1984 in the U.K.

Sarah Lyall, "Ever-Present Surveillance Rankles the British Public," NYTimes (October 24, 2009):

Suspecting Ms. Paton of falsifying her address to get her daughter into the neighborhood school, local officials here began a covert surveillance operation. They obtained her telephone billing records. And for more than three weeks in 2008, an officer from the Poole education department secretly followed her, noting on a log the movements of the “female and three children” and the “target vehicle” (that would be Ms. Paton, her daughters and their car).

[snip, snip}

The Poole Borough Council, which governs the area of Dorset where Ms. Paton lives with her partner and their children, says it has done nothing wrong.

In a way, that is true: under a law enacted in 2000 to regulate surveillance powers, it is legal for localities to follow residents secretly. Local governments regularly use these surveillance powers — which they “self-authorize,” without oversight from judges or law enforcement officers — to investigate malfeasance like illegally dumping industrial waste, loan-sharking and falsely claiming welfare benefits.

But they also use them to investigate reports of noise pollution and people who do not clean up their dogs’ waste. Local governments use them to catch people who fail to recycle, people who put their trash out too early, people who sell fireworks without licenses, people whose dogs bark too loudly and people who illegally operate taxicabs.

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Self-Confidence and Knowledge

"A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading", [Leszek Kolakowski] said.

"Leszek Kolakowski" (obituary), Telegraph.co.uk (July 20, 2009)

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Right to Counsel in Parental Termination Proceeding

The Supreme Court of Texas recently declined to review a Texas appellate court's ruling that an indigent defendant-parent in a private action to terminate parental does not have a statutorily- or constitutionally-guaranteed right to counsel. See In the interest of J.C., 2009 Tex. Lexis 171 (Sup. Ct. April 9, 2009).

Without rights such as these -- the right to counsel -- the right to submit and challenge evidence at trial means little or nothing. How does a society that is putatively dedicated to the rule of law justify the termination of parental rights in a proceeding in which the parent does not have counsel and does not have the ability to retain counsel -- not to speak of a parent's inability to secure a reasonable amount of time and services of any counsel the parent might be lucky enough to get?

'Tis a scandal.

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Natural Gas from Shale?

Natural gas from shale may be remaking the world's energy prospects. This is the result suggested by new technologies and new discoveries of usable shale. See, e.g., "BP sees possibility of 100 more years of natural gas" (Oct. 9, 2009) and "Drill Gas Here, Drill Gas Now" (Oct. 19, 2009). It appears that natural gas from shale is recoverable in significant amounts even in Europe. See "Shale Gas Will Tip The Scale" (Oct. 19, 2009).

The last article is worth quoting:

A seismic shock wave is coursing through the global energy industry. Based on American innovation, a new way of extracting natural gas from prehistoric clay called shale is unbalancing the global energy equation. The traditional rulers of the fossil fuels industry – Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia -- are watching in horror as independent wildcatters in unlikely places like Poland and Pennsylvania are finding gigantic new natural gas reserves. Shale Gas has been creeping up on the energy industry. As far back as 1981, a Texas wildcatter by the name of George T. Mitchell experimented with a new way of gathering natural gas from tight-rock deposits of organic shale. His idea was to drill horizontal wells 1 ½ miles behind the surface and then fracture the rock by using water pressure. ‘Fraccing‘ is the industrial equivalent of pressuring hosing the back deck, except that the process requires 2 to 3 million gallons of water and 1.5 million pounds of sand for just one well -- though 3 million gallons of water is not as much as it sounds, only the equivalent of 5 Olympic size swimming pools.

Source: http://lingo.cast.uark.edu/LINGOPUBLIC/natgas/wellprep/index.htm

According to The Potential Gas Committee, which is connected with the Colorado School of Mines, estimated US natural reserves increased almost 40% between 2006 and 2008 due to shale gas technology. The US is now estimated to possess 1,836 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of gas reserves, 33% of which is related to shale gas that no one knew how to extract economically as recently as two years ago. This translates into an additional supply of 26 years at current rates of consumption of about 23 Tcf per year. Total US natural gas reserves are now estimated at 75 years. In less than two years, the US has gone from a gas importing nation to a gas surplus nation.

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