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Comment Re:Ridiculous (Score 1, Insightful) 191

Reid singlehandedly tried to undermine the NRC from the top by appointing (via BO) Jaszko as NRC chair. Putting an incompetent political appointee in charge of an agency as important as the NRC is its own form of willful negligence. Thankfully he was driven out when it became clear he was not fit to hold such a position.

Comment Re: Will the video be available though? (Score 1) 643

I've convinced more than one cop to let me off. You have to know what the line is and read the officer's demeanor. Sometimes nice guy approach, some times a tougher stance is needed, no guarantees either way. Thanks for your unsolicited advice though.

The point regarding privacy is not to make a case against using the cameras, its more to make sure the impacts and consequences are considered in advance. Doing so and taking steps to address them can help achieve a successful outcome a lot quicker than simply dismissing those concerns or rationalizing them away.

Comment Re:Will the video be available though? (Score 1) 643

A step forward or backward? Do you want every encounter you have with an officer to be publicly available? Lets say you bet pulled for speeding, but felt it was not excessive and challenged the officer. The next week, you are at that job interview and here they have video evidence that you don't respect authority.

A very hypothetical case, I know, but as someone who has gotten his share of tickets, I will say I typically accept that I deserved the ticket and treat the officer with the appropriate respect and tone, but one or two cases I was quite upset and it probably would not have come off on camera very well even though there was nothing disrespectful said.

Comment Re:Not really new. (Score 1) 216

Of course, you forgot to mention that the actual levels/concentrations of the will be insignificant with respect to human health risk for almost that entire area in a relatively very short period. (Actually, it is already safe in most areas, but logistics, conservatism, and validation efforts all prevent a quicker return). And, have you ever even thought about the relative risks associated compared to the overall benefits we have gained from offsetting "mind-numbing" masses of air pollutants and greenhouse gasses. Or is your whole position based on your fear of radiation, lack of risk perception accuracy due to the ongoing anti-nuke FUD, which the oil and gas industry thank who wholeheartedly for supporting.

So, it seems you think its quite OK for those entities that decided tsunami walls were sufficient protection for towns and villages, and those that designated safe elevations for villages and told people it was OK to build their homes, not to worry, and turned out to be wrong.... to not be held to account, even though many lives were lost due to that mistake. And somehow, only the nuclear site presented a case of negligence and collusion. Despite the fact that the actual plant itself saved the lives of some people that were able to make it to the main plant structures in time. Yeah, its OK for thousands to die and lose their loved ones, but very small portion of land requiring remediation for a few decades is your outrage.

Your selective outrage is quite telling.

Submission + - Statistics Losing Ground to CS, Losing Image Among Students

theodp writes: Unless some things change, UC Davis Prof. Norman Matloff worries that the Statistician could be added to the endangered species list. "The American Statistical Association (ASA) leadership, and many in Statistics academia," writes Matloff, "have been undergoing a period of angst the last few years, They worry that the field of Statistics is headed for a future of reduced national influence and importance, with the feeling that: [1] The field is to a large extent being usurped by other disciplines, notably Computer Science (CS). [2] Efforts to make the field attractive to students have largely been unsuccessful." Matloff, who has a foot in both the Statistics and CS camps, but says, "The problem is not that CS people are doing Statistics, but rather that they are doing it poorly. Generally the quality of CS work in Stat is weak. It is not a problem of quality of the researchers themselves; indeed, many of them are very highly talented. Instead, there are a number of systemic reasons for this, structural problems with the CS research 'business model'." So, can Statistics be made more attractive to students? "Here is something that actually can be fixed reasonably simply," suggests no-fan-of-TI-83-pocket-calculators-as-a-computational-vehicle Matloff. "If I had my druthers, I would simply ban AP Stat, and actually, I am one of those people who would do away with the entire AP program. Obviously, there are too many deeply entrenched interests for this to happen, but one thing that can be done for AP Stat is to switch its computational vehicle to R."

Submission + - Australian Bureau of Meteorology accused of Criminally Adjusted Global Warming (breitbart.com)

marcgvky writes: The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has been caught red-handed manipulating temperature data to show "global warming" where none actually exists.

At Amberley, Queensland, for example, the data at a weather station showing 1 degree Celsius cooling per century was "homogenized" (adjusted) by the Bureau so that it instead showed a 2.5 degrees warming per century.

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