Supreme Court says that the US Government can arrest and detain people who have commited no crime, treat them inhumanely, and then release them after 2 weeks and suffer no repercussions

US Supreme Court rules Ashcroft can’t be held responsible in case of detention and abuse of innocent Muslim-American
[Via Boing Boing]

The Supreme Court ruled today that former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft cannot be personally sued over his role in the arrest of an innocent American citizen, a Muslim man who was never charged with a crime. From the Associated Press:

By a 5-3 vote, the court said Ashcroft did not violate the constitutional rights of Abdullah al-Kidd, who was arrested in 2003 under a federal law intended to make sure witnesses testify in criminal proceedings. Al-Kidd claimed in a federal lawsuit that the arrest and detention violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures.

He was held for 16 days, during which he was strip-searched repeatedly, left naked in a jail cell and shower for more than 90 minutes in view of other men and women, routinely transported in handcuffs and leg irons, and kept with people who had been convicted of violent crimes.

The ACLU’s response to the ruling is here.

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We already know that the government can arrest American citizens and detain them in horrible conditions for months before charging them with a crime.

But this man was never guilty of any crime and was released without testifying – which was supposedly the reason for holding him.  Now the Supreme Court says no constitutional rights were violated.

Yet the Fourth is the least of the things violated here. The Fifth says that no person will be deprived of life, liberty and property without due process of law. Sixteen days without liberty and no due process.

The Sixth says that the accused has a right to  a speedy and public trial. Yet our government has the blessing of the Supreme Court to hold people for as long as it wants to. Where is the speedy trial here?

And the Eighth discusses cruel and unusual punishment. Putting an innocent man naked in a jail cell would arguably violate that. Putting a man in solitary for several months without charging him would definitely violate that. Yet our government does this with impunity.

I used to think that the Constitution would protect us but in an era where the President can target American citizens for assassination, can hold people indefinitely without charges and can torture anyone in custody – all with no ramifications in the slightest – it seems to me that the Constitution provides little protection at all.

Intel’s idea for innovating – copy what Apple does

Intel’s new ‘Ultrabook’ design to compete with Apple’s iPad, MacBook Air
[Via AppleInsider]

Intel has unveiled design guidelines for a new category of thin-and-light laptops, dubbed “Ultrabooks,” that take cues from Apple’s iPad and MacBook Air.

Intel executives detailed the new designs at the Computex trade show, Engadget reports. Ultrabooks will marry the performance and capabilities of a laptop with “tablet-like features” in a “thin, light and elegant design,” Executive Vice President Sean Maloney said in a statement.

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A rip off of the MacBook Air is the next innovative device  from Intel. Again, Apple innovates and the industry copies.

What better evidence would we need for declaring Apple the company of the 21st Century. What would the computer industry look like if none of Apple’s ideas had ever come about? I shudder to think.

I did love no mention of the operating system. Microsoft is now just irrelevant in making a computer purchase.

The Internet makes some communities smarter

by kevindooley

Networking is good
[Via Pharyngula]

I feel a little bit guilty saying this: every time I write about Jonah Lehrer, it seems to be about jumping on his ideas, even though I think he’s a good writer and his other ideas, the ones I don’t carp about, are interesting. The last time was when I criticized his noise about how science is falling, and now he’s gotten on the “The internet is making us stupider” bandwagon. I think it is a silly argument; it’s essentially saying that making the exchange of ideas more free leads to greater ignorance about the diversity of opinions out there.

It’s just not true. I’m an admitted lefty liberal type, but one thing the internet has done is made it possible for me to see what righty rethuglicans are saying, and I do read them…usually so I can point and laugh, but still, I’m more aware of the range of ideas fermenting in American culture than I was 20 years ago.

But I can stop picking on Lehrer now. John Hawks does a fabulous job of dismantling the argument. Letting the arguments bloom does not mean that we’re suddenly blinded!

Very tangentially related, I also recommend this fascinating analysis of the size of social networks. It argues that there are measurable cognitive limits to the size of social groupings primates can recognize, and it’s correlated with brain size. From our cranial capacity and studies of other primates, it’s predicted that we ought to be able to cope with roughly 150 friends at a time, and an analysis of social networks shows that that is actually about right — people on Twitter typically maintain interactive contact with between 100 and 200 people at most, and any more than that is overwhelming.

So I checked my Twitter account, and I see that I’m following precisely…167 people. I feel so average now.

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Wisdom of the crowds only works for things that the crowd is pretty ignorant of. – say number of gas stations in the US. Ask them things people already know and they will be wrong, whether they have Internet access or not. But the internet can allow them to find the right answers for factual information.

All this paper showed is that when people are ignorant of the real facts, they rely on social networks of others whom they trust for the answers. The so-called wisdom of crowds only works in a world where every human is kept separated from every other, an impossible task.

The infomraiton about Twitter is interesting and fits a lot of previous work. There is one thing missing though. We evolved to deal with about 150 people in our community. That is the Dunbar number and is also seen in a digital realm, such as Twitter.

SImilar community sizes are seen with online gaming worlds. But the digital world allows us to create a wide variety of digital communities. we can deal with out 200 in twitter that we communicate with, and our 250 on Facebook, and our 250 online gamers.

We only have so many hours in a day. The 250 limit refers to our ability to simply ‘talk’ to enough people to create a community. Digital technology allows use to leverage this, maintaining connections with much larger groups by simultaneously ‘talking’ with whole communities.

Our hunter gather forebears used language to increase their community sizes over other primates, whose social interactions were limited to one-on-one grooming. Speeched allowed connection with multiple people at a time, allowing our communities to grow quite large.

Online approaches now allow us to expand our connections even further. Instead of talking with 5 people we can communicate with hundreds.

As an example, I had heard about the analysis of social networks on another blog that does not connect to  this one at all. It is here though that I got the actual link. My connections to two different communities allowed me to find the information I might want with little effort.

This decrease in the friction of information flow is what changes everything.

Yes, some people will be stuck in echo chambers. and this simply creates communities that will be brittle and unadaptive. Because they ignore facts that lie outside their community. Throughout history, the most successful cultures and communities have been those with the most diverse views, not the ones where everyone thought alike.

So lt those who want to stick in echo chamber. Their communities are doomed to failure eventually by simply not being adaptive nor resilient.

Removing climate denialists from power will be a prerequisite for change

Fundamental impasse on U.S. climate policy evident in House Foreign Affairs hearing on UN climate talks chaired by denialist Rep. Rohrabacher
[Via ClimateScienceWatch]

House Foreign Affairs oversight and investigations subcommittee chair Dana Rohrabacher (R-California), Obama administration climate negotiator Todd Stern, and a disparate panel of witnesses squared off at a May 25 hearing on whether U.S. participation in United Nations climate treaty negotiations is needed or desirable. The hearing exemplified the conflict within the U.S. power elite over how best to protect U.S. political and economic interests in the context of climate diplomacy.

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Rohrabacher, along with all the Republican leadership in the Legislature, believes that climate change is purely a political question.To him, the facts of the matter do not impinge on his ideology.

He views any attempt to deal with climate change at the policy level as a plan “to impose a lower standard of living on the rest of us.”

Until we get politicians who acknowledge climate change in positions to make a difference, we have little hope of altering our current path.

I prefer the English way

by Jinx!

Logical Punctuation
[Via Daring Fireball]

Ben Yagoda on the rise of “logical punctuation” in the U.S. — following the British tradition of placing commas and periods outside quotation marks. That’s been my style here at DF from the start.

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I eat meat in the continental style and now I know that I usually use quotation marks like the English. That seems to be my defalt. Then I’ll remember I’m supposed to put the period inside the marks.

Now i can feel comfortable with keeping it the way I like and know I am at the forefront of a paradigm shift.

Earthquake, tsunami and now a typhoon?

Japan plant ‘unready’ for typhoon
[Via BBC News | Science/Nature | World Edition]

The crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is not fully prepared for the heavy rain and winds of a typhoon bearing down on Japan, the plant’s operator admits.

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First Category 5 storm of the year. Luckily it has weakened over the last day and is now just a tropical depression as it hits Japan.

Having a lot of rain and wind right now would not be helpful at all. And these people do not need even more stress worrying about storms. BUt it looks likely they may have to deal with that this summer.

Earthquake, tsunami and now a typhoon?

Japan plant ‘unready’ for typhoon
[Via BBC News | Science/Nature | World Edition]

The crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is not fully prepared for the heavy rain and winds of a typhoon bearing down on Japan, the plant’s operator admits.

[More]

First Category 5 storm of the year. Luckily it has weakened over the last day and is now just a tropical depression as it hits Japan.

Having a lot of rain and wind right now would not be helpful at all. ANd these people do not need even more stress worrying about storms. BUt it looks likely they may have to deal with that this summer.

An acidification lab for the ocean

BBC News – Bubbling sea signals severe coral damage this century

[Via BBC]

Findings from a “natural laboratory” in seas off Papua New Guinea suggest that acidifying oceans will severely hit coral reefs by the end of the century.Carbon dioxide bubbles into the water from the slopes of a dormant volcano here, making it slightly more acidic.

Coral is badly affected, not growing at all in the most CO2-rich zone.

Writing in journal Nature Climate Change, the scientists say this “lab” mimics conditions that will be widespread if CO2 emissions continue.

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The closer to the vents, the lower the pH. So the researchers were able to exactly stratify the ecosystems around the vents by pH levels. As pH dropped and became more acidic, the types of coral seen also dropped until at 7.8 – the ocean is normally a pH of 8.1 – there was only one simple type of coral left.

At 7.7, there were no corals at all and a completely different ecosystem, dominated by grasses. But the hard shelled mollusks – who have a hard time creating their shells at low pH – normally seen with these grasses were missing.

And this was a reef not affected by overfishing or pollution, so it probably understates the ecosystem change.

There is a very good chance that these levels of ocean acidification will be seen in the lifetimes of people alive today. They would witness the death of coral reefs.

Tuned Tesla coils and Adam Savage

Doc Savage
[Via Bad Astronomy]

Two of my favorite things in the world are Doctor Who and My Close Personal Friend Adam Savage™. So what could be better than a video combining them, and throwing in two giant Tesla coils and a Faraday cage?

I think I have nothing to add to this.

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It made me smile.

Details of a disaster: Fukushima Dai-Ichi Unit 3

Fukushima Dai-Ichi Unit 3: The First 80 Minutes
[Via All Things Nuclear]

As described in my first post, I reviewed the detailed data the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) released, to understand the operation of Fukushima Units 1, 2, and 3.

The available information for Unit 3 does not extend long after the arrival of the tsunami, and does not extend to the point at which fuel in the reactor core was damaged by overheating. Much of the available information ends at 4:05 pm local time, about 80 minutes after the earthquake occurred at 2:46 pm.

The available information for the first 80 minutes following the earthquake shows:

1. The reactor shut down around 2:46 pm local time and remained shut down.
2. Normal power supplies to in-plant equipment were lost about a minute later. It is assumed that this occurred when the operators manually tripped the turbine/generator per procedure.
3. Both emergency diesel generators on Unit 3 automatically started and connected to their in-plant electrical buses within seconds of the power loss, restoring power to essential plant equipment.
4. The power interruption caused the main steam isolation valves to automatically close, disconnecting the reactor core from its normal heat sink and disabling the normal source of makeup water to the reactor vessel.
5. A safety relief valve (SRV) automatically opened around 2:52 pm to control rising pressure inside the reactor vessel. This SRV automatically re-closed when reactor pressure dropped. This SRV followed by two other SRVs cycled opened/closed periodically over the next 73 minutes to control pressure inside the reactor vessel.
6. The water level inside the reactor vessel steadily declined as cooling water was discharged through the open SRVs into the torus. By 4:00 pm, the water level had dropped below the bottom end of the level monitoring scale. There’s no compelling evidence that any system was used to provide makeup flow to the reactor vessel from the time that the MSIVs closed around 2:48 pm until 4:00 pm.
7. Around 3:38 pm, one of the emergency diesel generators stopped running. About a minute later, the other emergency diesel generator stopped running. It is assumed that the tsunami caused these failures.
8. Around 4:02 pm, the RCIC system appears to have been placed in service. The data ends shortly afterwards at 4:05 pm.

Details of my assessment of Unit 3 for the first 80 minutes after the March 11 earthquake are given here.

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He has written detail chronologies of the first minutes for Unit 1 and Unit 2.

I imagine this will be a TV movie sometime next season.

Small businesses providing more health insurance

More Small Businesses Offering Health Care To Employees Thanks To Obamacare – Rick Ungar – The Policy Page – Forbes
[Via Forbes]

The first statistics are coming in and, to the surprise of a great many, Obamacare might just be working to bring health care to working Americans precisely as promised.

The major health insurance companies around the country are reporting a significant increase in small businesses offering health care benefits to their employees.

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Instead of hurting small businesses, the new health insurance legislation is actually causing small businesses to voluntarily get health insurance. This is in direct contradiction to what many critics said would happen.

Some insurers are finding there small business enrollees increasing 58% in plans mandated by the new law. But the mandates do not take affect for several more years. They are doing this because it makes sense financially.

Many have never offered insurance at all.

More people covered by health insurance was a major objective of the legislation. Looks like that is already happening in some areas, before all the aspects of the law take affect.

Out of control prosecutors not only found in the US

Are Seismologists Responsible for People’s Deaths in an Earthquake?
[Via 80beats]

What’s the News: No one can predict earthquakes. But six seismologists and a government official are being tried for manslaughter in the deaths of more than 300 people in the 2009 tremblor in L’Aquila, Italy. The city’s public prosecutor says the scientists downplayed the possibility of a quake to an extent that townsfolk did not take precautions that could have saved their lives. A judge has just set the trial to begin on September 20.

What’s the Context:

The case, which was brought in 2010, hinges on the statements of Bernardo De Bernardinis of Italy’s Civil Protection Agency at a press conference a week before the quake. His agency had asked the scientists to convene and discuss whether the increasing seismic activity in the area might indicate a risk of a major quake. At the subsequent press conference, De Bernardinis, who is being tried along with the scientists, told the crowd, “The scientific community tells me there is no danger, because there is an ongoing discharge of energy. The situation looks favorable.” (via Nature News) People say that as a result of this reassurance, they didn’t leave …

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Even though the minutes of the meeting do not appear to support what the prosecutor is trying to take to trial. These 6 scientists could face up to 12 years in prison.

At least we are not putting scientists into jail. Yet.

The beginning of the end for Microsoft?

Consumer PC sales growth declines for first time ever: iPad the culprit?
[Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)]

Business Insider has posted a chart that tracks consumer PC growth from June of 2007 to March of 2011. According to the chart consumer PC sales have grown by at least 10 percent every quarter, until December 2010 when it remained flat. In the quarter ending March 2011, consumer PC sales actually went down 4 percent.

Business Insider says that “Microsoft’s consumer PC sales growth has pretty much never declined. Not even when Microsoft released Vista. Not even when the economy went in the toilet. But suddenly, the growth of sales is about to go negative.” Business Insider attributes this coming negative slump to the iPad. While you can present the same data in many different ways and draw different conclusions about what’s causing a particular decline, I do think Business Insider has a point.

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The sales of Windows 7 actually declined the last quarter compared to the previous one. And that one was flat compared to the previous. In fact, since March of last year, the growth in Windows sales have fallen off a cliff – dropping from increases of 37% a quarter to -4%. The sales curve is now pointing down.

This never happened through the teeth of the economic recession we are dealing with. Heck, even in the worst quarter at the beginning of the current crisis, Windows sales still went up 10%.

If this continues, the calls for Ballmer will really accelerate.

Using the iPad as a digital gift giver

President Obama gets an iPad 2 filled with Polish pride
[Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)]

President Obama is on a European tour, and one of his stops included Poland. Before parting, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk gave President Obama several gifts, a usual custom for visiting dignitaries. One of those gifts was an iPad 2. President Obama already has an iPad 2, but TUAW reader Darek points out this iPad 2 was just a “container” for other Polish goodies, including some masterful Polish movies.

“One of them was ‘Cathedral’ by Tomasz Bagiński, which got Oscar nomination several years ago,” Darek says. “There was also a masterpiece ‘City of Ruins’ — a digitally recreated aerial panorama of post-war Warsaw, almost totally destroyed during WWII.”

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Pretty nifty. The gift is not the iPad but the digital material it holds. This could not easily be done before the iPad yet it now allows world leaders to exchange important cultural items digitally.

This opens up a whole spectrum of possibilities. I wonder what we would include on our iPad?

House votes to increase maternal mortality rates in the US

by striatic

Abortion needs to be taught in our medical schools
[Via Pharyngula]

Read this horror story of a failed pregnancy.

I was taking an afternoon nap when the hemorrhaging started while my toddler napped in his room when I woke up to find blood gushing upward from my body. Though I didn’t know it at the time, I was experiencing a placental abruption, a complication my doctor had told me was a possibility. My husband was at work, so I had to do my best to take care of me and my toddler on my own. I managed to get to the phone and make arrangements for both of my children before going to a Chicago hospital.

Everyone knew the pregnancy wasn’t viable, that it couldn’t be viable given the amount of blood I was losing, but it still took hours for anyone at the hospital to do anything. The doctor on call didn’t do abortions. At all. Ever. In fact, no one on call that night did. Meanwhile, an ignorant batch of medical students had gathered to study me — one actually showed me the ultrasound of our dying child while asking me if it was a planned pregnancy. Several wanted to examine me while I lay there bleeding and in pain. No one gave me anything for the pain or even respected my request to close the door even though I was on the labor and delivery floor listening to other women have healthy babies as the baby I had been trying to save died in my womb.

Fortunately, a nurse called in a competent doctor to abort the fetus and stop the bleeding — or this woman would have been dead.

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The House passed legislation this week which would ban ALL health centers that receive any Federal money from teaching abortion techniques. The bill itself states that no Federal money “shall be used to provide any abortion or training in the provision of abortions.”

Almost any medical event which results in the loss of pregnancy is an abortion of some sort. A miscarriage is medically known as a spontaneous abortion. D&C and D&X are known as medical abortions.

To a doctor, an abortion refers to the type of medical procedure used to induce the end of a pregnancy, whether for elective or for therapeutic reasons.

So how is a clinic supposed to separate out the techniques used for elective abortions and those used for therapeutic when they are the same procedures? It can’t.

Medical facilities are already failing to teach the techniques that are used in abortion, even though the same procedures are used every day to save the lives of women.

Only about 50 of the 130 medical schools in the US offer  any abortion training. Soon it could be none. For a legal medical procedure.

Without anyone who knew how to perform a legal medical procedure, this woman would have died – her fetus was already dead. This complication – placenta abruption –  happens in about 1% of all pregnancies. 12% of those resulted in the death of the infant.

This is about 2700 pregnancies a year. Thousands of women a year who would die without doctors who know how to properly abort a dying or dead fetus.

And what about the huge number of women whose incomplete miscarriages are now dealt with using the same techniques used in abortions? What happens to them when no one knows how to do the procedure?

America already has a horrible maternal mortality rate, compared to much of the world. Serbia and UAE (8.6 per 100,000 live births) vs. the US (17 per 100,000). Virtually all of Europe is better than the US. Italy has the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world – 3.9 per 100,000) – one quarter of the US.

And the rate in the US is actually increasing instead of the decrease seen in the rest of the world.

The current political climate, which seeks to impose political ideology on medical decisions, does not seem likely to reverse the horrible direction of maternal mortality rates in the US.

That is what the House has now voted for. Thousands of women who will lose lives. Thousands of families who will lose a mother.

All because the House wants to prevent doctors from being taught a legal procedure that saves lives.