I’m still trying to place the movie that put up this gem: “Come on cocksucker; mess with me and we’ll see who shits on the sidewalk.”

Enjoy.

via Suicide Bombing Puts a Rare Face on C.I.A.’s Work – NYTimes.com.

In the days since the attack, details of the lives of the victims — five men and two women, including two C.I.A. contractors from the firm formerly known as Blackwater

The situation in the case that I would have potentially served on involved a young boy and his mother who decided to sue the Board of Ed for compensatory damages for the kid getting hurt on school grounds. (I’m being deliberately vague to protect myself legally even though we weren’t privy to most of the case’s details.) One of the topics of discussion, and one that probably got me dismissed from the case, was how much to weigh the memories of children.

“I just want to be sure my client is treated fairly,” the lawyer said. Kids aren’t all that talkative about things they aren’t interested in (They haven’t learned to sustain pointless conversation the way adults have), and they may be more intimidated by being on the witness stand than an adult. The fear is simple: do you trust the memory of child (in this case, a 5-year old memory for a child under the age of 15) and remember that most of them don’t talk like adults.

I suggested that I might weigh the views, description and memory of a child on a different scale than I would weigh physical evidence or adult testimony. This was a damaging proposition, apparently. The kid’s lawyer claimed translated in to a belief that children had “less rights than adults.”

Many items in the law protect children in more ways that aren’t replicated for adults: criminal law (mostly) has separate guidelines for minors, certain substances are prohibited for sale to minors, and they are often afforded better health insurance options than adults. All of these exist for good reason. Children have less life experience to draw from, making them easier to manipulate and results in lapses in judgment but they are also afforded some leniency because their brains haven’t fully developed. Patricia Williams’s column about minors being sent to prison for life without parole touches on this quite eloquently—much more than I could demonstrate here. They also simply have needs that they cannot fulfill on their own.

So, will I trust the memory of someone in their 30s more than a pre-teen. Absolutely. An adult is expected to understand the consequences of their actions than a child and use more reasoning skills to determine their behavior. Ask yourself: Would I trust a 12-year old to recount an experience from five years prior? I had way better things to think about (or not think at all) when I was 12, 13, or 14.

A tech columnist in USA Today wrote three years ago that:

The age at which our working memory peaks is 45, according to psychologist H. Lee Swanson of University of California, Riverside. After examining 778 people, ranging in age from six to 76, he found working memory got better as children got older, reaching peak level at age 45, then steadily declining. Moreover, the reason working memory declined is, “as we get older, we run out of places to put new information.”

The claim that kids would have less rights if your trusted their opinions and ideas more than an adult is a fallacious one. Our legal and economic systems exist with varying degrees of success and “rights” are not distributed equally—affluent people have more and better access to the legal system, for instance—but my willingness to trust a child is not one that violates their human or constitutional rights. I don’t discount their feelings or recollections but should be told to take them at face value? I think not. Although, I am willing entertain thoughtful rebuttals and/or addenda.

Then there are people like M. Stanton Evans, author of Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy. The irony of the title is killing me. While picking up a paperback copy of P.W. Singer’s Wired for War, I happened to notice Evans’s book a few inches away.

To be fair, I haven’t read the book but I will also say: books aren’t fact-checked. Even if the descriptions of the Soviet infiltration of the government are accurate as the Publisher’s Weekly review states on the Amazon.com webpage, it seems to obscure the point that (1) McCarthy’s list of supposed Communists was shown to be totally fabricated, and (2) the dozens, if not hundreds, of careers he shamefully laid to waste. A tendency that continues to run rampant in American politics.

The book’s front cover (not depicted here) quotes Ann Coulter: “The best book since the Bible.” No lack of fire and brimstone there.

And no discussion of McCarthyism would be complete without having Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) explain how to investigate the “anti-American” tendencies among members of Congress in 2008.

That’s presumably why we invaded Afghanistan, is it not?

This is a big problem with Obama’s 30,000-strong troop increase in Afghanistan: What’s to stop terrorists from setting up in any number of less-than-robust nation states.

What differentiates Yemen from Somalia in this situation?

The scanning of shoes and banning outside beverages were held as somewhat culturally shocking steps in airport security when they were first widely instituted, seven and four years ago. But in the reaction to the alleged Nigerian-born Yemeni terrorist’s Christmas attempt there’s been a lot of talk of full-body scanning. It makes me think of an airport MRI.

Unlike not being able to bring your grandmother’s iced tea on the plane, running naked through airport security naked is where most people, albeit somewhat jokingly, assumed this was headed. So, we can hardly be surprised when it was announced this morning that:

Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport will begin using full-body scanners within three weeks to check people travelling to the United States, after consultations with U.S. authorities, the Dutch interior minister said on Wednesday.

Wired’s Danger Room had an interesting write-up on this the other day. Security Porn anyone? New iPhone app?

Look at how the faces have blurred out to protect privacy. How much facial detail is picked up in these things? Is the information uploaded anywhere?

So, when will we have cars that scan our vital signs to know if we’re attempting to drive drunk? Just a thought.

Secret Santa? Predator drone training? Who knows. But they want them in 45 days with 160 gig HDs. Now I really feel left out not having a PS3.

For many, the word “nuclear” still conjures up the fear of Mutually Assured Destruction, desperate politicians, possible terrorism and Dr. Strangelove. It’s almost as if the word causes small leaflets to be dropped by an imaginary plane reminding you of an untold horror you might have forgotten. However, in spite of all this, recent articles about nuclear power have been amazingly civil, varied and, for the most part, engaging. I’m hardly a “general reader” of science issues but I don’t think they were terribly out of reach for someone who can make it through an episode of PBS’s Nova.

The three stories that come to mind are from fairly different sources: Wired, Esquire and Newsweek.

Each article assumes a different level of difficulty (with Esquire being somewhat noncommittal to the science of a really important innovation) but also all different aspects of the same goal: promoting the nuclear industry in a way everyone forgot about. Interestingly, the publication of these stories feels as though there was some sort of coming out party for nuclear scientists. That, yes, despite the dark imagery, people have been working in this field even after Chernobyl pressed your fear button. It’s cool again, as a scientist, to discuss nuclear power with an outsider without fear of being scandalized, and, as a journalist, you can finally talk about the technology as something other than a doomsday device.

Wired’s piece profiles Kirk Sorensen, an engineer at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, along with his efforts to promote thorium reactors as a replacement for uranium-fueled ones. Sorensen oversees a blog appropriately named Energy from Thorium and, unlike most scientists, tries to promote his efforts in the news. Thorium reactors—a long overdue endeavor—have several superior capabilities over their uranium counterparts, including less plutonium production. (Uranium was chosen years ago as the primary nuclear fuel, despite all of its shortcomings, because the government wanted to siphon off the resulting plutonium for weapons. Lovely, eh?)

Esquire’s piece spends far more time explaining that Eric Loewen “leads high school field trips” and “is a damn good father” instead of how he “will end global warming.” Esquire aside, Loewen’s idea for a new line of fast-reactors is a great and like Sorensen’s baby, it’s proven technology. Better yet, it consumes waste and would create manufacturing jobs.

The Newsweek story is the only story to focus on a nuclear technology with a gargantuan hurdle: fusion. But that’s what happens when you write about the Holy Grail of energy science—using water molecules to produce energy, without making plutonium and next to no waste.

In terms of integrating science into the popular consciousness in a meaningful way, these were all great stories. Aside from discovering nuclear’s newfound intellectual expression, these articles also illustrate that we have a lot of options before us. Perhaps too many. A lot of excellent technology has come about over the last few decades but it will ultimately come down to is the Congress.

The Nation and the New York Times have explained that the major hang-up of the nuclear industry is dealing with the insurance and construction costs—figures that end up in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Congress allotted $18.5 billion in loan extensions to the industry in an energy bill in 2005 and it’s in the House bill “American Clean Energy and Security Act” this year. Of course, the danger is, if there’s no protection against building the same ol’ reactors no one wants then we would be doing ourselves, our future and science a great disservice. Who would want to build these old reactors, you ask? Well, if you’re a major company with stake in nuclear power plants chances are you’re probably not that interested in experimenting with your stock.

Nuclear, for the foreseeable future cannot progress without government support and subsidy. If it’s agreed that our main goal is to cut greenhouse gases (and conservation is too obvious and high-minded) then we’re going to need nuclear power. As long as Congress can get it right—and avoids breathing new life into a dead sector of the nuclear industry. Fortunately, the House bill states that no later than February 1st, 2011, the Energy Secretary should report on “the results of a study on the use of thorium-fueled nuclear reactors for national energy needs.”

I’m not going to hold my breath.

Chances are it’ll be too late, cost too much and take too long to build enough nuclear plants to stem the effects of climate change. Thorium is about 4x more plentiful than uranium and it won’t be without it’s environmental costs so, in a way, it’s merely a stopgap measure. In the end, however, we must do what we can technologically, if we can’t control our addiction to increasing amounts of energy.

One of the most offensive buildings in Brooklyn was shown a great deal of sympathy in today’s Sunday Times: Richard Meier’s Glass Tower, Exposed in Brooklyn. At a time when there are people who are struggling to find a home, the NYT discusses the real estate using the “struggling” uber-rich as a backdrop. The front page of the Metro section was filled with the picture above.

On Prospect Park, a glass-and-steel monstrosity surrounded by stone building is, apparently, less than half full. “Could the starchitect best known for designing Manhattan condominiums for the likes of Calvin Klein and Martha Stewart sell $1 million one-bedrooms in a still-gentrifying zone without a reliable public school?” asked the author, Christine Haughney.

Adding that the residents of On Prospect Park, “have been left exposed not only to the perils of buying at the peak of the market but also to the stifled laughter of their neighbors following their every move.” Awww. Cry me the Amazon, will ya? Interestingly enough, the opinions of these neighbors, the one with the “stifled laughter,” aren’t included in this three-page story. But “many local residents decried for changing the character of the streetscape.”

Only two gentlemen from the area were included, who are recent converts to the project after seeing its construction, Mr. Vader and Mr. Henderson. The story described a meeting a kin to a support group for people living in the building. One residents’ heart sank at the idea that a unit similar to hers is available for 30 percent less than what she paid. (One couple paid $1.45 million for a one-bedroom on the fourth floor of the building.)

The heavy use of two elderly couples (photos included) was also highly suspect. One was Holocaust survivor Shalom Yoran at that. The NYT piece openly reads as an attempt to blunt criticism of the building’s very existence by launching sympathy for the “struggling” and “nervous” residents of One Prospect Park that miscalculated their financial adventure. The seniors that plan to live out their retirement in the building don’t deserve any animosity, in my opinion, because there was no financial strategy involved, per se.

When a story attempts to illicit compassion for the less fortunate, it often can’t be written without also blaming them in some way for the situation. Not so for well-off it seems. They’re the real victims of the real estate bust. Given the economic situation for millions of New Yorkers, there are far tougher decisions made than what could face the residents of On Prospect Park. But what can I say, the NYT knows its subscriber base.