April 4, 2009
New: RWB on Suwicha’s sentencing
Internet user gets ten years in jail for posting content that “defamed” monarchy (3 April 2009):
Reporters Without Borders condemns the 10-year jail sentence which a criminal court in the northeast Bangkok district of Ratchada imposed today on Suwicha Thakor for posting content online that was deemed to have insulted the monarchy. Thakor has been held in Bangkok’s Klong Prem prison since 14 January.
“The charge of lese majeste has become a major tool of repression in Thailand,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The sentence passed on Suwicha Thakor violates online free expression and is out of all proportion to what he is alleged to have done. We call for his release and we urge the government to amend this law, which is being abused in an unacceptable manner.” The rest is at Thai Political Prisoners.
Saturday, April 04, 2009
Blogger Lands in Jail for Insulting the Thai Monarchy
I don't mean to belittle the problems of Alaskan bloggers, but this news story shows that others have it much worse. I don't think the governor reads this blog, so I'm not worried she might try to see if Alaska can copy this too.
Friday, April 03, 2009
Blogging - What's Real? How Do We Know? Stevens, Kepner, Joy
It's Saturday morning in Chiang Mai. We have tickets for the Monday afternoon flight to Taipei and Tuesday afternoon to Anchorage. I've got things to do, but I got a comment today on the Let's Get Real about Mary Beth Kepner post that has my brain twisting.
How do any of us know what is real? OK, I don't want to go into a deep philosophical discussion, so let's limit this to what we see and hear in the news. Suppose you read that a prominent politician's conviction has been thrown out and that there were allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, and that there was an FBI 'whistleblower' who said his partner was violating the rules and was much too close to the witnesses. And the defense claimed this partner was having an affair with a key witness based on the whistleblower's complaint.
How do we cut through all that to find out what is true? I don't know about you, but I tend to rely on my beliefs which are based on my experiences and education. Those beliefs then inform the labels I read in the article. The interpretations are tempered by any personal experiences I have had directly with any of the people or places in the article.
I tend to 'think' more than the average person. My job was to think critically and to teach people to think critically. But I still get seduced by my stereotypes when I'm not being careful, especially if a story matches what I want to believe.
So I tend to be wary of 'politicians'. The nature of the system is that they need to raise money to get elected. And we know that people that help them get elected with big contributions are more likely to get an audience when they want one. Most people write checks to candidates they agree with, so if a candidate votes the way the contributor suggests, it isn't necessarily suspicious. But big lobbyists tend to contribute to all the likely candidates - it's not about ideology, it's about getting a foot in the door and getting what they want later on.
So 'politician' being convicted of corruption. My unthinking response is, "Yes!" If it's a Republican, then add another exclamation point. OK, I know there are honest politicians and good, decent Republicans. But if I don't stop to reflect on that, my gut reaction works through my stereotypes. But in this case, there are personal experiences too. I've met Ted Stevens on a couple of occasions. (I'm an Alaskan. Is there an Alaskan whose been around more than five years who hasn't met Ted?) He's smart, he's rabidly dedicated to doing what he thinks is right for Alaska which tends to mean getting money sent to Alaska. He also has been a Senator forever and from what I can tell, he already had an ego and temper long ago. All these years surrounded by sycophants hasn't helped his ego. And I know people who have told me they've seen the effects close up of how some of that money has spilled over into the waiting buckets of associates. Fishing and Seward for example. [Note: The ADN seems not to be giving free access to the Seward article. You may need a library password to get through on this link. The article citation is: Ben Stevens ' secret fish deal - State senator helped steer Adak pollock to a company he had financial stake in Anchorage Daily News (AK) - Sunday, September 18, 2005 Author: RICHARD MAUER Anchorage Daily News ; Staff ]
Whistleblower. That's a magic word for me. This is someone who sees a wrong and when the powers that be won't fix it, he or she risks everything to make sure the public is protected. Deep Throat. Daniel Elsberg. Jeffrey Wigand (played by Russell Crowe in The Insider). Karen Silkwood. These are all heroes. So the word whistleblower tends to turn on the 'good guy' reactors in my brain.
But in this case, I have some personal contact. I've watched in court and had several conversations with the 'corrupt' FBI agent. And the 'whistleblower's' comments are at odds with my sense of Mary Beth Kepner's professionalism and judgment.
Our science based society puts lots of weight on objectivity. We're supposed to keep an arm's length. We're supposed to judge the facts using rationality, not feelings. I had a conversation just yesterday with an anthropologist who is studying farmers in a small Thai village. Anthropology has gone through these debates about studying cultures 'objectively' from the outside or 'subjectively' by being a participant. This anthropologist is living in the house of one of the villagers when staying there and has been unofficially adopted by the family. This puts some limitations on the anthropologist's movements, but on the other hand gives the opportunity to learn things that wouldn't be available to someone looking 'objectively' from outside. There is no one best way.
When I first started blogging the trials in 2007, it didn't occur to me to talk to any of the participants. I was somewhat surprised to see some of the reporters chatting with the defense attorneys, the prosecutors, even the witnesses. Well, of course, Steve, that's what reporters do. But to me it seemed like that would taint what I wrote. If I actually know someone, if they had the courtesy to talk to me, wouldn't I owe them something, some sort of restraint perhaps on what I wrote?
Eventually, I did one day ask an FBI technician a question about a missing exhibit and learned from the answer that they had been reading my blog and trying to figure out who in the courtroom was writing it. OK, so that's what I wanted, people reading my blog. But to what extent do I then become a participant? But every reporter has to deal with the fact that their subjects read their articles and in many cases their behavior is affected by what they read. There is no complete objectivity. That led me to invite Mary Beth Kepner to talk to a class. And there were, as I've said in other posts, other conversations when we accidentally met somewhere in Anchorage.
So, when I read her name in the newspaper along with the 'whistleblower's' allegations, I had to think carefully about whether those personal conversations gave me important information (like the anthropologist gets from the adoptive family) or whether those conversations bias me against the 'whistleblower' and make me miss 'the truth.' [I know that putting things in quotation marks can be annoying, but it's the cleanest way I know how to point out that I'm using these words with some skepticism.]
So I read the complaint carefully. While I acknowledge I couldn't totally erase my impressions from my mind, the complaint on its own just seemed peculiar. I've written at length about it. First the redacted version. Then the less redacted version. (I even blew my own horn a bit when there were news reports that Joy hadn't been granted whistleblower status, but that turned out to be another lesson in why you shouldn't blow your own horn. Whistleblower status turned out to not be so clear cut in the Justice Department.)
Law enforcement officers have a lot of pressure to not rat on their own - even when their own commit serious crimes. Why would this agent rat on his colleague for things like being too close to an undercover source? It's an anomaly at the very least, if not bizarre.
I've written quite of few posts on this topic. The one that comes closest to tying things all together with links to all the others is Checkered Swan at the Stevens' Trial? post.
But in this post I want to focus on the difficulty of really knowing and how each of us has stories buried in our heads which give meaning to the words we read, whether that meaning is really in those words or not. Even if we don't have an immediate personal stake and won't be affected in any way, we judge where the truth lies not so much on the facts (in this situation there are still enough missing facts that we have to use circumstantial evidence) but on our beliefs, our prior experiences with the labels in the story, and our own emotional needs.
Perhaps Mary Beth Kepner did some voodoo on me that has kept me disbelieving Joy's allegations. Perhaps my ego is now invested in this and I want things to fall a certain way so that I will be vindicated as being right from the beginning. I work hard to make calls based on as much factual information as possible and with as much self-examination of my own hidden biases and motives as I can. Most of the time I don't write conclusions because there's still too many missing pieces. I just stack up the evidence as I see it and let readers draw their own conclusions. But, of course, which things I choose to list and which I omit, and how I tie them together will affect where the uncritical reader takes it. And the ideologically motivated reader will not be persuaded at all if my stacks of evidence don't point to the conclusion he wants to believe.
So, as someone who has followed this story closer than most people and still is not sure what it all means, I'd call on others who value the quest, if not the certainty, of truth, to be cautious in their conclusions. And to be skeptical of those who use any of this story to declare certainty about anything but the absolute facts - such as the fact that the Attorney General has written:
So, about that comment on the blog today. How do I know that the writer has something solid? Part of me wants to say, "Yes!' just because it would mean I was on the right track. But how much does he really know? It sounds like he's had a closer look than most, but that doesn't mean that his filters, his stories didn't lead him to unwarranted conclusions.
Ambiguity is not one of humankind's favorite places to be. We like to know. And even if we don't have enough evidence, we tend to jump to conclusions anyway. We like closure. I think that's why sports are so popular. At the end of the game we know who is the winner and who is the loser. Some may still dispute which is the best team, but they can't dispute who won the game.
[UPDATE March 17, 2012: Cliff Groh pursues the question of why the Bush Administration pursued the Ted Stevens indictment using the Schuelke Report for more information.]
How do any of us know what is real? OK, I don't want to go into a deep philosophical discussion, so let's limit this to what we see and hear in the news. Suppose you read that a prominent politician's conviction has been thrown out and that there were allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, and that there was an FBI 'whistleblower' who said his partner was violating the rules and was much too close to the witnesses. And the defense claimed this partner was having an affair with a key witness based on the whistleblower's complaint.
How do we cut through all that to find out what is true? I don't know about you, but I tend to rely on my beliefs which are based on my experiences and education. Those beliefs then inform the labels I read in the article. The interpretations are tempered by any personal experiences I have had directly with any of the people or places in the article.
I tend to 'think' more than the average person. My job was to think critically and to teach people to think critically. But I still get seduced by my stereotypes when I'm not being careful, especially if a story matches what I want to believe.
So I tend to be wary of 'politicians'. The nature of the system is that they need to raise money to get elected. And we know that people that help them get elected with big contributions are more likely to get an audience when they want one. Most people write checks to candidates they agree with, so if a candidate votes the way the contributor suggests, it isn't necessarily suspicious. But big lobbyists tend to contribute to all the likely candidates - it's not about ideology, it's about getting a foot in the door and getting what they want later on.
So 'politician' being convicted of corruption. My unthinking response is, "Yes!" If it's a Republican, then add another exclamation point. OK, I know there are honest politicians and good, decent Republicans. But if I don't stop to reflect on that, my gut reaction works through my stereotypes. But in this case, there are personal experiences too. I've met Ted Stevens on a couple of occasions. (I'm an Alaskan. Is there an Alaskan whose been around more than five years who hasn't met Ted?) He's smart, he's rabidly dedicated to doing what he thinks is right for Alaska which tends to mean getting money sent to Alaska. He also has been a Senator forever and from what I can tell, he already had an ego and temper long ago. All these years surrounded by sycophants hasn't helped his ego. And I know people who have told me they've seen the effects close up of how some of that money has spilled over into the waiting buckets of associates. Fishing and Seward for example. [Note: The ADN seems not to be giving free access to the Seward article. You may need a library password to get through on this link. The article citation is: Ben Stevens ' secret fish deal - State senator helped steer Adak pollock to a company he had financial stake in Anchorage Daily News (AK) - Sunday, September 18, 2005 Author: RICHARD MAUER Anchorage Daily News ; Staff ]
Whistleblower. That's a magic word for me. This is someone who sees a wrong and when the powers that be won't fix it, he or she risks everything to make sure the public is protected. Deep Throat. Daniel Elsberg. Jeffrey Wigand (played by Russell Crowe in The Insider). Karen Silkwood. These are all heroes. So the word whistleblower tends to turn on the 'good guy' reactors in my brain.
But in this case, I have some personal contact. I've watched in court and had several conversations with the 'corrupt' FBI agent. And the 'whistleblower's' comments are at odds with my sense of Mary Beth Kepner's professionalism and judgment.
Our science based society puts lots of weight on objectivity. We're supposed to keep an arm's length. We're supposed to judge the facts using rationality, not feelings. I had a conversation just yesterday with an anthropologist who is studying farmers in a small Thai village. Anthropology has gone through these debates about studying cultures 'objectively' from the outside or 'subjectively' by being a participant. This anthropologist is living in the house of one of the villagers when staying there and has been unofficially adopted by the family. This puts some limitations on the anthropologist's movements, but on the other hand gives the opportunity to learn things that wouldn't be available to someone looking 'objectively' from outside. There is no one best way.
When I first started blogging the trials in 2007, it didn't occur to me to talk to any of the participants. I was somewhat surprised to see some of the reporters chatting with the defense attorneys, the prosecutors, even the witnesses. Well, of course, Steve, that's what reporters do. But to me it seemed like that would taint what I wrote. If I actually know someone, if they had the courtesy to talk to me, wouldn't I owe them something, some sort of restraint perhaps on what I wrote?
Eventually, I did one day ask an FBI technician a question about a missing exhibit and learned from the answer that they had been reading my blog and trying to figure out who in the courtroom was writing it. OK, so that's what I wanted, people reading my blog. But to what extent do I then become a participant? But every reporter has to deal with the fact that their subjects read their articles and in many cases their behavior is affected by what they read. There is no complete objectivity. That led me to invite Mary Beth Kepner to talk to a class. And there were, as I've said in other posts, other conversations when we accidentally met somewhere in Anchorage.
So, when I read her name in the newspaper along with the 'whistleblower's' allegations, I had to think carefully about whether those personal conversations gave me important information (like the anthropologist gets from the adoptive family) or whether those conversations bias me against the 'whistleblower' and make me miss 'the truth.' [I know that putting things in quotation marks can be annoying, but it's the cleanest way I know how to point out that I'm using these words with some skepticism.]
So I read the complaint carefully. While I acknowledge I couldn't totally erase my impressions from my mind, the complaint on its own just seemed peculiar. I've written at length about it. First the redacted version. Then the less redacted version. (I even blew my own horn a bit when there were news reports that Joy hadn't been granted whistleblower status, but that turned out to be another lesson in why you shouldn't blow your own horn. Whistleblower status turned out to not be so clear cut in the Justice Department.)
Law enforcement officers have a lot of pressure to not rat on their own - even when their own commit serious crimes. Why would this agent rat on his colleague for things like being too close to an undercover source? It's an anomaly at the very least, if not bizarre.
I've written quite of few posts on this topic. The one that comes closest to tying things all together with links to all the others is Checkered Swan at the Stevens' Trial? post.
But in this post I want to focus on the difficulty of really knowing and how each of us has stories buried in our heads which give meaning to the words we read, whether that meaning is really in those words or not. Even if we don't have an immediate personal stake and won't be affected in any way, we judge where the truth lies not so much on the facts (in this situation there are still enough missing facts that we have to use circumstantial evidence) but on our beliefs, our prior experiences with the labels in the story, and our own emotional needs.
Perhaps Mary Beth Kepner did some voodoo on me that has kept me disbelieving Joy's allegations. Perhaps my ego is now invested in this and I want things to fall a certain way so that I will be vindicated as being right from the beginning. I work hard to make calls based on as much factual information as possible and with as much self-examination of my own hidden biases and motives as I can. Most of the time I don't write conclusions because there's still too many missing pieces. I just stack up the evidence as I see it and let readers draw their own conclusions. But, of course, which things I choose to list and which I omit, and how I tie them together will affect where the uncritical reader takes it. And the ideologically motivated reader will not be persuaded at all if my stacks of evidence don't point to the conclusion he wants to believe.
So, as someone who has followed this story closer than most people and still is not sure what it all means, I'd call on others who value the quest, if not the certainty, of truth, to be cautious in their conclusions. And to be skeptical of those who use any of this story to declare certainty about anything but the absolute facts - such as the fact that the Attorney General has written:
In light of this conclusion, and in consideration of the totality of the circumstances of this particular case, I have determined that it is in the interest of justice to dismiss the indictment and not proceed with a new trial.And even here I'm taking the Anchorage Daily News' word for it, but there were many other similar reports so I feel reasonably confident this is accurate.
So, about that comment on the blog today. How do I know that the writer has something solid? Part of me wants to say, "Yes!' just because it would mean I was on the right track. But how much does he really know? It sounds like he's had a closer look than most, but that doesn't mean that his filters, his stories didn't lead him to unwarranted conclusions.
Ambiguity is not one of humankind's favorite places to be. We like to know. And even if we don't have enough evidence, we tend to jump to conclusions anyway. We like closure. I think that's why sports are so popular. At the end of the game we know who is the winner and who is the loser. Some may still dispute which is the best team, but they can't dispute who won the game.
[UPDATE March 17, 2012: Cliff Groh pursues the question of why the Bush Administration pursued the Ted Stevens indictment using the Schuelke Report for more information.]
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Thai Elephant Conservation Center Hospital in Lampang and the Nursery (Part 2)
For anyone who wanted to see more of JP's research on elephant self recognition in mirrors, here's a link to the published article with videos . And here's another link to his interview on National Public Radio.
Can you see the Thai word for elephant hospital in both signs? I ask that only because most people just see seemingly impossible script, but if you look closely, you can see the letters. The last three letters of the top line of both pictures is 'elephant' - ช้าง. "Chang" The little ้ up above means it's high tone. Note also that letters look a little different in different fonts. The letters in front of ช้าง spell hospital.
Below is a list of the names of the elephants in the hospital when we were there on Wednesday. I would have photoshopped the three pictures together, but the final picture would have been way too small to read anything.
As it is you may want to double click to enlarge the pictures.
Owner indicates how the elephant got here. Anyone can send their sick elephant here for treatment. Confiscated seems to include Burmese elephants that somehow got into Thailand.
You probably have to enlarge this one, but it's the list of reasons
why each elephant is in the hospital.
This one was the most obviously injured. Probably this was a logging accident.
This baby was four months old if I recall correctly.
And this one was eight months old.
Can you see the Thai word for elephant hospital in both signs? I ask that only because most people just see seemingly impossible script, but if you look closely, you can see the letters. The last three letters of the top line of both pictures is 'elephant' - ช้าง. "Chang" The little ้ up above means it's high tone. Note also that letters look a little different in different fonts. The letters in front of ช้าง spell hospital.Below is a list of the names of the elephants in the hospital when we were there on Wednesday. I would have photoshopped the three pictures together, but the final picture would have been way too small to read anything.
As it is you may want to double click to enlarge the pictures.
Owner indicates how the elephant got here. Anyone can send their sick elephant here for treatment. Confiscated seems to include Burmese elephants that somehow got into Thailand.
You probably have to enlarge this one, but it's the list of reasonswhy each elephant is in the hospital.
This one was the most obviously injured. Probably this was a logging accident.
So this isn't the last picture you see here, here are some pictures from the elephant nursery.
This baby was four months old if I recall correctly.
And this one was eight months old.
March 2009 Google and Other Search Terms
I put up these posts to highlight the power of internet searches, how they sometimes go poorly astray, some of the more unexpected things people search for, the satisfaction I get when someone appears to have found just what they want, and the frustration when they get close, but don't know how to get the rest of the way. I learn about how people get here and maybe someone reading this will figure out something useful here too.
Click here for all the other posts on interesting google searches.
- what can i do to be more interesting? A reasonable question, but I don't think this person found the answer here. The person got to the November google search page.
- do federal judges fly on sundays with us marshals I'm sure I didn't have the answer for this, but there was something about Federal Marshals flying with Vic Kohring on Monday.
- pomegranate phone release india - sadly the pomegranate phone is not a real phone, but I was surprised at the number of people who thought it was. The spot is very well done which is why I posted it originally. This query was from someone in Bombay
- does the fbi pay for house hunting for new employees - this person got to the post on the FBI complaint by Chad Joy which did not answer the question, but maybe raised a lot of questions the seeker hadn't even considered.
- what is the thai version of lol - Bingo! Here's someone who got exactly what was sought: lol in Thai.
- does a yellow shirt go with red shorts - Absolutely, but they didn't get that answer. Instead they got a post on the political implications of redshirts and yellowshirts in Thailand.
- do americans even know where wales is? This UK browser didn't get the answer either, but at least now knows that the US has a place called Wales too. To Live in Die in Wales Alaska was probably a lot more than the person was expecting.
- famous people born in pennsylvania with their last name beggining with u (1909) - If this browser, who got to Famous People Born in 1909, searched the page for Pennsylvania, he would have found that David Riesman and Joseph L. Mankiewicz were both born in Pennsylvania, but obviously neither had a U in their last name. The closest we got were a V(elez) and two W's (Welty and Weil) There was also U. Thant. But not from Pennsylvania.
- how many people are famous for knowing more than one languages - Think about this for a bit. I guess if someone spoke 25 languages fluently, that might be the reason they are famous. I can think of famous people whose knowledge of a second language was much appreciated - such as Jackie Kennedy who could speak French. Anyway, this person got to famous people born in 1909 too.
- did lady natasha spender home in france burn down - Also got to the same place where there was something on Stephen Spender, Lady Natasha's husband.
- who is the famous person successful in studying at university more than 1 - This came from a computer using US English in Cambodia. Also got to famous people.
- elvi gray-jackson's values seems to be affecting policy decisions - Is that surprising? Don't most politician's values affect how they vote on policies? This searcher at least knew how to search the blog for 'elvi-gray-jackson' when she got an archive page full of posts. But what she got was about the election between Traini and Gray-Jackson.
- know your cranes t shirt - Here's one of those google hits that doesn't work. I had a post on Chiang Mai T shirts (which the browser got to) as well other posts on Sandhill and other kinds of cranes. The browser clicked on a picture from that page Chiang Mai T-shirts. But that got me curious - was there a T-shirt that showed you the different kinds of cranes? So I looked at the google page they got to. Well, the "know your cranes" t-shirt wasn't quite what I was expecting. Nor was the other T-shirt google found.
- "abie baby" production - A number of people searched for variations of this. I'm not totally sure what they were looking for, but they got to a Lincoln's Birthday post I did with an excerpt from the Anchorage Hair cast singing "happy birthday abie babie".
- ted the dog hunting for rabbis vidios - I first thought this was some sort of sick anti-semitic joke. But eventually I realized that the searcher had left out the 't' at the end of rabbi. The post he got was definitely not what he was looking for. It was about Ted Stevens and the Seward Sea-Life Center.
- how do you increase morale in a deli - The wonderful serendipity of googling. In a post called doing what's possible I, by chance, gave some examples, two of which included the magic words
"If she told you to pick up some bagels in a New York deli for lunch (and you were both in Los Angeles,) you'd laugh."
"improve the morale and increase production" - furniture that hangs from the roof inside - I really wanted to see what this looks like, but couldn't find it. The person did get to see some furniture in Hang Dong.
- chanot deed - Another bingo, almost. This was not something I expected anyone to be looking up. The search came from Denmark. I had just posted on this Thai form of property deed. So who was looking it up? An NGO worker? A corporation? Or maybe a Dane married to a Thai trying to figure out what happens when they buy property together in Thailand? Or maybe his attorney? Actually the post - on Chanot Chumchon - they got to probably wasn't as useful as a later post on the types of documentation for Thai property.
- how does the gut in death row work harder - Not sure what this person was looking for, but he got a post on why I think the death penalty shouldn't be reinstated in Alaska.
- kuala lumpur bird park owl take picture - This is a real bingo (I think, I'm never sure I really understand what people are looking for.) There's a spot in the KL bird park where you can have your
picture taken with birds, including two owls. This googler got to that post which included this picture of people getting their picture taken with the owls in the background. - steve keudell.blogspot.com - This one disturbs me. Actually, I got quite a few like this. Steve is a farmer in Oregon who got electrocuted when a tree branch fell on a power line. I started getting hits with his name one day and it didn't make sense, so I looked what else they got on google. I found an article about the accident. I've got Steve in my url so sometimes I get people looking for other Steves. So I put up a post about it, with some information about the accident and asked people to let me know if there was a better link for people to get info. They let me know about stevekuedell.blogspot.com. I posted it. But as a new blog (I assume) it wasn't as high up on google's radar as my blog so I kept getting more and more people. So this is someone who had the right url. If they had put it into the url window they'd have gotten directly to the right site. But they googled it instead and got to my site. Which now had a link at the beginning that sent them to the right site where they could get the latest update. And according the sitemeter information, they didn't go to that link. There were a number of hits like this. And others that did go to the better link. It's partly about knowing how to read and paying attention, it's partly internet literacy. And maybe some people didn't want to know more than I had up, even if it was a week old. Here's the most current information on Steve's condition.
- information on boyfriends cheeting on their girlfriends and the girlfriends pay the price - no comment. Not sure why this blog came up. Here's what their google search showed:
What Do I know?: March 2009I can't believe this was the best google could do.
... charge less, hurting shops who pay the price of legally and safely disposing of waste. ... schools and a health clinic as well as information on various ...
whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html - 451k - Cached
- a day i will never forget in chiang mai zoo with my family - I'm guessing this is of the genre of "Googling to find stuff for the paper I have to write for school". It was US Pacific Standard Time, from a Thai language computer. And they got my post on a day at the Chiang Mai zoo.
Click here for all the other posts on interesting google searches.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
And then there is Sarah Palin
The Gist:
The Whole Post:
(Thursday, April 2, 2009, 8 am Thai time) I knew something was up when I started seeing hits for Mary Beth Kepner again. Then someone left a comment on my Does Race Matter? post saying that the charges against Ted Stevens had been dropped. Although it was April 1, that isn't the kind of thing you make an April Fool's joke about. But I couldn't find much detail on the story before I went to bed and decided to try to digest this before posting anything. I have had attorneys tell me that the prosecution team had been totally out of line and the case should be dismissed, so I wasn't completely surprised. But still it was a stunner.
Now, though, as I look through the comments by various players and observers posted in the Anchorage Daily News (ADN) this morning, I'm disturbed (my regular readers know I tend to understate things) by the comments of our Governor. All the other comments in the story address the legal and personal aspects a in a more-or-less objective and muted tone.
At the most neutral tone we have the attorney general's words:
Ted Stevens' comments are also focused on the facts with little emotional elaboration and give credit where credit is due.
The defense attorney's statement discusses the points of the dismissal, then gives effusive credit before slipping into a bit of editorial language.
I'm sure there are people for whom the governor's statement hits just the right tone. But unlike Stevens and the Defense Attorney, she leaves out any credit for justice being done. But does she even realize who those adversaries were?
The people she so righteously decries for making 'blatant attempts. . .to destroy Stevens' were from the Bush Justice Department. Those who made sure his rights were "well-guarded" and dismissed the charges were from the Obama Justice Department.
Can you imagine any of George Bush's attorneys general taking similar action for a prominent Democrat? Or a McCain/Palin attorney general? If the Obama administration had the same sort of mind set that Palin displays here, this decision never would have been made.
All that said, given how the professionalism of the prosecution changed so radically when they moved to DC, I still have to wonder whether someone in that Bush Justice Department did things intentionally to get this trial thrown out.
[Update: See Cliff Groh's interpretation on all this. He was at the trial of Stevens.]
The people she so righteously decries for making 'blatant attempts. . .to destroy Stevens' were from the Bush Justice Department. Those who made sure his rights were "well-guarded" and dismissed the charges were from the Obama Justice Department.
The Whole Post:
(Thursday, April 2, 2009, 8 am Thai time) I knew something was up when I started seeing hits for Mary Beth Kepner again. Then someone left a comment on my Does Race Matter? post saying that the charges against Ted Stevens had been dropped. Although it was April 1, that isn't the kind of thing you make an April Fool's joke about. But I couldn't find much detail on the story before I went to bed and decided to try to digest this before posting anything. I have had attorneys tell me that the prosecution team had been totally out of line and the case should be dismissed, so I wasn't completely surprised. But still it was a stunner.
Now, though, as I look through the comments by various players and observers posted in the Anchorage Daily News (ADN) this morning, I'm disturbed (my regular readers know I tend to understate things) by the comments of our Governor. All the other comments in the story address the legal and personal aspects a in a more-or-less objective and muted tone.
At the most neutral tone we have the attorney general's words:
“In connection with the post-trial litigation in United States v. Theodore F. Stevens, the Department of Justice has conducted a review of the case, including an examination of the extent of the disclosures provided to the defendant. After careful review, I have concluded that certain information should have been provided to the defense for use at trial.
Ted Stevens' comments are also focused on the facts with little emotional elaboration and give credit where credit is due.
I am grateful that the new team of responsible prosecutors at the Department of Justice has acknowledged that I did not receive a fair trial and has dismissed all the charges against me. I am also grateful that Judge Emmet G. Sullivan made rulings that facilitated the exposure of the government’s misconduct during the last two years. I always knew that there would be a day when the cloud that surrounded me would be removed. That day has finally come.
The defense attorney's statement discusses the points of the dismissal, then gives effusive credit before slipping into a bit of editorial language.
Attorney General Eric Holder, too, should be commended. He is a pillar of integrity in the legal community, and his actions today prove it. Moreover, he has demonstrated the kind of leadership that we defense lawyers seek and that the Department of Justice desperately needs. Ineffective leadership permits this type of prosecutorial misconduct to flourish.And then there is Sarah Palin. She adopts the language, tone, and emptiness of a talk show host. Does she realize what she's saying?
This case is a sad story and a warning to everyone. Any citizen can be convicted if prosecutors are hell-bent on ignoring the Constitution and willing to present false
evidence.
Senator Stevens deserves to be very happy today. What a horrible thing he has endured. The blatant attempts by adversaries to destroy one’s reputation, career and finances are an abuse of our well-guarded process and violate our God-given rights afforded in the Constitution. It is a frightening thing to contemplate what we may be witnessing here – the undermining of the political process through unscrupulous ploys and professional misconduct. Senator Stevens and I had lunch together recently at my home and he reiterated the faith he held for vindication; he never gave up hope. It is unfortunate that, as a result of the questionable proceedings which led to Senator Stevens’ conviction days before the election, Alaskans lost an esteemed statesman on Capitol Hill. His presence is missed.
I'm sure there are people for whom the governor's statement hits just the right tone. But unlike Stevens and the Defense Attorney, she leaves out any credit for justice being done. But does she even realize who those adversaries were?
The people she so righteously decries for making 'blatant attempts. . .to destroy Stevens' were from the Bush Justice Department. Those who made sure his rights were "well-guarded" and dismissed the charges were from the Obama Justice Department.
Can you imagine any of George Bush's attorneys general taking similar action for a prominent Democrat? Or a McCain/Palin attorney general? If the Obama administration had the same sort of mind set that Palin displays here, this decision never would have been made.
All that said, given how the professionalism of the prosecution changed so radically when they moved to DC, I still have to wonder whether someone in that Bush Justice Department did things intentionally to get this trial thrown out.
[Update: See Cliff Groh's interpretation on all this. He was at the trial of Stevens.]
Elephants - Part 1
[Thursday, April 2, 2009 12:30am Thai Time]
The bus to Lampang (about 90 km south of Chiang Mai) dropped us off in front of the Thai Elephant Conservation Center and we called JP who told us to get our tickets and ride the shuttle up to the showgrounds. Here's another site that has videos of Center.
On the way up we saw this board next to information on getting a day of Mahout training.
The show focused more on skills the elephants had that made them so important for getting timber from the forest to the roads. But most such work is no longer available in Thailand because the government has programs to protect teak forests.
The show also included a non-traditional Thai elephant activity - painting.
Here are the three paintings we saw the elephants paint.
Apparently, elephants have very good control with their trunks and can do this sort of painting, but these representational paintings are done with close supervision from the mahouts. But when painting on their own, the elephants do much more abstract work than this. But the Center sells the paintings so this is a form of fundraiser.
After the show, people got to feed the elephants. A bunch of little bananas was 20 Baht ($.60). Most of the other visitors were Thai, though there were a a few other foreigners.
JP is a doctoral student doing his dissertation research here at the center. We met him last year and finally got a chance to go out and visit him in the center. His research is very interesting but I was sworn to silence until his work is published. But an earlier paper he published as a masters student on how elephants recognize themselves in mirrors. Here's the abstract:
The bus to Lampang (about 90 km south of Chiang Mai) dropped us off in front of the Thai Elephant Conservation Center and we called JP who told us to get our tickets and ride the shuttle up to the showgrounds. Here's another site that has videos of Center.
On the way up we saw this board next to information on getting a day of Mahout training.
The show focused more on skills the elephants had that made them so important for getting timber from the forest to the roads. But most such work is no longer available in Thailand because the government has programs to protect teak forests.
The show also included a non-traditional Thai elephant activity - painting.
Here are the three paintings we saw the elephants paint. 
Apparently, elephants have very good control with their trunks and can do this sort of painting, but these representational paintings are done with close supervision from the mahouts. But when painting on their own, the elephants do much more abstract work than this. But the Center sells the paintings so this is a form of fundraiser.
After the show, people got to feed the elephants. A bunch of little bananas was 20 Baht ($.60). Most of the other visitors were Thai, though there were a a few other foreigners.
JP is a doctoral student doing his dissertation research here at the center. We met him last year and finally got a chance to go out and visit him in the center. His research is very interesting but I was sworn to silence until his work is published. But an earlier paper he published as a masters student on how elephants recognize themselves in mirrors. Here's the abstract:
You can read the whole article at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Considered an indicator of self-awareness, mirror self-recognition (MSR) has long seemed limited to humans and apes. In both phylogeny and human ontogeny, MSR is thought to correlate with higher forms of empathy and altruistic behavior. Apart from humans and apes, dolphins and elephants are also known for such capacities. After the recent discovery of MSR in dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), elephants thus were the next logical candidate species. We exposed three Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) to a large mirror to investigate their responses. Animals that possess MSR typically progress through four stages of behavior when facing a mirror: (i) social responses, (ii) physical inspection (e.g., looking behind the mirror), (iii) repetitive mirror-testing behavior, and (iv) realization of seeing themselves. Visible marks and invisible sham-marks were applied to the elephants' heads to test whether they would pass the litmus “mark test” for MSR in which an individual spontaneously uses a mirror to touch an otherwise imperceptible mark on its own body. Here, we report a successful MSR elephant study and report striking parallels in the progression of responses to mirrors among apes, dolphins, and elephants. These parallels suggest convergent cognitive evolution most likely related to complex sociality and cooperation.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Chiang Mai Morning Bird Sounds - Mostly Koel
I'm taking the day off today and we're headed to see elephants with JP, who's doing his doctoral research on elephant behavior. But in the meantime, here are some morning bird sounds recorded this morning and yesterday. The scratchy noise in the background are the cicadas. There are other miscellaneous sounds like dogs barking and a couple of motorcycles. Enjoy. Just click on the yellow button with the black arrow.
Chiang Mai Morning Birds - Koel April 1, 2009 by AKRaven
Chiang Mai Morning Birds - Koel April 1, 2009 by Monday, March 30, 2009
One Week Left
It's Tuesday here in Chiang Mai. We're scheduled to fly out next week on Monday non-stop to Taipei. It was a quick 14.5 hours of airtime getting here from Anchorage in January, including a close connection - they'd already closed the doors on the flight we were catching - in Taipei.
The Anchorage flight (well, it's really the New York flight which stops in Anchorage) leaves before we make it to Taipei, so we get to overnight in Taipei and if all goes well, we'll be back in Anchorage to vote on Tuesday. But there is this Redoubt thing going on. An ADN story talks about Alaska Airlines resuming flights today and mentioned 'other airlines,' but not China Air's plans. Our travel agent says China Air's contingency is Vancouver. So maybe we'll even get to Seattle and have a chance to see our daughter. Or not.
It will all work out and we'll make sure we have a good time whatever happens.
The Anchorage flight (well, it's really the New York flight which stops in Anchorage) leaves before we make it to Taipei, so we get to overnight in Taipei and if all goes well, we'll be back in Anchorage to vote on Tuesday. But there is this Redoubt thing going on. An ADN story talks about Alaska Airlines resuming flights today and mentioned 'other airlines,' but not China Air's plans. Our travel agent says China Air's contingency is Vancouver. So maybe we'll even get to Seattle and have a chance to see our daughter. Or not.
It will all work out and we'll make sure we have a good time whatever happens.
Playing With Mud for a Good Cause
One of my neighbors found my blog and sent me this invitation to help build a meditation space for single mothers. [The picture is from Canvas Art Program Volunteer Blog. ] For people in Chiang Mai - it looks like a good day's fun today, tomorrow, and Thursday.
THE UNWINDING WALL
**VOLUNTEERS NEEDED**
Build a mud bottle wall! play with mud, recycle, and give to
Wildflower; a single mothers' community. Cultural Canvas Thailand, a
local arts NGO, will be creating a meditation space with single
mothers to provide them with a place of refuge and quiet. So come join
us!
Tuesday 31st of March, Wednesday 1st of April and Thursday 2nd of April
09.00 am- 04.00 pm
Lunch and Transportation Provided
Contact- Amp (Thai) 089-110-8860
Melissa (English) 083 -683 -2065
To learn more about Cultural Canvas Thailand visit
http://www.culturalcanvas.com/canvas_projects.php
For more information about "The Unwinding Wall" see our blog:
http://volunteercct.blogspot.com/
What's the Difference between a Lashkar and a Wazir?
Time to get a little perspective on our internal Alaska problems. This Foreign Affairs article by Nicholas Schmidle was emailed to me by a Pakistani friend, so I assume he's saying to me, "this guy gets it reasonably well." Here's the opening:
He does have more confidence in his ability to understand than I have in mine.
I always find that the more I learn about something, the more I find out how much there is that I still have no clue about. But he certainly knows a lot of details that most of us don't. And the Afghan-Pakistani border is only going to become more and more important in the next couple of years.
After eight years of a White House that often seemed blinkered by the threats posed by Pakistan, the Obama administration seems to grasp the severity of the myriad crises affecting the South Asian state. The media has followed suit and increased its presence and reporting, a trend confirmed by CNN’s decision to set up a bureau in Islamabad last year.To answer the title question you'll have to read the rest at the Foreign Policy link.
And yet, the uptick in coverage hasn’t necessarily clarified the who’s-doing-what-to-whom confusion in Pakistan. Some commentators continue to confuse the tribal areas with the North-West Frontier Province. And the word lashkars is used to describe all kinds of otherwise cross-purposed groups, some fighting the Taliban, some fighting India, and some fighting Shiites.
I admit, it’s not easy. I lived in Pakistan throughout all of 2006 and 2007 and only came to understand, say, the tribal breakdown in South Waziristan during my final days. So to save you the trouble of having to live in Pakistan for two years to differentiate between the Wazirs and the Mehsuds, the Frontier Corps and the Rangers, I’ve written an “idiot’s guide” that will hopefully clear some things up.
1. The Troubled Tribals
Bring up the Pakistan-Afghanistan border at a Washington cocktail party and you’re sure to impress. Tick off the name of a Taliban leader or two and make a reference to North Waziristan, and you might be on your way to a lucrative lecture tour. The problem, of course, is that no one knows if you’ll be speaking the truth or not. A map of the border region is crammed with the names of agencies, provinces, frontier regions, and districts, which are sometimes flip-flopped and misused. With only an unselfish interest in making you more-impressive cocktail party material (and thus, getting you booked with a lecture agent during these economic hard times), I want to straighten some things out.
He does have more confidence in his ability to understand than I have in mine.
"I lived in Pakistan throughout all of 2006 and 2007 and only came to understand, say, the tribal breakdown in South Waziristan during my final days."
I always find that the more I learn about something, the more I find out how much there is that I still have no clue about. But he certainly knows a lot of details that most of us don't. And the Afghan-Pakistani border is only going to become more and more important in the next couple of years.
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