Another place is running out of meth lab clean-up funds (so says the Columbus Dispatch). I don’t like the idea of Meth Labs *not* being cleaned up. But then it’s not like raiding Meth Labs is the long-term answer to the drug problem. Somehow I suspect that this is only going make things worse as counties will likely try to increase civil forfeiture and other shady tactics so they can be more “self-sufficient” in fighting the drug war.
[--Peter Moskos]
Another Agitator fan sent me a link to a story regarding a recent Ohio court ruling that upholds warrantless GPS tracking of people in their cars.
[Judge] Holbrook wrote that “a reasonable expectation of privacy” does not exist for those parking and traveling on public roads.
This topic has been in the news for some time and the practice apparently dates back for some years. I first heard about it when an American born Muslim student discovered a GPS tracker on his car and the FBI demanded it back. That student has since filed a lawsuit against the FBI for violating his right to privacy. According to this recent article in WIRED, federal district courts have been inconsistent, but Obama, being no more of a champion of privacy than his moronic predecessor, is trying to get the issue before the Supreme Court so they can dispense with that silly warrant nonsense once and for all.
If it is legal for a cop to follow you when you’re driving, then I believe SCOTUS will rule that GPS tracking constitutes the same thing and is therefore Constitutional.
The person who sent me the link asks this: If the courts ultimately rule that it’s okay for cops to attach one of these to a car without a warrant, would it not then be perfectly legal for ordinary citizens to do it back to the cops?
My answer would be, no. There are two kinds of people in this world: the rulers and the ruled. If there is anything we know from watching our government in action, the rules (made by the rulers) apply only to the ruled. But, using the “reasonable expectation of privacy” angle, it would be hard (not impossible) to argue that cops have an expectation of privacy that citizens don’t have. We’ve seen Radley make this argument with regard to citizens recording cops, and vice versa.
Anyone else care to weigh in on the question?
[Posted by Dave Krueger]
I’m in Dubrovnik now, flying to Prague tomorrow for the last leg of my trip.
These photos are from Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia. I was there on a gloomy day, so the photos really don’t do the place justice. The 16 lakes that form the park spin off several dozen waterfalls, the largest of which drops nearly 250 feet (depicted in the middle photo). Due to sunlight, mineral deposits, plant life, and various other factors, the water changes color from month to month, week to week, even from hour to hour. It’s also incredibly lucid. The trails are rugged, and you’re pretty much free to do your own thing. So yes, you can pull stupid stunts like the one where your feet are in the picture, hanging over the ledge. Which I did, and in retrospect would have been a rather undignified way to die.
Beautiful as it is, Croatia is still scarred and pock-marked by war. You can’t really escape it. Even here. The park is actually where the first shots were fired in the first of the many post-Yugoslavia break-up wars of the 1990s.
Here is an aggravating story out of Dallas, Texas about a kid who discovers $2000 in cash in an envelope and tries to “do the right thing”.
She turned it over to the Dallas police who told her they would give it back to her if they couldn’t find out who it belonged to. Three months went by. Then, as governments commonly do, the city just changed the rules of the game, mid-stream, and decided to keep it.
“We appreciate your honesty,” said Dallas police spokesman Senior Cpl. Kevin Janse. “We’re going to put the money to good use. It’s not going to be wasted, but put to good use for the City of Dallas.”
I’m sure the city will be able to find a much better use for it than the girl who was living in a single bedroom apartment with her parents and four brothers and sisters.
Nice work, Dallas, you sleazy pack of bottom feeding blood sucking assholes.
Thanks to Facebook friend and fellow Agitator fan Benjamin Meinders for this link.
[Posted by Dave Krueger]
[UPDATE 5-12-11 9:50AM ET]
Nate posted a comment below that includes a link to an update on the story indicating a change of heart on the part of the city. But, after reading the update, I wonder if the city’s initial attempt to keep the cash was even legal in view of the state law.
A 17-year-old boy was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct in Oak Park, IL this week. His alleged crime? Creating and distributing a raunchy, offensive “girl ranking” list, otherwise known as “blatant jackassery.” This story made the rounds earlier this year, and his classmates say he’s previously been expelled for a similar stunt, but now the police are getting involved.
Jackassery aside, the kid, who has not been identified because he’s a minor (he should count his lucky stars), allegedly created and distributed a list ranking 50 high school girls by facial appearance, various body parts, and supposed sexual prowess. The list also reportedly included racial and ethnic slurs, and undoubtedly clever titles for each girl like “the Fallen Angel” or “the Hangover.” Witnesses claim that, after handing out paper copies of his list, he gave an impromptu speech in front of a group of boys, crowing “women are the future, unless we stop them.” In an utterly unsurprising culmination of events, the list ended up on Facebook (sounds familiar, right?). Oak Park police have charged him with disorderly conduct and have passed his case onto juvenile court.
Obviously, this boy is a repugnant little SOB who deserves to have the sense knocked out of him on a daily basis in prison or wherever his sorry ass lands in life. But criminal charges? Distributing fliers in school I suppose could be considered misdemeanor disorderly conduct, but I assume a good attorney could have this charge thrown out in court. Don’t the defamed students have recourse through a civil suit? Are the police just using disorderly conduct as a bludgeon towards a kid who said something unpopular? What free speech issues does this raise?
It sounds to me like this guy isn’t the brightest crayon in the box. He may be a plucky, audacious punk now, but a bright future of meth addiction and child support payments likely awaits him. If I were one of these girls, I’d be very tempted to “leak” the guy’s name and photo to Gawker, and let the internet’s collective snark decide his ranking. Then I’d wish him luck in ever again finding a women who’d be willing to touch him.
[Libby]
Addendum: Let’s just get the inevitable comparisons to Karen Owen and her Duke University F-list out of the way now: She was a jerk, too, and anyone who Googles her name now knows it.
I couldn’t decide which of these stories was more absurd, so I’ll just post them both. Excuse the lack of commentary, but I’ve got some major time constraints today, and anyway, I’m sure you guys will have plenty to say about it!
(you know there was just some angry mother out there who pressured the school to act….but I’m still not sure why authorities were at all warranted. Because they’re minors?)
TSA Frisks A Baby; Says The Stroller Set Off \’Explosives\’ Alarm
Here’s the visual:
I just love that the TSA immediately responded to the “frisking” story by writing on it’s blog:
The child in the photo was simply receiving a modified pat-down which doesn’t even come close to what the headline implies.
Modified patdown, frisk, same difference?
[Alyona]
If I’m reading this LA Times opinion piece correctly, it sounds like cops who have been disciplined for use of excessive force are retaliating by suing the city.
In years past, [the city] would often pay judgments or settlements in connection with accusations of police misconduct but then never bother to investigate whether the misconduct occurred. Thanks to the consent decree between the city and the U.S. Department of Justice, those cases began to be investigated — and continue to be, even though the decree is no longer in force. That allows the department to discipline or fire those who committed the abuses.
So, the increase in investigations resulted in more cops being disciplined, which led to more lawsuits by cops against the city. And apparently they have been winning enough of them to have cost the city $18 million since 2005.
Have we entered the Twilight Zone? This doesn’t fit in with my assumption that cops always protect their own, permitting bad cops to get off too easily if they get any discipline at all. This sounds like the opposite; like cops are being victimized by overzealous disciplinary actions in response to accusations of misbehavior.
Or maybe it’s really a story about scapegoats who are now receiving justice.
[Posted by Dave Krueger]
I was enjoying a discussion in the comment section of my flogging post and thought this deserved its own post.
Did you know immigrants have lower rates of crime than native-born Americans? Non-citizens, illegal immigrants included, are much less likely to be in prison than US citizens. Immigrants, by and large, have lower rates of crime than red-blooded Americans.
Here are the numbers:
Combined in state and federal prisons, “non-citizens”–which includes legal immigrants–make up just 4.1% of the population (94,498 out of 1,613,656). I have no idea what percentage of those non-citizens are illegal immigrants from Mexico, but of course it would be some fraction of 95,000. (A big or small fraction I wouldn’t guess.)
By comparison, 6.9% (about 23 million) of the total United States population are non-citizens (2003, US Census).
Why are immigrants less likely to do crimes that put them in prison? It’s a good question. I would hazard a guess that it’s some combination of working harder to stay out of trouble, good family values (including perhaps religious values), and self-selection (people who have the desire and means to get to the US, legally or not, may be the cream of the crop compared to those left behind).
Many people, especially anti-immigrant types, either don’t know this or don’t want to believe it. Living in a majority immigrant neighborhood (in Queens) and a city (New York) where one-in-three is foreign born, this doesn’t surprise me at all. It seems to me the further one gets from knowing immigrants, the more anti-immigrant the beliefs.
[--Peter Moskos]
Conneticut is considering a bill that would require the recording of interrogations of people accused of capital felonies or class A or B felonies.
This sounds like a good thing:
Under the bill, any statement made during a police interrogation “at a place of detention” would not be admissible as evidence in a criminal proceeding if it there is no audiovisual recording of the comments. The recording cannot be intentionally altered.
And what is another way of guessing it might be good? Well, the prosecutors and cops don’t like it:
The Division of Criminal Justice and the state police oppose the bill. They raised concerns about the expense involved and how it could hinder interrogation techniques.
[Posted by Dave Krueger]
“J sub D”, a regular commenter here and at Hit & Run, has passed away. His later life is a terribly sad story, one you’d never have gleaned from the wit and insight of the comments he left here.
Jennifer Abel has posted a nice tribute here.
Rest in peace, John Hannah.
[posted by Radley]
Cops busted an underage drinking party in Galesburg Illinois and charged a dozen teens with drinking.
…but the worst of the charges are felonies for eavesdropping on police because they recorded officers on their cell phones.
Of course, Illinois wiretap law makes it a two-party state.
“I think a lot of times people want to record us because they think we’re going to do something wrong,” said Galesburg Police Captain Rodney Riggs.
He said not only was recording police without their consent illegal, it was annoying.
So, what if the house had a security system that automatically recorded everything that goes on? Or what if the cell phone recordings didn’t have audio? Would they still have been charged?
This apparently happened over the weekend, so hopefully I’m not repeating old news again. These stories are all starting to run together in my mind, so I wouldn’t be surprised.
[Posted by Dave Krueger]
I put up some pictures of a Baltimore Crack House. For me it’s a dirty trip down memory lane. For others, it was a home away from home.
[--Peter Moskos]
In what is being called, “the single largest illegal-BitTorrent-downloading case in history,” a federal judge announced today that he would allow subpoenaing of internet service providers to find out the identify of everyone that had downloaded the cheesy Sylvester Stallone movie, The Expendables. An estimated 23,000 downloaders are expected to be notified in the coming week.
I’m not going to wade into the complicated (or not so complicated) issue of BitTorrenting and the accompanying copyright issues, but I’m not nearly so buttoned up when it comes to the broader themes implicated in this news: porn and privacy.
As outlined by Wired, the Expendables subpoenas are part of a broader scheme taken up by enterprising lawyers to subpoena downloaders, sue them for the maximum fines for copyright violations ($150,000) and then offer easy online settlements. With penalties for copyright violations so high, many will pay a couple thousand dollars to make the suits go away, which adds up quickly among tens of thousands of users. Lawyers haven’t limited these suits to mainstream movies or music, they’ve also gone after the illegal BitTorrenting of pornography.
Which makes this whole subpoena issue that much more interesting: if a judge is willing to allow subpoenas for copyright violations of X (Hollywood movies) what’s to stop a judge from issuing subpoenas for copyright violations of Y (pornographic movies)?
As far as I can tell, probably nothing. The privacy issues implicated in illegally downloading a random copyrighted movie and illegally downloading a random copyrighted porn are the same. And while the whole world finding out about your illegally downloaded XXX copyrighted information is one thing, the far scarier implication for the rest of us is that ISPs would readily strip you of your anonymity in the face of any subpoena, ultimately threatening users’ free speech and privacy.
Which kicks the question to internet service providers. As I understand it, there are three options: to either deny cooperation with the subpoenas and protect their users; inform users of that their information has been subpoenaed so they can challenge it themselves; or cooperate with the subpoenas.
All of these options, obviously, require a lot of paperwork, time, and money, but the final option is probably the cheapest and easiest — which is a little terrifying for, you know, the freedom of the Internets and The Future.
In the immediate future (or past), however, I just hope none of you had the poor judgment of illegally downloading a terrible movie. I always knew there was a reason I hated Sylvester Stallone.
[Kate]
Earlier today, Alyona posted the story from ASU that shows 1 in 6 women would rather be blind than fat, concluding that we as a society (gender?) are pretty “fucked up.”
However, I’m not convinced that it’s our priorities that are fucked up in this case. Choosing blindness over fatness is arguably a rational choice. Consider:
The truly “depressing” thing about this research is that it makes 1 in 6 women sound like superficial bimbos and ignores or obscures the fact that obese people in America are treated like total shit. Does anyone think maybe that could explain why some people would prefer blindness to obesity? Hell, I might choose blindness, too.
*I don’t actually buy into any of this “last acceptable prejudice” asshattery, but the fact remains that prejudice against the obese is a pretty damn common prejudice.
[Libby].
I was going to post some photos tonight, but I’m exhausted. The Croatian coastline drive from Split to Dubrovnik is intense—exhilarating, breathtaking, and, at times, terrifying. And not just because Croatians drive like chimps on meth. But more on that later.
Just wanted to check in to shamelessly note I’m a finalist for The Week’s Opinion Columnist of the Year award. I just learned of this tonight. Pretty darned cool. My co-finalists are Ross Douthat, Michelle Goldberg, Rich Lowry, Nicholas Kristof, Peggy Noonan, and Tim Rutten.
Winner is announced tomorrow night, so I wanted to post this while I can still say I had a fighting chance.
A number of women would rather be severely depressed or blind, than fat.
It\’s a new study out of the University of Arizona….
[Women] were asked to choose whether they would rather be obese or have one of 12 socially stigmatized conditions, such as alcoholism or herpes. In many cases, the women would rather have more of the other conditions, with 25.4 percent preferring severe depression and 14.5 percent preferring total blindness over obesity.
Of course what “fat” means is subjective, especially if you compare a Hollywood starlet to say, your average mom of 2 living in a suburb….but we can’t deny that attitudes these days are completely skewed about women’s health, and that there is immense pressure put on women to fit an ideal you may see in magazines or on billboards.
Then again, we have an obesity epidemic in this country, so talking about our weight is important….as long as it promotes healthy eating habits and exercise rather than bulimia and diet pills.
But long story short, preferring to be blind rather than fat says a lot….it means we’re fucked up.
[Alyona]
The United States now has more prisoners than any other country in the world. Ever. In sheer numbers and as a percentage of the population. Our rate of incarceration is roughly seven times that of Canada or any Western European country. Despite our “land of the free” rhetoric, we deem it necessary (at great expense) to incarcerate more of our people, 2.3 million, than the world’s most draconian regimes. We have more prisoners than China, and they have a billion more people than we do. We have more prisoners than soldiers; prison guards outnumber Marines.
It wasn’t always this way. In 1970, just 338,000 Americans were behind bars. From 1970 to 1991 crime rose while we locked up a million more people. Since then we’ve locked up another million and crime has gone down. Is there something so special about that second million? Were they the only ones who were “real criminals”? Did we simply get it wrong with the first 1.3 million people we put behind bars?
Because alternatives to incarceration usually lack punishment, changes to our current defective system of justice are hard to imagine. I am not proposing to completely end confinement or shut down every prison. Some inmates are, of course, too violent and hazardous to simply flog and release. They are being kept in prison not only to punish, but because we’re afraid of them. But for the millions of other prisoners–particularly those caught up in the war on drugs (which I would end tomorrow if I could)–the lash is better than a prison cell. Why not at least offer the choice?
That prisons have failed in such a spectacular manner should matter more than it does. But it should come as no surprise, since prisons were designed not to punish, but to “cure.” Just as hospitals were for the physically sick, penitentiaries were created–mostly by Quakers in the late eighteenth century–to heal the criminally ill. Like so many utopian fairy tales, the movement to cure criminals failed.
Make no mistake: flogging is punishment, and punishment must by definition hurt. Even under controlled conditions, with doctors present and the convict choosing a lashing over a prison sentence, the details of flogging are enough to make most people queasy. Skin is literally ripped from the body.
Is flogging too cruel to contemplate? But then why, given the choice between five years in prison and brutal lashes, would most people choose flogging? Wouldn’t you? How can offering criminals the choice of the lash in lieu of being locked-up be so bad? If flogging were really worse than prison, nobody would choose it. Of course most people would choose the lash over incarceration. And that’s my point. Faced with the choice between hard time and the lash, the lash is better. What does that say about prison?
[You can read more about this in the Chronicle of Higher Education and also in the May-June edition of the Washington Monthly (available in better newsstands, but not yet online here). Even better, BUY MY BOOK, In Defense of Flogging. Agree with me or not, you should find the argument thought provoking and the book a good, short read. --Peter Moskos]
So according to my guidebook on Croatia, this month marks the start of the migration season for deutschis touristus. Over the next few weeks, scores of Germans—traveling in groups ranging from two to well over a dozen or more—will wander hundreds of miles to the Croatian coast, where they will gorge on the abundant shellfish, sun their ingurgitated bellies on the rocky shore, and—if they aren’t too sluggish from the sun and shellfish—to awkwardly mate. It’s a fascinating and wondrous phenomenon to observe, especially this closely. Interesting tidbit: Most of the time, you can tell the males from the females by the bushy tufts of hair on their faces. (But not always!)*
Today I walked around Plitvice Lakes National Park, a land of gorgeous turquoise water and terrifying waterfalls that you can damned near walk over. I then accidentally got lost in the countryside, after which a kindly Croatian sheep farmer gave me a ride back to my room. I offered to pay him. He jovially replied, “No, no. Happens all the time.” He said this with a your silly, lost, desperate American tourist face was payment enough twinkle in his eye. So it was a mutual exchange of services. (Awesome technology addendum: In the Internet and cell phone age, you can actually Tweet to the world that you’re currently lost in the Croatian countryside. Note, though, that while definitely awesome, this does very little to actually help you not be lost anymore.)
According to my guidebook (for real this time), this part of Croatia also is where most of Europe shoots its American-style spaghetti westerns. So some town and street names, weirdly, are Croaitan-ized versions of well-known American Indian words, tribes, and chiefs.
Photos of the falls in the next couple days. In the meantime, here are a few more shots from Ravinj, which I think is my new favorite town on the planet.
(*Note: I’m going to claim that my part-German heritage gives me license to make ethnic-ish jokes about German tourists.)
Update (5/10/11): Apparently, I dropped the ball, neglected to do the legwork, failed to RTFM on this story. This story was passed along to me by a friend late yesterday afternoon, and in my hurry to get a post up and get out of the office, I didn’t notice that the article was 3 years old. The friend who sent it along pulled the link from a post at BoingBoing, which has also been removed as of this writing. A thousand apologies for this oversight. #LessonLearned
____________________________________________________________
Readers in Maine, look out: peering at a child could land you on the wrong side of a anti-child predator law. Rep. Dawn Hill is championing a bill that would make “visual sexual aggression” (whatever the hell that means) an offense for viewing children in a public place.
The bill was prompted by the admittedly-creepy story of a guy watching children enter and exit a public restroom.
Her involvement started when Ogunquit Police Lt. David Alexander was called to a local beach to deal with a man who appeared to be observing children entering the community bathrooms. Because the state statute prevents arrests for visual sexual aggression of a child in a public place, Alexander said he and his fellow officer could only ask the man to move along.
“There was no violation of law that we could enforce. There was nothing we could charge him with,” Alexander said.He attended a talk with Hill a week later and brought the case to her attention. Hill pledged to do what she could, Alexander said, and the result was a change through the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee in the House, which made the law applicable in both private and public places.
Hill said she believes the move was necessary to correct what she called a “loophole” in the state’s criminal law statutes.
Is visual sexual aggression really a thing? Like, a thing that police can arrest you for? How do they define it? Is it a gaze lasting more than 3.2 seconds? Or is it one of those “you know it when you see it” kind of laws that’s left entirely up to the officers to define and enforce?
Listen: being a creeper is not illegal as long as you aren’t actually harming anyone. I don’t like what may be playing out in that guy’s head, and if he ever made even the slightest gesture that indicated harm to a child or anyone else, I’d be the first person to punch him in the windpipe (figuratively speaking). Protecting children from actual harm should be the police’s job, not harassing Boo Radley because he makes the locals uncomfortable. I get that it sucks when the presence of creepers makes going to the beach or the pool less fun. But the answer to dealing with the few creeps out there is not to pass another vague law that could apply to anyone and for which the definition is determined by the arresting officer. This could easily turn into a law against irritating a cop while in close proximity to a public restroom.
Sheesh.
[Libby]
“AC/DC Says Their Songs Will Never Be Available for Download; Rest of Internet Laughs.”
[Techdirt]
If the popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East didn’t present a big enough problem for the foreign policy realists-turned-revolution cheerleaders in the Obama administration, it appears that Mexicans have caught the freedom bug, and that U.S.-backed Mexican President Felipe Calderon is hell-bent on squashing it:
On Sunday thousands of Mexicans marched in the capital, Mexico City, to demand an end to the “war on drug trafficking” launched by President Felipe Calderón. They view it is an absurd war that has cost 40,000 lives. Similar protests were held across the country.
The March for Peace With Justice and Dignity that culminated in the capital made demands on the authorities and on the criminal gangs to put an end to the violence. The protesters think that organised crime has infiltrated the government and that there is now a “co‑opted state” – a “rotten state”. The war on drug trafficking “is not supported” by the people, according to the Catholic bishop Raúl Vera. The protests are supported by the Catholic church. “We Mexicans must shout a categorical ‘stop!’,” said the Mexican Episcopate Council.
Calderón’s government has reacted negatively to the protests. The public security minister, Genaro García Luna, said it was “unthinkable” that the fight against the cartels might be wrong. Calderón boasted that he had “the law, reason and force” on his side.
Do such blatant salutations to iron-fistedness make Calderon’s enablers uncomfortable? Probably. Will Pres. Obama hold Calderon to the same standards as the other dictators he’s been lecturing recently? Probably not. The U.S. has been falling over itself to please Calderon since Obama came into office.
In September 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton compared Mexico to Colombia of 20 years ago. The key lines: “These drug cartels are now showing more and more indices of insurgency; all of a sudden, car bombs show up which weren’t there before. It’s looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago, where the narco-traffickers control certain parts of the country, not significant parts.”
Calderon went bananas, prompting Pres. Obama to tell a Spanish-language news outlet that Clinton didn’t know what she was talking about. In turn, Calderon gave Obama a little pat on the butt for dismissing an entirely accurate assessment of Mexico’s dance with failed statehood.
“I think the one who best-corrected Secretary of State Clinton was President Obama, and he did it very well. In Colombia, not just 20 years ago, but still now, there are parts of the territory that are controlled, dominated by and governed precisely by criminals and guerrilla forces. In Mexico there are NO parts of the territory in the hands of criminals.”
“It is very painful for Mexico that such careless statements are made … so careless, not responsible, as those by Secretary of State Clinton, because they damage Mexico’s image terribly. Yes, we have problems; yes, we have some things. I think the main thing in common with Colombia is that we are both countries that suffer the results of drug use in the United States. Both countries are victims of the enormous American consumption of drugs and now, in addition, of an exacerbated sale of arms from American industry.”
While Clinton got to keep her job after questioning Mexico’s stability, Calderon saw to it that U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Carlos Pascual did not. Pascual “resigned” his post after Julian Assange leaked diplomatic cables in which the former Brookings Institute VP criticized not just Mexico’s inability to act on drug trafficking intelligence in a timely manner, but also its abysmal prosecution rate for murders (Pascual noted in one cable that “only 2 percent of those arrested in Ciudad Juarez have even been charged with a crime.”) Calderon complained that the cables caused “severe damage” to Mexico-U.S. relations, and Pascual got the boot. (In his new capacity at State, announced today, Pascual will be “Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs,” which sounds a lot like a rubber room.)
But that’s not say that Calderon doesn’t have a crush or two north of the border. DEA Administrator Michelle Leonhart (a Bush holdover-turned-Obama nominee who was confirmed in December by a Democrat-led Senate) is a woman after his own heart. “It may seem contradictory, but the unfortunate level of violence is a sign of success in the fight against drugs,” Leonhart told WaPo last month. She added that the cartels “are like caged animals, attacking one another.” Which means that if Obama decided to chide Calderon for ignoring a popular uprising, he’d have to chide his Justice Department for aiding and abetting.
[Posted by Mike Riggs]
Cross-posted at Reason’s Hit & Run.
Today’s xkcd strip reanimates the corpse of famed scientist Marie Curie in order to serve up a clever statement about women in the hard sciences:
I’ve always thought that, while academics and activists are busy blogging about social justice and bias in the classroom, the real feminists are the women who are out in the trenches: the computer science classes, the medical labs, the engineering projects. They’re not making a career of giving talks about pay gaps and sexism. Instead, they’re saying “eff that noise, screw convention, I’m going to do what I like.” As Clay Shirky brilliantly said last year: “To put yourself forward as someone good enough to do interesting things is, by definition, to expose yourself to all kinds of negative judgments…” So get out on the field and represent, ladies, damn the consequences.
In case I haven’t made myself absolutely crystal clear: the world needs few women’s studies PhDs.* All the hard battles – coverture, suffrage, body autonomy and sexual harassment – have already been won, and aside from that pesky framework-of-consent issue, we’re standing on solid ground. What the world needs, in addition to nurses, teachers, and caregivers, is engineers, scientists, programmers, and math geeks (I don’t want to hear anything about how men are innately better at math than women. IIRC, there may be more male outliers at the high end of the bell curve, but women are otherwise as capable as men). It may be the case that these career paths have an institutional bias against women, although I’m skeptical it’s as bad as some claim; during my three years as a computer science student, I never once received any negative attention from professors or classmates. All academic subjects, from English to philosophy, art to psychology, were at one time a big sausage party. If we are capable of parsing Tolstoy or William Burroughs, calculus isn’t beyond our comprehension.
[Libby]
*This point is open for debate, as it’s entirely possible that the world needs no women’s studies PhDs.
DISCLAIMER: Some of the above statements may contain sarcasm or exaggeration and should not be interpreted as a hate speech aimed at any religion, ethnic group, sex, locality, or government agency.
[Posted by Dave Krueger]
2 pounds of pot get a man in New Orleans a life sentence.
A 35 year old man from New Orleans was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison after he was convicted of possessing two pounds of marijuana with the intent to distribute. It was the fourth marijuana conviction for Cornell Hood II, and likely his last as a free man.
Here are a few more details from a local paper.
At Hood’s one-day trial, the evidence presented by the prosecution included a digital scale and about a dozen bags that had contained marijuana before being seized from the house, testimony showed. Deputies also found $1,600 in cash and a student-loan application with Hood’s name on it inside of a night stand.
Jurors deliberated for less than two hours and convicted Hood of a reduced charge, which usually carries no more than 15 years’ imprisonment. Assistant District Attorney Nick Noriea Jr. then used Hood’s past convictions on Thursday to argue that he was a career criminal worthy of a severe punishment.
Sounds like a real career criminal, student loan application and all.
[Alyona]
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