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At the start of the pandemic, I submitted a story as an AC about abandoned North Wilkesboro Speedway being scanned for iRacing. As NASCAR shut down along with other professional sports, a series of virtual races were run, and North Wilkesboro was the final virtual race in 2020.

NASCAR last raced at North Wilkesboro in 1996. It's a very unique short track in the mountains of western North Carolina. The distance is 0.625 miles, and the track is built on an incline. The two ends of the track race differently because the front stretch is downhill and the backstretch is uphill, with an elevation difference of 18 feet. There were limited updates to the track in the 1980s and 1990s, meaning that the track had significantly fewer amenities than other tracks of that era. After the track's owner died, it was sold, and North Wilkesboro's two races were moved to Texas and New Hampshire.

At the time, many people assumed that as NASCAR added more races, they would eventually return to North Wilkesboro. Unfortunately, that never happened, and no other series raced there, either. Aside from a brief attempt to reopen the track in 2010, the track was completely abandoned. The buildings and grandstands around the track started crumbling, and plants were growing through cracks in the track surface.

Before the pandemic hit, Dale Earnhardt Jr. gathered a group of people to visit the track to remove the plants from the track and clean it so it could be scanned by iRacing. Even then, I don't think anyone expected the track to ever reopen. However, the virtual NASCAR event drew attention to the abandoned track. When the North Carolina government had a surplus of money, the governor's budget allocated funds for three tracks in the state: Charlotte Motor Speedway, Rockingham Speedway, and North Wilkesboro Speedway. With the funding from the state, track owner SMI decided it was financially viable to rebuild the grandstands and buildings around the track.

Last year, SMI started rebuilding the facilities around the track. A few smaller races were held at the track late last year and early this year. Originally, NASCAR's all-star race was scheduled to return to Texas Motor Speedway this year. However, the racing at Texas has not been good, and fans were generally not pleased with this. SMI backtracked and later announced that the all-star race would take place at North Wilkesboro. The track is still being renovated, but the facility is once again in good condition.

SMI has not repaved the track, meaning that cars will run on the same surface as they did in 1996. Having been last repaved in 1981, this is by far the oldest track surface that NASCAR will run at this year. This means that grip will be low and tire wear will be very high, which could very well produce good racing. The truck series race starts in just a few minutes, and this is a points race. The cup series race is not a points race. Qualifying will continue this evening, and then the all-star open and race will take place tomorrow evening. There were a lot of fans in the stands yesterday for truck and cup series practice, which is unusual. The stands are packed today for the truck series, which is also unusual.

In 1996, Texas Motor Speedway took away one of North Wilkesboro's race dates. And now, 27 years later, this has been fixed and North Wilkesboro took that race date back from Texas.

I'm posting this journal because I've read far too much violent rhetoric on this site and seen far too many people making excuses for this sort of behavior. The Civil War was more than a conflict between the Union and Confederate armies, and militia groups were responsible for many of the worst atrocities. I fear that many people are far too eager to see a repeat of this brutal and ugly conflict.

History books tend to describe the Civil War through a series of battles between the Union and Confederate armies. Although those battles certainly happened, they ignore a large part of the violence that took place.

Today, the rivalry between the Missouri Tigers and Kansas Jayhawks is one of the most bitter in all of college sports. Until the mid-2000s, the rivalry was officially referred to as the Border War. Although many rivalries use the word "war" in their names, this rivalry is unique in that much of the tradition around the rivalry traces its history to an actual war. Both the Tigers and Jayhawks are named for Civil War militia groups. The University of Kansas campus in Lawrence includes Mount Oread, which is a large hill where one militia group organized before burning Lawrence to the ground. To this day, this event is unofficially referenced by many fans.

Missouri and Kentucky were somewhat unique during the Civil War in that their government officially remained loyal to the Union while illegitimate shadow legislatures voted to secede. Slavery was legal in Missouri, but it is misleading to suggest that the state was uniformly loyal to the Confederacy. In fact, Saint Louis was a Union stronghold, as well as many other cities around the state such as Columbia.

The Old Courthouse in Saint Louis is the site of two trials where Dred and Harriet Scott sued for their freedom from slavery. In the first trial, their request was denied. They requested a retrial where they were awarded their freedom from Irene Emerson. Following the second verdict, Emerson appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court which overturned the circuit court decision and sent Dred and Harriet Scott back into slavery. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled in 1857 to deny freedom to Dred and Harriet Scott. This ruling also invalidated the Missouri Compromise, meaning that slave owners could continue to own slaves even after moving to states where slavery was illegal. Today, the Old Courthouse is maintained by the National Park Service and has exhibits about the Dred Scott case. I've visited the courtroom where Dred and Harriet Scott were initially awarded their freedom before higher courts ruled that they were the property of Emerson.

Much of the conflict in Missouri and Kansas was between militia groups. Some of these militia groups were organized to fortify and defend cities while many others roamed through the states committing acts of violence. Militia groups that supported the Confederacy were known as Bushwhackers. There were also militia groups that organized in Kansas in support of the Union, and they were known as Jayhawkers. Both the Bushwhackers and Jayhawkers were known for conducting brutal raids and engaging in lawlessness.

One well-known raid occurred in 1861 when James Lane organized a group of Jayhawkers to sack the town of Osceola in western Missouri. The town was burned to the ground, nine residents were court-martialed and executed, and 200 slaves were freed. Lane and his militia plundered from Osceola, stealing food and resources. The Jayhawkers were known for their brutality and were harshly criticized by Union commanders. In 1862, Union Major General Lorenzo Thomas wrote about Charles Jennison's group of Jayhawkers that they were "no better than a band of robbers; they cross the line, rob, steal, plunder, and burn whatever they can lay their hands upon. They disgrace the name and uniform of American soldiers and are driving good Union men into the ranks of the secession army."

One of the responses to Lane's raid was conducted by William Quantrill, a Bushwhacker who organized a group of raiders that included "Bloody Bill" Anderson to go into Kansas and attack the town of Lawrence. On a night in August 1863, a group of about 450 raiders organized near Mount Oread before entering Lawrence to burn it to the ground. Banks and stores were looted, 150 men and boys were killed, and the town was completely burned by the raiders. Prior to the raid, Quantrill compiled a list of people purported to be in Lawrence whom they planned to capture and execute, though some on the list such as James Lane successfully fled and avoided being put to death.

Jennison was also known for brutal raids in western Missouri, where his raiders devastated five counties. In many cases, all that was left from Jennison's attacks were stone chimneys known as Jennison monuments, where the houses had been burned to the ground and only the chimneys remained.

Many Bushwhackers not only conducted raids in Kansas but also against Union strongholds in Missouri. In September 1864, "Bloody Bill" Anderson and his group of Bushwhackers massacred the city of Centralia, which is located in central Missouri, about 15 miles northeast of Columbia. Anderson's band of raiders that attacked Centralia included Jesse James, who would go on to be a particularly famous outlaw. Concerned that Columbia would also be targeted by Bushwhackers, Congressman James Rollins organized a militia known as the Columbia Tigers in support of the Union to fortify the city and protect it against Bushwhacker raids. Anderson and his raiders never attacked Columbia, and the Tigers are often credited with discouraging Bushwhackers from raiding the city. As far as I can tell, history remembers the Tigers favorably, and unlike the other militia I've discussed, they were not associated with lawlessness and brutality.

Much of the conflict in Missouri and Kansas was not between the Union and Confederate armies, but between militia groups on both sides. Both the Bushwhackers and Jayhawkers were known for looting, arson, and mass murder. The conflict was much more complicated than Missouri being a slave state and fighting against Kansas, which was a free state. In fact, a significant portion of Missouri was loyal to the Union and faced many brutal raids by the same Bushwhacker militia groups that attacked Kansas.

Not all militia groups were associated with lawlessness, and some were organized by people protecting their homes and cities against raiders. However, many of these groups on both sides of the conflict were incredibly brutal and indiscriminately killed people. Although the Jayhawkers supported the Union, many of the atrocities they committed were just as horrible as the raiders conducted by Bushwhackers.

When modern militia groups stockpile weapons and prepare for combat, these are not necessarily idle threats. There is historical precedent in the Civil War of these militia groups looting, burning cities to the ground, and committing mass murder. Violent rhetoric is unacceptable, whether it's sarcastically calling for attacks on NRA leadership or wishing for the deaths of fifty million progressives. I have no problem with people using guns for self defense to protect themselves from being attacked by criminals. The problem is that there are many people and militia groups arming for war, and we should not treat this as an idle threat. If we're going to learn from history, we need to remember that the Civil War was incredibly brutal, and many of the worst atrocities were committed by militia groups using their political affiliation as an excuse to engage in lawlessness.

When people are stockpiling weapons, conducting paramilitary training, and promoting anti-government ideas, we would be fools to dismiss this as hyperbole. There is no place for violence or violent threats, serious or otherwise, in civilized society. I'm posting this because I'm very troubled by some of the awful comments and journals that have been posted here recently. I fear that many people are eager to repeat the atrocities of the Civil War, and none of us will benefit if that happens. This needs to stop.

A few days ago, aristarchus started a thread about warp speed and the vast distances across interstellar and intergalactic space. I posted an AC reply explaining what the warp scale means and briefly discussed inconsistencies in Star Trek. Perhaps I'd be better off posting this on the Daystrom Research Institute subreddit, but I'll give it a try here.

The writers of TNG wanted the Enterprise-D to be considerably faster than the Enterprise-no bloody A, B, C, or D. At the same time, they also modified the warp scale so that the speeds are faster for any warp factor and so warp 10 is essentially infinite velocity. Still, the writers wanted the galaxy to still seem quite large, with vast swathes of uncharted space. There are major inconsistencies between TOS and TNG, and even within the TNG era. I'll provide two examples.

In the TOS episode That Which Survives, the Enterprise travels 990.7 light years at maximum warp, which takes 11.33 hours. For the TOS Enterprise, warp 8 is maximum warp. Take the cube of the warp factor and you get a top speed of 512c. By comparison, Voyager was hurled 70,000 light years into the Delta Quadrant. If they traveled at the same speed without stopping, it should have taken a little under 34 days to return to their original location. Instead, in Caretaker, they say it would take 75 years at maximum warp.

In First Contact, Picard states that the Federation is 8,000 light years across with 150 members. Maximum warp for Voyager is 9.975, which is really, really fast. By comparison, maximum warp for the Enterprise-D is 9.6, but Data states in Encounter at Farpoint that warp 9.8 is possible with extreme risk. These are some of the Federation's fastest ships, and even the Defiant only has a maximum warp of 9.5. It should take these ships many years to cross Federation space, so an ordinary ship would likely take much longer to cross Federation space. Instead, we typically see travel times on the order of days or weeks, though that isn't from one end of the Federation to the other. Still, the travel times are far quicker than they should be with the size of Federation space. Again, this doesn't make sense with the travel time for Voyager's return to the Alpha Quadrant.

Of course, there are a couple of real reasons for the inconsistency. One is that there weren't really any standards applied in the TOS era to be consistent about the technology, stardates, or many of the other details. The speed of the Enterprise was pretty much whatever the writer wanted it to be for that episode. The other main reason is that science fiction writers generally don't do a good job representing the vast scale of interstellar space. Other inconsistencies have been resolved, such as why Klingons look different in TOS than in later series. But no explanation has been given on screen to explain the vast differences in speed.

As a creative writing exercise, I ask: If you were a writer for Star Trek, if you were trying to explain the inconsistencies in the warp scale, how would you do so? I'll offer an idea, but I'm interested in hearing other ideas.

A lot of interstellar communication appears to be instantaneous or very nearly so, particularly in the TNG era. This is explained by a network of subspace relays that accelerate the speed of subspace radio signals within Federation space. I would explain that the subspace relays don't just affect communications but also boost the speed of ships. As long as you're within the network of subspace relays, the speed of your ship gets boosted by a couple orders of magnitude. Get outside of Federation space and you lose the massive boost. It would allow ships to cross Federation space quickly while still making it difficult to travel to uncharted regions of the galaxy. Analogous to the Roman Empire's network of paved roads, travel is very efficient until you try to go beyond the network.

The apparent speeds in TOS often get explained away, with things like traveling to the other side of the galaxy referring to crossing the galactic plane. I highly doubt that this is the meaning the writers intended. It's actually much more interesting if the TOS Enterprise really did travel to the Gamma and Delta Quadrants, but they later became effectively inaccessible to Federation ships. Of course, TNG era ships still have to be faster.

In TNG's Where No One Has Gone Before, the Traveler is able to accelerate the Enterprise-D to incredible speeds. Kosinski thinks his theories about warp propulsion have unlocked much faster speeds, not realizing that it's only because of the Traveler. I would explain the incredible speeds in TOS in the same way. The warp engines were really much slower than in the TNG era, but the Federation was the recipient of outside help. Perhaps the Federation even tried to engineer new warp engines around the theories they thought would allow them to travel at those much faster speeds, but those experiments ultimately failed. That could explain why the Excelsior's transwarp drive in Star Trek III was never seen again, and the ship later on has standard warp engines. Much like Kosinski, the Federation didn't realize or want to believe that they were getting outside help.

A lot of TOS is an allegory for the Cold War, where the Klingon Empire represents the Soviet Union. I would write that the Q Continuum wanted humanity to survive and evolve, perhaps eventually to be like themselves. Q actually said that if he hadn't hurled the Enterprise 7,000 light years to encounter the Borg at system J-25, humanity would have been assimilated. I would reveal that the Q were also assisting the TOS era Federation, just without revealing their presence. Without the interference of the Continuum, the Federation would have been conquered by the Klingon Empire, the region would spend centuries under a military dictatorship, and humanity would eventually have been reduced to near extinction under the brutal conditions. As a twist, I'd also add that Daniels from Enterprise was also one of the Q, again protecting humanity from threats from the future during the Temporal Cold War.

Basically, faster travel times would give the Federation a huge advantage moving troops and supplies over long distances. This would allow them to not only avoid being conquered by the Klingon Empire but to prosper. Once the Klingon Empire was significantly weakened due to Praxis exploding, there would no longer be any need for outside assistance, and the Q stopped intervening to prevent humanity from starting too many wars and becoming conquerors. The interference was unnecessary and might have been harmful to peace in the region once the Khitomer Accords were signed.

These are my ideas for how the writers could reconcile the speed differences. I think it's much more interesting if TOS era ships actually traveled great distances than to use gimmicks like the other side of the galaxy meaning to cross the galactic plane. If you were writing for Star Trek and needed to resolve these inconsistencies in warp speed, how would you explain them?

The Rolex 24 is the premier sports car endurance race in North America, running for 24 hours at Daytona. It's the American equivalent of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The race is sanctioned by IMSA, which streams it commercial-free globally. The exception is in the United States, where IMSA TV is blocked because NBC has the rights to broadcast the race.

Segments of the race are broadcast over the air on NBC and on cable on USA. There are several hours of the race that aren't shown on NBC or USA. All 24 hours of the race are streamed to paid subscribers on Peacock. The NBC and USA coverage of the race includes ads. Most ad breaks are split screen, where the commercial is displayed in a larger box but the race is shown in a smaller box. This is standard for most motorsports coverage in the US, including NASCAR and Indycar.

Prior to this year's Rolex 24, IMSA and Indycar races were streamed on Peacock with no ads. When NBC and USA would go to commercial, the commentators were silent, but you'd see camera feeds showing action around the track. The other IMSA races at Daytona this January didn't have any ads when streamed on Peacock. For some reason, NBC decided that Peacock viewers should get ads during the Rolex 24 this year.

It gets worse. Unlike the NBC and USA broadcasts, the Peacock stream only has full screen ads, meaning that you don't get to follow the race during commercial breaks. Unlike the contextual ads that air on NBC and USA, these are full screen targeted ads.

To summarize, if you watch the Rolex 24 on NBC and USA, you can at least follow the race during commercial breaks. If you pay Peacock $9.99/month, they take your subscription money and give you a worse product in return. They are getting more money from Peacock subscribers through subscriptions and targeted ads, then providing an inferior product. This might well be peak greed from NBC.

There is a solution, of course. Get a VPN, set your location outside the US, and watch the IMSA TV stream. You won't get the NBC commentators, but IMSA TV is free, and there are no commercials. It's still good business for IMSA because international viewers still see the sponsorships on the cars and around the track, so the sponsors pay higher rates.

NBC has always been an acronym for Nothing But Commercials, but this is a staggering level of greed.

I know many people here don't care about sports, but I'm betting there are a lot of people here who know way more about engineering race cars than I do.

This weekend, Kurt Busch is missing his fourth consecutive race due to a concussion he sustained from a crash during qualifying at Pocono. As Busch drove through the final turn, he spun the car, and hit the wall hard in the right rear quarter panel. The right front of the car also hit the wall after the initial impact. It's a hard hit, for sure. But I've seen other impacts in recent years that looked just as hard and didn't injure the driver.

NASCAR switched to the next gen car this year, which features many changes over the gen 6 cars of the past decade. I believe that Ryan Newman's crash at the end of the 2020 Daytona 500 influenced the design of the next gen car. I watched that wreck on live TV and really thought I'd just seen a driver get killed. The tone of the broadcast, the way Mike Joy and Jeff Gordon talked about Newman's wreck was far too reminiscent of Dale Earnhardt's crash on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500.

Much like Earnhardt's crash, Newman's car got turned and hit the wall head on. Two decades ago, that impact might have been fatal. Now, drivers are required to wear a HANS device, which prevents their head from snapping forward in a crash and causing a basilar skull fracture, which is often a fatal injury. There is also a SAFER barrier that absorbs some of the impact. After the initial impact, Newman's car flipped and spun around in front of Corey Lajoie's car, which collided directly with Newman's driver's side window. Newman's head hit the roll cage, knocked him unconscious, and he sustained a brain bruise. Despite all of the safety improvements since Earnhardt's death, Newman was lucky to survive.

As I understand it, NASCAR designed the next gen car to have a stiffer chassis so that wrecks like Newman's wouldn't be fatal. However, a lot of drivers have complained that impacts to the rear of the next gen car are more violent than with the gen 6 car. Measurements of the forces experienced are not more severe than with the gen 6 car, but drivers say the impacts feel more violent.

It makes complete sense that the roll cage should be as strong as possible to protect the driver. If it's possible, strengthening the roll cage seems like an obviously good decision. Moving the driver toward the center of the car could also provide more protection. However, it's not clear to me that making the front or rear of the car stiffer would be beneficial in a wreck like Newman's. And if the front and rear of the car don't crumple as much, it seems like impacts in those areas would be more violent for drivers.

In a crash like Busch's, I expect the damage would be significant enough to require going to a backup car for the race, but not to injure the driver. Crashes like this are relatively common, particularly compared to Newman's crash. NASCAR is going to be a lot more dangerous if crashes like Busch's frequently injure drivers.

Am I missing something here? Shouldn't it be possible to strengthen the roll cage to protect against crashes like Newman's while also allowing the front and rear of the car to crumple enough to dissipate the forces from impacts? I'm not understanding why this is described as a tradeoff between providing more protection in a crash like Newman's but causing more violent impacts in crashes like Busch's. That said, I don't know a whole lot about the design and engineering of race cars, so perhaps I'm missing something.

Over 15 years ago, Slashdot ran a story about EdGCM, an educational climate modeling tool, being released freely to the public. The actual model, as in the numerical climate simulation, was GISS Model II, and it was developed at NASA in the early 1980s. The actual model was released by NASA as open source, but was being maintained at Columbia University. By the time of the story, NASA had developed newer models such as GISS ModelE that were more advanced, could simulate climate processes with greater detail, and could use the capabilities of modern computer hardware to improve processing speed.

The EdGCM tool was effectively a front end to the underlying model, providing a fairly intuitive interface for configuring simulations, starting and stopping the model, and visualizing output. EdGCM was bundled with a variety of data sets that allowed simulations of present and near future climate scenarios, and also some paleoclimate scenarios. Climate models might as well be a black box for many people. People hear about the models and their projections of future climate, but I don't think that climatologists have adequately educated people on what the models are and how they work. If people are going to vote on policy decisions that are influenced by projections of future climate, we need the public to be scientifically literate about climate and how climate projections are made. EdGCM is a great educational tool to give students hands-on experience in the classroom working with a basic climate model.

A few years after the initial release, EdGCM was moved behind a paywall, requiring users to purchase licenses to obtain the software. For students, the price was $29. For everyone else, the price was set at $199. A few years ago, the EdGCM website effectively went dark, promising a new website that has never been brought online. At this point, it seems the project is effectively dead.

Although Model II is open source, the interface built atop it is not. Directly running Model II is non-trivial. The model settings are input via a namelist that must be configured, something that EdGCM did. The output must be postprocessed into a format that is usable with analysis and visualization tools. The model is a three-dimensional simulation of the Earth's climate, but it requires an initial condition from which to begin the simulation. The initial conditions includes the state of the atmosphere, land surface, oceans, and ice cover that comprise the climate system.

The initial conditions for the present day will not suffice for simulating the last glacial maximum, the climate during the Permian-Triassic extinction, the snowball Earth, or any other interesting paleoclimate scenarios. A few such data sets were bundled with EdGCM, but they have to be generated for any particular scenario. This is not simple, particularly for paleoclimate simulations where we have no direct observations of the climate. Although I am not absolutely certain, I believe the data sets bundled with EdGCM with likely proprietary and could not be redistributed without permission.

Old Windows and Mac versions of EdGCM are available on archive.org and can be downloaded from where. The Mac version that is archived was built for PowerPC and cannot run on anything resembling a current Mac system. The Windows version was designed for 2000, XP, and Vista. It can run on Windows 10 but is very clunky, and some features do not work correctly or at all. In their present form, the versions that can be freely downloaded are not suitable for use in the classroom.

Unfortunately, independently recreating the work that went into EdGCM is a very difficult process. Building the software interface around the model is actually the easy part. The file formats for the initial conditions are documented online, but the detail isn't enough to fully understand how those files are structured. For example, "the wacky part is that topographic height is scaled by gravity" is a bit confusing. I assume it means that the topography is the elevation in meters multiplied by 9.81 m/s^2, meaning that it's the geopotential height of the land surface. But that's not totally clear, and the units aren't actually given. All of the files on that page have to be created in order to run the model, which seems to be a much larger challenge than creating the EdGCM interface.

Suffice it to say, the apparent discontinuation of EdGCM is a great loss to science and education. There don't appear to be comparable tools available that provide similar levels of functionality and could reasonably be used in high school and college science classes. Believe me, I've spent plenty of time searching. One goal of this journal is to raise awareness of the need for tools like this. But it also raises a problem with many projects in academia. When the funding goes away, the project tends to be abandoned. Those funds often come from grants where money is scarce, the paperwork is onerous, and a lot of very beneficial projects never get funded. If the source code and data aren't freely available, works like EdGCM might as well be totally lost. I don't have the answers except to say that I strongly oppose proprietary licenses for works like these, and that the funding model is seriously broken.

There's a story in the submission queue about a gun control law passed in New York yesterday. I doubt it makes it to the front page, but there are elements of this story that would fit Slashdot's Your Rights Online section.

For a bit of background, the Supreme Court recently overturned a prior law that required people seeking a concealed carry permit to justify the need for doing so. The new law is a response to the Supreme Court decision.

New York state passed a law on Friday banning guns from many public places, including Times Square, and requiring gun-license applicants to prove their shooting proficiency and submit their social media accounts for review by government officials.

I've skimmed the new law and I didn't see details about how the social media checks would be implemented. However, I think we can look to a previous gun control bill in New York to see how this might be implemented.

If the bill passes, investigators would be able to look for posts or searches that contain threats to the health or safety of others; intentions to carry out an act of terrorism; or commonly known profane slurs or biased language describing the race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, age, disability or sexual orientation of a person.

In order for investigators to access personal accounts, applicants would have to give over their login details to social media platforms such as Facebook Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram.

The newly enacted law builds on one of New York's requirements that people purchasing guns be of good moral character. This seems pretty vague to me. This language is used to justify the social media checks. It's not clear with the new law how far back social media checks would go, but I assume that users would be required to turn over passwords for accounts that aren't publicly searchable. Back to the 2018 bill, here's the justification for the social media searches:

While the NYAGC hasn't thrown its support behind the bill yet, McQuillen thinks the proposals could be beneficial.

"We've obviously seen some of the mass shooters have a social media history that should have sent red flags," he said.

Gun ownership is protected by the second amendment. Logically, this includes the ability to purchase guns. The fact that a person chooses to exercise their second amendment rights is not probable cause or justification to violate their fourth amendment rights. It's also quite vague about what would disqualify a person on the basis of their moral character, leaving the definite possibility that speech and expression that is protected by the first amendment could be the basis for denying a person their second amendment rights. These rights have all been incorporated against the states under the fourteenth amendment.

I support gun control, but this goes way too far. In many respects, gun ownership should be regulated like driving. Freedom of movement is a right protected by the Constitution under the privileges and immunities clause. This doesn't specifically mention cars, but they provide a freedom of movement that isn't available through public transportation or other modes of travel. I believe this is analogous to the second amendment, which doesn't specifically mention guns, but courts recognize that guns are a major component of the right to keep and bear arms.

Just as people applying for a driver's license must demonstrate that they can safely operate a motor vehicle, I consider it reasonable to require gun purchasers show they can safely use a gun. Just like there's a vision test to get a driver's license, I think it's reasonable to require a person to demonstrate sufficient physical and mental health to safely operate a gun. Just as there's a driving test, I think it's reasonable to require applicants to demonstrate good marksmanship.

Even law enforcement questioned the effectiveness of the 2018 bill:

Meanwhile, Chief of Gates Police Department in New York State James VanBrederode questioned the effectiveness of trawling through social media and search history, arguing that looking at an applicant's history of mental health and domestic violence would likely be a more helpful predictor of future behavior.

"We chase down these social media threats," he told WHAM. "And very few are ever legitimate, because it's easy to sit behind a keyboard and say something bad. I would even agree that this has become a violation of your privacy rights."

One of the big problems with background checks is that many disqualifying issues never get reported to the federal database. The Supreme Court ruled on Printz v. United States (1997) that federal law could not compel states to submit such information. A lot of data never gets reported, allowing people who should be disqualified from purchasing a firearm to do so anyway. This ruling ought to be revisited.

Another issue is the use of stolen guns in crimes. Many stolen guns don't get reported to authorities until after they're used in a crime. Penalties can and should be increased for failing to properly secure a gun and failure to promptly report a stolen gun.

There are plenty of ways to improve gun control without egregiously violating people's freedom. It also raises the question of whether a person will be treated as suspicious if they don't disclose their social media history. The law is also vague about what constitutes social media. For example, SN has friends and foes, and interactions here are social in nature. Would I have to turn over my SN username and password to get a permit to buy a gun in New York?

Regardless of whether or not you want strict gun control, I'd like to think that we can all agree that this is a massive abuse of power and invasion of privacy.

I know, I just posted a journal a few days ago. I'm not trying to bury anything, just discuss a situation that's arisen recently.

I am a faculty member, and I graduated recently enough to have student loan debt. Biden pledged to forgive $10,000 for every borrower with federal student loans. This saga has been going on for roughly 17 months with no end in sight. If anything, it seems that student debt holders are pawns in a political game. Regardless of the decision, Biden owes student debt holders an answer instead of dragging this out ad infinitum.

I generally support forgiving student loan debt. Pretty much nobody has been paying on federal student loans for the past 2+ years, so forgiving the debt isn't going to exacerbate inflation. It's not going to infuse extra cash into the economy, but it will remove a long term drag on the economy that might help in the future.

Student loan forgiveness should include graduate student debt. In my experience, the terms of graduate assistantships prohibit students from taking other employment, under penalty of revoking the assistantship. I'm aware of efforts to remove tuition waivers from assistantships that aren't funded externally, squeezing graduate students even further. Let's not penalize them further.

With respect to the question of fairness, all Americans benefit from having an educated workforce. Even if you didn't go to college, you benefit from people who did go to college. The portrayal of student debt holders as people who racked up massive debt going to expensive private universities or pursued degrees that some consider worthless is a caricature of student debt holders. I can express a similar question of fairness, asking that if I don't drive, why should I pay taxes for roads? It's a ridiculous proposition because even if I don't drive, I benefit from others being able to drive to work and the goods that are shipped on those roads. The same principle applies to student loans.

I wholeheartedly agree that we need to curb the abuses of student loans and, more generally, with all financial aid. Part of it is reducing the wasteful spending on facilities and administrative bloat. But it's a false dichotomy to say that we need to stop future abuses instead of forgiving student loan debt. We can and should do both.

However, it's not all a problem of wasteful spending by bureaucrats. I just had a student tell me they are taking my class pass/no-pass and intend to fail. I've never had a student directly say that to me before. Because they're taking the course pass/no-pass, failing the class won't lower their GPA. They don't intend to make any attempt to complete any additional coursework in my class, and right now would finish with a 2.5%. They're remaining enrolled so they can continue receiving financial aid. All the student has to do is email me about an academic matter at the end of the semester, and I have to indicate that they continued attending the class all semester when I enter the F grade. The student gets to keep whatever financial aid they're receiving without making any serious effort to complete the course.

Last semester, I had several students who stopped doing any work midway through the semester, then attempted to turn in a single very late assignment right at the end of the semester. It's the same issue, where they make a token effort at the end of the semester to keep their financial aid without making any effort to complete the course. This seems very dishonest to me, and I want these students to have to repay the aid. It's not all administrative abuse, and the behavior I'm describing seems more common than in the past. As an instructor, it's incredibly frustrating to know that students aren't making an honest effort, but they're using my class to get financial aid. In fact, the reason I'm posting the journal is to vent my frustration about this situation. I work hard to prepare good courses and to help students, so I don't like being a pawn in schemes like these.

Let's do a lot more to stop the abuses of financial aid, both by administrators and students. But let's also do the right thing and forgive the student debt for students who worked hard to earn their degrees. We can and should do both.

It's time for jury trials to be abolished in the US. I'm not writing this because of any current or recent events. It's just an important issue to me.

Take a look at the recent Senate impeachment trials. The Senate isn't like a jury; it is a jury, with the powers that every other jury is supposed to have. They can ask questions, call witnesses, decide what is impeachable, and dismiss charges as they see fit. These powers are the reason the Constitution guarantees the right to jury trials in criminal cases.

Historically, juries decided both facts and law. Although the prosecution (or the plaintiff) and the defense presented their cases, juries could ask questions and summon witnesses to testify for the purpose of determining the truth. They also had the power to not uphold laws that they deemed unjust or overly harsh. Unfortunately, juries no longer really determine facts or law. Instead, they are instructed to follow the judge's instructions about how to apply the law, and weigh the cases presented by the prosecution (or plaintiff) and the defense. Juries have already been stripped of nearly all of the powers that made them important enough to be required in the Bill of Rights.

Cases often involve complex issues of law, technology, and forensic science. Many jurors lack the background to make informed decisions about such matters, and plenty of lawyers prefer it this way. Instead, cases are influenced heavily by emotion and by how the two sides conduct and present themselves. How can juries determine the facts when they may not understand the evidence or have access to all of the evidence?

In some cases, jurors are conscripted into serving at trials where their verdict could potentially place them and their families at risk of retaliation. While I would prefer that nobody face this, at least judges willingly choose their profession. It is particularly unfair and unjust to force jurors into such risks.

Although jury nullification is possible, judges and lawyers seriously frown upon the practice and try hard to prevent it. No juror can be punished for the verdict they reach, meaning that a jury can simply refuse to convict if they decide a law is unjust. It's an important power that juries still technically have, but jurors who indicate they are willing to nullify laws can expect to be dismissed. There are multiple instances of people standing outside courthouses, informing people of the power of jury nullification, and being charged with jury tampering. Although people charged in that manner have generally been acquitted, it has taken years for this to happen in some instances.

I firmly believe that justice would be better served if jury trials were abolished. Instead of paying juries below minimum wage to not really decide either facts or law, let cases be decided by panels of judges who understand the law better and are expected to inform themselves about complex issues of science and technology. Either restore the power of juries or eliminate jury trials altogether. Because the former seems extremely unlikely, it is time to join many other countries in abolishing juries completely.

I hate to say it, but Star Trek needs to go back into hiatus. I say this as someone who's watched virtually all of the 700+ episodes and movies spanning TOS all the way to Enterprise, many of them several times over. CBS is actively ruining the franchise with greed and poor quality.

CBS is not renewing licensing agreements for classic Star Trek to stream on other platforms, eventually making it exclusive to Paramount+. More recently, CBS is now selling Star Trek NFTs at extremely high prices. Both of these cannot be explained as anything other than pure greed.

I get that CBS wants to maintain exclusive rights to Star Trek content that they create. Fine. But the ubiquity of Star Trek on streaming platforms was a great opportunity to get new fans interested in the franchise, and for long-time fans like me to easily watch classic episodes. I already paid for Amazon Prime and was happy to watch Star Trek there. Instead of being satisfied with the royalties from services like Netflix and Amazon Prime, CBS thinks I should have to pay for Paramount+ to watch Star Trek. This probably drives away potential customers who might be introduced to Star Trek on another streaming platform, then might subscribe to Paramount+ for shows like Discovery and Picard.

Don't even get me started on NFTs. I understand owning physical items that are collectible, and the value that is associated with such things. Instead, these are just randomly generated starships that only exist virtually, and can only be purchased at high prices. There's obviously no need for fans to buy NFTs, but it's a clear effort to extract more money from people foolish enough to pay for one of these. Perhaps the CEO of Paramount Global ought to change his title to Grand Nagus.

Gene Roddenberry had rules for how Star Trek was written, things like making the character interactions believable, and avoiding melodrama. This gave Star Trek a unique feel as a science fiction show instead of being a futuristic drama. Those rules are now gone, and we've ended up with feels more like a generic drama set in the Star Trek universe.

CBS Trek also relies too heavily on plots that involve existential threats as a way to get the viewer interested. This is a massive departure from classic Star Trek, in which most episodes were self-contained and involved a problem that might involve a threat to the ship or a conflict on some planet. When there was an existential threat like the Borg invading Earth, it genuinely felt serious because it was so much larger than the threats faced in every other story. The stories just aren't believable when every story is an existential threat, but we know that the threat will be predictably defeated at the end of the season. It's also lazy writing, creating an existential threat instead of hooking the viewer with an interesting premise and getting them invested in the fate of the characters involved.

Rick Berman attributed the cancellation of Enterprise nearly two decades ago to franchise fatigue, saying that one Star Trek series or another had aired continuously since 1987, and that it was hard to keep fans interested at that point. When Manny Coto took over as the showrunner for the final two seasons of Enterprise, he brought a lot of fresh ideas, but the damage was already done. Creating more Star Trek series is a great way to accelerate franchise fatigue, particularly when the writing isn't all that great. CBS doesn't seem to have learned anything from Rick Berman's mistakes.

For all of the hate Rick Berman gets, he did a lot right, things like bringing in talented writers like Michael Piller, Ira Steven Behr, and Ronald D. Moore, and mostly letting them do their jobs. As I understand it, Berman didn't really want to create lots of Star Trek series, but Paramount pushed for this to have more content for UPN.

Replace UPN with Paramount+ in my last paragraph and it sounds a lot like what CBS is doing now. The writing is less interesting now and the greed is worse. As a Star Trek fan, I hate to say it, but it's time for the franchise to go back into hiatus. Bring it back in a few years or a decade and write good, interesting stories that actually feel like Star Trek.

One last thing: I have zero issues with Star Trek being woke. TOS was quite woke. DS9 openly supported progressive views, particularly in many of the stories about the Ferengi. Star Trek has been woke from the very beginning. This is a feature, not a bug. Star Trek that's not woke just wouldn't be Star Trek. The problem is that being woke doesn't fix extreme greed and lazy writing.