Of course, we have to be realistic: For this vision to work, we need EVERYBODY on the same page. We can't have free-riders leeching off the system. And there are *always* a few malcontents and reactionaries who won't go along.
Don't get me wrong -- we should make every effort to re-educate them. But if they can't or won't let us help them, well, it's sad, but they will just have to be dealt with. Can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and all that.
The Court cannot substitute its judgment for that of the agency, but the agency must "cogently explain why it has exercised its discretion in a given manner" (State Farm, 463 U.S. at 48). It has not done so.
So. The top scientists and engineers in America and around the world are huddling their heads together in Houston, having pulled a month's worth of 20-hour days desperately trying to brainstorm every possible way to make the well stop.
And... you're modding up a guy who doesn't think they thought of DUMPING ROCKS ON IT????
Or wait... they did think of dumping rocks on it but don't want to? Even though they're looking at BILLIONS in cleanup/restoration/litigation costs? Not to mention potential penalties like, you know, no more deepwater drilling?
If blocking it with rocks would work, why would it take 500,000 TONS of rocks? The pressure coming from the wellhead is less than 5,000 POUNDS. And why would simply hauling loads of rocks and dumping them on the wellhead cost "few billions"?
I understand you are upset. The question is, why do you let your emotions turn you into a complete blathering idiot?
I'm on the scene monitoring things in Louisiana, working for a government agency. Other than that I have no dog in this fight. I am neither a fan of nor do I hate Obama.
Now read the article carefully. Like this part:
"Francesca Grifo of the Union of Concerned Scientists says it could have been useful in the Gulf of Mexico.
"I'm just very frustrated with how long it has taken for us to have this order," she says, "particularly in light of these events, where this kind of guidance clearly could have made a difference in this situation.""
So what does the reader naturally expect? Obviously, an explanation of how the guidance would have made a difference -- oops, make that a CLEAR difference -- in this situation. Well, you can expect all you want, but you're not getting it from this article.
Then there's this:
"In a teleconference, Jane Lubchenco of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said a group of government scientists came together just this week to seek a scientifically defensible measurement.
"We've always said that it is extremely important to get a reliable flow rate," she said. "But we've known all along that doing so would be extraordinarily difficult.""
I hope you, as a reader, aren't expecting to find out why it would be important -- let alone EXTREMELY important -- to get a reliable flow rate figure. 'Cause you aren't getting it from this article.
I don't know why Lubchenco said this. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen addressed this issue early on. He said it's NOT important whether it's 5K barrels or 200K barrels -- we'd be doing the same thing in either case, and so it would be a waste of time and resources trying to figure out a number that, in the end, would be at least 50 percent speculation anyway.
Under U.S. law, you can be prosecuted and convicted for disseminating classified information. It's a minefield the government is not going to enter happily, but it is certainly an option open to them.
If a classified aircraft crashes in your backyard and you start snapping pictures, you *probably* will not be forceably restrained. On the other hand, a friendly military Public Affairs officer will probably stroll over your way and let you know you are committing a crime and it would be in your own best interest to hand over your card.
In the past decade, [school district] officials spent $3.5 million trying to fire just seven of the district's 33,000 teachers for poor classroom performance — and only four were fired, during legal struggles that wore on, on average, for five years each. Two of the three others were paid large settlements, and one was reinstated. The average cost of each battle is $500,000.
[Note that, in one of nation's largest school districts, that's less than one ATTEMPTED firing per year]
We also discovered that 32 underperforming teachers were initially recommended for firing, but then secretly paid $50,000 by the district, on average, to leave without a fight. Moreover, 66 unnamed teachers are being continually recycled through a costly mentoring and retraining program but failing to improve, and another 400 anonymous teachers have been ordered to attend the retraining.
I appreciate your thinking this through, but I think you're way off base.
My prediction: your phone will BE your computer. You'll stick it in your pocket, then when you get to work, you'll drop it in the monitor-connected dock and fire up your bluetooth (or whatever) input devices. At the end of the day, you'll pull it out of there, stick it back in your pocket. When you get home, same thing, except dock could be networked to your TV as well.
Simple. Gives you everything in one place, and eliminates need for synching. Also, each night, as it charges, your phone will perform an incremental, encrypted backup to a cloud service. If you ever lose your smartphone, no big deal, you just buy another one and do a full restore.
I know this is OT -- go ahead a mod me as such -- but I can't figure out how to tag a story. Clicking on the disclosure triangle next to the tags doesn't work, and I've tried several different browsers. Can someone enlighten me?
If there's one thing I've learned from the media over the last seven or eight years, it's that Europeans are enlightened, scientific, wine-enjoying lovers of freedom compared to us dumb hicks in the states. They would never do something like this.
- AJ
I thought that crushed wasps and hornets, for example, give off a smell that causes their brothers (wait- actually sisters, right?) to go into attack mode.
But, er, didn't the West Virginians *refuse* to secede? To put it another way, your comment would be accurate if the WVs had seceded *and formed their own country*. But they didn't. They essentially just stayed with the union.
Hilariously wrong. Cato is a *libertarian* think tank. They have next to no influence, compared to the usual K-street actors (AARP, unions, industries of all kinds, trial lawyers, environmentalists, etc.)
Think about it: What libertarian policies have you seen Congress adopt recently?
I always figured that the future was in phone/PC convergence. Which is to say, rather than syncing your smartphone with your computer, your smartphone would BE your computer.
Coming in to your office, You'd pull your PC out of your pocket, sit it on your desk and plug in a monitor. It would connect to a wireless keyboard and mouse, and away you'd go.
WHen you left to go home or to a meeting, you'd unplug the monitor, stick it in your pocket and off you'd go. The only other thing is you'd pay a cloud service to do incremental backups over wireless or cell service.
I don't know about your situation, but I can tell you here in Alaska there are without question two different types of mosquitos. The ones that come out first in the spring are big, slow and dumb. As the summer wears on these are replaced by mosquitos that are clearly smaller, faster and much more aggressive and cagey.
It's not a one-time thing, but rather happens like this every year.
"Secretly authorized in 2002, the program lets the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) monitor telephone conversations and e-mail messages of people inside the U.S. to identify suspected terrorists."
Hmm. I don't think this is accurate, in the sense that it implies that *intra-U.S.* calls were subject to monitoring. If I understand correctly, it was calls *coming in* to the United States, from individuals or organizations believed to have ties with terrorism.
I'm not certain about this though. If I'm wrong, feel free to set me straight.
- AJ
Addendum: As I read further, I see this guy is the kind who is going to have a lot of fans on/., but I wonder. This, for example: "I was very worried. The Bush administration was capable of very crazy things and illegal things. I knew they were doing torture. And I knew they had taken into custody and jailed people who were citizens of the United States... and just thrown them away in a brig with no trial and no charges. "
The Bush administration was not, to my knowledge, grabbing Americans off the street and "disappearing" them. Was this in fact the case, outside this guy's fevered dreams?
Probably, but I think I will download a fresh copy and give it a spin. I was a huge iCab fan back when it first came out... even before tabbed browsing was invented, it had this "open link in new window behind current window" ability that was so obvious to me, I couldn't understand why IE couldn't do that. Plus it had a great little community of users.
Obviously, everyone is glad Rodheis home safely. Neverthess, many around the blogosphere have pointed out that the Times has a two-faced approach to this kind of secrecy.
Take, for example, the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, which the Times did a big expose of back in '06. There were absolutely no questions that this program was
Constitutional
legal
briefed to the appropriate members of congress, and
working!
Yet that didn't stop the Times from announcing to every terrorist from Marrakech to Jakarta all about it, how to avoid getting caught by it, etc.
Again, there is no dispute that this program was working; in other words, nailing terrorists -> saving civilian lives. Too bad the lives it was saving weren't those of Times employees!
PS Good overview here, by the guy who led the Justice Department's prosecution against the 1993 World Trade Center bombers.
Slashdot Mirror
Hear hear!
Of course, we have to be realistic: For this vision to work, we need EVERYBODY on the same page. We can't have free-riders leeching off the system. And there are *always* a few malcontents and reactionaries who won't go along.
Don't get me wrong -- we should make every effort to re-educate them. But if they can't or won't let us help them, well, it's sad, but they will just have to be dealt with. Can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and all that.
- AJ
From page 20:
The Court cannot substitute its judgment for that of the agency, but the agency must "cogently explain why it has exercised its discretion in a given manner" (State Farm, 463 U.S. at 48). It has not done so.
- AJ
To everyone who modded this post up...
So. The top scientists and engineers in America and around the world are huddling their heads together in Houston, having pulled a month's worth of 20-hour days desperately trying to brainstorm every possible way to make the well stop.
And... you're modding up a guy who doesn't think they thought of DUMPING ROCKS ON IT????
Or wait ... they did think of dumping rocks on it but don't want to? Even though they're looking at BILLIONS in cleanup/restoration/litigation costs? Not to mention potential penalties like, you know, no more deepwater drilling?
If blocking it with rocks would work, why would it take 500,000 TONS of rocks? The pressure coming from the wellhead is less than 5,000 POUNDS. And why would simply hauling loads of rocks and dumping them on the wellhead cost "few billions"?
I understand you are upset. The question is, why do you let your emotions turn you into a complete blathering idiot?
- AJ
I'm on the scene monitoring things in Louisiana, working for a government agency. Other than that I have no dog in this fight. I am neither a fan of nor do I hate Obama.
Now read the article carefully. Like this part:
"Francesca Grifo of the Union of Concerned Scientists says it could have been useful in the Gulf of Mexico.
"I'm just very frustrated with how long it has taken for us to have this order," she says, "particularly in light of these events, where this kind of guidance clearly could have made a difference in this situation.""
So what does the reader naturally expect? Obviously, an explanation of how the guidance would have made a difference -- oops, make that a CLEAR difference -- in this situation. Well, you can expect all you want, but you're not getting it from this article.
Then there's this:
"In a teleconference, Jane Lubchenco of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said a group of government scientists came together just this week to seek a scientifically defensible measurement.
"We've always said that it is extremely important to get a reliable flow rate," she said. "But we've known all along that doing so would be extraordinarily difficult.""
I hope you, as a reader, aren't expecting to find out why it would be important -- let alone EXTREMELY important -- to get a reliable flow rate figure. 'Cause you aren't getting it from this article.
I don't know why Lubchenco said this. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen addressed this issue early on. He said it's NOT important whether it's 5K barrels or 200K barrels -- we'd be doing the same thing in either case, and so it would be a waste of time and resources trying to figure out a number that, in the end, would be at least 50 percent speculation anyway.
- AJ
Assertive, confident and forthright. Also wrong.
Under U.S. law, you can be prosecuted and convicted for disseminating classified information. It's a minefield the government is not going to enter happily, but it is certainly an option open to them.
If a classified aircraft crashes in your backyard and you start snapping pictures, you *probably* will not be forceably restrained. On the other hand, a friendly military Public Affairs officer will probably stroll over your way and let you know you are committing a crime and it would be in your own best interest to hand over your card.
Just FYI.
- Alaska Jack
L.A. Weekly:
In the past decade, [school district] officials spent $3.5 million trying to fire just seven of the district's 33,000 teachers for poor classroom performance — and only four were fired, during legal struggles that wore on, on average, for five years each. Two of the three others were paid large settlements, and one was reinstated. The average cost of each battle is $500,000.
[Note that, in one of nation's largest school districts, that's less than one ATTEMPTED firing per year]
We also discovered that 32 underperforming teachers were initially recommended for firing, but then secretly paid $50,000 by the district, on average, to leave without a fight. Moreover, 66 unnamed teachers are being continually recycled through a costly mentoring and retraining program but failing to improve, and another 400 anonymous teachers have been ordered to attend the retraining.
- AJ
Yeah, all good points, esp. the employer security thing. I guess I was thinking about my own situation, where that's not really a factor.
- AJ
I appreciate your thinking this through, but I think you're way off base.
My prediction: your phone will BE your computer. You'll stick it in your pocket, then when you get to work, you'll drop it in the monitor-connected dock and fire up your bluetooth (or whatever) input devices. At the end of the day, you'll pull it out of there, stick it back in your pocket. When you get home, same thing, except dock could be networked to your TV as well.
Simple. Gives you everything in one place, and eliminates need for synching. Also, each night, as it charges, your phone will perform an incremental, encrypted backup to a cloud service. If you ever lose your smartphone, no big deal, you just buy another one and do a full restore.
- AJ
"Ever get the urge to look at pornographic drawings of famous cartoon children?" Hibbert: No. Lisa: No. Marge: No. Wiggum: No. Bart: No. Patty: No. Wiggum: No. Ned: No. Selma: No. Frink: No. Lovejoy: No. Wiggum: Yes. I mean, no. Heh.
... and yet, miraculously, research on coal-to-liquid fuels continues all over the country! Damn that Reagan and his ineffective efforts.
Google: Coal to liquid
- Alaska Jack
Easy there, Bill.
- AJ
I know this is OT -- go ahead a mod me as such -- but I can't figure out how to tag a story. Clicking on the disclosure triangle next to the tags doesn't work, and I've tried several different browsers. Can someone enlighten me?
If there's one thing I've learned from the media over the last seven or eight years, it's that Europeans are enlightened, scientific, wine-enjoying lovers of freedom compared to us dumb hicks in the states. They would never do something like this. - AJ
'It was amazing to find that the cockroaches avoided places treated with these extracts like the plague,' says Rollo
I worry about what will happen if we all do actually get the plague. Where will these health-conscious cockroaches go?
- Alaska Jack
I thought that crushed wasps and hornets, for example, give off a smell that causes their brothers (wait- actually sisters, right?) to go into attack mode.
- AJ
A public employee in the pursuit of his or her official duties has no reasonable expectation of nor right to privacy.
In a sane world, anyway.
- AJ
But, er, didn't the West Virginians *refuse* to secede? To put it another way, your comment would be accurate if the WVs had seceded *and formed their own country*. But they didn't. They essentially just stayed with the union.
- AJ
Hilariously wrong. Cato is a *libertarian* think tank. They have next to no influence, compared to the usual K-street actors (AARP, unions, industries of all kinds, trial lawyers, environmentalists, etc.)
Think about it: What libertarian policies have you seen Congress adopt recently?
- Alaska Jack
I always figured that the future was in phone/PC convergence. Which is to say, rather than syncing your smartphone with your computer, your smartphone would BE your computer.
Coming in to your office, You'd pull your PC out of your pocket, sit it on your desk and plug in a monitor. It would connect to a wireless keyboard and mouse, and away you'd go.
WHen you left to go home or to a meeting, you'd unplug the monitor, stick it in your pocket and off you'd go. The only other thing is you'd pay a cloud service to do incremental backups over wireless or cell service.
Seems pretty straightforward to me.
- AJ
I don't know about your situation, but I can tell you here in Alaska there are without question two different types of mosquitos. The ones that come out first in the spring are big, slow and dumb. As the summer wears on these are replaced by mosquitos that are clearly smaller, faster and much more aggressive and cagey.
It's not a one-time thing, but rather happens like this every year.
- AJ
TFA:
"Secretly authorized in 2002, the program lets the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) monitor telephone conversations and e-mail messages of people inside the U.S. to identify suspected terrorists."
Hmm. I don't think this is accurate, in the sense that it implies that *intra-U.S.* calls were subject to monitoring. If I understand correctly, it was calls *coming in* to the United States, from individuals or organizations believed to have ties with terrorism.
I'm not certain about this though. If I'm wrong, feel free to set me straight.
- AJ
Addendum: As I read further, I see this guy is the kind who is going to have a lot of fans on /., but I wonder. This, for example: "I was very worried. The Bush administration was capable of very crazy things and illegal things. I knew they were doing torture. And I knew they had taken into custody and jailed people who were citizens of the United States ... and just thrown them away in a brig with no trial and no charges. "
The Bush administration was not, to my knowledge, grabbing Americans off the street and "disappearing" them. Was this in fact the case, outside this guy's fevered dreams?
I know what a zergling rush is ... what's a carrier warp?
Just curious.
- AJ
Probably, but I think I will download a fresh copy and give it a spin. I was a huge iCab fan back when it first came out... even before tabbed browsing was invented, it had this "open link in new window behind current window" ability that was so obvious to me, I couldn't understand why IE couldn't do that. Plus it had a great little community of users.
- AJ
Good tip! Thanks, legitimate poster!
- AJ
Obviously, everyone is glad Rodheis home safely. Neverthess, many around the blogosphere have pointed out that the Times has a two-faced approach to this kind of secrecy.
Take, for example, the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, which the Times did a big expose of back in '06. There were absolutely no questions that this program was
Yet that didn't stop the Times from announcing to every terrorist from Marrakech to Jakarta all about it, how to avoid getting caught by it, etc.
Again, there is no dispute that this program was working; in other words, nailing terrorists -> saving civilian lives. Too bad the lives it was saving weren't those of Times employees!
PS Good overview here, by the guy who led the Justice Department's prosecution against the 1993 World Trade Center bombers.
- AJ