in a way that has really be a major shift in how people are getting elected and who is driving the conversation in terms of what issues are important. The "traditional" media sources like radio, television, and newspapers are now in the back seat of the political dialog in Utah now and are mostly trying to play a game of catch-up to find out what is happening rather than being the primary forums for what is setting the political agenda.
The defeat of Bob Bennett for the U.S. Senate is one very clear example here, where somebody who essentially used the strategy that he used six years ago to get re-elected simply isn't working any more. In spite of a campaign warchest of tens of millions of dollars, the guy simply couldn't get a foothold on the voters in Utah. The only reason Mark Shurtleff didn't get the party nomination in this case was because he dropped out of the race due to personal family issues... something I happen to respect. He was the leading candidate for that office and likely would have received the nomination if he was still in the race.
This is going to be happening much more in the future, and if not with Twitter it will be some other network-based media that will be more directly connected to the candidate. Twitter seems perhaps all that more important particularly for political campaigning but it will also show up when these public officials are performing their official duties... exactly as happened here with the Utah A.G.
Unfortunately, there is a link. The problem is that many in the polygamous communities are marrying off their daughters at incredibly young ages (between 12 and 15 years old) and those girls are conceiving babies with those men who are involved. This is, unfortunately, a widespread practice and in fact is one of the things that has been used to shut down some of these groups.
If the polygamous marriages were between consenting adults and everybody was 21+ before they got into those relationships, I wouldn't mind myself. There are some people willing to get into such relationships and typically they aren't prosecuted in Utah either (or by Mark Shurtleff). The Utah A.G. is going after the pedophilia and those who are supporting that behavior, where unfortunately these individuals who are doing this think it is a religious right to have sex with minors. If it wasn't involving kids, there wouldn't be nearly as much opposition to the issue in Utah and in fact the law might have even been repealed in terms of outlawing polygamy.
Frankly, if war is declared, I would hope that more than a few twitter messages would be transmitted carrying the message, including something perhaps from the "commander in chief" who is being ordered to go to war.
I certainly have no problem with elected officials (Mark Shurtleff is elected into the office of Attorney General) to express to their constituents what actions they are doing in the process of performing their official duties. If diplomatic messages sent via twitter can avert a war from happening, I would say it would be all that much more useful (aka a "tweet" saying that negotiations have broken down and that war is imminent, and then somebody gets their head out of their ass to deal with the problem causing that communications break-down to keep the war from happening after reading such a tweet).
Twitter has saved people's lives, and helped keep people from spending ungodly periods of time in a foreign prison. It may be unusual to get messages in a manner like this because of the novelty of the situation, but I think such pronouncements will be much more common place in the future, not less so. This is merely a reaction to change in general, and noting that something like an execution would be mentioned by a public official with a medium that until a couple of years ago didn't really even exist.
If you have a defense attorney worth their salt, they should also dismiss any such formed jury and even perhaps file an appeal immediately to complain about that kind of behavior. That at least would set up a change of venue at the least if there was some sort of manipulation of the jury involved.
The defense has just as much right to question and to reject jurors as the prosecution, but unfortunately many defense attorneys (particularly public defenders) really don't care and let such a thing simply slide by without really trying to make a difference. This is more knowing your rights, and if you get caught in that situation to certainly make a stink about it. Particularly with a capital punishment option as a sentence, such trial verdicts are often overturned or forced to a re-trial if there is any sort of mischief on the part of the prosecution.
Why not simply use a radioactive isotopic randomizer to perform the execution. Probability could be adjusted to whatever threshold you would would want, where there is a random chance for the event to not happen.
BTW, in the case of the Utah firing squad, the officers involved in the shooting are handed guns where some are randomly given blanks instead of bullets. The bullets are inserted into the guns in full view of everybody involved, but then the guns mixed up so no single person knows if they are firing a "real" bullet or merely a blank. I'm not sure if that makes it any better to actually be involved with an execution, but you can have some doubt when involved with such a group as to if you actually pulled the trigger to kill the guy or not.
The question that is begging to be asked is if the attorney general in Utah, or frankly in any other state (or equivalent position that has the same kind of responsibility) has ever announced to the press that he has ordered the execution to proceed? I think if you ask that question to a number of members of the press, that you would find such announcements to be common place... particularly if the public official was not physically present at the site of the execution (Mark Shurtleff was not at the prison where the execution took place, he merely phoned in the order for the execution).
Normally members of the public have not been privy to such "raw" newsfeeds in the past, so perhaps that comes more as a shock when you see public officials doing what they've been doing for quite some time but normally not reported to the public until after the fact.
For myself, the announcement itself was something that is newsworthy in its own right and deserved to be said.
What was inappropriate? Was it the announcement or how it was delivered? By the manner in which you are complaining here, you seem to be suggesting that it is inappropriate for a government official who is performing their official duties to comment upon their actions to their constituents in any medium due to what is being done. Note here that the attorney general in Utah is an elected position and not appointed, so addressing his constituents is very directly the point of this message too.
If that is what you are trying to suggest, that no commentary by a public official should ever take place before, during, or after an execution, you at least would be logically consistent here. Otherwise what you are complaining about here is the medium of the message, and that somehow something transmitted over the internet is less worthy of conveying that message than some other format such as something found on the front page of a newspaper.
If that is what Mark Shurleff had written, I'd agree with you. It was patently not phrased in such a manner and in fact the only thing you are complaining about here is the medium and not the message.
There is this little thing in the U.S. Constitution (and in the Utah constitution) that prohibits legislators from passing an "ex post facto" law. The firing squad has been used for a long time in Utah, and it was the law when this man committed the murders. Although the state legislature has since repealed firing squads as a form of execution, those who committed crimes for capital punishment have been given the option of being sentenced under the original form of punishment for the crime when it was committed or have the choice to be given a lethal injection instead (considered more "humane"... if that really matters).
That it took nearly twenty years for this man to go from arrest to execution is more what the problem is here rather than giving this man the ability to select the form of his death. For myself, I am glad that such principles are enshrined constitutionally and that you can't be prosecuted or sentenced under a law that hasn't been written yet. That opens up a Pandora's box of problems that is better to let something messy like a firing squad happen even if you think the guy deserves no choice in the matter.
If you decide to come to Utah and go postal by killing a bunch of people, you won't be given the option of a firing squad under current law.
I don't think Orin Hatch is likely to get renominated for office from his own political party, so I don't think that is going to be too much of a problem in the not too distant future. He is up for re-election in two years, and is going to have to face an electorate in Utah fired up to kick Obama out of office (from Utah's perspective that is definitely not Obama's core constituency). Hatch is too liberal for many folks in Utah. Basically, if Bennett was too liberal, Hatch is everything that many in the "tea party" really hate.
"Bringing the bacon home to Utah since 1976" is not going to be a slogan that will fly too far in Utah in the next election cycle.
The governor is also tied to this execution as he did have the ability to grant clemency or commute the sentence to life in prison. Governor Herbert chose not to do that and let the execution stand. The Attorney General, however, has constitutional authority over actually carrying out the sentence and the responsibility to make sure that any evidence that could be used to clear the individual that is going to be executed has been presented before a court and had all possible appeals exhausted before the execution takes place.
Mark Shurtleff, by making the order, certified that all such evidence by any prosecutor in the State of Utah has been formally presented in such a manner.
Other than complaints about the media being used for transmitting the message (I personally don't have a problem with Twitter as a news medium), was there some wording or tone of the announcement that somehow offended you and you thought it was in poor taste?
Frankly, if it had been a press release or a mass e-mail, I fail to see how it could have been stated more clearly or plainly. At least with Twitter, he had to be short and to the point and not waste words. The complaint here seems to be about the medium rather than the message itself.
The only way that Mark Shurtleff is going to fail in a re-election bid is to get caught sleeping with a minor (male or female.... take your pick), committing some other felony, or voluntarily stepping down from office. Only cannon fodder will even run against him within the Republican party, so he doesn't even have any real threat in terms of getting re-nominated.
The major opposition to him has been with the polygamous communities in southern Utah, as he has been enforcing the anti-polygamy laws. He feels that older men making babies with 14 year old girls is something that is wrong and should be prosecuted as statutory rape, and organizations which encourage that behavior should be dis-incorporated with assets seized by the state. For myself, I happen to agree with him and am glad that he is doing that prosecution.
If this was his first tweet, it might make sense for some people to be complaining about this. However, he has been "tweeting" for over two years, including much of that with a candidacy for the U.S. Senate. That he dropped out of that political race is irrelevant, but he is continuing to use Twitter, Facebook, and other "social media" to keep in touch with his constituents.
It should be pointed out that the A.G. in Utah is a directly elected political office... something that sometimes gives problems to the Utah governor as the AG is also in the governor's cabinet but often don't agree with each other or are even of the same political party. Also of note: Utah has a demographic base that also has a huge number of "younger" voters (what do you expect with a bunch of Mormons and with Catholics as the #2 religion), so frankly it makes even more sense to seek out the constituency on the internet. Of particular interest is that the voters who are between 30-50 have been turning out and getting involved politically.... and having a huge impact on state-wide elections. Traditional media outlets aren't nearly as effective for this age group.
You won't have a worforce problem - just remote-control everything.
Such a "remote control" environment simply doesn't exist anywhere... and try as you might you are going to need somebody to get up there to kick things loose and get stuff working. I'll admit there may be considerable automation, but it doesn't solve all of the problems even if the only personnel are going to be repair and service technicians rather than somebody manually moving ore with a spade into push cart of some kind.
Robots have worked for space exploration so far because there is some low-hanging fruit that can easily be grabbed by such devices. It is a hideously expensive endeavor to conduct robotic missions of the type that have explored the Solar System so far, and they are also painfully slow.
Even for Spirit and Opportunity, two "robots" that have been incredibly productive, one skilled geologist spending a couple days on Mars will be able to duplicate or even surpass the science and even raw discoveries than those two robots have accomplished since they landed there. A team of geologists working on Mars would be able to uncover some of that harder to access stuff that wouldn't even be considered until somebody is physically there.
Ditto for the Moon, and particularly for building factories that do anything useful there. Yes, a very simply "factory" might be built on the Moon to so some very menial kind of task and producing something like say a "brick" that could be used for other construction on the Moon, but you aren't going to get any kind of complex industrial process going without at least having some people up there to get it going. That requires infrastructure and people... where there will be a chronic shortage of even skilled people.
Besides, I think something is lost when you completely remove humanity from the equation. There are other intangible benefits by having people "on the Moon" besides being slaves to build stuff, even if it will be the factories and such that could provide the economic rationale for them to be there in the first place.
It certainly seems within mission scope to regulate broadcast frequencies and to regulate equipment that may interfere with others who are trying to broadcast on those frequencies (such as how the FCC has regulatory authority over computer manufacturing equipment). Even there, however, the scope of their activity is strictly to make sure that such equipment minimizes such interference to within "reasonable" technical parameters.
This sounds more like there was a regulatory void, and because the FAA simply refused to move for awhile on the topic, the FCC took the ball and moved in. The problem here is that the FCC is regulating what is by definition a navigation issue, and that is where I'm scratching my head about the issue. With the U.S. Air Force monitoring and tracking orbital debris, I'm sure this is a multi-agency issue anyway, but it still seems weird for the FCC to take the lead here on this issue.
BTW, I don't think that the dominance of communications spacecraft is going to last all that much longer in space either, but that is a separate issue.
What in the blazes is the FCC doing by regulating that sort of mess? The FAA, yeah, I could see them having regulatory oversight over spacecraft design and requirements for deorbiting put into mission requirements, but the FCC? That is about as silly as NOAA requiring private citizens to register when they want to take a picture of the Earth from space.
I knew space law was rather mucked up, but this is borderline insanity.
Both Pluto and the Moon have hydrostatic equilibrium.... in other words if you pile a bunch of rock on the surface, eventually that mountain of dirt will collapse due to the weight (if it is a big enough pile). Such a pile of rocks would also be insignificant compared to the overall diameter of the body. To me, that can and should be the only definition of a "planet" that really matters, and the orbit stuff is there strictly because some folks at the IAU are too pansy to consider that planets may be found in more unexpected places.
I don't have a problem with claiming the Moon, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Triton, and Titan as having planetary status. Heck, I'm even willing to call Titan a "terrestrial planet" and grouping it with Venus, the Earth, and Mars as it has a substantial atmosphere. Those without an atmosphere perhaps ought to have some other "special status" and term applied.... which would include Pluto (for the most part... the Plutonian atmosphere is only a part-time affair and doesn't even compare to Mars all that favorably).
The BS about orbits and such is a broken definition anyway, particularly the heliocentric part that requires a planet to orbit the Sun specifically. If there is ever a "hot Jupiter" found that has a larger "moon" capable of sustaining life (aka Pandora from Avatar or "Yavin IV" from Star Wars), I'm quite certain that the public perception of such a place would be generally considered to be a "planet" when push comes to shove. There are enough exo-planets that have been discovered to indicate the menagerie of planets is going to get far more complex as well, and the current IAU definition requires an orbit around the Sun specifically... not just any old star. It may take another century or so to work out a final definition, by which time I hope that there is at least some more data besides what is found in the Solar System to help flesh out that definition.
That is the largest problem with the IAU definition anyway, as it is very arbitrary and prone to "tweaking" in such a way that isn't really all that natural of a feel for those who aren't really into the subtle issues that surround planetary science as a discipline. A much better definition could be achieved and IMHO should be made that may very well place the Moon (Luna, the "Earth's Moon") into a classification that makes it at least a "dwarf planet". The term "moon" is a comparatively recent "invention" anyway that merely implies that the body is a "companion" to another planet just as Luna is to the Earth... whatever that relationship may be. There certainly is no formal scientific definition that would hold out for what is a "moon" and what is a "planet" if some pair of planets like Romulus and Remus from Star Trek were ever discovered that orbit each other and both have substantive atmospheres capable of sustaining life and are roughly the same size.
I'd seriously wager that we're closer to being able to genetically modify pigs to fly than to overcome those "engineering challenges".
I've got to figure out a way to work this into a sig. Seriously, I nearly died laughing at this statement.
BTW I think you are spot on here and this is something easy to group with solar power satellites (another "future technology" based on wishful thinking and scam artists). There may be some materials science breakthroughs in the future to get this stuff to happen, and the practical side of it has been worked out in terms of raw physics (i.e. it isn't something like a FTL drive) but I think it is something that is just beyond our basic capabilities at the moment.
Making pigs fly, while certainly an amazing accomplishment and worthy of a Nobel prize if somebody actually can combine avian and mammalian DNA, is something I think more likely to happen and doesn't require nearly the extensive research before it can become practical. A bit more understanding of genomic sequences is going to have to happen before that becomes practical. Here is a good question: Do you think the Nobel committee would take a nomination seriously that actually accomplished this task?
How would they withstand high winds from the likes of thunderstorms, hurricanes/typhoons, and so on?
Tropospheric problems such as weather is the least of the problems facing this technology. A far more serious problem is dealing with the ionosphere, which would literally erode the cable causing its failure after a fairly short period of time. If it can handle the tension necessary for getting to a geosynchronous orbit from the Earth's surface, weather problems can easily be dealt with as a trivial engineering problem on the side.
I don't have a problem with Space Elevators myself, other than it is something that is going to be in the next century or much later. It isn't a technology that we are going to be effectively going to use... at least here on the Earth.
Mars makes much more sense for a something like this as it has lower gravity, hence it doesn't require nearly the same tensile strength and other problems facing the technology. There may even be other bodies like Ceres or elsewhere that may even have a better practical implementation of the concept well before you ever see it being built on the Earth.
Mind you, as you have stated here, the technology has applications in other fields and there is some benefit to simply thinking along those lines. Still, I wouldn't get your hopes up too high and I certainly would not like to see other launch technologies dismissed in hopes that this one solution is going to work out.
Funny that you say that. What defines "proven" and how many launches does that take?
I don't see SpaceX failing on their next 10 launches, although they may indeed lose a vehicle in the next 10 along the way. The ESA has lost Ariane vehicles after several successful launches too, as has RKK Energia with the Soyuz and Progress vehicles, so yeah you may have a point here.
What makes statements like the one here ("once they have proven their launcher with a valid success rate") is that it is a moving goalpost that can never be achieved. I'll admit that a single datapoint is not enough information to base a valid statistical measure, but it is useful if grouped with other launches and compared with track records of other vehicles. Overall, SpaceX is now 3 for 3 with a 50% success rate for achieving the target orbit, which is certainly some additional statistical datapoints to compare and review in terms of reliability and if the company "has the right stuff" to work with.
For some additional comparisons and datapoints, there have now been 15 Merlin engines that have been used in actual spaceflight operations, and various criteria that can be applied to each individual rocket motor for statistical controls and comparison. Is that enough of a statistical universe for some real number crunching in terms of reliability figures? That number is going to be well north of 100 engines within a couple of years, and if the current manifest holds out there will also be more than 30 launches (assuming nobody backs out of the current manifest). Hopefully by the time that manifest is finished this line of argument will be dead.
There have been some performance issues, even with this last launch, to consider that the Merlin engines may not have performed at 100% of engineering expectations in spite of a successful launch. That is certainly going to be something for the engineers involved to tweak and try to improve performance and hopefully be able to provide increased reliability in the future. This is something that is generally true for almost all rockets, and it should be pointed out that not all rockets always have to be 100% perfect to achieve mission goals.
What is really exciting is that Bigelow still has yet to make a major move with SpaceX. They are busy trying to "second source" a vehicle with Boeing (understandable.... Robert Bigelow doesn't want to be hung out to dry by Elon Musk and SpaceX) and are also generally trying to see a broad and robust launcher industry, but it is possible that they may go ahead and sign another contract with SpaceX in the not too distant future.
The real exciting stuff that is going to happen will be with Virgin Galactic and Space Adventures (with the Armadillo Aerospace joint-venture). That is going to get the bottom feeders some serious experience with spaceflight launch experience and provide some testing environments for equipment and prototypes that until now simply haven't even been possible. The "build a little, test a little" approach that has worked out so well for the computer and electronics industry may finally be applied to spaceflight.... a long time coming if you ask me.
It still is a little steep in price to spend about $250 k for a flight into the upper atmosphere for an engineering test, but that is a heck of a lot cheaper than the $500 million "test" of the "Ares I-X" rocket that did so little for so much money. Just imagine the engineering tests that could have been performed on over 2000 sub-orbital launches to explore the performance envelopes of various components for a future spacecraft.
Iridium is also on a knife edge of profitability at the moment, and this deal is actually a good one for Iridium as well as SpaceX. If SpaceX is successful, Iridium will have its constellation for significantly improved performance for a fraction of the cost of the original constellation.... and this time the money isn't being exported to China either. Yes, at least part of the original Iridium constellation was put up on Chinese rockets.
Dang, it is good to see China get underbid by an American company due to an army of under-employed workers and cheaper manufacturing costs:)
There have been cultures on the Earth where the amount of time required for an ordinary person to work in order to sustain basic living requirements was actually quite low.... on the order of an hour or two a day. There certainly were even for these cultures periods of time that everybody was expected to put in long hours during critical seasons and events that happened, but this tended to be the exception to the rule rather than the rule. What did these people do during the other hours of the day? Create art, make babies, teach lessons to the next generation, and have fun enjoying life. See Plains Indians (native American tribal groups) and Pacific Islanders (Polynesians) for examples of cultures like this.
On the other hand, Tennessee Ernie Ford made famous a song about the life of an ordinary coal miner, where in fact they ended up owing more money at the end of the day simply by working than they had at the beginning of the day.... typically working a 12-16 hour shift at least six or seven days a week. I'd certainly say that going to work is not necessarily the point of doing stuff like this, and it turns out that "advanced civilization" tends to dump hard work even more upon ordinary folks.
There is much more to life, and there certainly are folks who wouldn't mind going to the Moon or elsewhere in the Universe for a whole bunch of reasons... including just to get away from people like their mother's-in-law or to get a fresh start on life (being in a location far enough away that extradition doesn't really make sense). Yeah, I can see a whole bunch of reasons for people going to the Moon, and not all of them are glamorous either.
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The "god" thing is certainly legal, as the right of religious expression is certainly a protected right both within the U.S. and Utah constitutions. As to if you think it is appropriate for an elected official to mention their religious preferences or divine object of adoration in communication to their constituents, that is what the ballot box if for. If you don't like that to happen, bring it up and make it a campaign issue.... perhaps even running for that public office yourself if the issue is important enough to you.
And no, this is not only contrary to law, but it enshrined in law. Considering the nature of the constituents of Mark Shurtleff, he would be greatly amiss and not really be representing his voters (in general) if he had not invoked the name of God.
You are certainly welcome to bring up the issue like you have here, and express your belief that such behavior ought to be regulated. I, for one, would not want to live in a country or land that prohibits the expression of religion or prohibits speech of this kind in general as well... even if they are a public official. I and public officials are free to say what they will, and you are free to listen or ignore us if you choose. This is especially true for political speech (of which I think this clearly qualifies).
Does it seem juvenile because as a kid you never heard somebody using Twitter to express serious news? It sounds more like you are getting old and aren't relating to the younger generation.
More importantly, politicians who don't use Twitter and other social media (particularly in Utah... for a whole bunch of reasons) simply won't get elected to public office. Especially in this particular election cycle, I've seen electronic social media used in a way that has really be a major shift in how people are getting elected and who is driving the conversation in terms of what issues are important. The "traditional" media sources like radio, television, and newspapers are now in the back seat of the political dialog in Utah now and are mostly trying to play a game of catch-up to find out what is happening rather than being the primary forums for what is setting the political agenda.
The defeat of Bob Bennett for the U.S. Senate is one very clear example here, where somebody who essentially used the strategy that he used six years ago to get re-elected simply isn't working any more. In spite of a campaign warchest of tens of millions of dollars, the guy simply couldn't get a foothold on the voters in Utah. The only reason Mark Shurtleff didn't get the party nomination in this case was because he dropped out of the race due to personal family issues... something I happen to respect. He was the leading candidate for that office and likely would have received the nomination if he was still in the race.
This is going to be happening much more in the future, and if not with Twitter it will be some other network-based media that will be more directly connected to the candidate. Twitter seems perhaps all that more important particularly for political campaigning but it will also show up when these public officials are performing their official duties... exactly as happened here with the Utah A.G.
Unfortunately, there is a link. The problem is that many in the polygamous communities are marrying off their daughters at incredibly young ages (between 12 and 15 years old) and those girls are conceiving babies with those men who are involved. This is, unfortunately, a widespread practice and in fact is one of the things that has been used to shut down some of these groups.
If the polygamous marriages were between consenting adults and everybody was 21+ before they got into those relationships, I wouldn't mind myself. There are some people willing to get into such relationships and typically they aren't prosecuted in Utah either (or by Mark Shurtleff). The Utah A.G. is going after the pedophilia and those who are supporting that behavior, where unfortunately these individuals who are doing this think it is a religious right to have sex with minors. If it wasn't involving kids, there wouldn't be nearly as much opposition to the issue in Utah and in fact the law might have even been repealed in terms of outlawing polygamy.
Frankly, if war is declared, I would hope that more than a few twitter messages would be transmitted carrying the message, including something perhaps from the "commander in chief" who is being ordered to go to war.
I certainly have no problem with elected officials (Mark Shurtleff is elected into the office of Attorney General) to express to their constituents what actions they are doing in the process of performing their official duties. If diplomatic messages sent via twitter can avert a war from happening, I would say it would be all that much more useful (aka a "tweet" saying that negotiations have broken down and that war is imminent, and then somebody gets their head out of their ass to deal with the problem causing that communications break-down to keep the war from happening after reading such a tweet).
Twitter has saved people's lives, and helped keep people from spending ungodly periods of time in a foreign prison. It may be unusual to get messages in a manner like this because of the novelty of the situation, but I think such pronouncements will be much more common place in the future, not less so. This is merely a reaction to change in general, and noting that something like an execution would be mentioned by a public official with a medium that until a couple of years ago didn't really even exist.
If you have a defense attorney worth their salt, they should also dismiss any such formed jury and even perhaps file an appeal immediately to complain about that kind of behavior. That at least would set up a change of venue at the least if there was some sort of manipulation of the jury involved.
The defense has just as much right to question and to reject jurors as the prosecution, but unfortunately many defense attorneys (particularly public defenders) really don't care and let such a thing simply slide by without really trying to make a difference. This is more knowing your rights, and if you get caught in that situation to certainly make a stink about it. Particularly with a capital punishment option as a sentence, such trial verdicts are often overturned or forced to a re-trial if there is any sort of mischief on the part of the prosecution.
Why not simply use a radioactive isotopic randomizer to perform the execution. Probability could be adjusted to whatever threshold you would would want, where there is a random chance for the event to not happen.
BTW, in the case of the Utah firing squad, the officers involved in the shooting are handed guns where some are randomly given blanks instead of bullets. The bullets are inserted into the guns in full view of everybody involved, but then the guns mixed up so no single person knows if they are firing a "real" bullet or merely a blank. I'm not sure if that makes it any better to actually be involved with an execution, but you can have some doubt when involved with such a group as to if you actually pulled the trigger to kill the guy or not.
The question that is begging to be asked is if the attorney general in Utah, or frankly in any other state (or equivalent position that has the same kind of responsibility) has ever announced to the press that he has ordered the execution to proceed? I think if you ask that question to a number of members of the press, that you would find such announcements to be common place... particularly if the public official was not physically present at the site of the execution (Mark Shurtleff was not at the prison where the execution took place, he merely phoned in the order for the execution).
Normally members of the public have not been privy to such "raw" newsfeeds in the past, so perhaps that comes more as a shock when you see public officials doing what they've been doing for quite some time but normally not reported to the public until after the fact.
For myself, the announcement itself was something that is newsworthy in its own right and deserved to be said.
What was inappropriate? Was it the announcement or how it was delivered? By the manner in which you are complaining here, you seem to be suggesting that it is inappropriate for a government official who is performing their official duties to comment upon their actions to their constituents in any medium due to what is being done. Note here that the attorney general in Utah is an elected position and not appointed, so addressing his constituents is very directly the point of this message too.
If that is what you are trying to suggest, that no commentary by a public official should ever take place before, during, or after an execution, you at least would be logically consistent here. Otherwise what you are complaining about here is the medium of the message, and that somehow something transmitted over the internet is less worthy of conveying that message than some other format such as something found on the front page of a newspaper.
If that is what Mark Shurleff had written, I'd agree with you. It was patently not phrased in such a manner and in fact the only thing you are complaining about here is the medium and not the message.
There is this little thing in the U.S. Constitution (and in the Utah constitution) that prohibits legislators from passing an "ex post facto" law. The firing squad has been used for a long time in Utah, and it was the law when this man committed the murders. Although the state legislature has since repealed firing squads as a form of execution, those who committed crimes for capital punishment have been given the option of being sentenced under the original form of punishment for the crime when it was committed or have the choice to be given a lethal injection instead (considered more "humane"... if that really matters).
That it took nearly twenty years for this man to go from arrest to execution is more what the problem is here rather than giving this man the ability to select the form of his death. For myself, I am glad that such principles are enshrined constitutionally and that you can't be prosecuted or sentenced under a law that hasn't been written yet. That opens up a Pandora's box of problems that is better to let something messy like a firing squad happen even if you think the guy deserves no choice in the matter.
If you decide to come to Utah and go postal by killing a bunch of people, you won't be given the option of a firing squad under current law.
I don't think Orin Hatch is likely to get renominated for office from his own political party, so I don't think that is going to be too much of a problem in the not too distant future. He is up for re-election in two years, and is going to have to face an electorate in Utah fired up to kick Obama out of office (from Utah's perspective that is definitely not Obama's core constituency). Hatch is too liberal for many folks in Utah. Basically, if Bennett was too liberal, Hatch is everything that many in the "tea party" really hate.
"Bringing the bacon home to Utah since 1976" is not going to be a slogan that will fly too far in Utah in the next election cycle.
The governor is also tied to this execution as he did have the ability to grant clemency or commute the sentence to life in prison. Governor Herbert chose not to do that and let the execution stand. The Attorney General, however, has constitutional authority over actually carrying out the sentence and the responsibility to make sure that any evidence that could be used to clear the individual that is going to be executed has been presented before a court and had all possible appeals exhausted before the execution takes place.
Mark Shurtleff, by making the order, certified that all such evidence by any prosecutor in the State of Utah has been formally presented in such a manner.
Other than complaints about the media being used for transmitting the message (I personally don't have a problem with Twitter as a news medium), was there some wording or tone of the announcement that somehow offended you and you thought it was in poor taste?
Frankly, if it had been a press release or a mass e-mail, I fail to see how it could have been stated more clearly or plainly. At least with Twitter, he had to be short and to the point and not waste words. The complaint here seems to be about the medium rather than the message itself.
The only way that Mark Shurtleff is going to fail in a re-election bid is to get caught sleeping with a minor (male or female.... take your pick), committing some other felony, or voluntarily stepping down from office. Only cannon fodder will even run against him within the Republican party, so he doesn't even have any real threat in terms of getting re-nominated.
The major opposition to him has been with the polygamous communities in southern Utah, as he has been enforcing the anti-polygamy laws. He feels that older men making babies with 14 year old girls is something that is wrong and should be prosecuted as statutory rape, and organizations which encourage that behavior should be dis-incorporated with assets seized by the state. For myself, I happen to agree with him and am glad that he is doing that prosecution.
If this was his first tweet, it might make sense for some people to be complaining about this. However, he has been "tweeting" for over two years, including much of that with a candidacy for the U.S. Senate. That he dropped out of that political race is irrelevant, but he is continuing to use Twitter, Facebook, and other "social media" to keep in touch with his constituents.
It should be pointed out that the A.G. in Utah is a directly elected political office... something that sometimes gives problems to the Utah governor as the AG is also in the governor's cabinet but often don't agree with each other or are even of the same political party. Also of note: Utah has a demographic base that also has a huge number of "younger" voters (what do you expect with a bunch of Mormons and with Catholics as the #2 religion), so frankly it makes even more sense to seek out the constituency on the internet. Of particular interest is that the voters who are between 30-50 have been turning out and getting involved politically.... and having a huge impact on state-wide elections. Traditional media outlets aren't nearly as effective for this age group.
You won't have a worforce problem - just remote-control everything.
Such a "remote control" environment simply doesn't exist anywhere... and try as you might you are going to need somebody to get up there to kick things loose and get stuff working. I'll admit there may be considerable automation, but it doesn't solve all of the problems even if the only personnel are going to be repair and service technicians rather than somebody manually moving ore with a spade into push cart of some kind.
Robots have worked for space exploration so far because there is some low-hanging fruit that can easily be grabbed by such devices. It is a hideously expensive endeavor to conduct robotic missions of the type that have explored the Solar System so far, and they are also painfully slow.
Even for Spirit and Opportunity, two "robots" that have been incredibly productive, one skilled geologist spending a couple days on Mars will be able to duplicate or even surpass the science and even raw discoveries than those two robots have accomplished since they landed there. A team of geologists working on Mars would be able to uncover some of that harder to access stuff that wouldn't even be considered until somebody is physically there.
Ditto for the Moon, and particularly for building factories that do anything useful there. Yes, a very simply "factory" might be built on the Moon to so some very menial kind of task and producing something like say a "brick" that could be used for other construction on the Moon, but you aren't going to get any kind of complex industrial process going without at least having some people up there to get it going. That requires infrastructure and people... where there will be a chronic shortage of even skilled people.
Besides, I think something is lost when you completely remove humanity from the equation. There are other intangible benefits by having people "on the Moon" besides being slaves to build stuff, even if it will be the factories and such that could provide the economic rationale for them to be there in the first place.
It certainly seems within mission scope to regulate broadcast frequencies and to regulate equipment that may interfere with others who are trying to broadcast on those frequencies (such as how the FCC has regulatory authority over computer manufacturing equipment). Even there, however, the scope of their activity is strictly to make sure that such equipment minimizes such interference to within "reasonable" technical parameters.
This sounds more like there was a regulatory void, and because the FAA simply refused to move for awhile on the topic, the FCC took the ball and moved in. The problem here is that the FCC is regulating what is by definition a navigation issue, and that is where I'm scratching my head about the issue. With the U.S. Air Force monitoring and tracking orbital debris, I'm sure this is a multi-agency issue anyway, but it still seems weird for the FCC to take the lead here on this issue.
BTW, I don't think that the dominance of communications spacecraft is going to last all that much longer in space either, but that is a separate issue.
What in the blazes is the FCC doing by regulating that sort of mess? The FAA, yeah, I could see them having regulatory oversight over spacecraft design and requirements for deorbiting put into mission requirements, but the FCC? That is about as silly as NOAA requiring private citizens to register when they want to take a picture of the Earth from space.
I knew space law was rather mucked up, but this is borderline insanity.
Both Pluto and the Moon have hydrostatic equilibrium.... in other words if you pile a bunch of rock on the surface, eventually that mountain of dirt will collapse due to the weight (if it is a big enough pile). Such a pile of rocks would also be insignificant compared to the overall diameter of the body. To me, that can and should be the only definition of a "planet" that really matters, and the orbit stuff is there strictly because some folks at the IAU are too pansy to consider that planets may be found in more unexpected places.
I don't have a problem with claiming the Moon, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Triton, and Titan as having planetary status. Heck, I'm even willing to call Titan a "terrestrial planet" and grouping it with Venus, the Earth, and Mars as it has a substantial atmosphere. Those without an atmosphere perhaps ought to have some other "special status" and term applied.... which would include Pluto (for the most part... the Plutonian atmosphere is only a part-time affair and doesn't even compare to Mars all that favorably).
The BS about orbits and such is a broken definition anyway, particularly the heliocentric part that requires a planet to orbit the Sun specifically. If there is ever a "hot Jupiter" found that has a larger "moon" capable of sustaining life (aka Pandora from Avatar or "Yavin IV" from Star Wars), I'm quite certain that the public perception of such a place would be generally considered to be a "planet" when push comes to shove. There are enough exo-planets that have been discovered to indicate the menagerie of planets is going to get far more complex as well, and the current IAU definition requires an orbit around the Sun specifically... not just any old star. It may take another century or so to work out a final definition, by which time I hope that there is at least some more data besides what is found in the Solar System to help flesh out that definition.
That is the largest problem with the IAU definition anyway, as it is very arbitrary and prone to "tweaking" in such a way that isn't really all that natural of a feel for those who aren't really into the subtle issues that surround planetary science as a discipline. A much better definition could be achieved and IMHO should be made that may very well place the Moon (Luna, the "Earth's Moon") into a classification that makes it at least a "dwarf planet". The term "moon" is a comparatively recent "invention" anyway that merely implies that the body is a "companion" to another planet just as Luna is to the Earth... whatever that relationship may be. There certainly is no formal scientific definition that would hold out for what is a "moon" and what is a "planet" if some pair of planets like Romulus and Remus from Star Trek were ever discovered that orbit each other and both have substantive atmospheres capable of sustaining life and are roughly the same size.
I'd seriously wager that we're closer to being able to genetically modify pigs to fly than to overcome those "engineering challenges".
I've got to figure out a way to work this into a sig. Seriously, I nearly died laughing at this statement.
BTW I think you are spot on here and this is something easy to group with solar power satellites (another "future technology" based on wishful thinking and scam artists). There may be some materials science breakthroughs in the future to get this stuff to happen, and the practical side of it has been worked out in terms of raw physics (i.e. it isn't something like a FTL drive) but I think it is something that is just beyond our basic capabilities at the moment.
Making pigs fly, while certainly an amazing accomplishment and worthy of a Nobel prize if somebody actually can combine avian and mammalian DNA, is something I think more likely to happen and doesn't require nearly the extensive research before it can become practical. A bit more understanding of genomic sequences is going to have to happen before that becomes practical. Here is a good question: Do you think the Nobel committee would take a nomination seriously that actually accomplished this task?
How would they withstand high winds from the likes of thunderstorms, hurricanes/typhoons, and so on?
Tropospheric problems such as weather is the least of the problems facing this technology. A far more serious problem is dealing with the ionosphere, which would literally erode the cable causing its failure after a fairly short period of time. If it can handle the tension necessary for getting to a geosynchronous orbit from the Earth's surface, weather problems can easily be dealt with as a trivial engineering problem on the side.
I don't have a problem with Space Elevators myself, other than it is something that is going to be in the next century or much later. It isn't a technology that we are going to be effectively going to use... at least here on the Earth.
Mars makes much more sense for a something like this as it has lower gravity, hence it doesn't require nearly the same tensile strength and other problems facing the technology. There may even be other bodies like Ceres or elsewhere that may even have a better practical implementation of the concept well before you ever see it being built on the Earth.
Mind you, as you have stated here, the technology has applications in other fields and there is some benefit to simply thinking along those lines. Still, I wouldn't get your hopes up too high and I certainly would not like to see other launch technologies dismissed in hopes that this one solution is going to work out.
Funny that you say that. What defines "proven" and how many launches does that take?
I don't see SpaceX failing on their next 10 launches, although they may indeed lose a vehicle in the next 10 along the way. The ESA has lost Ariane vehicles after several successful launches too, as has RKK Energia with the Soyuz and Progress vehicles, so yeah you may have a point here.
What makes statements like the one here ("once they have proven their launcher with a valid success rate") is that it is a moving goalpost that can never be achieved. I'll admit that a single datapoint is not enough information to base a valid statistical measure, but it is useful if grouped with other launches and compared with track records of other vehicles. Overall, SpaceX is now 3 for 3 with a 50% success rate for achieving the target orbit, which is certainly some additional statistical datapoints to compare and review in terms of reliability and if the company "has the right stuff" to work with.
For some additional comparisons and datapoints, there have now been 15 Merlin engines that have been used in actual spaceflight operations, and various criteria that can be applied to each individual rocket motor for statistical controls and comparison. Is that enough of a statistical universe for some real number crunching in terms of reliability figures? That number is going to be well north of 100 engines within a couple of years, and if the current manifest holds out there will also be more than 30 launches (assuming nobody backs out of the current manifest). Hopefully by the time that manifest is finished this line of argument will be dead.
There have been some performance issues, even with this last launch, to consider that the Merlin engines may not have performed at 100% of engineering expectations in spite of a successful launch. That is certainly going to be something for the engineers involved to tweak and try to improve performance and hopefully be able to provide increased reliability in the future. This is something that is generally true for almost all rockets, and it should be pointed out that not all rockets always have to be 100% perfect to achieve mission goals.
What is really exciting is that Bigelow still has yet to make a major move with SpaceX. They are busy trying to "second source" a vehicle with Boeing (understandable.... Robert Bigelow doesn't want to be hung out to dry by Elon Musk and SpaceX) and are also generally trying to see a broad and robust launcher industry, but it is possible that they may go ahead and sign another contract with SpaceX in the not too distant future.
The real exciting stuff that is going to happen will be with Virgin Galactic and Space Adventures (with the Armadillo Aerospace joint-venture). That is going to get the bottom feeders some serious experience with spaceflight launch experience and provide some testing environments for equipment and prototypes that until now simply haven't even been possible. The "build a little, test a little" approach that has worked out so well for the computer and electronics industry may finally be applied to spaceflight.... a long time coming if you ask me.
It still is a little steep in price to spend about $250 k for a flight into the upper atmosphere for an engineering test, but that is a heck of a lot cheaper than the $500 million "test" of the "Ares I-X" rocket that did so little for so much money. Just imagine the engineering tests that could have been performed on over 2000 sub-orbital launches to explore the performance envelopes of various components for a future spacecraft.
Iridium is also on a knife edge of profitability at the moment, and this deal is actually a good one for Iridium as well as SpaceX. If SpaceX is successful, Iridium will have its constellation for significantly improved performance for a fraction of the cost of the original constellation.... and this time the money isn't being exported to China either. Yes, at least part of the original Iridium constellation was put up on Chinese rockets.
Dang, it is good to see China get underbid by an American company due to an army of under-employed workers and cheaper manufacturing costs :)
There have been cultures on the Earth where the amount of time required for an ordinary person to work in order to sustain basic living requirements was actually quite low.... on the order of an hour or two a day. There certainly were even for these cultures periods of time that everybody was expected to put in long hours during critical seasons and events that happened, but this tended to be the exception to the rule rather than the rule. What did these people do during the other hours of the day? Create art, make babies, teach lessons to the next generation, and have fun enjoying life. See Plains Indians (native American tribal groups) and Pacific Islanders (Polynesians) for examples of cultures like this.
On the other hand, Tennessee Ernie Ford made famous a song about the life of an ordinary coal miner, where in fact they ended up owing more money at the end of the day simply by working than they had at the beginning of the day.... typically working a 12-16 hour shift at least six or seven days a week. I'd certainly say that going to work is not necessarily the point of doing stuff like this, and it turns out that "advanced civilization" tends to dump hard work even more upon ordinary folks.
There is much more to life, and there certainly are folks who wouldn't mind going to the Moon or elsewhere in the Universe for a whole bunch of reasons... including just to get away from people like their mother's-in-law or to get a fresh start on life (being in a location far enough away that extradition doesn't really make sense). Yeah, I can see a whole bunch of reasons for people going to the Moon, and not all of them are glamorous either.