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February 3, 2012

February 2, 2012

  • Really good article on the huge incarceration rate in the U.S., its causes, its effects, and its value:

    Over all, there are now more people under "correctional supervision" in America -- more than six million -- than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height. That city of the confined and the controlled, Lockuptown, is now the second largest in the...

February 1, 2012

  • Brian C. Kalt (2012), "The Idaho Loophole," Georgetown Law Journal, Vol. 93, No. 2.

    Abstract:
    This article argues that there is a 50-square-mile swath of Idaho in which one can commit felonies with impunity. This is because of the intersection of a poorly drafted statute with a clear but neglected constitutional provision: the Sixth Amendment's Vicinage Clause. Although lesser criminal...

January 31, 2012

  • The storyline:

    1. TSA screener finds two pipes in passenger's bags.

    2. Screener determines that they're not a threat.
    3. Screener confiscates them anyway, because of their "material and appearance."
    4. Because they're not a threat, screener leaves them at the checkpoint.
    5. Six hours later, the next shift of TSA screeners notices the pipes and -- not being able to explain...
  • Some errors in forensic science may be the result of the biases of the medical examiners:

    Though they cannot prove it, Dr Dror and Dr Hampikian suspect the difference in contextual information given to the examiners was the cause of the different results. The original pair may have subliminally interpreted ambiguous information in a way helpful to the prosecution, even though they did not consciously realise what they were...

January 30, 2012

  • According to my publisher, the book was printed last week and the warehouse is shipping orders to booksellers today. Amazon is likely to start shipping books on Thursday. (Yes, Amazon's webpage claims that the book will be published on February 21, 2012, but they'...

  • Does this story make sense to anyone?

    The Department of Homeland Security flagged him as a potential threat when he posted an excited tweet to his pals about his forthcoming trip to Hollywood which read: 'Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America'.

    After making their way through passport control at Los Angeles...

  • This was pretty good, I thought:

    However, it may be difficult to write military doctrine for many aspects of cyberconflict that are truly revolutionary. Here are no fewer than 10 to consider:
    1. The Internet is an artificial environment that can be shaped in part according to national security requirements.

    2. The blinding proliferation of technology and hacker tools makes it impossible to be...
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8:27pm February 4-4:00 GMT