You don't need criminal intent to be persecuted (er prosecuted)

Two quotes:
"Under the English common law we inherited, a crime requires intent. This protection is disappearing in the U.S."
"being emotionally distressed is just part of living in a free society."
Congress would serve us well by spending one year out of four removing old, redundant and ineffective laws. Of course, that won't be happening.

L. Gordon Crovitz: You Commit Three Felonies a Day - WSJ.com:
"Boston civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate calls his new book 'Three Felonies a Day,' referring to the number of crimes he estimates the average American now unwittingly commits because of vague laws. New technology adds its own complexity, making innocent activity potentially criminal.

Mr. Silverglate describes several cases in which prosecutors didn't understand or didn't want to understand technology. This problem is compounded by a trend that has accelerated since the 1980s for prosecutors to abandon the principle that there can't be a crime without criminal intent."

In England - Mandatory Jail for Handing in a Gun

Poor judgment has been exercised by everyone Mr Clarke came in contact with after he found a shotgun dumped in his back yard. He should never have been charged, tried, or convicted. It is tragic that the home of the Magna Carta has reduced itself to this pitiful state.

Ex-soldier faces jail for handing in gun:
"A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for 'doing his duty'.

Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday – after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year.

The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year's imprisonment for handing in the weapon.

In a statement read out in court, Mr Clarke said: 'I didn't think for one moment I would be arrested.

'I thought it was my duty to hand it in and get it off the streets.'"

Sensible people have been fleeing Britain for years - this decision may increase the trend. How can a jury damn someone to prison when that person was merely trying to protect the public at large? Their hysteria regarding guns ought to encourage such behavior, not condemn it.

College Student Invents Lightweight Personal Insulation

BYU student Nate Alder brought together a team that designed Argon insulated clothing for a college competition and the idea is now being used in a new line of lightweight commercial products.

Not Just Hot Air | Popular Science:
"During one of the scuba seminars, he learned about how divers in cold climates pump argon gas into their dry suits for insulation. As a former snowboard instructor, he wondered if argon could be used to warm skiers and snowboarders too.

He returned to college, still with no declared major and no knowledge of chemistry but intent on exploring the possibilities of using the gas as an insulator. “I didn’t even know if argon was flammable or toxic,” jokes Alder, now 28. When his research revealed that argon is actually inert and used to extinguish fires in computer labs, he knew he was onto something. He began recruiting BYU business and engineering students and quickly assembled a crack team to flesh out argon-based outerwear that would enable wearers to adjust warmth by simply inflating or deflating a vest.

The group wrote a business plan and entered a BYU competition. “Our first prototype was basically a plastic pillow filled up with the gas,” Alder recalls. Although their idea was unprecedented—no one had ever tried trapping argon for use in cold-weather gear—they finished a somewhat disappointing fifth place and decided to disband."

Their discoveries are now commercial products:

Klymit NobleTek Gas Insulation | Popular Science:
"Cold-weather apparel made with Klymit NobleTek is simultaneously ultralight and hyper-efficient, thanks to chambers that keep the body warm in the same way double-paned windows insulate a building. A layer of argon has the same thermal conductivity as a layer of down or synthetic fiber insulation three times as thick, and unlike those materials, it’s unaffected by wetness or compression. The wearer can adjust the warmth level on the go by connecting a thumb-sized argon canister to a valve in the pocket ..."

30 Basic Human Rights

According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, created by the United Nations in 1948, we have 30 basic human rights.

While some of us may dispute specifics, like who is to provide (pay for) "the right to affordable housing, medicine, education, and child care, enough money to live on" (#22), this document gives us a starting point for discussions.

FYI - protecting Copyrights (#27) is a hot topic in this electronic age, and it certainly seems that some of our enemies are opposed to "A free and fair world" (#28) if that means allowing us to enjoy our other rights.

This link discusses the same list of rights in more accessible language.

Another ebook reader for your PC

Amazon's Kindle is probably the most popular ebook reader. This PC application helps them stay on top. One of the best features is synchronization between devices, so the reader is always on the correct page when you go from your Kindle to reading on your PC and then to your iPhone. I've been using the excellent MobiPocket reader for both my PC and my Palm Centro, but the Kindle may be a better choice for many.

Kindle for PC Ships, Hints At Future Color Kindle | Gadget Lab | Wired.com:
"Kindle fans now have one more place they can read their e-books: A PC. Kindle for PC joins the equally well-named Kindle for iPhone and, er, Kindle for Kindle in the list of ways to read Amazon’s DRM’ed content. A Mac version is “coming soon”.

The application does pretty much what the iPhone version does: your place is synced with other devices by Whispersync, and there is support for your bookmarks and annotations. You can browse and buy from the Kindle Store, but you can’t access blogs, newspapers or magazines. This isn’t a problem, we guess, as you’re sat at a computer with a web browser anyway."

FYI - DRM = Digital Rights Management

What is an FN Five-Seven?

The FN Herstal Five-Seven is a fairly ordinary pistol chambered for a quite unique cartridge. The 5.7X28mm round is reminiscent of the AR15/M16 5.56X45mm cartridge (also known as the .223 Remington) adopted by the US military during the Vietnam War era. Like this rifle round, it uses a smaller than normal projectile fired at high velocity. The projectiles are very similar in size, with the 5.7X28 bullet weighing about the same as light .223 bullets intended for varmint (small game) hunting.

What, Exactly, Is a ‘Cop-Killer’ Gun? (Updated) | Danger Room | Wired.com:
"News reports on the Fort Hood rampage say that the alleged shooter, Maj. Nidal Hasan, used an FN Herstal Five-Seven pistol — described in some reports as a “cop killer” gun.

. . .

The Five-Seven is chambered for the 5.7 x 28mm cartridge, ammunition originally developed by FN Herstal for the FN P90 Personal Defense Weapon. The P90 was conceived as a compact, powerful weapon that could be carried by aircraft crews, vehicle drivers and other troops who needed a weapon that was smaller than a carbine but larger than a pistol.

. . .

Gun control group The Brady Campaign says it bought and test-fired a Five-Seven, and that it successfully penetrated a police vest. That said, it doesn’t seem quite accurate to call the Five-Seven a pocket-sized assault rifle. Its barrel would give it a lower muzzle velocity than a PN90; likewise, it strikes me as unlikely that it would give a shooter much more accuracy and effective range than a standard pistol. And plain-vanilla pistol round can be devastating enough: Think of the Virginia Tech shooter, who used a Glock 9mm and Walther .22.

We don’t know at this point a lot of the details: Exactly what kind of ammunition the shooter used; how many shots in total were fired; and at what range. That will take a lot of police work, and a lot of patience.

Still, the tragedy at Fort Hood seems likely to renew debate: Both on gun control, and on the kinds of measures to protect troops while they are on base, and unarmed.

UPDATE: Hasan bought the gun on August 1st — less than a month after he was transferred to Ft. Hood, a law enforcement official tells Newsweek’s phenomenal new Declassified blog. “At the same time, Hasan also bought several high capacity 20 round magazines that allowed him to rapidly fire off multiple rounds during the attack without reloading, the official said."

The Future of Air Power?

Military technology is driven quite a bit by the "last war" and tradition, particularly when we aren't fighting a "hot war". Actual combat has a tendency to make the military face brutal realities.

For many decades, we've had the luxury of being able to control the air - a significant strategic advantage. Today's reality is that unmanned aircraft are cheaper in both dollars and political consequences (no downed pilots to recover).

The use of UAVs or RPVs is unrewarding & emotionally difficult for the pilots, but if we're to maintain our advantage, we'll be doing much more of it. Manned aircraft won't be phased out for a long time, but unmanned aircraft are going to become much more common - we better get used to it.

Fighter Pilots Face A Dismal Future
"Many people, including some generals in the air force, believe that its next generation fighter will not have a pilot on board. Many air force generals admit that the F-35 is probably the last manned fighter. But some believe that the F-35 will be facing stiff competition from pilotless fighters before F-35 production is scheduled to end in 2034.

UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles) are not particularly popular with many U.S. Air Force leaders, but that is not the case in many other countries. Air force generals around the world see the unpiloted jet fighter as a way to break the monopoly the U.S. Air Force has had on air supremacy for the last sixty years.

Most Americans don't even think of this long domination of the air, but potential enemies of the United States are well aware of it, and that domination has a profound effect on how those nations do their military planning. In effect, if you think about going to war with the United States in the immediate future, you take for granted that American aircraft will control the skies above. Robotic jet fighters could change that. And this is forcing American air force generals to confront a very unsavory prospect; a sixth generation fighter that is flown by software, not a pilot.

It's not just that most of the those American air force generals began their careers as fighter pilots. No, the reason is more practical. American air superiority has largely been the result of superior pilots. The U.S. didn't always have the best aircraft, but they always had the most talented and resourceful pilots. And that's what gave the U.S. its edge. Will that translate to software piloted fighters? Research to date seems to indicate it will."

Hidden Solar Cells Could be an Option for Homeowners

The bigger problem with solar is the need for energy storage, or an energy substitute when the sun isn't shining. Energy can be stored in batteries or more elaborate systems. For most homeowners, the best substitute is the electricity grid - sell excess solar energy to the grid during the day and buy cheap electricity from it at night.

Once you've made these decisions, then aesthetics of the solar array can be considered and the article below may have a solution for some folks.

Our home faces south, so photovoltaic cells would need to be mounted on the street facing surface of our roof, or we would have the increased expense of building frames to hold them at the correct angle on the back side of the roof. Our neighbors might not mind a bunch of solar panels, but they would also need to be approved by the dreaded HOA.

Hidden Solar Cells: 3-D System Based On Optical Fiber Could Provide New Options For Photovoltaics:
"Converting sunlight to electricity might no longer mean large panels of photovoltaic cells atop flat surfaces like roofs.

Using zinc oxide nanostructures grown on optical fibers and coated with dye-sensitized solar cell materials, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a new type of three-dimensional photovoltaic system. The approach could allow PV systems to be hidden from view and located away from traditional locations such as rooftops.

"Using this technology, we can make photovoltaic generators that are foldable, concealed and mobile," said Zhong Lin Wang, a Regents professor in the Georgia Tech School of Materials Science and Engineering. "Optical fiber could conduct sunlight into a building's walls where the nanostructures would convert it to electricity. This is truly a three dimensional solar cell."

. . .

Dye-sensitized solar cells use a photochemical system to generate electricity. They are inexpensive to manufacture, flexible and mechanically robust, but their tradeoff for lower cost is conversion efficiency lower than that of silicon-based cells. But using nanostructure arrays to increase the surface area available to convert light could help reduce the efficiency disadvantage, while giving architects and designers new options for incorporating PV into buildings, vehicles and even military equipment.

. . .

Wang and his research team, which includes Benjamin Weintraub and Yaguang Wei, have produced generators on optical fiber up to 20 centimeters in length. "The longer the better," said Wang, "because longer the light can travel along the fiber, the more bounces it will make and more it will be absorbed."

Traditional quartz optical fiber has been used so far, but Wang would like to use less expensive polymer fiber to reduce the cost. He is also considering other improvements, such as a better method for collecting the charges and a titanium oxide surface coating that could further boost efficiency.

Though it could be used for large PV systems, Wang doesn't expect his solar cells to replace silicon devices any time soon. But he does believe they will broaden the potential applications for photovoltaic energy."

More success in private space ventures

With NASA's current problems, our leadership in space technology is in the hands of industry - private & public firms. Fortunately, quite a bit of activity is occurring in this area . . .

Xoie Claims $1 Million Lunar Lander Prize | Autopia | Wired.com:
"Leaving it to the last minute, the team from Masten Space Systems has made a come-from-behind effort to win the $1 million prize after successfully flying its lunar lander last week. The team flew a new ship, called Xoie, to qualify for level 2 of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge.

After looking at the qualifying teams, Masten Space Systems and Armadillo Aerospace, the competition came down to inches.

In order to qualify for the level 2 of challenge, each participating team’s rocket had to autonomously make a round trip between two separate launch pads, flying to an altitude of at least 164 feet and remain aloft for at least 180 seconds. Armadillo Aerospace successfully met the requirements back in September. Their lander, Scorpius, had an average landing accuracy of about 35 inches.

When the team from Masten flew Friday, one day before the end of the competition, they managed to make the round trip with an average landing accuracy of about 7.5 inches. John Carmack’s Armadillo Aerospace team lost the million dollar prize by a little more than two feet."