Dorm room waftage

BEYOND SAD. OK, Irvine is a safe city—compared to other U.S. cities. So says the FBI, anyway.

Irvine is the safest city in America when measuring violent crime in cities with populations of more than 100,000, according to FBI statistics....

Irvine in 2006 had four homicides, 17 rapes, 50 robberies and 55 aggravated assaults, [an Irvine police officer] said. In 2005, there were two reported homicides, 17 rapes, 42 robberies and 90 aggravated assaults.... (FBI Says Irvine Is America's Safest City)

(The murder rate in the U.S. is 4.28 persons per 100,000. In Europe, it is much lower. For instance, in Spain, the rate is about one fourth what it is in the U.S. (See.) You'll recall that, a few years ago, trustee Tom Fuentes objected to a Saddleback College "study abroad" program to Spain in part owing to concerns about student safety.)

Linda Park was a freshman at Irvine Valley College in 1995 when she was brutally murdered by two young men in search of loot in her parents' home. (The men were recently convicted of murder and sentenced.)

Today’s OC Register (Justice served for murdered Irvine girl, but memories linger) offers a sad follow-up.

THESE COLLEGE KIDS TODAY. It’s awfully expensive attending college these days. At private colleges, tuition can be ridiculous.

Today’s Reg has a story (Tuition-money pot sales land Chapman student in jail) about one enterprising—er, desperate—young man who coughed up his college coin by selling cannabis:

…According to court testimony, William Paul Laaser, 20, told Orange police officers that he was selling marijuana to "raise money for tuition." The university's tuition for the 2008-09 academic year is about $47,000.

Laaser was arrested Oct. 27 when university public safety officers responded to a complaint of an odor of marijuana coming from Laaser's dorm room.

Sgt. Dan Adams of the Orange Police Department, said about 40 grams of marijuana, a scale, a ledger detailing purchases, numerous plastic baggies and $800 in a locked trunk were found in Laaser's room.

Laaser pleaded guilty Nov. 11 and began serving his jail term Monday. Laaser's driver's license will be revoked for a year, he will have to perform 45 days of community service for Caltrans or do other physical labor and will be on probation for three years, according to the Orange County District Attorney's Office.

Well, at least the kid has been mastering some practical skills.

CON-FUSION. Today, physicist Bob Park notes that

It's been almost 20 years since the March 23, 1989 announcement that cold fusion had been discovered by two chemists at the University of Utah [Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons]. By June, cold fusion was an object of ridicule.

A small band of embattled defenders retreated to holding annual conferences of like-minded scientists to which skeptics were not welcome.

The story now seems to be entering a new chapter. Believers have begun showing a willingness to confront skeptics, submitting papers to open meetings of major scientific societies. They no longer use the term "cold fusion," preferring the less contentious "low-energy nuclear reactions" (LENR) to describe their field….

However, the use of LENR has been undone by referring to "excess heat" as the Fleischmann-Pons effect. This only serves as a reminder of the outrageous conduct of the university administration and the incredibly sloppy research on which the claim was based.

This year, there is great excitement over the work of Yoshiaki Arata, a respected professor at Osaka University. In May Arata demonstrated the production of excess heat to an audience of 80, but there have been many such claims over the years and until it is replicated by someone outside the LENR community and a plausible explanation is advanced, it will change few minds.