Here.

Yeah, I’m in a quippy sort of mood. Link via Instapundit.

Phreaking is back?

From National Journal on the HDTV spectrum in the United States: Spectrum Wars.

The bottom line is that the war over the airwaves has continued to drag on because generations ago, the government handed out valuable frequencies to broadcasters for free, and other industries haven’t been able to buy these desirable frequencies. For the broadcasters as well as their competitors, the battle over spectrum space has been a lobbying game.

Reminds me of the Cartoon Guide to Federal Spectrum Policy I’m sure I’ve linked to before. Everything is easier to understand in cartoon format.

Unfortunately, the situation is similar in Australia. As the uptake of any significant amount of HDTV hardware is unlikely in the near future, broadcasters have been reluctant to invest in the technology - instead prefering to sit on their gift-wrapped spectrum, until the deadline comes around. Based on US experience, it is unlikely that the 2008 deadline actually means anything. If HDTV is not ready to go, would the government really take away its citizen’s analog TV?

…using stun guns against pigs, but not firebombs against laboratories. (PDF)

The Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise study is by far the best review I have seen on PETA and eco-terrorism. I did a fair bit of research on this topic a month or two ago for an aborted project - the Center for Consumer Freedom is also good, albeit with a broader focus (more - obviously - consumer centric.) Anyway, they are both worth browsing around.

I just subscribed to this: Telecommunications Journal of Australia. You should too - it seems good.

A discussion on the economics of blackmail at Marginal Revolution, as well a link to Richard Posner paper (PDF) on the same topic.

The reference in the title? Here.

The always reliable City Journal on Why the US Needs More Nuclear Power.

That’s the stunning thing about nuclear power: tiny quantities of raw material can do so much. A bundle of enriched-uranium fuel-rods that could fit into a two-bedroom apartment in Hell’s Kitchen would power the city for a year: furnaces, espresso machines, subways, streetlights, stock tickers, Times Square, everything—even our cars and taxis, if we could conveniently plug them into the grid. True, you don’t want to stack fuel rods in midtown Manhattan; you don’t in fact want to stack them casually on top of one another anywhere. But in suitable reactors, situated, say, 50 miles from the city on a few hundred acres of suitably fortified and well-guarded real estate, two rooms’ worth of fuel could electrify it all.

Fear over nuclear power is a remnant of cold war anti-war rhetoric. As the article points out, the two accidents in history, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl do not in any way invalidate nuclear energy. At Three Mile Island, the safety mechanisms worked as they should of, preventing the release of any significant radioactive material. Chernobyl doesn’t count, because the Soviet Union “couldn’t build a safe toaster oven.”

On a side note, I saw a documentary a little while back which argued that the Chernobyl disaster was, in part, the result of building the reactor on top of a earthquake fault line. This Reuters piece seems to refer to that documentary, but also mentions that other nuclear reactors are at risk from similar seismic events.

I assume modern nuclear reactors have some form of earthquake proofing. This Australian briefing paper on plants in Japan “Nuclear Power Plants and Earthquakes” seems to indicate that there is little to fear.

Mind you, the “Uranium Information Centre” is probably not the most unbiased group in the world. But it does get my respect for being in Melbourne.

The article we ALL want to write:

You may have daydreamed about it: some forgotten constitutional provision, combined with an obscure statute, that together make it possible for people in the know to commit crimes with impunity. Whether you were looking for opportunities to commit crimes or afraid that somebody else was, the possibility of a constitutional “perfect crime” was too compelling to ignore. This Essay represents the fruits of my own daydreams, combined with the fact that lately I have spent my lucid moments mulling over one particular forgotten constitutional provision: the Sixth Amendment’s vicinage requirement.

“The Perfect Crime”, Brian C. Kalt, here

Link via Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy

JUST a friendly reminder - the website at the moment is an eyesore. I know it, and you must too. But there is a fix! To the right, just below my gorgeous face, is a number of links so that you can change it. If you are using Firefox, go with the Egypt one. Its the only one I have ever been happy with. And if you are using IE, well, I guess use the Type one, but its nothing really special.

Why is my website so convoluted to use? Because I am self-taught. And like all autodidacts, I have random gaps in my knowledge that make me completely unable to perform certain tasks.

Building a website that looks good in both IE and Firefox is one of them. I’d love some help, by the way.

…for a present for Chris? Buy me one of these:

It can be purchased here. Link via BoingBoing.

UPDATE: and then, I could convert it into a mobile phone! (Link again from Boingboing.)