A very disturbing narrative is being spun by several commentators on the right. In the aftermath of the failed Christmas day airplane bombing, several politicians and pundits have criticized the Obama administration for using the criminal justice to legally detain and try the attempted bomber, instead of holding him as an “enemy combatant”. You may remember that President Bush invented the notion of an enemy combatant on order to indefinitely detain individuals who had been captured in Afghanistan and Iraq and were suspected of being terrorists. The supreme court ruled that this indefinite detention without trial or tribunal violated the criminal trial rights provided in the constitution. And yet, these commentators make the argument that by using the criminal justice system in this way, Obama and the justice department are somehow putting America at risk, failing to extract critical information from this dangerous terrorist.

First, it should be noted that this is a blatantly hypocritical attempt to make political hay out of a near tragedy. When the shoe bomber similarly failed to detonate an explosive on an aircraft in the Bush years, he was tried in the criminal justice system and not labeled an enemy combatant. These commentators, including the former Vice-President, supported that decision then, and they ate only objecting now to try to convince Americans that Obama is somehow endangering America.

However, it is significantly more important to remember why the Bush era policy is so dangerous. On our constitutional republic, we operate under the principle that our executive must be subservient to the constitution, and that no national crisis gives the executive the power to ignore the provisions enumerated therein. It is exactly in times of crisis that these provisions are so important, as the supreme court held in the famous case of Ex parte milligan. Lincoln overstepped his authority by suspending the writ of habeas corpus during the civil war, which was perhaps the greatest nation crisis our country has ever faced. The limitation on the power of the executive to indefinitely detain people is of utmost importance because the police power of the executive is so easily abused, and there is so much injustice committed when someone is incorrecy deprived of their liberty and separated from their family.

Perhaps those who believe that the civil rights of a terrorist are unimportant should remember what it is that we are defending. After the Boston masacre, the people of Massachusetts were outraged, and they demanded that the British soldiers involved be executed. However, John Adams, at great peril to his reputation, took on the task of defending these soldiers. He did this because he believed that in a society of laws, justice cannot be served unless the laws are applied equally to everyone. This means that anyone who is accused of a crime, no matter how guilty they may appear, is entitled to the same legal protections. This is necessary because justice does not know in advance who is truly guilty. If our legal system is to have any legitimacy, it must never prejudge those who come before it. That is why John Adams presented the defense for those soldiers. If they had not had a proper defense, their trial would have been merely a stage show, and any punishment made against the would gave been just as injust as the killings that they themselves perpetrated. And once we become a nation of show trials, we will rapidly descend into a state where politics is practiced through the criminal justice system instead of in our democratic institutions.

The space shuttle has two propulsion systems, the main engines, which run on liquid fuel (SSMEs), and the solid rocket boosters (SRBs). The SRBs are the two thinner rockets on either side of the external fuel tank, and they provide most of the thrust that the space shuttle uses to get into orbit. You may have seen video of them dramatically separating from the shuttle, which they do once they are finished boosting the shuttle.

The thing about the SRBs is that because they are solid fuel, there is no easy way to turn them off. The ignition system sets the fuel on fire and it burns until it is used up. When you see the space shuttle launch, you see the SSMEs turn on about 6 seconds before liftoff. The purpose of this is to test SSMEs to make sure that they are operating correctly before the SRBs are lit.

Once the SRBs are lit, they will burn for 123 seconds, and until that time, NASA has no ability to abort the ascent of the space shuttle. It is going for a trip. Once the burn is done, there are several abort options, usually landing in Europe or attempting to turn around and return to Florida. But for those 123 seconds, the shuttle is going to fly on its course.

There are many times in life where you don’t know if everything is going to work perfectly. The shuttle was never tested in unmanned flight before its first launch. Any number of things can and do fail immediately after takeoff. However, sometimes in order to do something important or difficult, you need to take a chance that problems may arise. Launching the space shuttle would be next to impossible on liquid fuel alone, and far more costly. So in order to reap the benefits some great undertaking, sometimes you have to fire the SRBs and hope for the best.

Steve is going to go without caffeine for two weeks. Or so he says. Wish him luck! So far he is one hour in. So far so good.

I made it to California! I’ve been here about a week now and I’ve settled in pretty well to both my home for the summer and my job. This is the first time I’ve lived in a house proper where I’ve had to take care of the place myself. I’ve managed to fix the sprinkler system, clean mold out of just about every appliance (the power went out for about 10 days before we got here) and pull internet out of thin air!  [I also perform at birthday parties.]

Anyway, if you are someone I know  (or someone whom I should know) and you are in the silicon valley area, shoot me an e-mail and say hello. Or do that anyway. I’d love to know if anyone actually reads this.

The 1 hour flight to Boston requires you to arrive at the airport 1 hour in advance of departure. For me, that means that I have to get to the airtrain 80 minutes before departure, and the LIRR to get to the airtrain 30 minutes before that, which requires leaving the house a total of 2 hours before the flight takes off. It takes another 45 minutes in Boston to get to Cambridge from the airport. That means that if everything clicks perfectly it will take 3 hours 45 minutes total travel time for a 1 hour flight.

Take the bus, and you have 20 minutes extra travel on each end of a 4 hour ride, for a total of 4 hours 40 minutes. So taking the bus to Boston takes 25% more time and costs 10% as much.
The Amtrak train costs slightly more than the plane and takes about the same amount of time.

So why not always take the bus? Comfort is a consideration, but is that comfort worth a 900% premium? Reliability is another, but I don’t have enough information to determine the relative reliability of these modes of transportation; if anything, I think the bus is more reliable. So really it is a comfort issue. Today, comfort won out, but maybe next time I’ll go with cost, given my general annoyance with JetBlue today. Anyway, food for thought I suppose.

[Stuck in JFK because I missed a flight by 2 minutes...]

Dear world,

Today marked the end of my third year at Harvard. I say that because I took my only final exam today, in a core course that I will have some… constructive criticism… for in my course ratings.

I am always struck at the end of each semester just how fast time has flown by.  At the beginning of the year I was still realing from the huge final project crunch I had from fall semester, and I was immediately thrown into NMUN. I say thrown because I found myself directing a committee for which I was less prepared than I would have liked, mostly because I was originally going to crisis direct. Of course, right after NMUN the political cogs of the IRC began to turn.  Somewhere in there I turned 21, drove to Florida and back, balanced a $500K budget, and managed to complete two of the most code intensive final projects I have ever stared down.

And then someone got shot in Kirkland house… Read the rest of this entry »

I just finished migrating everything to GoDaddy, so now my Registrar, DNS, and Hosting are all one company instead of 3 different companies. I think that this will be for the better. If my site goes down suddenly or vanishes… you will know why!

This will probably be the last post in the meta category. If you read my site or stumble upon it, leave a comment and say hi!

Thank you to everyone who came to Bacchanalia! I hope you had a great time. It’s a bit strange to see an event like that from the organizational side, and to realize that it all gets tossed together by a bunch of college students in their (extemely limited) spare time. But HoCo is great, so thanks to them and to everyone!

Hello to all the numerous fans of Brad Seiler out there. My website seems constantly to be in a woeful state of disrepair. Since I have become ashamed of the broken links and promises of added content, I just decided to take everything down and replace it with a WordPress blog. Hopefully that will be a better way to communicate my thoughts and ramblings with the world.

Thanks for stopping by!