(Make reasonable estimates for frictional co-efficient, car weight and man’s strength)

The new laws state that someone can be re-tried after acquittal if “compelling new evidence” comes to light thus removing a protection which over hundreds of years have saved thousands of people from bullying state interfearence.

What prompted these laws were that some of people were coming out of court having been found not guilty and they were admitting their crimes.

This is a weak argument in favour of removing Double Jeopardy protection after all bad though it may be to have the man who raped you walking free when everyone knows he was guilty it still seems rather better than having the man who raped you walking free with everyone wondering whether or not you were lying.

Also idea of “compelling new evidence” seems to undermine the presumption of innocence a bit because to me compelling new evidence means evidence which basically shows that they were wrongly acquitted which in turn means that a judge has sent the message to the new jury that the evidence suggests the defendant is guilty.  And you can’t solve this by not telling the jury in fact that just spreads the presumption of guilt more widely.

But the most important point is that for every extra criminal this law locks away there are hundreds of innocent people who don’t get proper closure.  Their lives, already blighted by wrongful accusations, now further hurt by the fact that they will never be able know that their ordeal is finally over.  The locking up of the one extra criminal isn’t worth all the destruction it does to countless other people’s lives.

To quote the family of the victim of this Celaire bloke:

“It is a victory for everyone who feels that they have been let down by the justice system.

“This double jeopardy will give people the chance to say, ‘We can go back and fight again, we won’t give up.’”

Or put another way:

“They can go back and fight again, they won’t give up”

However the American Civil Liberties Union makes the point much better than I would so I lifted the entire article from their website (link included):

“See-Through” Body Scanners

Millimeter Wave Image (see larger >>) Backscatter X-Ray Image (see larger >>)

There are some security measures that are extremely intrusive and should only be used when there is good cause to suspect that an individual is a security risk. See-through body scanning machines are capable of projecting an image of a passenger’s naked body.

Passengers expect privacy underneath their clothing and should not be required to display highly personal details of their bodies such as evidence of mastectomies, colostomy appliances, penile implants, catheter tubes and the size of their breasts or genitals as a pre-requisite to boarding a plane.

http://www.aclu.org/privacy/35506res20080603.html

There are two, massive, populist traps which catch people on either side of the path. Those of us whose sympathies lie to the right must, at all times be vigilantly wary of any instinct within us which writes off as irrelevant the interests of any one particular group, particularly the poorest. This is the cruelty trap and it is wrong on every level, it is unfair and it is contrary to the only moral aim that a centre-right government can have, namely, as set out above, to act for all. The Tories fell into this trap when they introduced the Poll Tax which was certainly wrong in scale, if not in principle.

The trap on the other side is, however, just as deep and appalling, if not more so. It is the trap of spite and it is this trap that Kelvin Hopkins, Hon. Mem. for Luton (North), has fallen into when talking about the 50p tax rate.

First a bit of rather obvious (perhaps skipable) economic background.

It is well understood that there comes a point when raising tax rates will no longer increase the tax take because as the incentive to aim for higher gross pay lessens other considerations become more important. People, especially the very rich, do care about things other than the size of their gross pay check. They care about the number of hours they have to work, they care about their enjoyment of the time they spend doing that work, they may chose to take some lesser, but untaxable, benefit in liew of a pay rise (or they may agree to take a pay cut on a similar rationale), or they may, perhaps with a heavy heart, chose to leave their nation because they see their tax bill as a rather over priced sort of rent and their patriotism runs only so deep.

30 or so years ago it was not uncommon to have 80 or 90% top rates of taxation and it is widely believed that at this time a substantial reduction in tax rates would have actually lead to an increase in the tax take. We are probably not, yet, at the level where this tax rise will cause a reduction in tax take, at least not in the short term. But at the same time we may not be far off (at least this is my instinct, which may be wrong).

The fact is that shortly before the next general election we are due to move to a tax system where to put a net. 100 pounds into a rich (I>£150,000 p.a.) man’s pocket costs someone over £230 (Ironically if they are a slightly less well paid making them £100 a year better off may cost their employer as much £290 per year [details available on request]).

I can’t say that I am sure that the 50p rate is a wrong decision, even though this it is my instinct and I can’t be certain that it is merely electioneering, although again I feel it probably is.

But what I will say for sure is that we do not need MP’s like Mr. Hopkins saying:

“if a handful of ageing pop stars and money-grubbing bankers leave the country as a result [of the 50p rate], I say good riddance… …In the Budget debates of last year and the year before I suggested much more radical tax changes that would reach further down, with tax rates on the mega-rich higher even than those suggested by the Government. We should go back perhaps a little way towards where we were in 1979.”

This is the politics of spite and it has no place in any nations politics - recession or no recession.

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Are we nearly there yet?

Right now I’m not milking cows

AN exceptionally rare white deer nicknamed “Pearl” has been discovered in the Scottish lowlands by a professional hunter, who is now taking bids from people who want to kill it.

The funny thing about this article comes about half way down when the Times quote the farmer who owns the area:

Bartle said he was now keen to shoot the animal: “I’ve got two dates hopefully lined up next month. It needs culling – it’s a freak.”

That’s right folks - it’s a FREAK.

I admit that I find it tiresome when people act as if they are somehow on special Privy Council terms on matters of deep national importance.   Especially if they have just undergone sixth form work experience or something similar. I remember people at school saying, “Oh I couldn’t possibly tell you that, it’s much too dangerous if it gets out.  I’m trusted by her Majesty you know!” Give it a break you self-important phaffle-head!  Yes some things need to be kept secret.  Setting a scale of importance from one to ten: troop movements in Afghanistan being a Ten, the Cabinet minutes from the run up to the Iraq war being a three and the amount Britain knew about the torture practised by the Bush Administration being a one.

On that scale the discussion or otherwise of an aspect of physics with an interested undergraduate is well bellow zero and the same goes for most things people are asked to keep “secret”.

Most likely if you think you have been told some vital matter of national security then you’ve been placed “in the loop” to make you feel important.  This probably accounts for 90% of “secrets” while 90% of the rest are doubtless things that might be embarrassing rather than dangerous, “Chris Galley” Stories, if you will. After that maybe 10% of the residue is actually troop movements in Afghanistan and if you know about them then, in the words of Sir Humphrey, you’ll be “keeping it secret that you hath the secret to keep” and you won’t be telling people how important you are.

Anyway, it turns out that , assuming that the UF₆ gas remains at room temperature (and remains a near-ideal gas - big assumption!) then we would need the edge of the centrifuge to move at 400 m/s which is roughly Mach 1. This means that if the centrifuge had a two metre diameter then this would mean g forces of more than 10,000 g. Furthermore keeping the stuff at room temperature in such an environment might be tricky. Perhaps the non-idealness of the gas might help the enricher out quite a bit.

(Probably error ridden) notes are enclosed below.

notesongascentrifuges

ps
Isn’t the microsoft formatting just beautiful.

A more well defined problem is this:

Two players are both given £100.00 to use in wining a contest which is conducted as follows:  In the first round each player must pay as much or as little of his money into a box (unseen by his opponent) as he wishes to.  The boxes are then examined by the umpire who awards a point to whoever paid the most money (ties are scored as half a point each).  With whatever money each opponent has left a second round is conducted in the same way.  Finally a third round is conducted in which both players will place all their remaining money into a third and final box. The winner of the third round is decided in the same way.

Imagine you are playing this game.

Clearly, since there is symmetry in the game, there can be no strategy that guarantees a win for one or other player.

But is there one which guarantees at least a draw?

Assuming the answer to this question is no (which I feel would not be hard to prove), is there an optimal (most likely probabilistic rather than deterministic) strategy that maximises the chance of winning the contest? (Strictly I would want to maximise the expected outcome of the contest for the player employing the strategy. A drawn overall outcome would count as half a win)

Clearly if the above strategy exists it will have an expected outcome of 0.5 or better against all other strategys including itself (against which it would score, on average, 0.5).

Problem:

Find such a strategy or prove that one does not exist!

For all I know these two problems might be among the hardest in Mathematics or they might have relatively simple solutions. (This is especially likely if the answer is that such a strategy can be proved not to exist which I think is likely to be the answer).

Finally, and I think more easily, if you could cheat by bringing extra money into the game how much extra money would you need, with a good strategy, to guarantee that you win the contest?

For this one can you think of a good bound and accompanying strategy?

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articlebycharlesmoore

I feel Moore is perhaps a little unfair in his assessment of Gordon Brown’s motivation, especially given Brown’s personal circumstances.  A fairer assesement might be that offering to cancel PMQ’s was a fine gesture for Brown to make and equally it was fine for the Tories to accept but ultimately the Speaker made the wrong decision and should have allowed PMQ’s to continue without David Cameron.

Having said that this is by no means the worst decision the Speaker has ever made (see Speaker Michael Martin) and given the current controversies in which he has been embroiled it is understandable that he didn’t want to be seen to be standing simultanously asgainst govenment and opposition.

Moore acknowledges that the general public probably feel that Gordon Brown, William Hague and Vince Cable’s tributes to Ivan were a good display of adversaries coming together over something tragic which “transcended” the usual politicking.

If they are each to be rightly commended for this then surely the decision of Nick Clegg to say almost nothing in public but simply to send private condolences should also be commended as the most elegant and selfless of possible gestures that a party leader could make?