The Economist On Jury Nullification

The Economist is looking at jury nullification. The best stuff is in the comments. Notions of right and wrong. What is conscience? The really big questions. For which each of us has to find his own answer. What? You wanted some one else's? It does save the pain of thinking I suppose. Responding according to a program is faster and easier. Possibly better. If you have the right program. And then the environment changes. And the program starts slipping in some details. Then larger chunks diverge as the program remains static while the environment continues to change. And then the program falls. To be replaced by a better one more suited to current circumstances.

The best defense in a changing environment? As few restrictions as possible. But that model fails too in its own special way. "Restrict them, I don't do that."

Thinking. Painful as it is, it is the only way out.

Hey Kids, What Time Is It?

Those of you of a certain age (what age is that?) will recall that ancient call. But for the rest of us that may become a reality thanks to a new government program. And what will that program do? It will let the frequency of the grid wander to better accommodate intermittent sources of power like solar and wind. And why is solar intermittent you ask? Clouds. Solar can go from full power to low power and back to full power with the passing of a cloud. And depending on wind speed that can happen rather quickly. With that going on it is tougher to keep the frequency constant. And keeping the frequency within one cycle of the 5,184,000 cycles that are supposed to happen in 24 hours
requires co-ordination.

Regulation of power system frequency for timekeeping accuracy was not commonplace until after 1926 and the invention of the electric clock driven by a synchronous motor. Network operators will regulate the daily average frequency so that clocks stay within a few seconds of correct time. In practice the nominal frequency is raised or lowered by a specific percentage to maintain synchronization. Over the course of a day, the average frequency is maintained at the nominal value within a few hundred parts per million.

Think of the grid as a huge rotating machine with what amounts to electrical "shafts" between every generator and load. If the speed of the generator and load differ greatly the shaft will break.

The primary reason for accurate frequency control is to allow the flow of alternating current power from multiple generators through the network to be controlled. The trend in system frequency is a measure of mismatch between demand and generation, and so is a necessary parameter for load control in interconnected systems.

Frequency of the system will vary as load and generation change.

So frequency will go up or down depending on supply and demand. A drop in supply (increase in demand) causes the frequency to go down. An increase in supply (decrease in demand) causes the frequency to go up. On an instantaneous basis this is held quite close to keep out of phase current (caused by generators and loads at different frequencies) to a minimum. Phase current requires bigger wires and transformers but delivers no power to the load. Expense without revenue. This is bad for business.

The frequency is generally changed (synchronized) at night when loads are lowest so the amount of phase current is minimized. Obviously it is cheaper and requires less co-ordination to let things drift a little. But when it comes to time a little means a lot. A five minute a month drift will put you off by an hour in a year. (that hour a year is about .01% accuracy). To keep it to 6 minutes a year requires that the grid average frequency be .001% accurate.

What kind of devices will this change affect?

A yearlong experiment with the electric grid may make plug-in clocks and devices like coffeemakers with programmable timers run up to 20 minutes fast.

The group that oversees the U.S. power grid is proposing a change that has the potential to disrupt electric clocks in schools, hospitals and other institutions, according to a company presentation obtained by The Associated Press. It may also mess with the timing of traffic lights, security systems, sprinklers and some personal computer software and hardware.

The biggest disruption will be in traffic flow control. What happens when you end rush hour traffic control twenty minutes early? Well, the electric power guys will be saving money and those stuck in traffic will be losing it.

With everything so interconnected seemingly insignificant changes in one part of the system can have huge effects in other parts of the system. For instance what about getting your alarm clock wake up at the right time to get to work on time? If you use an alarm clock like this one, Sony ICF-C318 Automatic Time Set Clock Radio with Dual Alarm you will be resetting your clock frequently despite the fact that the clock automatically adjusts for daylight savings time. So how do you get the right time? There is your computer or cell phone of course. But if you want something on your wall I like this clock: La Crosse Technology WT-3102B 10-Inch Atomic Analog Clock. It is synchronized to WWVB which is the time standard for North America (good to plus or minus one second or better - depending on some technical details). And what do you know? The frequency it broadcasts at (60,000 Hz) is exactly 1,000 times the desired North American line frequency to within one part in a thousand billion or better. Which is one second in about 30,000 years. Close enough for most work. Our most accurate atomic clocks are about a million times better - currently. And scientists and engineers are working constantly to improve the clocks. In fact of all the fundamental quantities we can measure - length, mass, time - time is the quantity we can measure most accurately although it is the most ephemeral.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Fukushima Unit #3 Explosion 14 March '11

Something very bad happened on Monday 14 March. About 3 days after the earthquake. Judging by the flash and the sound the camera recording the event was on the order of 1500 ft to 2,000 ft from the explosion.

The stunned look on the face of the woman in the TV studio says it all.

Some guy on the Intertubes thinks that was a nuclear explosion. I don't think so. I would have expected a flash followed by a fireball. OTOH the first blast was not straight hydrogen/oxygen. There was a fireball.

But it does seem as if you can't believe the published reports. Yesterday there was good news. Today there is good news that is worse than yesterday's good news. That can't be good.

And the double trouble we are seeing was predicted.

The year was 1992 and Lochbaum, working for Enercon, the nuclear engineering consulting firm, had established a reputation as the go-to guy to bring systems into compliance with regulatory requirements and industry standards. He was part of a team evaluating the capabilities of the twin reactors at the Susquehanna River Nuclear Power Station in Pennsylvania, which was seeking permission from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to increase their power and operating temperatures.

“Susquehanna is very similar to the plants in Japan,” recalled Lochbaum. “But it is much bigger. My partner, Don Prevatte, was looking at safety systems and meltdown scenarios in the reactor and I was looking at them in the spent fuel pool system. What we found was that there was a problem with the spent fuel located inside the containment building.

“If there was a reactor accident, the environment produced by the reactor automatically triggers a spent fuel pool accident. And, conversely, if there is a spent fuel pool accident, it automatically triggers a reactor accident. And since they are both in that confined space, the radioactive environment created by one interferes with you being able to get to the other.”

In a sense, it should have been obvious. Having two complex systems next to each other in a single containment building tied their fates together. The design for the pressurized water reactors, on the other hand, utilized separate, adjacent buildings for the reactor and the spent fuel pools.

“In theory,” said Lochbaum,” if you had a reactor accident, the containment would hold and everything would be nice. But when you combine the two systems, everything failed.”

PPL, which owned the plants, declined to invest in a costly fix, so the two engineers put together an inch thick analysis dropped it off at a local copying center and had it mailed to the NRC. It was dismissed within two weeks

I keep saying that civilians have a conflicting motivations profit/safety. Fine. That is not an unusual conflict (think automobiles). But in systems where failures are infrequent a "nothing has gone wrong yet" mentality can set it. Of course good engineers are pessimists by nature with enough of an optimistic streak (arrogance?) to go ahead and actually do something once in a while. It is a difficult balance. Some one got this one bad wrong. Willfully.

Capturing The Rent Seekers

I have adapted something Wretchard said at The Belmont Club. I added the part in BOLD.

Increasing the power of government without a corresponding increase in transparency, does not, as many liberals believe, lead to the control of “rent-seeking capitalists” by the state, but control of the state by “rent-seeking capitalists”.

It is pretty much inevitable. Smaller government is the answer. Then citizens have less they need to pay attention to in order to keep government sorta honest.

Supply And Demand

Eric in his post An "effective" war on drugs means war on drugs that are effective! directed me to this Megan McArdle post The Goals and Means of Meth Control where I found the following exchange most amusing:

RobM1981

Here is a paradox that always makes me think about libertarianism:

How many meth-lab operators have degrees in chemistry, or any science, or anything at all?

Running a meth lab is certainly not easy. It's not a get-rich-quick scheme. The risks of a fiery death are high. The risks of a long stretch in prison are high. And, if you use your own product (which I'd have to think many of them do), the risks borne of addiction are high.

Getting the raw materials is a lot of work. Staying under the radar is a lot of work. Selling is dangerous - there is no honor amoungst your clientele.

Yet they do it. Why? Clearly if they are smart enough to do all of these things, they aren't stupid. And clearly if they do all of that work, they're not notably lazy.

It always strikes me as if this is a case where the job is well defined, the risks/rewards are well understood, and there are no significant startup costs.

What would happen if we made opening a pizza parlor that simple - go to Town Hall, pay a small license fee, and off you go. What if, like most of Europe, you could serve beer and wine without a license?

How many meth lab operators would opt to open sub shops, and taverns in their basements, and pizza joints out of their kitchens, etc., if only we'd let them?

Another commenter has an answer:

Rob Lyman in reply to RobM1981

None. They do it to get money to feed their addiction. No rational person would choose running a meth lab at home over fighting the zoning board.

And then a wag shows up:

barryd in reply to Rob Lyman

When you put it that way, I think a lot of people would choose running a meth lab... ;-)

Ain't it the truth. And it shouldn't be.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Blackout

I was reading the comments at this Victor Davis Hanson piece and came across an interesting set of observations on the state of the economy.

14. Foobarista

As for the “gray market” in California, I’m convinced that regulators – and politicians – are well aware of its existence and don’t want to touch it. My wife sells small businesses and pretty much never sees a little, cash-heavy business that doesn’t pocket most or all of the cash – even in otherwise regulated areas like restaurants and dry cleaners.

The sad thing is that my wife occasionally runs into American-born blacks or whites who want to buy a business and whose heads explode when they realize that nearly everything is under the table, and that operating a completely legit business would mean you simply wouldn’t make enough money to operate because the market prices in the “grayness” of the market players. Immigrants of all sorts are far more comfortable with these arrangements and often prefer it.

And any business involving lots of manual labor? They’re completely under the table, not because the owners are paying sub-minimum wages – the workers are often decently paid – but because regulations and taxes make it impossible to operate legally. And since few American-born people are willing to work under the table, illegals are pretty much the only ones hired.

April 11, 2010 - 10:06 pm

Which explains the title of this post. When the government hand becomes too heavy people no longer use it. And it is not just the people who sell labor. It is also the people who buy it.

15. tryingtodorightthing

I work in law in the San Fernando Valley and can tell you from personal experience that the Los Angeles County Building Code Enforcement does not inspect nor enforce laws such as illegal converted garages or the related building codes. The inspectors will act as if they are going to inspect and then just refuse to do so. I have made complaints of very serious conditions such as exposed wires, gas lines illegally re-routed and the such with no action by the city.

April 11, 2010 - 10:11 pm

That is how you make a third world country. You regulate everything with a heavy hand. If you want to be profitable in such an environment you have some choices. Bribery is one. Ignoring the rules is another. The next comment makes that point.

Suzann

You’re my neighbor. (In a general sense – I live also in the SFV) and you’re talking about MY neighbors. (In the specific sense! The house to my right has two illegal ‘apartments’ in the back yard – the one to the left has a ‘converted’ garage.) I look at houses and they all have unliscensed contruction. No one cares. The law is a joke. No – worse – the law is predatory. You would actually be in legal trouble if you tried to OBEY the written laws.

April 12, 2010 - 1:47 pm

So who is bypassing the state? Some very nice people.

20. Les Hardie

Dr. Hansen: I and my upscale neighbors are all scofflaws. We live in a village in the Santa Monica mountains just west of Topanga. Most of us are professionals,others academics, scientists, businessmen, some cops and firemen. RE prices are high, but the area is semi-rural—a lot of horses, atvs, trucks, chainsaws. People here are well educated but pride then=mselves on being tougher than city people. Most are still Democrats. But everybody tries to avoid any gov’t permitting. The view is that between the county and coastal, nobody can build a dog house, much less a room addition, so f***them and do it anyway. Judges and lawyers do major remodels without permits; pools and spas, sheds and barns, these projects are regularly done subrosa. More than a complete lack of trust that the government will be fair and reasonable, is a belief that govt has no right to tell us what we can and cant do on our property (at least on a small scale). It seems to be a version of “don’t tread on me!” It may be the salvation of Ca when those who espouse the regulatory state realize how bad it is in practice, and take real steps to get it off our backs.

April 11, 2010 - 10:39 pm

The next commenter is not so optimistic about the situation in terms of people believing in the regulatory state on the one hand and avoiding it at all costs on the other.

T

The problem is that those who espouse the regulatory state will never realize how bad it is in practice. When liberal social theories don’t work its always because they weren’t executed correctly or because of some outside influence. It’s never because the theories were wrong-headed or flawed from the outset.

April 12, 2010 - 10:30 am

And of course every one who has watched Star Wars knows the final outcome:

Princess Leia: The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

Conventional wisdom at its finest.

There are over 170 comments to that post so I'm sure there is more information along the above lines. Not to mention thread drift and thread jacking. I leave it to the reader to ferret out more useful stuff.

Now about the Drug War Black Market.....

Cross Posted at Classical Values

The Regulatory State

When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. - George Orwell

H/T Jccarlton at Talk Polywell

The Oligarchy Controlling Washington

Glenn Beck explains the American oligarchy/government organization chart.


Is your blood boiling yet?

The Greeks have seen all this before. Something like 3,000 years ago. The one thing we have in our favor is that oligarchies are rarely popular when self-government is at least a theoretical option.

Time to take to the streets. See you at the next Tea Party.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Regulation Crisis

I got this from an e-mailer who wishes to remain anonymous:

We have crises in Banking, Energy, Transportation, and Health Care. Four of the most heavily-regulated industries in the U.S. Yet our new president says this is a failure of the free market.

I think the Stock Market could be added to the list.

The Small Business And Thrift Store Destruction Act

Congress has recently passed a law that will destroy a lot of small businesses and will prevent thrift stores from selling products for children.

If someone you know volunteers at a thrift store or crochets baby hats for the crafts site Etsy or favors handmade wooden toys as a baby shower gift, you've probably been hearing the alarms about the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA).

Hailed almost universally on its passage last year--it passed the Senate 89 to three and the House by 424 to one, with Ron Paul the lone dissenter--CPSIA is now shaping up as a calamity for businesses and an epic failure of regulation, threatening to wipe out tens of thousands of small makers of children's items from coast to coast, and taking a particular toll on the handcrafted and creative, the small-production-run and sideline at-home business, not to mention struggling retailers. How could this have happened?

Pretty simple really. Congress never looks at the unintended consequences of the laws it passes.

Congress passed CPSIA in a frenzy of self-congratulation following last year's overblown panic over Chinese toys with lead paint. Washington's consumer and environmentalist lobbies used the occasion to tack on some other long-sought legislative goals, including a ban on phthalates used to soften plastic.

The law's provisions were billed as stringent, something applauded by high-minded commentators as a way to force the Mattels and Fisher-Prices of the world to keep more careful watch on the supply chains of their Chinese factories.

Ah yes. The "we must do something in order to keep our phony baloney jobs" mentality that seems to affect legislators at every level of government.

The first thing to note is that we're not just talking about toys here. With few exceptions, the law covers all products intended primarily for children under 12. That includes clothing, fabric and textile goods of all kinds: hats, shoes, diapers, hair bands, sports pennants, Scouting patches, local school-logo gear and so on.

And paper goods: books, flash cards, board games, baseball cards, kits for home schoolers, party supplies and the like. And sporting equipment, outdoor gear, bikes, backpacks and telescopes. And furnishings for kids' rooms.
Comment On This Story

And videogame cartridges and audio books. And specialized assistive and therapeutic gear used by disabled and autistic kids.

So a disabled kid has goods made special for them by a third party and the testing can run $100,000 for an item depending on the number of components. We really have a lot of geniuses in our Federal government. And what about R&D? A computer board I once made was put into a wheel chair for a young lady to help her operate the wheel chair by blowing puffs of air. I sold the board for $50. How in the heck could I afford $100,000 of testing for a production run that amounted to about 1,000 pieces if even one of those boards was incorporated in a device for a handicapped child? And horror of horrors, the device used lead based solder.

Again with relatively few exceptions, makers of these goods can't rely only on materials known to be unproblematic (natural dyed yarn, local wood) or that come from reputable local suppliers, or even ones that are certified organic.

Instead they must put a sample item from each lot of goods through testing after complete assembly, and the testing must be applied to each component. For a given hand-knitted sweater, for example, one might have to pay not just, say, $150 for the first test, but added-on charges for each component beyond the first: a button or snap, yarn of a second color, a care label, maybe a ribbon or stitching--with each color of stitching thread having to be tested separately.

Suddenly the bill is more like $1,000--and that's just to test the one style and size. The same sweater in a larger size, or with a different button or clasp, would need a new round of tests--not just on the button or clasp, but on the whole garment. The maker of a kids' telescope (with no suspected problems) was quoted a $24,000 testing estimate, on a product with only $32,000 in annual sales.

Could it get worse? Yes, it could. Contrary to some reports, thrift and secondhand stores are not exempt from the law. Although (unlike creators of new goods) they aren't obliged to test the items they stock, they are exposed to liability and fines if any goods on their shelves (or a component button, bolt, binding, etc.) are found to test above the (very low) thresholds being phased in.

Nor does it get them off the hook to say an older product's noncompliance with the new standards wasn't something they knew or should have known about (let alone to say anyone was harmed; the whole controversy from start to finish has gone on with precious little showing of real-world harm to American kids from most of the goods being banned).

I guess this might be a good thing in the long run though. Poor people will not be able to easily afford children. Eugenics through environmental laws. And you know eugenics was a favorite of the left. So maybe our Democrat Congress and its Republican allies knew what they were doing after all. And who was the only guy to vote against it? Libertarian-Republican Ron Paul who is a baby doctor.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Classical Values

The Brown Acid - Quality Control in A Free Market

Denis Hamill at the New York Daily News takes drug manufacturers to task about how their products are killing Americans for the sake of company profits.

In 1969, as a hippie kid at Woodstock, I sat in the mud with a score of Brooklyn pilgrims from Prospect Park's Hippie Hill listening to festival organizers shouting over the loudspeakers to the 400,000 zonked-out druggies, "Beware of the brown acid, man! If you've dropped the bad brown acid, report immediately to the medical tent, man!"

And the stampede was on.

Judging by recent events, you get more truth from drug culture than pharmaceutical companies and the Food and Drug Administration.

He goes on to point out that:

On three separate holiday-related occasions, I was sitting around gabbing with friends in Brooklyn and Queens and one of the first topics to arise was the reluctant revelations by the FDA and the pharmaceutical companies that they are literally killing us by the tens of thousands with these deadly prescription drugs they are hawking with less conscience than streetcorner dope pushers.

One young woman had taken Accutane, which we now learn may cause liver damage and birth defects as well as promoting suicide. But, hey, it gets rid of acne!

I spoke with one guy who has been on Prozac for years for his depression, only to learn that Prozac promotes violence toward others and suicidal tendencies - an anti-depressant that sends people to roof ledges to ask, "To be or not to be?"

Eli Lilly and Co. had data to this effect for 15 pill-pushing years, told the FDA, and they both kept it as secret as the books of a Colombian cocaine cartel.

I make a similar point in my article Addiction or Self Medication.

"Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize an undercover dictatorship. To restrict the art of healing to one class of men, and deny equal privilege to others, will be to constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic, and have no place in a Republic. The Constitution of this Republic should make special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom." abridged quote --Benjamin Rush, M.D., a signer of the Declaration of Independence

I go on in that article to say just why the "ethical" drug companies are in the lead in the fight against street drugs.

Natural molecules similar to an active ingredient in marijuana play a part in helping the brain clear fearful memories and keep them from being permanently debilitating. The British journal Nature has reported this discovery by scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany. The scientists of the Institute say that this has implications for the treatment of post traumatic stress disorder and other fear based conditions.

It turns out that anxiety disorders are the most common mental health problem in the United States. They are worth $46 billion a year to the pharmaceutical industry. You don't suppose this fact has any thing to do with the pharmaceutical industries being in the forefront of the Drug Free America campaign do you? Of course not. They are just trying to keep you from being addicted to natural products at the cost of 1/10th of a cent per dose when they are more than willing to sell you an FDA and doctor approved, pharmacy sold product that will do the job for a dollar a dose. They have only your best interests at heart. Just ask their accountants.

There is no doubt that we need an honest robust drug industry. They may through their research have the keys to extending life and reducing suffering. Without honest profits they can not do the research that keeps the pipeline for new medicines full. What is lacking is honest profits. In fact the FDA was invented by the Federal Government to keep the drug companies honest. It hasn't worked out that way. It seems that every Federal regulatory agency eventually gets taken over by the very people it is intended to regulate. See the history of the ICC (The Interstate Commerce Commission) which is fortunately no longer a factor in regulating transportation rates. The same needs to be done to the FDA. What is needed is a private watchdog like UL (for electrical equipment) which came into being around the same time as the FDA. They also regulate a market. The market for electrical equipment. It has worked out rather well with no laws needed and no Federal Regulatory Bureau subject to political pressure. Funny thing is that the UL is a creature beholden to insurance companies.

The free market in action.