Letters to the Editor
musictaxes
Published Letters: 3
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The intersection of Spitzer and FISA
[Read the article: Misadventures in logical reasoning -- and lessons learned from the Spitzer scandal]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn-- Please consider developing what these two matters have in common: the government has a tremendous amount of information about all of us, and at present functionally few if any restraints on how they use it.
We are being told that a bank employee reported "suspicious activity" by Mr. Spitzer. Can we be so sure? Is it such a stretch to think that maybe big brother was keeping watch over Spitzer's every move just in case something politically useful popped up? Not hard to then have the bank in question file a report. And how many others might be under similar scrutiny?
The media is now making frequent reference to "illegal money transfers" in reporting the Spitzer story. Having been tangentially involved in this area from my years as a tax consultant, I can almost guarantee there was nothing illegal about how Spitzer moved around his money. For instance, cash transactions of more than $10,000 at a bank aren't illegal, they merely have to be reported to the treasury department by the bank. Reporting any amounts less than that is at the discretion of the bank, but it is still perfectly legal to withdraw or deposit cash. How Mr. Spitzer spent his money is where laws got broken, not how he accessed it.
From this you can see that banks have been deputized into a system of ongoing data mining not dissimilar to what the telecoms are doing. And we all are potentially under scrutiny here just as with our emails and phone calls.
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With laws like this, who needs enemies?
[Read the article: Is Briana Waters a terrorist?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"But the USA Patriot Act created a new category of domestic terrorism, which is defined as an offense "calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government" or "to intimidate or coerce a civilian population"."
Under this definition of terrorism you could easily indict George Bush, Dick Cheney, David Addington, John Yoo and a host of others involved in the Bush administration, for doing precisely what it says. And no need to be arguing over the veracity of informants to establish their participation--the public record has all you would need. Such laws are very dangerous, particularly when so much of our system of checks and balances has been subverted by those in power.
Walt Kelly was right.
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But will the light really be left on for 50,000 hours?
[Read the article: Ask Pablo]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In the initial question, there's no mention of what use the lighting is part of. Your calculations do assume 50,000 hours of continual usage, which if nothing else should be noted as thus presenting one endpoint in the range of usage situations. Now, if we're broadening out the discussion (as many of the letters have done), it is an easy extension to consider whether there are that many situations in which lighting must remain on continually, and indeed whether we can change our behavior (even in industrial and commercial applications) to reduce usage. The more we are able do that, the less relevant your actual calculations become in real world situations.