Daily Archives: February 23, 2006

FERC Jettisons Legitimate Business Purposes

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Michael Giberson

An example of federal bureaucracy run amok? No, it is only FERC revamping their anti-market manipulation rules to accomodate changes brought about by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The old market behavior rules sought to prohibit, among other things, “actions that are without a legitimate business purpose and that are intended to or foreseeably could manipulate market prices, market conditions, or market rules.” The phrase “legitimate business purpose” had been challenged in court as too vague. The new rules omit the problematic phrase.

For more see “FERC Jettisons ‘Legitimate Business Purpose;’ Retains Other Rules for Natural Gas & Power Wholesalers” on law firm Bracewell & Guiliani LLP’s Energy Legal Blog.

Why So Quiet?

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Lynne Kiesling

Yeah, things have been quiet here at KP. I have some cool work stuff to discuss, which I’ll start developing. But otherwise my cool work stuff has been insider pool (for example, learning a computer program that I may use to program experimental environments) that is of little general interest and requires little comment on my part; or it’s been stuff that I’m going to let incubate and not discuss for a while.

London in Four Dimensions

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Lynne Kiesling

Courtesy of Londonist, check out the fascinating Digitally Distributed Environments. It’s the blog of Andy Hudson-Smith, from University College London’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. He can take historic information about a city, in this case London, and import it into Google Earth to see how London would look if it still retained some historical features, buildings, etc. Boundless human ingeneuity.

One great example is the overlay of 1690 London into Google Earth (note also the correction in the comments and a follow-up post). Andy notes the shifting of the shape of the Thames due to the contruction of the Embankment. I am particularly interested in this because I know London pretty well; one of my favorite things to do is to wander its streets and see what I stumble upon. Combine that with my love of the rich geographic detail of London in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, and I think that means that this site is a place where I could spend hours and hours.

If you like maps and history, and London, do check it out.