There’s no other way to phrase it. This is HUGE news: Astronomers have found a planet orbiting the Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun!
Holy wow. Seriously. Wow.
Before I get into details, let me sum up what we know:
The planet, called Proxima Centauri b or just Proxima b (exoplanets are given their star’s name plus a lower case letter in order of discovery, starting with “b”), orbits Proxima every 11.2 days. It has a mass of no less than 1.3 times the Earth’s, so if it’s rock and metal like Earth it’s only a bit bigger. It’s a mere 7.3 million kilometers from the star—a lot closer than Earth's distance from the Sun of 150 million kilometers!—but Proxima is so faint and cool it receives about two-thirds the amount of light and heat the Earth does. That means that it’s in Proxima’s habitable zone: It’s possible (more or less) that liquid water could exist on its surface.
There’s some backstory here, and it’s very cool. Proxima Centauri is only 0.14 times the diameter of the Sun and 0.12 times its mass. Its surface temperature is much lower, so it’s cool and red, what we call a red dwarf. It orbits a binary star called Alpha Centauri, made of two stars more similar to the Sun (so the whole system is a trinary star). Proxima is pretty far out from the pair, about 0.1 light-years or so (a trillion kilometers), about 200 times farther than the distance of Neptune from the Sun. So it’s nearly out by itself in space, barely bound to the binary.
The Alpha Centauri binary is easily visible from Earth’s Southern Hemisphere, though they look like one star at their distance of about 4.3 light-years, and are among the brightest stars in the sky. Proxima, even though it’s closer to us, is so intrinsically dim that you need a good pair of binoculars to see it at all.
Because it’s the closest star to the Sun, astronomers have looked at it for decades to see if there’s any evidence of a planet. There have been false alarms over the years, all eventually shown to be errors.
But this time it looks like it’s very much real. The difference is the quality of data, because our technology and techniques have improved mightily recently. Using two different cameras on two different telescopes, the astronomers divided the light from Proxima into a spectrum showing many individual colors. They looked for subtle and periodic changes in the spectrum that would be due to a planet orbiting the star. As the planet moved, it would tug on the star; Proxima would make a little circle as the planet made a bigger one. This creates a Doppler shift in the spectrum, which in principle can be measured.
The faster the planet orbits, the bigger the shift, and usually the easier it is to detect. The motion Proxima b imparts on its star is very small, just one or two meters per second.* That's very hard to detect.
But the eyesight of the cameras was sharp, and the ability of the astronomers to tease out the signal greater. By using other telescopes to observe the star, they were able to account for any change in the star’s brightness that could masquerade as a planet, confounding the results. In the end, the signal from the planet’s motion came out pretty clearly. I have to admit, it looks pretty solid to me.
That’s important to me: A few years back a planet was announced orbiting one of the stars of Alpha Centauri, which was very big news. But later it was found to be a spurious signal, and in reality no planet was seen. Planet discoveries get retracted every now and again, especially ones where the signal is faint. In this case when I heard the news I was pretty skeptical, but after reading the paper it looks good to me. I’m satisfied the planet is real.
There are some caveats, though. For one, we can’t know the true mass of the planet. If we see the orbit edge-on then it has a mass of 1.3 times the Earth. But if the orbit is tipped, the mass has to be greater to cause the star to wobble as observed, and if the orbit is tipped by 45°, say, the planet’s mass has to be 40 percent bigger. If it’s tipped more, the planet has to be even more massive.
We’re not sure of the shape of the orbit. It might be elliptical (aficionados of exoplanets take note; the eccentricity is no more than 0.35), or it might be circular. But either way, it’s at the right distance from Proxima that, given reasonable assumptions about the planet’s composition, it could have liquid water on its surface. This calculation has a lot of caveats—its temperature without an atmosphere would probably be around -40° C, but Earth’s average temperature without the greenhouse effect is only -15°. So yeah, cold, but if it has enough CO2 or other greenhouse gases in the air (assuming it even has air!), it could be clement there.
If so, that makes it not just the closest exoplanet known, but the closest potentially habitable one known.
Again: wow.
Mind you, we know nothing of its composition, or even its size. It may be completely uninhabitable, or it might be Eden. There’s no way to know. So be cautious here: It’s likely to be Earth-size, but we don’t know if it’s Earth-like.
Either way, it’s more than 40 trillion kilometers away, so we’re not going there any time soon. The fastest spacecraft we’ve ever launched would take many tens of thousands of years to get there. Don’t pack your underthings just yet.
Still, this is terribly, terribly exciting. We’ve only known for sure about the existence of exoplanets—worlds orbiting alien suns—since 1992. The first found were orbiting a dead star, a pulsar. The first planet orbiting a Sun-like star wasn’t found until 1995, and in the next two decades we built telescopes dedicated to looking for them, and as of today we know of over 3,000 such strange, new worlds.
And now we know that it’s possible that the nearest one is, on a cosmic scale, right next door.
People say that it’s a curse to live in interesting times. But with science, it’s not. It’s amazing.
*Correction, Aug. 24, 2016: I originally misstated that this was the speed the planet goes around the star, not the speed of the star itself. The velocity of the star as it moves in a small circle is much smaller than the velocity of the planet, which is making a much bigger circle in the same amount of time.
Want to make your own robot? You can do this the easy way, or you can do this the hard way. Or, both, if you like.
The basic home made robot is a robot because it moves around, and the way that is usually achieved is with two independently powered wheels, a third wheel (or something) to balance the thing, an energy source, some logic circuitry, some sensors, and some sort of remote control.
You can learn how all these technologies work, buy the various parts, put them together, program it, and have your own robot.
The robot comes with a simple remote, but you can install apps on smart phones that allow you to control the robot. The smart phone app offers a few features that the included remote leaves out, such as a super turbo mode, and the ability to control the robot by shaking your phone.
The Makeblock DIY mBot V1.1 Robot Kit is just under a hundred bucks, and is a fairly high functioning robot. You have to build it after you get it, but that takes something like 10 minutes. My brother Joe kindly sent one to Huxley, and Amanda and Huxley built it together in short order while I waited and watched, ready to jump in if needed. I was not needed. (Amanda is a scientist and Huxley is a gear head, so of course this was easy for them.)
One of the important features of the Makeblock Robot is that some of the key assembly needed to make a robot of this kind is either obviated by design (I’ll ‘splain in a minute) or made very easy with the use of handy dandy cables.
Normally, to make a robot like this, you’d start with a controller board such as the Arduino Uno . These boards have little thingies to which you attach wires, but they are lined up and organized in such a way that you can also attach a “shield” which consists of pre-fab circuitry to do a specific thing. One kind of shield is a motor control shield. Others facilitate infrared communication, or blue-ray communication.
The core of the the Makeblock Robot is Arduino circuitry already married to, and on the same board as, a motor control and an IR communication circuit. To this are added (by you) a couple of sensor boards and a blue-tooth board. The sensor and blue tooth boards are separate because you may want to swap out the sensors or comm devices that come with the robot, later, when you figure out how it all works and want to do more.
The motor control parts of the board attach to the motors with simple cables. All of it screws together to a chassis, which holds the controller, the brain, some of the sensors, and the wheels.
There is also programming built into the device, so it can do stuff right out of the box.
The robot comes with a small remote, which can be used to send motion commands, and some other fun commands, to the robot via an IR system (just like a TV remote). (If you build one, point your other remotes at the robot and see if you can get a rise out of it by trying different buttons!)
A second mode is “object avoidance mode.” This can be initiated with an on board button, or via the remote. The robot has a sensor on the front that sends out an ultrasonic signal, and then receives it, using time to estimate, bat-like, how far the nearest object in front of it is.
As the robot approaches an object, it stops, and changes course.
This sensor system does not detect when the robot is at the top of the stairs. Repeat. This sensor system does not detect when the robot is at the top of the stairs.
A third mode is “line follow mode.” This involves a pair of sensors at the front of the robot, facing downwards. These detect certain color contrasts, and in so doing, can determine if the robot is over a line, and if so, using some fairly simple (built in) programming, the robot follows the line. The kit comes with a big piece of paper with a black figure eight on it.
You can try to make your own lines, but you will find that your human senses are not the same as the robot senses, so what you think is a contrasting line may not be what the robot thinks is a contrasting line. So, experiment.
And, if you don’t find the line following to be good enough as it is, buy a more sensitive sensor, and program the robot to follow lines using programming mode.
Or buy two robots, attach a ballon to each, on the other end, a balloon popper, and have robot wars in your house. Like this:
Or set the robot up to count time (an hour or two) and then drive around the house holding a giant feather for a while. The cat will like that. I’m pretty sure you can also get an IR sensor more sensitive than the one on board, or a motion sensor, so the robot can actually go and find the cat using body heat or motion. And so on and so forth.
The mechanics of connecting together parts are said to interface or interact with Lego Technic.
Since this is an Arduino based device, the programming can be done in the native Arduino Language (called Sketch, a form of C). But MakeBlock provides MBlock, which is a form of Scratch. (I have two reviews of Scratch books here.) This form of scratch lets you use scratch like programming blocks, and the drag and drop elements, etc. but then translates the scratch program in to sketch. You can use this system in a cloud based form on any platform, and the offline editor currently works only in Windows and on a Mac. (It is possible to run it on Linux, according to what I’ve read, but I’ve not tried it yet.)
You don’t have to know programming to build this robot and have fun with it, but a little bit of programming is easy to do, and this is perhaps one of the best ways for a kid to learn some hardware and some software skills.
Verizon Wireless is reportedly trying to add more bloatware to Android phones by installing apps from other companies in exchange for payment. "The wireless carrier has offered to install big brands' apps on its subscribers' home screens, potentially delivering millions of downloads, according to agency executives who have considered making such deals for their clients," Advertising Age reported yesterday. "But that reach would come at a cost: Verizon was seeking between $1 and $2 for each device affected, executives said."
Bloatware has been a problem on Android phones for years, and this wouldn't be the first time Verizon Wireless was the culprit. But the company's latest moves sound like they have the potential to make things worse.
Verizon started pitching the app installs to retail and finance companies, among others, late last year, according to Advertising Age. Verizon only makes the offer for Android phones since carriers don't have the same access to Apple's iPhone.
Nvidia has called out Intel for juicing its chip performance in specific benchmarks—accusing Intel of publishing some incorrect "facts" about the performance of its long-overdue Knights Landing Xeon Phi cards.
Nvidia's primary beef is with the following Intel slide, which was presented at a high performance computing conference (ISC 2016). Nvidia disputes Intel's claims that Xeon Phi provides "2.3x faster training" for neural networks and that it has "38 percent better scaling" across nodes.
At this juncture I should point out that juicing benchmarks is, rather sadly, par for the course. Whenever a chip maker provides its own performance figures, they are almost always tailored to the strength of a specific chip—or alternatively, structured in such a way as to exacerbate the weakness of a competitor's product.
You’re running a restaurant — or maybe a mosque or an abortion clinic. Union members stand on a public sidewalk outside the restaurant and project light onto your wall that causes a message to appear on your wall: It says the restaurant got cited for health code violations. Or it says “this business hires scabs.” Or anti-Islam protesters project a Muhammad cartoon on the wall, or antiabortion protesters project an image of an aborted fetus. Can you stop this by going to court and getting an injunction, on the theory that the projection onto what is, after all, your wall is a trespass?
1. The opinion for the court is brief. It notes that different states adhere to one of two approaches: Under the traditional rule, “a trespass only occurs ‘where the invasion of land occurs through a physical, tangible object.’ ” “Tangible” here means more than microscopic; smells wafting from a pig farm, for instance, are borne by physical objects, but they aren’t trespass. Under the modern rule, “a trespass may also occur when intangible matter, such as particles emanating from a manufacturing plant, cause actual and/or substantial damage to the [property].”
The Nevada Supreme Court hadn’t resolved which theory applies, but there was no need to decide, the majority concluded, “because Local 159 did not commit trespass using either theory. Jurisdictions that adhere to either doctrine have stated that light is intangible. Because light is intangible, Local 159 did not commit trespass under the traditional theory. And because the light did not cause damage to GWP’s building, Local 159 did not commit trespass under the modern theory. … Because we conclude Local 159’s actions cannot constitute a trespass, the district court abused its discretion in issuing the injunction.”
The court rejected the union’s arguments that the injunction violated the First Amendment or was preempted by federal labor law. If the Nevada Legislature wanted to bar projecting images onto a wall, it could do so — but the common law of trespass did not impose such a prohibition, the court’s opinion held.
2. Judge Jerome Tao, though, wrote a much longer concurring opinion (in addition to joining the court’s opinion) and one that strikes me as very interesting and thoughtful. First, he discussed why this case might be harder than the court’s opinion suggests:
Virtually all of the “light trespass” cases cited by the parties, and in the court’s order, concern the potential trespassory effects of “ambient” light, by which I mean light intended to serve a legitimate ulterior purpose on a nearby property but which incidentally happens to leak or diffuse onto the claimant’s property; common examples of this include construction lighting or light reflecting off the screen of a drive-in movie theater.
In contrast, this case involves something arguably different: a beam of light specifically and intentionally directed at the Respondents’ property and nowhere else that served no purpose other than to intentionally light up the Respondents’ building the way the Union wanted.
Does this distinction make a difference? It seems to me that it possibly could, and if so then we are presented with a question of first impression, as almost all of the existing case law relates to ambient lighting….
Before the district court below [and in their briefing], the Respondents argued … that by projecting a text-based light image onto the Respondents’ wall, the Union interfered with the Respondents’ property-based right to instead put their own message on that wall, or have no message there at all. Had this argument been vigorously re-asserted before us, then we would have to squarely confront it.
But during oral argument the Respondents appeared to shift away from this argument. When asked whether what made the light image projection objectionable was that it was in the form of readable text, counsel responded that whether the image was readable or not was not the problem; the problem was that the light image altered the appearance of the property, and the property owner possesses the right to control the appearance of the property at all times.
Whether they intended it or not, by identifying the root of the problem as the effect of the lighting upon the appearance of the property, the Respondents have rendered irrelevant the distinction between whether the light invasion resulted from ambient lighting or focused lighting, or whether it contained text or was merely color. If the argument is that the projected light image interfered with the Respondents’ right to place their own message in the same place, then the interference could be accomplished just as easily with a monochromatic beam as with a textual light image. Furthermore, the question of whether light alters the appearance of property seems to me to have nothing to do with whether that light was ambient in nature or individually directed and focused at the property; if of sufficient intensity, both could affect the appearance of the property in the same way.
To analogize to a conventional trespass, a trespass committed by a person walking onto prohibited land would be no less a trespass if that person also happened to invade other nearby properties as well during his travels. Similarly, a pedestrian’s physical presence on the land constitutes a trespass regardless of whether he was there as part of an exercise routine utterly lacking a message, or whether he was there to make a point about something. Whether that person also trespassed onto other properties along the way, and whether his trespass was with, or free of, communicative purpose, are fundamentally irrelevant to whether a trespass occurred.
And that is the fundamental difference between an invasion by ambient lighting or focused lighting: whether the lighting went into many different directions and lit other properties in addition to this one with no communicative purpose, or whether it went only in one direction and lit only this property to convey a message.
By conceding that the problem was the effect that the light beam had on the appearance of the property — and not either the nature of the beam itself or the message it conveyed — the Respondents have made irrelevant the origin of the light beam, the direction of its projection, and the intent of party projecting it. Thus, the question of whether it matters that the light was only ambient lighting or rather was purposefully directed at the property is no longer at issue in this appeal. [Footnote moved: This could possibly be because analyzing the light projection based upon the message it contained might implicate questions relating to speech under the First Amendment or to federal pre-emption under the National Labor Relations Act. [EV adds: Note, though, that Tao joined the court’s opinion, which concluded that the First Amendment and federal labor law preemption claims should be rejected.]
Therefore, because we generally limit ourselves to answering only the question asked, I do not interpret our order here as addressing the question, which we necessarily leave unresolved, of whether it might make a difference in other cases for purpose of trespass law that the light at issue was not incidental leakage but rather was intentionally and specifically beamed at the affected property and served no other purpose than to light the Respondents’ property with a readable message.
3. Despite that, Tao concluded, the trespass issue — though close — should be resolved against a finding of trespass:
Even if we considered the nature of the beam itself (as argued in the briefing), rather than its effect on the appearance of the property (as argued orally), I am not sure the district court injunction could stand.
The Respondents argue that the beam of light itself is, by definition, a “tangible” thing that can “invade” real property. This argument derives from the language commonly used by various courts attempting to define the tort of trespass. According to the Respondents, light is a physical thing that can invade and therefore trespass onto property; according to the Union, it is not. Tracking the traditional judicial language, my colleagues conclude that the light projection at issue here did not constitute a tangible property invasion, and I agree.
But what does it really mean to say that something is “tangible” or amounted to a “physical” invasion? The Respondents do not allege that their property was physically harmed or damaged in any way; that their access to the property was impeded or obstructed by the Union’s activities; or that the Union attempted to possess or appropriate any portion of the property in any way, at least in the traditional sense of physically occupying space that belonged exclusively to the Respondents by virtue of their ownership of the land under the law of real property.
Rather, the argument made here is that the light projection constituted a trespass because light is composed of “particles” (according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, which the Respondents cite in their brief), and those particles are tangible and therefore capable of physically intruding across the Respondents’ property line. But whether something is “tangible” or not does not seem to me to be a proper or clear legal test, at least not one that can be readily understood and applied to a wide range of facts.
Instead, the argument strikes me as a syllogism based upon superficial pseudo-science, and I am not sure that the outcome of this case ought to be governed by this kind of approach.
As an initial observation, the science relied upon by the Respondents appears to be wrong, or at least incomplete. If one really wants to get into the physics of the question, light has the properties of both a wave and a particle. Scientifically speaking, light sometimes has the qualities of a particle and sometimes has the qualities of a wave, and, to make things even more complicated, it can have both qualities at the same time. So the scientific answer to whether light is a particle or a wave is that it is both; therefore, following the Respondents’ syllogism, sometimes light is arguably physical and sometimes it is clearly not. If this is our inquiry, then we are dealing with nothing more than an exercise in subjectivity, something akin to a Rorschach ink blot in which any judge can find a trespass, or not, depending on his or her personal predilections because both conclusions would be supported by the underlying science of the matter. But as a method of legal analysis, that gets us nowhere fast.
More fundamentally, technical merit aside, scientific analysis and legal analysis are two different modes of inquiry designed to accomplish very different goals. In science, data-based objective truth is all that matters. In law, courts care about the “truth” in the sense of achieving a just (or “right”) result in a particular case; but they also care about other things and can sometimes sacrifice individual truth in order to achieve other important policy goals, such as making the law predictable, consistent, stable, and clear even if not well-matched to the facts of every individual case.
Consequently, even if it were unequivocally true that a quantum physicist would think of light as formed of particles, that conclusion alone should not govern whether we should find a trespass here as a matter of legal analysis and underlying public policy. There is a place for science in drafting and interpreting the rules that govern human conduct, but determining what scientists may think about a matter in legal dispute is not the ultimate goal of what courts do.
Properly framed, I think the question before us is not whether light is tangible or not, but instead: what legal right inherent in property ownership does the light projection supposedly violate? …
Fundamentally, the right to own property is the right to exclude others from entering, using, or possessing it. In a real sense, whenever property is bought or sold, what has really been purchased is the right to sue someone in court for trespass for entering, using, or possessing the property without the owner’s permission.
The Nevada Supreme Court has said that a trespass occurs when a property right has been physically invaded. Alternatively, the tort has also been described more broadly as protecting against “[a]ny misuse of the land or deviation from the intended use of the land.”
But these are relatively generic phrases, and it is not entirely clear how they can be applied to the particular facts at hand…. Fundamentally, the problem here is that we are confronted with a clash between very old law and evolving new technology. Trespass is one of the oldest torts known to Anglo-American jurisprudence, dating as far back as twelfth-century England. But back then, even the most advanced thinkers of the day were not aware of such things as atoms, electrons, or photons ….; it would be another two centuries before Galileo proved that the earth revolved around the sun, a revelation so antithetical to prevailing thought that he was burned at the stake for suggesting it.
It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the tort of trespass was originally limited to physical invasions of property by people or objects composed entirely of matter; as far as anyone knew, there was nothing else that existed in the universe that could invade anything. In an era lit by wax candles, and then whale-oil lamps, and then kerosene, there was not much that one could do to another’s property with light.
But nowadays light can be so many more things and can be used in so many more ways; searchlights, lasers, and light projectors of the kind involved in this case are now commonplace. The inquiry here is whether the bundle of rights traditionally protected by the ancient tort of trespass should be read to include the right to stop the newly-developed light projection used here.
4. And the answer to that inquiry, Tao concluded, is that the question should be treated under the tort of nuisance rather than the tort of trespass:
The torts of trespass and nuisance are closely related, so much so that some courts have observed that expanding the tort of trespass to cover such things as light, gas, or odors effectively blurs the two torts together and makes them one. The traditional common-law view was that property injury caused by such things as light, gas, sound, smoke, odors, or vibrations might constitute an actionable nuisance under the right circumstances, but could not support a cause of action in trespass. On the other hand, a substantial minority of modern cases have held that light invasions can constitute a trespass so long as substantial harm results to the property. But, speaking generally, most commentators and the majority of courts consider light invasions to be better suited for the law of nuisance rather than trespass.
I agree with the view that light invasions — at least of the kind at issue here– are better suited to be addressed by the law of nuisance than the law of trespass. The fundamental conceptual difference between a trespass and a nuisance is that trespass is the right to exclude something absolutely, while nuisance is the right to exclude something that might have to be tolerated in small quantities but may become the subject of judicial relief when it becomes excessive and unreasonable even in an urban environment. Compare Crook v. Sheehan Enters Inc., 740 S.W.2d 333, 335 (Mo.App. E.D.1987) (“Trespass is the unauthorized entry by a person upon the land of another, regardless of the degree of force used, even if no damage is done, or the injury is slight.”) and Kitterman v. Simrall, 924 S.W.2d 872, 878 (Mo.App. W.D.1996) (noting that liability for trespass “exists whether or not done in good faith and with reasonable care, in ignorance, or under mistake of law or fact”) with Sowers v. Forest Hills Subdivision, 294 P.3d 427, 431 (Nev. 2013) (nuisance “may arise from a lawful activity conducted in an unreasonable and improper manner” and in evaluating whether an activity constitutes a nuisance, “it is necessary to balance the competing interests of the landowners, using a commonsense approach.”). See generally Restatement (Second) of Torts, § 821D (Am. Law Inst. 1979) (trespass is an interference with a property owner’s right to exclusive possession of a property, while a nuisance is an interference with the owner’s use or enjoyment of the property).
Thus, the tort of nuisance involves a balancing of competing interests with an eye toward ascertaining the reasonableness of the intrusion, while the tort of trespass is absolute and involves no such balancing. What this means for this case is that, by claiming a trespass to have occurred, the Respondents are seeking an absolute bar against the invasion of projected light, without any inquiry whatsoever into whether the intensity, duration, or other qualities of the projection were unreasonable or excessive. Indeed, the Respondents specifically argue in their brief that
The fact that [the Union] only projected images for a limited duration of time … does not absolve it of trespass liability…. [T]he question of trespass is not one of scope or degree; rather any interference … no matter its manner or duration — is actionable.
But while it is true that manner and duration do not matter when applied to traditional trespasses committed by people or super-atomic objects, when applied to light, the Respondents’ argument goes too far and takes the law of trespass to a place it was never meant to go….
Human beings see things only when light is either projected by, or reflects off of, an object and enters the retina; without light, nothing is visible and the world would be dark. Thus, a property such as the Respondent’s building can only be seen at all if some source emits enough light to reflect off of the building with sufficient intensity to trigger the nerves within the eye of a human observer. During the daytime, this source can be natural rather than artificial (the sun), but, at night, artificially created and projected light (that is, excluding light from the sun, the moon, and the stars) might be necessary to light the building or else it might be invisible.
Every property located in a densely populated urban area like Las Vegas is continually bombarded by multiple artificial light sources, including such assorted things as street lamps, commercial neon signs, neighboring porch lights, automobile headlights, helicopter searchlights, the ambient glow cast by the Las Vegas Strip over the horizon, and the like, even such barely visible things as pedestrian cell phone screens or cigarette embers. Everything that a human being can see from the property is, technically speaking, a light wave crossing the property line and invading the property.
All of these lights affect the appearance of the property with varying intensity and duration, some brief and barely perceptible, and some with great intensity for long periods of time. If the Respondents are correct and neither intensity nor duration are relevant to whether a trespass has occurred, then all can be the subject of judicial relief no matter how transient or barely perceptible the effect on a property. If the Respondents’ argument is correct, then a court could enjoin every light visible from the property anywhere in the city — could order it all turned off — under the rubric of protecting a property right.
[Footnote: Indeed, the Respondents light their own property with an array of lights. Surely they do not believe that the light they project stops at their property line and doesn’t intrude into neighboring properties; quite to the contrary, the very point of their lighting is to make the property visible from far away so that customers can find it at night. So, if the Respondents are correct that projected light constitutes a trespass when it crosses a property line, then the Respondents are themselves trespassing onto every neighboring property from which their property is visible.]
Ultimately, when the question is properly framed, the answer strikes me as quite simple: I do not think that the absolute right to block artificial light emanating from somewhere off of the property — without any inquiry into its intensity, duration, reasonableness or unreasonableness — should be included within the “bundle of rights” that one acquires when purchasing a parcel of land in a densely populated urban center like Las Vegas. Trespass law does not convey the right to live in a black hole. I would therefore conclude that the light that was projected in this case does not constitute a violation of the law of trespass. The injunction below was based upon the wrong tort.
On the other hand, simply because a property owner does not have the right to exclude all light emanating onto a property under trespass law does not mean that one must tolerate every kind of light that is beamed onto the property no matter how excessive or unreasonable it may be. In some cases, projecting artificial light onto someone else’s property might constitute an actionable private nuisance. The district court’s order contains no factual findings regarding whether such a nuisance occurred in this case, and so that question is not before us.
I therefore agree with my colleagues, for all of the reasons set forth in the court’s order but also for the additional reasons outlined herein, that the injunction is void and a reversal is in order.
5. Finally, a practical question, but perhaps one with some legal significance: Wouldn’t it be relatively cheap to hire someone who’ll also stand on the sidewalk and project some light over wherever the protesters are projecting it? That wouldn’t make the wall look pretty, but it should be enough to make the original display illegible. If this is indeed relatively easy (and I may be mistaken on that), should that matter to the legal analysis?
A thriving marijuana plant is seen at a grow operation in Denver, Colorado December 31, 2013. (Reuters/Rick Wilking/File Photo)
This is big. Starting in December 2014, Congress has provided that “[n]one of the funds made available … to the Department of Justice may be used … to prevent [various] States from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana” (§ 542 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act). Today, the Ninth Circuit held that federal judges should enforce this law by stopping prosecutions for conduct that is authorized by state medical marijuana laws:
Appellants complain that DOJ is spending funds that have not been appropriated by Congress in violation of the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution. See U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 7 (“No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law ….”)…. [I]f DOJ were spending money in violation of [§ 542], it would be drawing funds from the Treasury without authorization by statute and thus violating the Appropriations Clause. That Clause constitutes a separation-of-powers limitation that Appellants can invoke to challenge their prosecutions….
Thus, in order to decide whether the prosecutions of Appellants violate § 542, we must determine the plain meaning of “prevent any of [the Medical Marijuana States] from implementing their own laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.” … “[I]mplement” means:
To “carry out, accomplish; esp.: to give practical effect to and ensure of actual fulfillment by concrete measure.” Implement, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed. 2003);
“To put into practical effect; carry out.” Implement, American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed. 2011); and
“To complete, perform, carry into effect (a contract, agreement, etc.); to fulfil (an engagement or promise).” Implement, Oxford English Dictionary, www.oed.com.
In sum, § 542 prohibits DOJ from spending money on actions that prevent the Medical Marijuana States’ giving practical effect to their state laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana….
[By prosecuting state-authorized medical marijuana users,] DOJ, without taking any legal action against the Medical Marijuana States, prevents them from implementing their laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana by prosecuting individuals for use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana that is authorized by such laws. By officially permitting certain conduct, state law provides for nonprosecution of individuals who engage in such conduct. If the federal government prosecutes such individuals, it has prevented the state from giving practical effect to its law providing for non-prosecution of individuals who engage in the permitted conduct.
We therefore conclude that, at a minimum, § 542 prohibits DOJ from spending funds from relevant appropriations acts for the prosecution of individuals who engaged in conduct permitted by the State Medical Marijuana Laws and who fully complied with such laws….
[But] DOJ does not prevent the implementation of rules authorizing conduct when it prosecutes individuals who engage in conduct unauthorized under state medical marijuana laws. Individuals who do not strictly comply with all state-law conditions regarding the use, distribution, possession, and cultivation of medical marijuana have engaged in conduct that is unauthorized, and prosecuting such individuals does not violate § 542….
We therefore must remand to the district courts. If DOJ wishes to continue these prosecutions, Appellants are entitled to evidentiary hearings to determine whether their conduct was completely authorized by state law, by which we mean that they strictly complied with all relevant conditions imposed by state law on the use, distribution, possession, and cultivation of medical marijuana. We leave to the district courts to determine, in the first instance and in each case, the precise remedy that would be appropriate.
We note the temporal nature of the problem with these prosecutions. The government had authority to initiate criminal proceedings, and it merely lost funds to continue them. DOJ is currently prohibited from spending funds from specific appropriations acts for prosecutions of those who complied with state law. But Congress could appropriate funds for such prosecutions tomorrow.
Conversely, this temporary lack of funds could become a more permanent lack of funds if Congress continues to include the same rider in future appropriations bills. In determining the appropriate remedy for any violation of § 542, the district courts should consider the temporal nature of the lack of funds along with Appellants’ rights to a speedy trial under the Sixth Amendment and the Speedy Trial Act.
[Footnote: The prior observation should also serve as a warning. To be clear, § 542 does not provide immunity from prosecution for federal marijuana offenses. The CSAprohibits the manufacture, distribution, and possession of marijuana. Anyone in any state who possesses, distributes, or manufactures marijuana for medical or recreational purposes (or attempts or conspires to do so) is committing a federal crime. The federal government can prosecute such offenses for up to five years after they occur.
Congress currently restricts the government from spending certain funds to prosecute certain individuals. But Congress could restore funding tomorrow, a year from now, or four years from now, and the government could then prosecute individuals who committed offenses while the government lacked funding. Moreover, a new president will be elected soon, and a new administration could shift enforcement priorities to place greater emphasis on prosecuting marijuana offenses.
Nor does does any state law “legalize” possession, distribution, or manufacture of marijuana. Under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, state laws cannot permit what federal law prohibits. Thus, while the CSA remains in effect, states cannot actually authorize the manufacture, distribution, or possession of marijuana. Such activity remains prohibited by federal law.]
Gen Con bills itself as "the best four days in gaming"—and in many ways, it is. More than 60,000 people crammed into the Indiana Convention Center in downtown Indianapolis to play, purchase, and demo the hottest new board games and RPGs releasing in 2016. The Ars crew spent several days at the show drowning in a delicious gaming gumbo; now that we're back, we've put together a list of the top titles we played at the show.
If you're looking for a solid overview of what's hot in board gaming for the second half of 2016, you've come to the right place. (And stay tuned for our coverage of the Essen Spiel fair in October for all your Eurogame needs.)
Unless otherwise noted, these games should be hitting store shelves soon.
The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday in favor of the American government’s seizure of a large number of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom’s overseas assets.
After years of delay, in December 2015, Dotcom was finally ordered to be extradited to the United States to face criminal charges. But his appeal is set to be heard before the High Court in Auckland on August 29. Dotcom could conceivably appeal to the New Zealand Court of Appeals and to the Supreme Court of New Zealand (if it agrees to hear the case), a process that could take many more years.
Visiting Italy and passing on the country’s world-class cheeses, meats, and seafood may seem like a ghastly travel crime. But if you live in the country and do the same with your kids, it could soon be a real crime.
Conservative lawmaker Elvira Savino recently proposed a law that would prohibit parents from keeping their kids on a strict vegan diet—that is, one that abstains from meat, fish, dairy products, and sometimes other animal products such as honey and gelatin. The text of the law describes such a diet as “devoid of elements essential for healthy and balanced growth.”
If the law is passed, parents found in violation would face up to a year in prison. But if a child becomes ill or dies on the diet, the parents would face boosted jail time of up to four or six years, respectively. The law applies to parents of kids 16 and under, with the harshest penalties going to parents of kids three and under.
A view of the region known as the ice free corridor, in Northern Canada, where retreating ice sheets created a passageway between Beringia and the Americas more than 14,000 years ago.
Mikkel Winther Pedersen
The standard story of how humans arrived in the Americas is that they marched 1,500km across the Bering Land Bridge, a now-vanished landmass between Siberia and Northern Canada that emerged roughly 15,000 years ago in the wake of the last ice age. But for the past decade, evidence has been piling up that humans arrived in the Americas by traveling in boats along the Pacific coast. Some 14,000-year-old campsites like Oregon's Paisley Caves have been found near rivers that meet the Pacific, suggesting that early humans came inland from the coast along these waterways. Now, a new study published in Nature provides more solid evidence the first humans to reach the Americas could not have come via the Bering Land Bridge.
A group of geoscientists, anthropologists, and biologists led a massive effort to study the "ice free corridor," an environment in Northern Canada near the Bering Land Bridge, when humans were supposedly crossing it 15,000 years ago. They used a common method for sampling ancient environments called coring. Using hollow tubes, they drilled deep into the sediment at the bottom of two frozen lakes in British Columbia, looking for fossils of plant and animal life from the era when humans could have crossed the Land Bridge. They picked these two specific lakes—Charlie Lake and Spring Lake, to be exact—because they were in the ice free corridor, a passageway into the Americas where the last remaining ice sheets melted. The very first humans to pass into the Americas would have had to cross through this area.
Carefully analyzing the layers of sediment, the researchers were able to determine what kind of life inhabited the region. Radiocarbon dating allowed them to recreate a timeline for the ancient ecosystem there, too. In their paper, the researchers write:
Interesting chart of consumer debt — its worth noting that two of the biggest categories — mortgage and auto borrowing — are backed by a hard asset. Student loans are the largest unsecured debt.
Last week while dining at Denny's in Santa Monica, Dick Van Dyke and his a cappella Vantastix buddies broke out into song. Although not quite a flash mob, it was a surprise performance of the song "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" for the lucky diners at the coffee shop.
"Breakfast at Denny's, with a side of grits makes me want to sing!!" Van Dyke wrote on his Facebook page Saturday.
Van Dyke played the eccentric inventor Caractacus Potts in the 1968 film "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," which was co-written by Roald Dahl and was based on a story by Ian Fleming, of James Bond fame.
Between the Reagan years and the crash of 2008, developers absorbed the skyrocketing wealth of the 1% with monuments to bad taste and ostentation: the McMansion.
(more…)
Prosecutors had sought a custodial sentence for the felony sexual assault charge, but Butler worried about "the kind of treatment" Wilkerson would receive in the prison system. Instead, Wilkerson will spend two years in Boulder County Jail on a program that allows him to leave during the day, and 20 years on probation.
"I don't know that there is any great result for anybody," Butler said. "Mr. Wilkerson deserves to be punished, but I think we all need to find out whether he truly can or cannot be rehabilitated."
The victim, who was present at the hearing but left before the defense addressed the court, asked Butler to send Wilkerson to prison.
"Have as much mercy for the rapist as he did for me that night," she told the judge.
The victim consumed alcohol on March 15, 2014; Wilkerson told her friends he would "make sure she was safe," then "isolated" and raped her, according to prosecutors.
Wilkerson admitted to investigators he’d made advances to the victim that night, “but that she rebuffed him each time, and that he felt ‘pissed off’ and called her a ‘fucking bitch,’” according to court documents.
At his trial, his behavior was such that both Deputy District Attorney Caryn Datz and the judge used the same language to describe it: "entitled."
"Whether or not family and friends see that on a consistent daily basis, it's what I've at least noticed to be the theme of what I've been seeing and hearing," Butler said. "I do have some great concerns over, as I would describe it as, ways he tried to play the system."
But neither that—nor the victim's impassioned statement—was enough to convince the court that the rape deserved serious punishment. Butler did, however, say he admired her courage: "That kind of strength is really admirable. Without ever forgetting this happened, I hope she is able to find hope for the future."
Wilkerson's case echoes that of Stanford University rapist Brock Turner, who raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster only to receive a light jail sentence after a trial marked by observations, both in and out of court, of the suspect's privileged and entitled behavior. As then, the sheriff's department refused to release their booking mugshot (above) until after his sentencing.
A USA Today investigation has discovered a network of paid informants working for Amtrak and nearly every US airline who illegally delve into passengers' travel records to find people who might be traveling with a lot of cash: these tip-offs are used by the DEA to effect civil forfeiture -- seizing money without laying any charges against its owner, under the rubric that the cash may be proceeds from drug sales. One Amtrak secretary was secretly paid $854,460 to raid her employer's databases for the DEA.
(more…)
Combo Pool is simple and great fun: use the arrows to aim your ball, and hit c to fire it.
It's a game where you throw colored marbles against each other. If two marbles of the same color make contact, they merge and upgrade to the next color. Your lifebar diminish with the number of balls on the field. If you lifebar is empty, you enter in a sudden death mode, and your last ball must save you by removing some balls.
Controls : use arrows left-right to adjust direction, and key "c" to launch a ball. Click on the game to give it focus if buttons doesnt work.
You can cheat by only ever firing straight up, but even then you can get in trouble because of the number of balls that form on the axis. Other suggestions for refining the game: allow players to hold the button to determine how powerful a shot to release, and have a button to hold that allows more refined angles.
There are a number of perks to having a robot vacuum, the biggest being you can clean your home without actually having to do anything yourself. You do pay for that convenience, though, as most robo-vacs cost just as much as elite handheld ones do. iRobot decided to try something different with the Braava Jet: it's half the size of its other Roomba vacuums, it costs just $199, and it doesn't actually vacuum—it mops.
The company made the Braava Jet with a certain kind of user in mind, one that likely doesn't live in a huge home, has primarily hardwood or tile floors, and doesn't want to dig deep into their wallets for an automatic vacuum. Though it's ideal for those living in small apartments, others should carefully consider their options before investing in this mopping robot.
Design: A cute, compact cleaner
The Braava Jet might be the cutest robot that iRobot has ever made. Measuring 6.7" × 7.0" × 3.3" and weighing 2.7 pounds, the tiny square mopping robot is slightly smaller than a lunchbox, and it even has a handle like one, too. The device is mostly white with a few accents of ocean blue, particularly on the backlit "clean" button that sits prominently on its top. Blue also highlights the precision spray hole, on the side of the robot, where water shoots out to dampen the floor ahead of the Braava Jet's path.
the new poster child for why backdoor methods fail
Microsoft has inadvertently demonstrated the intrinsic security problem of including a universal backdoor in its software after it accidentally leaked its so-called "golden key"—which allows users to unlock any device that's supposedly protected by Secure Boot, such as phones and tablets.
The key basically allows anyone to bypass the provisions Microsoft has put in place ostensibly to prevent malicious versions of Windows from being installed, on any device running Windows 8.1 and upwards with Secure Boot enabled.
And while this means that enterprising users will be able to install any operating system—Linux, for instance—on their Windows tablet, it also allows bad actors with physical access to a machine to install bootkits and rootkits at deep levels. Worse, according to the security researchers who found the keys, this is a decision Microsoft may be unable to reverse.
We're seeing car thefts in the wild accomplished through hacking:
Houston police have arrested two men for a string of high-tech thefts of trucks and SUVs in the Houston area. The Houston Chroniclereports that Michael Armando Arce and Jesse Irvin Zelaya were charged on August 4th, and are believed to be responsible for more than 100 auto thefts. Police said Arce and Zelaya were shuttling the stolen vehicles across the Mexican border.
[...]
The July video shows the thief connecting a laptop to the Jeep before driving away in it. A Fiat-Chrysler spokesman told ABC News that the thieves used software intended to be used by dealers and locksmiths to reprogram the vehicle's keyless entry and ignition system.
Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson and vice presidential nominee Bill Weld recently caused some controversy with their remarks on potential Supreme Court nominations. Weld was taken to task by many libertarians for suggesting he might want to appoint justices like Democrats Stephen Breyer and Merrick Garland. But legal scholar Richard Primus claims that libertarians should also dislike Johnson’s comment that he would seek to appoint”people that look at the Constitution of original intent”:
To my knowledge, the world of libertarian commentators had no negative reaction to this comment by Johnson. Nor would one expect it to.
But if the reason why the idea of an originalist Supreme Court sets off no alarm bells among libertarians is that libertarians think the Founders understood the Constitution as a charter of libertarian ideals in the way that twenty-first century libertarians understand those ideals, then those twenty-first century libertarians are laboring under a distorted understanding of the eighteenth century. Yes, the Founders believed in limited government and individual liberty, and crucially so, and at a high level of abstraction those are ideals shared by modern libertarians. But they’re also ideals shared, at that level of abstraction, by most non-libertarians in American politics today. And there’s no reason to think that the Founders as a group understood those ideas in the particular ways that distinguish modern libertarians from most other Americans.
Primus’ post has drawn thoughtful rebuttals by John McGinnis and Michael Ramsey. I particularly agree with many of McGinnis’ points:
[Primus] says that the Constitution does not entrench libertarian principles as such. True enough. Libertarianism is a philosophy of the twentieth century. The key provisions of the Constitution are from the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth century. But for a libertarian who wants to decide which constitutional interpretive philosophy should be instrumentally useful (to be clear that is not I), it should not matter that the Constitution does not perfectly capture libertarianism. Instead, the question should be whether an originalist view would move constitutional law today toward more libertarian results than plausible competing interpretive theories. And here the answer is yes.
First, the original Constitution sharply limited the scope of the federal government and constrained it through the separation of powers. While the Constitution did not much limit state power within state borders (and states retained huge authority even after the Fourteenth Amendment), the capacity of citizens to exit and move to other states gives the individual substantial leverage against most governmental power….
Moreover, the limitations on government and the structure of rights reflects the historical truth that the Constitution does emerge from a generally classical liberal framework, a framework that is a forebear of libertarianism. Crucially, neither the classical liberal nor libertarian wishes to facilitate the egalitarian redistribution that is the mark of social democracy. It was James Madison, father of the Constitution, who wrote in his advocacy for its ratification that protecting the “different and unequal faculties of acquiring property” was the first object of government, a sentiment quite libertarian in nature.
Progressives of an earlier era, like Woodrow Wilson, recognized that the original Constitution was inimical to the social engineering and egalitarian democracy. That is why they found it defective. I disagree with their normative political views, but their assessment of the original Constitution has a refreshing interpretive honesty.
In this article from last year, I explained in greater detail why there is considerable congruence between libertarianism and originalism. Enforcement of the original meaning certainly would not give us a completely libertarian polity. But it would still impose tighter limits on federal power and stronger protection for a variety of individual rights – including property rights and economic liberties – than is likely under realistically feasible alternative, such as “living constitutionalism” or wide-ranging judicial deference to the political process.
Primus also claims that the original Constitution many be inimical to libertarianism because its purpose “was to create a more powerful government, not a less powerful one.” But the government created by the original 1787 Constitution could simultaneously be more powerful than the very weak one that existed under the Articles of Confederation, and much less powerful than what we have today. Moreover, most of the important amendments since 1787 – the Bill of Rights and the Reconstruction amendments – limit government power in a variety of significant ways, most of which are highly congruent with libertarianism.
Finally, Primus takes libertarians to task for holding up George Mason as a forbear of their position, despite the fact that he favored giving Congress the power to enact sumptuary laws. It is indeed true that Mason held a foolish position on that issue. But, from a libertarian point of view, that is easily outweighed by his efforts to limit federal power and strengthen protection for individual liberty on a wide variety of other fronts, most notably in promoting the idea of a Bill of Rights, which was in large part based on the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which he played a key role in drafting.
George Mason fell short of libertarian ideals, particularly in continuing to own slaves, despite the fact that he knew it was unjust. But he did take a generally libertarian approach to a wide range of constitutional issues. Libertarian admiration for George Mason is no less defensible than the ubiquitous left-liberal admiration for the constitutional vision of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal, despite the fact that he had a terrible record on civil liberties, and ordered the interment of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps. These sins are, in liberal eyes, outweighed by his achievements on other fronts. Much the same thing can be said for the libertarian view of Mason, and many of the other founders.
Academics who study warfare and terrorism typically don't conduct research just kilometers from the front lines of battle. But taking the laboratory to the fight is crucial for figuring out what impels people to make the ultimate sacrifice to, for example, impose Islamic law on others, says Atran, who is affiliated with the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris.
Atran's war zone research over the last few years, and interviews during the last decade with members of various groups engaged in militant jihad (or holy war in the name of Islamic law), give him a gritty perspective on this issue. He rejects popular assumptions that people frequently join up, fight and die for terrorist groups due to mental problems, poverty, brainwashing or savvy recruitment efforts by jihadist organizations.
Instead, he argues, young people adrift in a globalized world find their own way to ISIS, looking to don a social identity that gives their lives significance. Groups of dissatisfied young adult friends around the world often with little knowledge of Islam but yearning for lives of profound meaning and glory typically choose to become volunteers in the Islamic State army in Syria and Iraq, Atran contends. Many of these individuals connect via the internet and social media to form a global community of alienated youth seeking heroic sacrifice, he proposes.
Preliminary experimental evidence suggests that not only global terrorism, but also festering state and ethnic conflicts, revolutions and even human rights movements -- think of the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1960s -- depend on what Atran refers to as devoted actors. These individuals, he argues, will sacrifice themselves, their families and anyone or anything else when a volatile mix of conditions are in play. First, devoted actors adopt values they regard as sacred and nonnegotiable, to be defended at all costs. Then, when they join a like-minded group of nonkin that feels like a family a band of brothers a collective sense of invincibility and special destiny overwhelms feelings of individuality. As members of a tightly bound group that perceives its sacred values under attack, devoted actors will kill and die for each other.
Comcast should discontinue its claim that Xfinity service "delivers the fastest Internet in America," the National Advertising Division (NAD) recommended today. Comcast should also discontinue certain ads where it claims to have the "fastest in-home Wi-Fi," the group said.
For its fastest Internet claim, Comcast relied on crowdsourced data from the Ookla Speedtest application. An "award" provided by Ookla to Comcast relied only on the top 10 percent of each ISP's download results.
"Although Xfinity offers a variety of speeds at a range of prices and tiers, Comcast’s advertising does not limit its claims to a particular tier," the NAD's announcement said. "NAD determined that the claims at issue in both print and broadcast advertising reasonably conveyed a message of overall superiority—that regardless of which speed tier purchased by a consumer, in a head-to-head comparison, Xfinity would deliver faster speeds."
The Makeblock DIY mBot V1.1 Robot Kit 
is just under a hundred bucks, and is a fairly high functioning robot. You have to build it after you get it, but that takes something like 10 minutes. My brother Joe kindly sent one to Huxley, and Amanda and Huxley built it together in short order while I waited and watched, ready to jump in if needed. I was not needed. (Amanda is a scientist and Huxley is a gear head, so of course this was easy for them.)
is just under a hundred bucks, and is a fairly high functioning robot. You have to build it after you get it, but that takes something like 10 minutes. My brother Joe kindly sent one to Huxley, and Amanda and Huxley built it together in short order while I waited and watched, ready to jump in if needed. I was not needed. (Amanda is a scientist and Huxley is a gear head, so of course this was easy for them.)
