WWVB What Would Vannevar Blog?

Bicycle Dreams: Race Across America (RAAM)

2012-01-23T18:39:00.008-05:00

This Wednesday, 7 pm, Southside Works Cinema: Bicycle Dreams, a documentary about the Race Across America (RAAM).

I am really looking forward to this movie, although it has nothing at all to do with any kind of bicycling I've ever been involved with, or will ever be involved with.

Me going to this movie is sort of like a limo chauffeur watching a ~~Nascar race~~ Demolition Derby. These people do incredible things, against all understanding, and it involves bicycles.

Here's my favorite RAAM story (so far): Alberto Blanco is in third place when he experiences Shermer's Neck, which happens when your neck muscles are exhausted from holding your head and helmet at a peculiar angle for a very long time.

His support team used a backpack frame, some straps and coat-hangars, and a lot of Duct Tape to fashion a rig to keep him riding.

More? From Bike-Pgh.org:

Bicycle Dreams, the award-winning feature-length documentary about the Race Across America (RAAM), will premiere in Pittsburgh at the Southside Works Cinema on Wednesday, January 25 at 7 p.m. as part of the film's ongoing nationwide winter tour. The screening is co-sponsored by BikePGH and the OTB Bicycle Café.

The film, which has won numerous awards at film festivals all over the world, "is an up-close look at what RAAM riders go through," says Stephen Auerbach, the director and producer of Bicycle Dreams. "They deal with searing desert heat, agonizing mountain climbs, and endless stretches of open road. And they do it all while battling extreme exhaustion and sleep deprivation. It's a great subject for a film."

Before and after the movie, the OTB Bicycle Café on East Carson Street and will be offering discounts to moviegoers before and after the event. Movie goers can enjoy $3 Snow Melts, $1 Sloppy Joe's and $2 off Great Lakes.

“An astonishing documentary,” declares Pez Cycling. “This film is a ride of many stark contrasts; when it ended I felt both shattered and triumphant. I realized I was experiencing its genius. A central theme of Bicycle Dreams is the profoundly inspiring strength of the human in facing monumental challenge and tragedy. Bicycle Dreams is a race of truth.”

“This film isn’t for those who want to shy away from the tragic side of the human experience, unwilling to risk the cracking of their shell of denial, not willing to risk their coping mechanism,” writes Cycling-Review.com. “Bicycle Dreams captures the human condition like few other films. Bicycle Dreams moves us to break through the barrier of the fear of death. I have seldom found a film that captures this ‘life drama’ as powerfully as does Bicycle Dreams.”

Adds Podium Café, “Bicycle Dreams is the ultimate inner journey. If you thought the life of a cyclist was an internal struggle, wait until you see what Auerbach unearths in this film. Bicycle Dreams is an unprecedented exploration of the subject of the suffering on the bike.”

About.com writes, “As we fall deeper and deeper into Bicycle Dreams, what we witness grows more terrifying, yet more compelling. Auerbach’s masterful direction exposes the raw lessons that drive people to push beyond the limits of human endurance. Revealing what lies at the heart of every impossible human endeavor is what Bicycle Dreams is all about.”

Tickets will be $11 in advance and $15 at the door the night of the show.

Newt's Brilliant Ayn Rand Marriage Strategy

2012-01-20T11:15:00.018-05:00

I think most people have completely failed to imagine the possibility of Newt Gingrich's strategic brilliance this week, and it demonstrates the capability of a visionary leader with a solid grounding in our nation's exceptional history to move beyond what seems possible.

This week's maneuver in which the second Mrs. Gingrich (M-G^2.0) described Newt's suggestion and exploration of a novel way to preserve a marriage, which is the foundational bedrock of our culture, was misunderstood by many as a setback when it was actually a game-changing repositioning by the Gingrich campaign.

Cain-supporter Stephen Colbert came the closest to understanding, when he pointed out that "at least Newt asked permission. That’s a Southern gentleman. That’s what Robert E. Lee would have done."

M-G^2.0's outreach to married women was also a brilliantly conceived attempt to connect with Ron Paul's LLV's (Libertarian Leaning Voters). Newt's beyond Mitt Romney; it's a mop-up operation now, and it's time to bring the Apostate's Apostles into Newt's Big Tent where they belong.

Sometimes public leaders have to speak in code. For instance, when Newt talks about janitors and food stamps, we know what he's referring to. It's fun being in on a stealth conversation.

When Marianne Gingrich (M-G^2.0) tells her story of Newt asking for an "arrangement" or an "understanding", those code words are appealing to two distinct constituencies with just one message.

He appeals to Romney's Francophile supporters, who know that if this were France, nobody would consider this cinq à sept newsworthy.
He directly channels the Libertarian spirit of bold individuality and appeals directly to Ron Paul's core followers.

Two targets, one shot. Brilliant.

Ayn Rand famously wanted to have an affair with her young assistant Nathaniel Blumenthal, so she worked it out with her own husband and then approached the young man's wife proposing an arrangement to her two employees. Ayn Rand was faithful to that arrangement until the young man foolishly reneged on his committment^2.0 to Ayn. Which was very painful to her, and we've all known pain in our lives.

By having Marianne Gingrich (M-G^2.0) tell the story of Newt ending up in the same philosophical position viz-a-vis monogamy, Newt realizing the way to save our foundational bedrock institution of marriage was to accomodate the outsourcing that has made our economy a place where job creators can do their best, unencumbered by paperwork and legacy standards, Marianne was speaking directly to Ron Paul's LLV's (Libertarian Leaning Voters) who understand Libertarian code-words.

In fact, when you look at the history of Newt's relationships, you'll see his continuous commitment to Randy philosophy (a philosophy which resulted in Rand's being considered Cougar Zero). Early polling shows support for Ron Paul dropped 35% overnight, and most of those voters indicate they're moving into Newt's Big Tent.

Newt is synthesizing the individual-driven Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand with the rebirth we see in Christian forgiveness. You get into the new relationship with Ayn Rand; you get out of it with Christianity. Only a mind with the inquisitive breadth of Newt Gingrich could manage this fusion. That's why We Need Newt.

Newt Gingrich. Ayn Rand.

They share a vision to save Marriage.
They share a vision for America.

Anyway, how does a guy with three wives end up criticizing a Mormon?

A Curious 1963 Bicycle Safety PSA: One Got Fat

2012-01-14T17:26:00.015-05:00

One Got Fat is a short bicycle safety film from 1963. I love these old movies because it lets me show my children the movies I saw as a child, sort of a documentary of my own youth.

The movie emphasizes the modern "Vehicular Cyclist" paradigm expressed by John Forester: "Cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles."

There's a few quirks in the movie and IMHO it's worth watching. It may surprise you.

The Public Service Announcements (PSA) of the time period were generally innocuous - wash your hands, be polite, stop-drop-roll, etc. The quirkiness of this 49-year-old short movie, and its position in the public domain, has led to its recent use in several music videos.

The film is sampled in "Everything You Do is a Balloon" by Boards of Canada, "Bloody Palms" by Phantogram, "20 Inches of Monkey" by Lamps, "Fool's Life" by Dr. Dog, "St Peter" by The Black Spiders, and "January" by Venetian Snares, and "Oh Me, Oh My" by Nerf Herder.

Like a lot of children's stories it may reveal more than originally intended.

Today the fat kid is a loser; in this movie, the kid who got fat was the winner.
Using injury as a motivator would be considered stigmatizing and unacceptable today.
And then there's the racism thing...

The plot relies on the Ten Little Indians theme from Agatha Cristy's 1939 novel and subsequent 1945 movie, And Then There Were None.

Let's review the provenance of this storyline. In 1864 Septimus Winner wrote a song called Ten Little Indians.

In 1868 the song was adapted and renamed (possibly by Frank J. Green) as "Ten Little Niggers" and became standard fare in blackface minstrel shows. It was a very popular, well known song.

Agatha Christie used the story in her novel of the same title, "Ten Little Niggers", about a series of killings on remote Nigger Island. This novel is the most successful (in terms of sales) mystery novel of all time.

Agatha Christie's novel was published as "Ten Little Niggers" in England and Europe. For the American market it was edited and renamed And Then There Were None. The brilliance of American marketing was to change the named "other" to Indians, (swapping out one exploited and deprecated group for another) and to make two of the victims into "good guys" that the audience could root for. One might claim that Indians held the same role in American history that the original title reflected in British perspective.

British versions of the book continued to use Agatha Christie's original title up until 1985. A 1987 Russian version used the title Десять негритят, or "Ten Little Negroes". Try to imagine a book and a movie called "Ten Little Italians", or "Ten Little Israelis".

Remarkably, the Ten Little Anythings storyline derives from a blackface vaudeville song dating from the Civil War. It's a racial song from the days of slavery. How can this possibly be the plot device used for a publicly funded, 1963 bicycle safety movie?

But wait, there's more.

Just like the American version of the book abandoned Agatha Christie's original title and used "Indians" as the "other", this 1963 bicycle safety movie abandoned the American Indian motif and instead uses monkeys for a metaphor.

All the stupid kids who can't follow the sensible rules are monkeys. The one kid who played the game by the rules turns out to not be a monkey at all; he's a white kid just like everybody else. Holy Happy Ending, Batman.

Monkeys have a special place in "our" coded narratives. Consider King Kong: black, taken from Africa against his will, shackled and chained, owned as an asset and seen as the key to fortune, entranced by a white woman and eventually shot down by the Army and the police. Can anybody deny that some aspect of King Kong's monkey is a racial metaphor? Does anybody believe that the whole "save the white woman from the black beast" narrative is just about explorers and show business?

"One Got Fat" was released in 1963. Something else that came out in 1963 was Pierre Boulle's book La Planète des singes. In 1968 the derivative movie, Planet of the Apes made its debut.

The Planet of the Apes book and movie series used astronauts and monkeys as a metaphor for racism, privilege, bigotry, and justifiable rebellion. During test screenings, reviewers noted out that black audiences drowned out much of the dialogue by cheering "Right on!".

Introducing the monkeys brought Agatha Christie's original title full circle.

That's a lot of stuff to find in one video. It really is a documentary of my youth.

If nothing else, it's interesting how modern music videos are connected to an 1864 slavery ditty. Fortunately, we've all moved beyond that now. Right?

Deconstructing the Despicable "Band of Brothers" Imagery

2012-01-13T00:05:00.002-05:00

By now most people with web access have seen the despicable photo working its way across the ether, the "money shot" picture of a band of brothers celebrating their victory, all in their uniforms, the heady moment when they could do anything and it was great to be alive.

What were they thinking? The answer is, they weren't thinking, they were just acting out their understanding of their assigned roles. They've slayed dragons, they've beat the enemy, they've come out ahead. They're winners, heroes, gladiators. They couldn't pass up the photo op.

When people ask, How could they do that? I respond, This is what they are, at their essence; you're not seeing a quirk, you're seeing the nature of the beast. And we're responsible for them; our pressures, expectations, and rewards drove them into this, with our blessing and approval.

Taking the picture was bad judgement; they were carried away by testosterone, arrogance, and their power. They've lost their perspective on the bigger human condition and any claim to decency. Their hubris is way out in front of them. In the moment of the photo, they've put pretense and posture aside and let their Inner Warrior stand proud. This camera doesn't lie.

People from other cultures will look at the photo and wonder, What have the Americans come to? But deep inside, to some extent, we Americans recognize and even embrace the behavior. We won't hold this against these men.

The guys in the picture will have to live with this for the rest of their lives, but they really only regret the publicity of it; they're good with the activity. I suspect if you had drinks with them in private, they'd admit "hell yes I'd do that again".

In the future, when they're under stress and having a "fight-or-flight" moment, they'll remember their experience and the lessons that have been imprinted onto their psyches. Don't be surprised to see this callous indifference again.

The attitude on display is so embedded in their "culture" that they can't even understand what's wrong with it; therefore, anybody who objects to it must be out of touch. Some of their colleagues and fellow-travelers are obliviously defending the photo right now.

Just to ensure there's no ambiguity, we are talking about the photo below, right?

They've completely lost their decency, their moral compass, and their connection to the American people. If they had any sense of shame, they'd withdraw into obscurity and do public service work.

And as far as that other photo (the Marines in Afghanistan), I find myself agreeing with Robert Wright; this is what happens in war, and when you choose to start a war you set yourself up for this.

Losing Faith: 1960's Alabama and Relative Perniciousness

2012-01-12T10:34:00.002-05:00

Relativity is tricky, in both physics and ethics. Sometimes it's pretty clear that two things are both "bad", but it's hard to say which is worse, to quantify or evaluate relative perniciousness.

In a recent incident, an Allegheny County police officer says he stopped at a congested intersection. There were two Township policemen and a Township Councilman. The County Cop says that when he asked them about the intersection, one Township cop punched the County cop in the throat and knocked him down, then the two Township cops filed affadavits and charged the County cop with criminal charges. The charges were without merit and were dismissed. The County cop is now suing.

Here's a question: Which was worse:

the Township cop assaulting the County cop, or
the two Township cops filing false statements, charging a crime that didn't exist, and attempting to put the County cop in jail?

The assault is a one-time violent wrong, which if survived will diminish over time; the perjury, conspiracy, and false imprisonment will have life-long effects if successful.

Here's an observation: the perjury, conspiracy, and false imprisonment of the County Cop didn't succeed, but the "justice system" did not follow through; there was no accountability for the two Township cops - who, if the County cop is right, committed crimes of their own. The criminal justice system did not deal with the false reports and fake charges; the victim had to resort to a civil lawsuit to try to right the wrong. And this is a policeman.

I believe in our system and our society. More to the point, I want to believe in our system and our society. (Because in the end, it's all about me.) And so I think, ok that's just one event. Aberrations happen. It's the exception that shows how good things are, most of the time. I want to believe that. All my inclinations make me want to believe.

Increasingly, I'm having trouble believing that there's just one problem every few years.

For instance, from the Post-Gazette's Sadie Gurman, Nov 13 2010:

The Allegheny County district attorney's office said it will review dozens of criminal cases involving a pair of Pittsburgh police officers charged Friday with framing two men in what prosecutors called a wrongful drug arrest.

Officers Kenneth Simon, 49, and Anthony Scarpine, 58, were put on paid leave and could face termination in light of the charges against them, which include conspiracy, official oppression, unsworn falsification and obstruction. Officer Simon also was charged with felony perjury and is accused of stealing more than $800 from the pockets of one of the men he and Officer Scarpine arrested.

The charges were the result of a months-long probe by the district attorney's office into the July 7 arrests of Tim Joyce, 22, and David Carpenter, 38, at a North Side car wash. Numerous drug offenses against the men were filed -- and later withdrawn -- after the officers wrote in sworn accounts that they witnessed a hand-to-hand cocaine transaction that the district attorney's office said did not take place.

Surveillance footage from the car wash, in the 2900 block of Stayton Street, "does not depict any contact whatsoever" between either suspect and shows Officer Simon taking a wad of what appeared to be cash from Mr. Joyce's pocket, prosecutors wrote in a criminal complaint.

Charges against the police officers were dismissed.

Sure, maybe there's more than one bad cop out there; it's not all of them, just some. And I'd like to think that the rest of the criminal justice system protects us from those few bad apples. Because the really bad stuff, that all happened in Alabama in the 1960's. Not in these modern times, not in Pennsylvania. Couldn't happen here/now.

From Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, we have this:

The "Kids for cash" scandal unfolded in 2008 over judicial kickbacks at the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Two judges, President Judge Mark Ciavarella and Senior Judge Michael Conahan, were accused of accepting money from Robert Mericle builder of two private, for-profit juvenile facilities, in return for contracting with the facilities and imposing harsh sentences on juveniles brought before their courts in order to ensure that the detention centers would be utilized.

Two interesting sidebars to mention:

Is this what happens when you privatize government functions (such as prison) - maybe when you run government like a business, justice goes away and you get business-like results?
None of this is trivial when one of the possible outcomes of our criminal justice system is execution.

How did these Luzerne County kids end up? How did the false imprisonment change them, their view of society, their view of justice? As a parent, what do you do when the Cops, the Judge, and the Prosecutor falsely imprison your child, and your kid gets raped in jail, joins a gang, and comes out a different person? Does anybody believe that expunging their criminal record makes them whole?

Which brings me, inexorably, to Jordan Miles. Jordan Miles (the violin-playing honor student at the magnet school) was beaten, tased, and had the hair ripped out of his scalp by three Pittsburgh policemen. The policemen submitted affadavits and charged Jordan Miles with crimes.

Fortunately, Jordan Miles had family and a clean record. If he'd had a marijuanna bust a few years prior and if English wasn't the primary language in his house, it all would have gone differently. But his family supported him, his community supported him, and the charges were dropped.

The more I think about it, the beating and scalping weren't the worst things those cops did to Jordan Miles; the attempt to falsely imprison him looms much larger. And if he didn't have a clean record and family support, it would have happened.

The more pernicious crime may be the filing of false statements, the conspiracy of the official report, and the attempt to deprive Jordan Miles of his liberty, to label an innocent man a criminal, and to (in fact) make him into a different person by sending him to prison for a few years.

I want to believe in our system, I really do. But when I look at the conspiracy to falsely imprison Jordan Miles; when I look at the fabrication of a story about Tim Joyce and David Carpenter, and again with Officer Ray Hrabos; when I look at the police escorting Big Ben in Georgia; and when I look at Luzerne County, I think: don't be naive, don't be a sucker.

And in each of these cases, the criminal justice system didn't self-correct; Ray Hrabos and Jordan Miles are seeking justice in civil court.

And when these incidents are left unchallenged, when the wrongs are not made right, our entire system is degraded and the people lose faith. And so the damage done by these perjuries, conspiracies, and false imprisonment accrues to both the instant victim and to our society at large. This hurts everybody.

And finally, I need to say: this is not most police, who are good, caring people. I would go further and acknowledge that most of those good police are prisoners of the system too. I understand why Alexis Madrigal expresses empathy for John Pike of UC-Davis. Peter Moskos attributes a lot of this to flawed training and places the blame on police departments, not police officers. James Baldwin recognized that notorious Alabama Sheriff Jim Clark was merely the endpoint of a system that shaped the sheriff just as it shaped the people the sheriff attacked.

The understanding that most police are not the problem does not mitigate the issue; as Allegheny County police officer Ray Hrabos said about his experience, "Wrong is wrong, and this needs to be righted".

Every complaint needs to offer a recommendation or else it's just whining; the recommendation is, We need to treat false reports and false charges (not wrong charges) as pernicious crimes against both the individual and society.

JusticeForJordanMiles
justice4jordan

Veracity of the Official Police Version and Public Confidence in Justice

2012-01-11T19:00:00.014-05:00

From the always excellent Rich Lord in the Post-Gazette:

A 2010 incident that pitted police against police is now the subject of a lawsuit in which an Allegheny County officer said that Springdale Borough officers roughed him up, baselessly charged him and lied about it all.

The complaint, filed today in U.S. District Court by county Officer Ray Hrabos, said that Springdale Officer Mark Thom pulled a gun on him and pushed him into a snow bank during a brief dispute over a blocked street. Another Springdale officer later filed charges against Officer Hrabos, most of which were dismissed at the district judge level. The last charge -- disorderly conduct -- was thrown out and mocked by a judge on appeal.

"If this can happen to Officer Hrabos, then who among us is safe from police officers who are willing to lie?" asked attorney Timothy P. O'Brien, who is representing the officer. "Any citizen can be in the same context as Officer Hrabos, where two or three police officers or public officials can fabricate charges if they're willing to state something that wasn't true."

Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Robert Gallo dismissed the disorderly conduct charge on appeal, telling both sides the matter "should have been settled that night. ... This is insane to come down here on this case. Just insane to even bring it here, this far."

Officer Hrabos said he was not worried about being ostracized for suing other officers. "Wrong is wrong, and this needs to be righted," he said.

The Jordan Miles case is about the same thing: integrity of the official version, a citizen's rights, and the (public servant vs military) police orientation.

Increasingly, people are being mistreated by police in the same shameful way that blacks have been mistreated for a long time. Now they're even treating cops like they mistreat black people. I've said it before; in today's environment, increasingly we are all black Palestinians, and maybe we're going to discover what all that noise was about.

Beech Hollow Energy Project, Montour Trail Economic Development, Downwind Implications

2012-01-10T18:43:00.015-05:00

From the Post-Gazette:

Power plants approved in Robinson, Washington County
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
By Andrea Iglar

Two side-by-side power plants, fueled by natural gas and waste coal, gained approval Monday night in Robinson, Washington County.

Supervisors hinged approval of the Beech Hollow Energy Project on 55 conditions, including the developer paying thousands of dollars in annual fees to the township, following guidelines for fly ash placement and monitoring well water and air quality.

Developers Robinson Power Co. and Champion Processing Inc. have 10 business days to agree to the provisions or township officials will reverse their vote.

The $538 million dual-plant project is expected to generate a total of 300 gross megawatts of electricity on 37 acres bounded by routes 22 and 980 and Candor and Beech Hollow roads, near the Allegheny County border.

It's an interesting location. "Tain't" in Allegheny County, but it's close. Inquiring minds do wonder how the natural gas and the waste coal are going to get to these two new plants.

This Google Map image shows the perimeter of the two power plants in yellow and the Montour Trail in green. Maybe they're going to use cargo bikes to haul the waste coal in?

The red circle on the map is the location of the Frac-Pure water remediation facility. This plant takes poisonous Marcellus Shale fracking fluids and provides a "cradle-to-grave" (their phrase, not mine) solution, rendering the nasty stuff into clean water and profitable products.

Frac water treatment, a natural gas power plant, a waste coal powerplant. Is this the economic development that anybody expected along the Montour Trail?

The unanswered question has to do with the 55 stipulations the township has advanced. If that's an attempt to make the project onerous to the developers, kudos and accolades to the township.

Where does the waste coal come from?
According to Energy Justice, the Robinson Power Company had planned to fuel the plant by burning the 37 million ton pile of waste-coal (the Champion Processing Inc. refuse pile) beside the proposed plant.

According to DPSInfo: Many years of mining in Pennsylvania created large areas of waste coal, called gob piles. This is the Beech Hollow gob pile, just outside of McDonald, as seen from the western side (photo taken winter 2008):

Pennsylvania gob contains far more mercury than any other types of coal or waste coal in the nation. Gob is also higher in mercury, chromium, arsenic and lead. Most of that will be captured in the ash, which -- at other waste coal burners -- is dumped locally, in communities near the power plant. Ash dumps aren't required to have basic protection like landfill liners. The waste coal industry has documented that toxic metals like lead and cadmium leach out of ash, so the groundwater is still at risk.

If they build two new power plants - a natural gas plant and a waste coal plant - there's going to be smokestacks and pollution. Let's take a look - just as a thought exercise - at what's downwind of the approved location.

You can tell the direction of the prevailing winds by looking at the airport runways (shown in yellow). If you draw a line (azimuth 120 degrees magnetic) from the power plant location, you get a downwind footprint shown by the purple line on the map.

Some of the effluent will climb high and drift far away; the heavier, more toxic particles will fall to the ground 10 to 15 miles from the plant. That'll be Bethel Park, South Park, Library, and McDonald.

Boy. It ~~sucks~~ blows to be downwind.

History of Beech Hollow Energy Projects

Beech Hollow 1.0:
From SourceWatch: Robinson Power Company has proposed a 250 megawatt (MW) coal plant, which would utilize circulating fluidized bed technology and burn waste coal. This is a revision of a 1984 proposal for a waste-coal plant. According to Residents Against the Power Plant, the Beech Hollow Energy project will burn refuse from a “square-mile dump” that is one of the largest coal-refuse piles east of the Mississippi, and from other refuse piles throughout the area.[1]

The U.S. Forest Service submitted comments to federal and state environmental regulators in March 2005, arguing that the plant would adversely affect wilderness areas in West Virginia.[2] The proposal was accepted by Robinson Township officials on Sept. 11, 2006; planning commission chairman Neal Matchett resigned in protest of the decision.

Robinson Power had until Oct. 1, 2006, to begin construction in order to prevent the air permit from lapsing. No significant construction has occurred on this project as of late 2007. Several permits have been challenged by local residents, keeping the project at bay.

On January 20, 2010, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection invalidated the plant's air quality permit, because Robinson Power had allowed construction to lapse for more than 18 months.

Beech Hollow 2.0:
Here's an artist's image of what the waste coal plant might look like:

Second Anniversary of Jordan Miles' Beating by Pittsburgh Police

2012-01-09T06:31:00.000-05:00

Two years ago this week, at 11pm on Jan 11 2010, there was an event involving three Pittsburgh policemen and one young man.

The three police officers were in a "99 car", which is a special sort of squad. Between them, these three officers accounted for 20% of Pittsburgh's illegal firearms arrests (no data available on convictions) in the previous year.

More recently, on Christmas Eve it was also an unmarked "99 Car" with plainclothes police that shot and killed a 24-year old black man who was trying to get away from them.

There is no independent truth from two years ago, no video tape or disinterested eyewitnesses, but it seems like everybody's version involves these common elements:

The plain-clothes cops saw Jordan Miles and got out of their unmarked car.
Jordan Miles ran away.
They chased him, tased him, and beat him.
They stuck a tree branch through his cheek, and ripped the hair out of a portion of his head.

While Jordan Miles was in the hospital (pictures here), the police submitted paperwork describing Jordan's behavior and charged him with crimes: loitering and prowling after dark, resisting arrest, escape, and aggravated assault (of the three policemen). The judge dismissed all the charges against Jordan.

The three cops spent a year off duty, drawing full pay and benefits, and even drawing the overtime money etc. they would have earned if they hadn't taken a year off with pay.

Local government decided not to investigate the event because the Feds were going to look at it. The Feds decided there was insufficient evidence to make a conviction of the police officers likely.

The City Of Pittsburgh has paid a retired cop to report that (acccording to the policemen's official version of events) the police acted consistently with their training. The consultant did not say that the official version was true, or that what the policemen did was either legal, moral, or justifiable. Pittsburgh Courier contributor Louis 'Hop' Kendrick writes that Pittsburgh paid Jesse James to investigate Frank James.

The police say that Jordan Miles had a Mountain Dew they thought was a gun. There is no Mountain Dew can/bottle in the evidence. The city's consultant explains that absence as an excusable, understandable failure to secure evidence.

A year ago, on the first anniversary of the beating, the Post-Gazette said,

A year after what looks like the unnecessarily harsh treatment of a law-abiding citizen, there is no sign of movement toward a just conclusion.

Pittsburghers have a right to know what happened to Jordan Miles. He and the officers have a right to see the facts aired in public. Until that day, a cloud will hang over Pittsburgh and what passes for justice, accountability and transparency in this city.

Until this is resoved, the Beating of Jordan Miles will continue to reflect poorly on the city of Pittsburgh and on the great majority of the police force who had nothing to do with it.

Memory and Perspective: Civil War, Pearl Harbor, Iraq

2012-01-07T09:52:00.010-05:00

We have written before of the importance of memory, relying on "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting" as a shibboleth.

Today we would like to expand the discussion of memory as essential to progress, and start off with American pragmatist George Santayana's "The One who does not remember history is bound to live through it again", shown as an inscription at Auschwitz.

First, we highly recommend Ta-Nehisi Coates' article in the Atlantic, Why do so few blacks study the civil war?

In my opinion it's a landmark document. It's a pleasure to see a good person's oeuvre distilled into a single work that has the potential to change the culture.
Coates establishes slavery, explicit in the South but also exploited by the North, as the cause of the Civil War, and repositions the conflict as possibly the consummation of the Revolutionary War rather than it's current place as the war that white people all feel bad about.

Second, we suggest Robert Wright's "Ron Paul Vindicated (Unfortunately):

A week ago Ron Paul tried to convey how the ever-tightening sanctions on Iran--which may soon include an embargo on its oil--look from an Iranian point of view: It's as if China were to blockade the Gulf of Mexico, he said--"an act of war".

This is sheer conjecture; Ron Paul is no expert on Iran. But now someone who does have relevant credentials has weighed in, and the picture he paints is disturbingly reminiscent of the one Paul painted. It suggests we may be closer to war than most people realize.

That piece leads to Vali Nasr's article in Bloomberg, "Hard-line U.S. Policy Tips Iran Toward Belligerence".

Tensions between Iran and the U.S. are so high, a conflagration could be tripped off without either country intending it. This latest spiral of hostility began after the U.S. and its European allies responded to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s report on Iran’s nuclear activities by imposing and threatening additional, tougher sanctions. New U.S. measures may drastically cut Iran’s oil revenue.

To escape this self-defeating outcome, the Western powers should imagine how the situation looks from Tehran.

Robert Wright picks up on Vali Nasr's suggestion, and imagines how it looks from Tehran:

Iran's nuclear scientists have recently evinced a tendency to get assassinated, and a mysterious explosion at a military facility happened to kill the general in charge of Iran's missile program. These things were almost certainly done by Israel, possibly with American support. If you were Iranian, would you consider assassinations on your soil grounds for attacking the suspected perpetrators?

Underlying our Iran strategy is the assumption that if we keep ratcheting up the pressure, the regime will eventually say uncle. A problem with this premise is that throughout human history rulers have shown an aversion to being seen by their people as surrendering. Indeed, when you face dissent, as the Iranian regime does, there's actually a certain appeal to confronting an external threat, since confrontation tends to consolidate domestic support. As Nasr puts it, "the ruling clerics are responding with shows of strength to boost solidarity at home."

This doesn't mean Iran's rulers haven't wanted to make a deal. But it does mean the deal would have to leave these rulers with a domestically plausible claim to have benefited from it, and it also means these leaders can't afford to be seen begging for the deal. When President Ahmadinejad visited New York last year, he gave reporters unmistakable signals that he wanted to negotiate, but the Obama administration chose to ignore them. After Ahmadinejad "went home empty handed," reports Nasr, power increasingly shifted to Iranians who argued for confrontation over diplomacy.

Even so, Iran's foreign minister made another appeal to re-open talks only days ago, suggesting that they be held in Turkey. But, as the New York Times reported, western nations interpreted this overture "as an effort by Iran to buy time to continue its program." Got that? If Iranians refuse to negotiate it means they don't want a deal, and if they ask to negotiate it means they don't want a deal.

Nasr says the tightening of the screws is making Iran increasingly determined to get nuclear weapons--not to start a war, but to prevent one. Having seen what happened to Muammar Qaddafi, says Nasr, Iran's leaders worry that foreign powers would "feel safe enough to interfere in the affairs of a non-nuclear-armed state."

And so we go back to Santayana, remembering that while the Japanese attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor was precipitated by many things, the final straw that moved plans into action was the US freezing all Japanese assets and Roosevelt's imposition of an oil embargo in July 1941. Which is pretty much what we're doing with Iran right now.

This is how a Japanese pilot saw Pearl Harbor in December 1941:

We can try to see their side first, and work for our goals within that understanding, or maybe we can eventually see what it looks like to them from their combat cameras.

Portland is Last Year and Hipsters are Passé; Pittsburgh and nü-Yinzers are 2012 n'at

2012-01-03T23:31:00.004-05:00

From the Washington Post, The 2012 In/Out List signals these transitions:

Out: Portland. In: Pittsburgh
Out: Hyperbole. In: Pragmatism

The Hipster is Dead. Long Live the nü-Yinzer

In a follow-up article explaining the Portland-Out-Pittsburgh-In declaration, Washington Post writer (and Pittsburgh expat) Maura Judkis explains,

“Portland has overextended its welcome as the destination for hipsters who want to find themselves, while frolicking in beautiful scenery and reasonable rents,” says [In/Out Listmaker] Hesse. “Pittsburgh is reasonable-rents, nice scenery, nice downtown, and the people are, in general, just far less insufferable.”

...I’ll go a step further. Portland, with its elaborate facial hair and abundance of strip clubs, represents irony. Pittsburgh, with its working-class pragmatism, is the opposite: earnest and straightforward. It’s a place where people drink cheap beer and wave their Terrible Towels without self-consciousness.

The natural life span of the hipster has come to an end.

Pittsburgh is poised to offer a new type of lifestyle. The Steel City has its own bike routes, microbreweries, organic food markets, art and lush scenery. Pittsburgh was named one of the world’s 20 must-see destinations by National Geographic Traveler in 2011 (Only one other place in the United States, Sonoma, Calif., made the list).

With its dramatic merging of two rivers, it has one of the best skylines in America. Don’t forget that it has one of the country’s weirdest and most delicious sandwiches.

It might be a cliche to say that Portland’s 15 minutes are up but not in an article about Pittsburgh. The man who first uttered that phrase — Andy Warhol — was a native son.

Forbes: Pittsburgh on Worst 10 Bio-Terror Readiness List

2012-01-02T17:44:00.026-05:00

Pittsburgh has made another Cities Ranked list, but this time we're in the Bottom Ten, according to Kristen Doerschner's article in the Beaver County Times, "Local officials dispute report on terrorist attack preparedness".

The federal government's Dept of Health and Human Services (HHS) runs the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and CDC runs the Cities Readiness Initiative. The CDC's City Readiness Initiative has been rating metropolitan areas (SMAs) on their preparation to respond to a large-scale bioterrorist event by dispensing antibiotics to the entire population of an identified MSA with 48 hours.

On December 5 2011, Forbes ran an article, "America's Most And Least Disaster-Ready Cities". The lines that grabbed my scan were these:

Here are the bottom eight MSA's in the Forbes report:

Charleston, WV
Little Rock, AR
Hartford, CT
Portland, ME
Pittsburgh, PA
Fresno, CA
Birmingham, AL
Albuquerque NM (worst)

There is some room for quibbling with the Forbes' methodology, as suggested by Kristen Doerschner's headline, "Local officials dispute report on terrorist attack preparedness".

Doerschner went to lengths to identify that the Forbes' methodology took the CRI scores from the last three evaluations and averaged them. In that light, the results don't indicate this year's preparation as much as the MSA's overall preparation, relative to the other cities, over the last several years.

That's the gripe of the local officials, who say the three-year average doesn't fully recognize their improvements.

From the DHHS/CDC/CRI website, here are the actual scores for our MSA:

What I get out of those numbers is that in 2007-2008 the region was unprepared. Since then, Allegheny County has done very, very well; the other counties have improved but not too much.

I think that's newsworthy: Over the last few years, this region has been been relatively unprepared for a bioterrorist attack; since then, Allegheny County is doing much better, and the rest of the region is doing somewhat better.

Beaver County Times Scoops Post Gazette

It's startling that there's no coverage of this in the Post-Gazette. Online searching in both the P-G website, and on Google for the P-G, returns: Nothing. Dead Air, Crickets, Nada, Zip, Zilch, Bupkis, Zero.

Shouldn't this be kind of a big deal for the Post-Gazette? Allegheny County is going to be surrounded on all its borders by bioweapon'd exurb Zombies?

Kudos, compliments, and accolades to the Beaver County Times and reporter Kristen Doerschner.

At the risk of being strident, I think that bioterrorism don't really care about the distinct autonomies of Blawnox and and Bellview and Beaver Falls etc, and the CDC numbers suggest we still haven't come to terms with regionalism (the RAD not withstanding).

Finally, to the Starve-The-Beast folks who would suggest that the Constitution doesn't explicitly provide for federal ratings of local bioterrorism readiness and so we should close that shop, I would say: Really? How else would you know about this?

2012 Burgh Bike Wish List

2012-01-01T13:58:00.000-05:00

There's a great discussion on the Bike-Pgh web forum soliciting 2012 WishLists, here's the link and here's my Wish List:

My demands as such fall completely in the context of WOW it's great here, there's a lot of wonderful things, great people working on the future, my glass is 98% full.

The weakness in my requests, and probably part of the reason that several of these things aren't accomplished, is that they involve regional vision and Pittsburgh is a Balkanized parochial mishmash. (but a very nice one to live in)

I must also recognize that my list consists of things I want OtherPeople to do and pay for. I think that some of these requests fall into the category of paint-and-signs, and some of these requests will bring "network" higher-added-values (I can't bring myself to say synergy). And with that:

Complete some path from SouthSideWorks to Waterfront. Doesn't have to be the permanent path but damn, open the SC gate for now, etc. If I could only have one thing, this would be it.

Develop simple, foolproof signage that helps a stranger riding from Ohiopyle to navigate the Boston-McKeesport-Duquesne-Waterfront-SouthSide- AND THEN WHAT? Station Square - Ft.Pitt Bridge OR Hot Metal Bridge - Jail Trail - Dahtahn Streets? The presentation that visitors see in the last 20 miles of riding into Pgh is confusing, non-intuitive, and not visitor-friendly.
Riding 300 miles from DC to Boston PA? Simple.
The last 20 miles to the Point? Impenetrable for a non-Yinzer.
Classic old-school Pittsburgh, you have to already know how to get there to be able to get there.

Opening the trail segment at SouthSideWorks - which looks quite ready.

Signage/Marking telling cyclists how to get from SouthSide - StationSquare to PointStatePark to NorthSide. There's several ways to do it, but there's no way for an non-Burgher to easily know.

Complete a signed/marked route from Station Square to Coraopolis and the Montour Trail. Could be: Put sharrows and share-the-road signs on 51 and Neville Island (and done!)

The southern connection from GAP to Montour Trail needs attention, especially now that the Airport Connector is open. Which I love.

The Panhandle Trail from Burgettstown to the WV State Line needs to be upgraded.

And in the 3-year timeframe (hey, we all have our fantasies, right?)
Route/road/trail that extends the PanHandle to the City.

Trail from Coraopolis to Monaca

Trailside hostel in Pittsburgh

Changing stations at a few trailheads like they have in Rockwood

Bike lockers at a few key locations

Speculating on The Manning Affair - Did Breanna Manning Kill Osama bin Laden?

2011-12-31T00:30:00.019-05:00

End of the year blog posts often fall into two categories: the retrospective 2011 In Review, generally a safe topic in which the author spins known events, or the prospective Predictions for 2012 in which the writer speculates about possible future events.

This homage to Oliver Stone splits the tropes and speculates about possible past events, the possible-yet-untold big story of 2011. Strap in and give this one a try.

The US Government knew exactly where Osama bin Laden was hiding for months prior to his execution. Several staffed locations in the neighborhood were watching the house and receiving the electronic intelligence. Things were going well; it was a gold mine.

In the aftermath of 9/11, mega-buck computer system contracts were given to the military-industrial complex to help tear down the silos and connect the dots in real-time. No more compartments; now the right hand (Panetta's Army) would know what the left hand (Clinton's State Dept) was doing.

Somebody took videos and documents out of these newly integrated uber-systems and sent them outside the fence. Although prosecution witnesses have testified that they cannot prove that the leaked documents came from Manning's computer, the junior enlisted soldier is accused of the greatest American intelligence violation ever.

The accusation that Manning's breach is one of the biggest intelligence failures in American history brings to mind these questions:
Why don't we see any impact?
Why is the only person charged a 24-year old E-3?
What will they do with/to Manning?
How could this all happen?

      ... Where's the impact?
When Manning released the documents to WikiLeaks, the people responsible for watching Osama bin Laden were aware that somewhere in the pile of documents was a clue that could unmask their covert surveillance, warn bin Laden, and put their people on the scene in great danger. Maybe a travel voucher, a consultant's bill for equipment repair, a mercenary's invoice for security services; some sort of a reference that was inconsistent with the risks being taken.

Faced with the impending document release, the US decided to bring the ObL surveillance project to a premature and preordained conclusion; they picked a day, attacked the compound, and executed bin Laden. (and I'm good with that)
The Big Story of 2011 is: B. Manning unwittingly provoked Osama bin Laden's execution.

      ... Why is the only person charged a 24-year old E-3?
Just like in Abu Ghraib, the middle-level NCO's and senior officers will not be charged. If they had to tell the truth to defend themselves, their stories of the military-industrial complex and what we're doing over there would unacceptably rock the Establishment, so they're only charging this one kid.

It's politically impossible for the Administration to criticize Hillary Clinton's State Dept for failing to protect their documents, just as it's politically impossible for the Administration to blame the HS-MIC geeks for the rushed, unwise systems integration ordered by the 9-11 Commission.

      ... What's going to become of Manning?
Nobody has any idea of what to do with Manning, because all the options have unacceptable political consequences. Manning's gender-identify crisis, which led to dressing as female alter-ego Brianna when off-duty, are both an indication of his tremendous inner turmoil and an impossible discussion for an Establishment that has just repealed DADT.

This blogger's guess: They're hoping that B. Manning commits suicide and solves the Establishment's problem for them. If the brig can't push the buttons fast enough for a suicide, they'll delay any decision about B. Manning's fate until after the 2012 election, and then if necessary they'll park Manning in Gitmo.

      ... How could this all happen?
The military chain of command completely bungled Manning's development and supervision. At initial intelligence school, before there was any access to SIPRNet, B. Manning was reprimanded for posting YouTube messages revealing sensitive information. After Manning punched a colleague in the face, Manning was demoted and told to expect a discharge. B. Manning was still given full access and kept on duty. A disgruntled insider is a much bigger risk that a malicious outsider.

The military's complete failure to address a obviously troubled person (Manning) is quite similar to their failure to address Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Malik Hasan. Hasan also has a history of supervisors who knew that something was wrong and took no action. In both situations, political sensitivity and career considerations prevented people from dealing with known, troubled misfits and we have suffered for that.

None of the hypothetical questions below can be discussed, and to the extent that we leave them off-limits we remain vulnerable to their repeated exploitation:

In the cases of both Manning and Hasan, did political sensitivity trump command responsibility?
Should we restrict clearances for troubled youngsters, including those who experiment with off-duty alternative gender identification?
Can the advocates of gays in the military explain the statistically unlikely event that the greatest intelligence failure in American history was perpetrated by a gay transgender soldier?
Would the pre-9/11 info-stove-pipes have prevented this debacle?
Can it be that twenty-something Breanna caused the execution of Osama bin Laden? Does she deserve a medal?
In raising the tranny-twinkie defense, is B. Manning going to set the LGBTQ community back and reintroduce cisgender privilege and transphobia?

If they're only going to charge one grunt for a systemic failure of the homeland security - military industrial complex (HS-MIC), I've got to say: Free Breanna Manning.

But Wait There's More: In case that wasn't enough, our 2012 Big Story dangles this little nugget for reporters hoping for a Pulitzer: Pakistan knew about the bin Laden compound and the surveillance, and they permitted US intelligence to work unilaterally within their country. Both governments were on very thin ice. The US decided not to trust Pakistan with knowledge of the execution within their borders and then we left a wrecked helicopter in their city.

The Pakistan government accommodated us in an unprecedented way and then the US humiliated them publicly with an untenable internal political problem. The current Pakistan-US crisis is another artifact of L'Affaire Manning.

Correct Expectations, Kick the Can, Accountability re Jordan Miles

2011-12-26T12:29:00.024-05:00

Sometimes, evaluating an experience depends on your expectations. If your expectations are informed and realistic, you are more likely to end up with the appropriate degree of satisfaction.

Before you go downtown — for dinner, a play, a meeting, business, etc — make sure you have the correct expectations.

From the excellent Rick Lord in today's Post Gazette::

The City of Pittsburgh paid a consultant, Joseph J Stine, to write a report which "concludes that jumping out of an unmarked car, pursuing Mr. Miles and striking him until he submitted to being handcuffed were consistent with police training."

If that's not your expectation when you go into the city, perhaps you should recalibrate. Also, a minor nit: testifying for cash that something is "consistent with training" is not the same as saying it's legal, justified, or moral. The Police Academy lesson plan doesn't trump the Constitution.

Playing Kick the Can

The report is not a whitewash; it does find one instance of incorrect procedure. When the policemen threw away the Mountain Dew can that they thought was a gun, they violated evidence rules. The report explains that this error is understandable in the context.

Jordan Miles insists there was no Mountain Dew. The report asserts without evidence that there was one.

The Mountain Dew is the purported basis for the police beating. No Dew, no justification.

If there ain't no Can,
Why did you Beat the Man?
If there ain't no Dew,
WTF is wrong with You?

Hired guns deliver the desired outputs. According to AELE, Mr. Stine's rates are:

$275 per hour for review of material and report preparation and submission
$100 per hour for travel
$2,000.00 per day depositon [sic]
$2,500.00 per day for trial testimony days
$1,200.00 per day for monitoring testimony
All plus expenses

Traditionally, a litigant gives a consultant money to get the desired report which is biased in favor of their case. What's curious in this instance is that the litigant (the City of Pittsburgh and the Mayor of Pittsburgh) are public and elected, respectively, and so they are presumably accountable for their decisions and the way they spend the Public Treasure.

It would be interesting to hear the Mayor support (or disavow) the expert report He paid for.
It would be interesting to hear who decided to hire this consultant, and what process guides public spending on this sort of thing.
It would be interesting to know, what public official supports the expense and the report that the City has introduced to the Court as authoritative and reliable?

The intriguing question is whether the City, the Pittsburgh Police, and the CopOnTheBeat actually believe this report (which they have told the Court is truthful). I kind of hope that they don't believe it, either.

@justice4jordan

We're Not All Home for Christmas

2011-12-25T02:12:00.004-05:00

Christmas Venn Diagram

2011-12-24T21:08:00.004-05:00

From The Flaneuse (!)

Christmas Venn Diagrams seem to be a British thing, as discussed here on Christmas 2010.

The Night of the Meek

2011-12-23T18:06:00.001-05:00

There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call The Twilight Zone.
— Rod Serling

The Night of the Meek, the December 23, 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone.

Part One, First of two Parts (14:30)

Part Two, Second of two Parts (10:21)

Zeno's Arrow, the GAP Trail and the Speed of Christmas

2011-12-22T13:43:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time there was a Greek guy named Zeno of Elea. Some pretentious people were making ridiculous arguments wrapped in very fancy structures and speeches and he wanted to show them they were being silly, so he took their thinking to its logical conclusion and described the problem of an arrow reaching its target.

So you've got the archer at distance=0, and the target at distance=100 feet. (We'll use feet because we're Americans and we don't like the metric system.) The archer wants the arrow to hit the target so she aims, draws the bowstring, and lets loose.

An unsophisticated person might think the arrow would fly to the target, but Zeno explained that if one was to follow his colleague's arguments, before the arrow could get to the target it would have to reach the halfway point (50 feet). And so, at some intermediate point the arrow is halfway there.

But then, before the arrow can go the rest of the way, it has to go with the halfway thing again. So at another intermediate point, the arrow is at 75 feet.

Almost there, right? But no, before it can hit the target it has to reach halfway, 87.5 feet.And again and again and again: 93.75 feet, 96.975 feet, 98.4875 feet, all of a sudden these numbers look like the damned metric system. The absurdity is, Zeno explains, that at any moment there's always a halfway distance to be reached first, and so truly reaching the destination is logically impossible.

Big silence; dead air. Zeno reformatted the story in terms of walking across the room, and explained why you could move most of the way across the room but you could never really get there, if you followed their thinking. The legend says that Diogenes, who was getting tired of the exercise, then walked across the room and sat down, rolling his eyes at to Zeno to show that he understood the fallacy in a way that was lost to the others.

It seems like an esoteric paradox that might have been amusing a few centuries ago, but we have better things to consider these days (like figuring out how many wars we're in) except that it keeps popping up.

The progress of the Great Allegheny Passage also seems to follow Zeno's Paradox. Each year, half of the remaining trail between Pittsburgh and DC is completed and introduced; each year the gaps are reduced, and yet in spite of the incremental progress it seems like true completion is never achieved.

Or say you're driving to Grandma's with your kids in the back seat. Are we there yet? No. Are we there yet? No. Are we there yet? No. Are we there yet? No. Are we there yet? No. Are we there yet? No. Are we there yet? No.

It may be that Zeno just figured out quantum theory before his time. If you're comfortable with location as a probability distribution rather than a fixed certainty, you're probably good with Zeno's arrow eventually being mostly there.

Today's XKCD works the same theme:

We are grateful for the XKCD-symbiotic website, Explain XKCD.com which draws out the cleverness of the work. Today they point out the nuanced fallacy of Zeno having an Advent calendar because he lived B.C.

Merry Christmas. I hope it gets here, and/or that we get there.

No Solistice Solace: My Mother and the Hanukkah Weather

2011-12-21T15:44:00.017-05:00

Quite often at the end of the day my life is a poorly framed vignette from a Woody Allen movie; the key themes are Me aka The Schmuck, me Not Listening, my Mother, and The Guilt. The details vary in each scenario, but that's the general theme. Today I ran headfirst into, "so... maybe you should listen to your mother?"

The local weather forecast called for unseasonably moderate temperatures (55F) and heavy rain all day. Not just a spritz of rain, mind you, but a near-Biblical deluge. As I planned the day I gave up any hope of getting on my bicycle, even though in the internal monologue in the back of my mind, I knew it was the start of Hanukkah and I dreaded the potential reminder of my Mother's weather expertise.

My Mother is a person of strongly held beliefs which may not always withstand rigorous inquiry. She is not, for instance, much of an expert on the physical world. Time and distance, directions, weather patterns - not her niche. She will call me to ask about long-range forecasts because she thinks I should know these things (but really because she wants me to have the guilt if it rains on her picnic); she asks things like: Is it going to rain on Easter? She asks me this in November.

But my Mother has one rock-solid bit of weather certainty: the weather will always be nice on Jewish holidays, she insists, because they are G^d's Chosen People and He would not rain on their holidays.

The physical implications of a Divine global nice-weather policy during Jewish Holidays would be catastrophic. Imagine, no rain anywhere for eight days. I could hear Jackie Mason asking, So, Mister Chaos Theory, you think a butterfly in Bolivia could make with the flapping wings and cause a problem in China, what about no rain anywhere for eight days? Now that would be a problem I think! It would have tremendous effects, it would be like Death Takes A Holiday on the Weather Channel.

Not withstanding the logical and physical implications, my Mother insists the weather will always be nice on Jewish holidays. In the past I'd schedule some weather-dependent activity - VFR flying, a bike trip, a visit to the beach - and I'd cancel because the weather wouldn't cooperate my Mother would say, you should have waited three days for Yom Kippur, you know how it works, they're G^d's chosen people...."

Today I went about my business in the gloomy wet rain, I blocked time and precluded any bike riding, and then in complete ignorance of the forecast the afternoon turned into this:

People are walking around in short-sleeves under blue skies, 55F on December 21, and I should have brought my bike and be out riding but no, I knew better and I listened to the computers and the forecast and ignored my Mother and in my internal audio channel I hear: You should have listened to your mother, you schmuck. You think Mister Weather.com knows better than your Mother? How's that working for you?

Aarrrggghhhhh.

And the great tragedy isn't that I have these discussions with my Mother. The great tragedy is that these discussions now take place without any interaction with my Mother, completely within my own mind. I'm screwing myself into the ground and she's not even aware of it.

She's inside my head, it's not enough that I hear my own internal voices I've got her whispering in there, too. It's like a Terminate-Stay-Resident computer program, running in the background and it's there again every morning when I wake up and reboot. She's installed; she could go Mute (hah!) and I'd still hear her voice. I leave it to others as to whether it's a bug or a feature.

Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish friends.

Happy Birthday Ludwig!

2011-12-16T17:54:00.002-05:00

Ides of December

2011-12-15T20:21:00.003-05:00

Military Surplus and Profit-Taxes-Lobbying

2011-12-09T21:35:00.009-05:00

The Homeland Security / Military Industrial Complex (HS/MIC) continues.

FY2011 sets record for military surplus transfers to police departments.

30 Big Corporations Spent More Lobbying Than On Taxes, 2008-10 (via EBM)

Good friends sent good links and I wanted to pass these along.

Thank You Mayor Mubarak Bloomberg and the HS-MIC

2011-12-03T00:02:00.003-05:00

We have recently suggested that in the aftermath of 9-11, police departments are losing their "protect-and-serve" civilian orientation in favor of a military/ counter-terrorism posture that is nurtured by the Homeland Security Military Industrial Complex (HSMIC) and led by civilians that defer to national military advisors.

We have received feedback that our claim is far-fetched, over-reaching, and myopic. Fortunately, New York City's Mayor ~~Mubarak~~ Bloomberg has weighed in to support our position.

From the NY Post:

NYC is ready to go to war.

Mayor Bloomberg boasted yesterday that "I have my own army" in the NYPD and, if that wasn't enough to establish the city as a worldwide power, added "I have my own state department" as well.

The comments came during a speech the mayor delivered at MIT describing how he was managing the city. Trying to offer some idea of the scope of New York's workforce, Bloomberg got a bit carried away with himself.

"I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh largest army in the world," he said. "I have my own state department, to Foggy Bottom's annoyance. We have the UN in New York, so we have entree into the diplomatic world that Washington does not have. I don't listen to Washington very much, which is something they're not thrilled about."

We look forward to learning about his army's perspective on the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners, the Geneva Protocol to the Hague Convention on the use of gas/biochemical weapons such as pepper spray, and the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

We remain intrigued about the Rules of Engagement the Mayor has established for the NYPD's claimed capability to shoot down civilian aircraft on their own authority.

What's amazing is that Bloomberg, who both promotes a domestic military presence and is himself a product of the culture of Homeland Security, manages to make Rudy Guliani seem rational, and manages to make uber-mensch Ed Koch seem a milquetoast.

Time to Go: Ensuring Separation

2011-12-02T11:30:00.002-05:00

How to know when it is time to leave?
The Great Works offer some advice.

"To hold and fill a cup to overflowing
Is not as good as to stop in time.

Temper a sword to its hardest and it is easily broken;
Amass the greatest treasure and it is easily stolen;
Claim credit and honour and you easily fall;

When the work is done,
and one's name is becoming distinguished,
to withdraw into obscurity is the way of Heaven."
      Tao Te Ching, Chapter 9

"Man, who is born of woman,
Is short-lived and full of turmoil.
Like a flower he comes forth and withers.
He also flees like a shadow and does not remain."
      Job 14:1-2

"Amid a place of stone
Be secret, and exult
Because, of all things known
That is most difficult."
      W.B. Yeats Responsibilities and Other Poems, 1916

A personal note: Today I retire.

This was a great gig for many, many years. It's been challenging and fulfilling.

I've been extremely fortunate to spend my time with bright, clever, engaging people who taught me so much, and I am grateful to them.

Increasingly, my little interior voice is telling me it's time to go. And you've got to listen to that quiet tiny voice.

Also, there's the Mayan 2012 end-of-the-world prophecy, and it would suck to not get at least a few months of retirement in before the denouement.

Just yesterday I read about Till Eulenspiegel, a German wit circa 1300. His métier was to find amusement by using alternative or literal interpretations of commonly used figurative language, and I think I may have something along that line.

Starting with an air traffic controller's blog post, Anticipating Separation:

Retirement is a great job but it takes a while to get it. Don't lose patience. Anticipating your own separation can be an agonizing process. Retirement, by its very nature, is a self-indulgent act. As it should be.

When my time came I was done being the team player. It was finally time to act in my own best interest, thinking only of myself and my family. As every controller knows, the sooner separation is achieved ~ the better.

When you start out, you want to get "checked out". You try to be aggressive and anticipate separation. The instructors teach you that while anticipating separation is good, what it's all about is ensuring separation.

I've been anticipating separation, today I achieved separation, and I went to the Admin Officer and checked out. Full circle in a way that Till Eulenspiegel might appreciate.

Separation Anxiety: A New Birther Meme

2011-11-28T00:02:00.003-05:00

I am intrigued and often amused at the dynamics of misinformation and disinformation, because they lay bare the elements of effective, credible narratives and identify our blind spots. They often seem to generate a higher speed of distribution if they can tap into a latent need in the audience.

For instance, look at the effectiveness of the corporate archive footage of Rockwell's Retroincabulator (and the subsequent update, the Turbo Encabulator). There are lessons to be learned there.

One recent local example would be the spoof FOP Press Release that did, in fact, become a news story that refreshed public awareness of the issue and took on a life of its own when the authorities over-reacted.

Originally from Alex Leary of the St. Petersburg Times, via Politico, we have this video developed on behalf of US Senate wannabee Steve Welch:

I have to wonder if introducing yourself to the electorate by demonstrating your capacity for smooth, glossy disinformation is going to have unintended consequences. (If, in fact, elections still have consequences — but that is a topic for another day.)

A Countdown of Sorts: 3 Days and a Wake Up