How To Shoot Up A Mall Without Getting Caught - This Only Works For Whites

In April 2014 I wrote a post titled How To Shoplift Without Getting Caught - This Only Works For Whites.  It recounted African-American astrophysicist  Neil Degrasse Tyson's story about how he got stopped for shoplifting white the actual white shoplifter walked out at the same time without being pursued at all.

 "I walked out of a store one time and the alarm went off and so they came running to me.  I walked through the gate at the same time a white male walked through the gate.  And that guy just walked off with the stolen goods, knowing they would stop me and not him.  That’s an interesting exploitation.  What a scam that was. People should do that more often."

This apparently works for shooters too.  From AP:

"HOOVER, Ala. (AP) — Protesters on Saturday marched through an Alabama shopping mall where police killed a black man they later acknowledged was not the triggerman in a Thanksgiving night shooting that wounded two people.
An officer shot and killed 21-year-old Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford, Jr. of Hueytown while responding to the Thursday mall shooting. Police said Bradford was fleeing the scene with a handgun.
Hoover police initially told reporters Bradford had shot a teen at the mall, but later retracted the statement."

I guess you just have to make sure there are innocent black men near you and the first responders will go after them while you get away.  

This is what is called a teaching moment.  People profess not to be racist.  Our president has said variations of "I'm the least racist person you've ever met" on at least  six occasions.   (That's probably not a good example, but we've all heard from many people that they aren't racists.)

And if they mean, they wouldn't use racial slurs it's probably true.  But racism is deeply embedded in our culture.  Television and movies have overwhelmingly put non-whites in negative roles over the years.  We hear repeatedly from the media and our friends that minorities are poor, on welfare, commit crimes We absorb that.  We don't hear as much about the structural reasons they're poor - redlining that keeps property values low in minority neighborhoods, the higher bars to get loans for minorities, lack of good educational opportunities in minority neighborhoods, and reluctance of landlords to rent to them and employers to higher them.  

So we all carry these stereotypes in our heads.  Even the targets of the stereotypes get infected.  

So in situation where someone has to make a split second decision about who the bad guy is - the shoplifter, the shooter, etc. - those stereotypes point the responders gun at the black guy, the Hispanic.

If Logic And Reason Don't Work, Perhaps It's Time For Poetry

Home 

by Warsan Shire

"You have to understand
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land"

The bio below is from Seekers Club:

"Warsan Shire is a Kenyan-born Somali poet, writer and educator based in London. Born in 1988, Warsan has read her work extensively all over Britain and internationally – including recent readings in South Africa, Italy, Germany, Canada, North America and Kenya- and her début book, ‘TEACHING MY MOTHER HOW TO GIVE BIRTH’ (flipped eye), was published in 2011. Her poems have been published in Wasafiri, Magma and Poetry Review and in the anthology ‘The Salt Book of Younger Poets’ (Salt, 2011). She is the current poetry editor at SPOOK magazine. In 2012 she represented Somalia at the Poetry Parnassus, the festival of the world poets at the Southbank, London. She is a Complete Works II poet. Her poetry has been translated into Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. Warsan is also the unanimous winner of the 2013 Inaugural Brunel University African Poetry Prize."

Edward Snowden On Blockchains/Masha Gessen On An Injustice

Ben Wizner explains why he's making this discussion public:

"Through it all, I’ve found him to be the clearest, most patient, and least condescending explainer of technology I’ve ever met. I’ve often thought that I wished more people — or perhaps different people — could eavesdrop on our conversations. What follows is a very lightly edited transcript of one of our chats. In it, Ed attempts to explain “blockchain” to me, despite my best efforts to cling to my own ignorance."

and this comes almost a the very end of the discussion:

"This is the one interesting thing about blockchains: they might be that one tiny gear that lets us create systems you don’t have to trust. You’ve learned the only thing about blockchains that matters: they’re boring, inefficient, and wasteful, but, if well designed, they’re practically impossible to tamper with. And in a world full of shifty bullshit, being able to prove something is true is a radical development. Maybe it’s the value of your bank account, maybe it’s the provenance of your pair of Nikes, or maybe it’s your for-real-this-time permanent record in the principal’s office, but records are going to transform into chains we can’t easily break, even if they’re open for anyone in the world to look at.
The hype is a world where everything can be tracked and verified. The question is whether it’s going to be voluntary."

You can see how Snowden and his interviewer got there here.



Another example of our  imperfect justice system.  Some of it is 'the system.'  Much of it is people who simply don't care and do their job perfunctorily, without considering how they can make the system work better.  And some people get off on their power, which they can best demonstrate by harming others unnecessarily:

The Injustice of Siwatu Ra’s Imprisonment and the Relentless Logic of Mass Incarceration

"A story can defy belief and appear ordinary at the same time. This is such a story. Siwatu Ra, a twenty-six-year-old woman with no prior criminal record, was sentenced by a Detroit court, in March, to two years in prison on felonious assault and felony firearm charges, after brandishing a gun at another woman during an argument. Ra maintained that she pointed the gun in defense of herself, her mother, and her two-year-old daughter; her gun was unloaded and licensed, and she has a concealed-carry permit in Michigan, which is an open-carry, Stand Your Ground state. Ra was incarcerated as soon as she was sentenced, even though she appealed her conviction, and even though she was nearing her third trimester of pregnancy. Three months later, she gave birth in St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, in Ann Arbor, in the presence of four armed guards. Her son was taken from her two days later."

One can't help wishing that stats were easily available to test my belief that this result (the incarceration) would be less likely to happen at all if this were a white man, instead of a black woman.

The author,  Masha Gessen, has US and Russian citizenships, wrote a biography of Putin, and is just smart - both in intelligence and street smarts.

But I spent a good part of the day at the Kiddie Museum with my three grandkids.  Such activities are necessary for one's mental health in today's world, and because they still need to have a childhood full of fun and new experiences.

We Give Thanks Today, But Few United States Citizens Contemplate Giving Back

History books have given us a pretty story of the origin of this holiday.  But as time has passed and the stories of the victors have been challenged, more and more people are jumping in to tell a different version.  Some just quibble over the facts.

Some excerpts from the Daily Signal

"The Pilgrims very famously didn’t celebrate Christmas. They said, “There’s not a place in Scripture that authorizes the celebration of Jesus’ birth. There’s no scripture that tells us when it occurred.” And they saw it as an invention that the Catholic Church had basically created. . ."

". . . The first time that you really would say that Thanksgiving becomes a national holiday is during the American Civil War. And that would not have been realized at the time—we see it more from hindsight. But Abraham Lincoln in 1863 issued a proclamation in the fall, making the fourth Thursday in November of that year a day of national Thanksgiving. And he primarily means it as a day of thanksgiving for the way that God was aiding Northern armies in the war against the South. And that also doesn’t endear Southerners to a Thanksgiving holiday."

" . . .And I joke—but also sort of mean it seriously—that one of the things that ultimately reconciles Southerners to Thanksgiving is the development of football.
And by the 1890s, the national championship game for what was the forerunner of the NCAA was being held annually in New York City on Thanksgiving Day. And well before 1900, the tradition of having football games on Thanksgiving Day is sweeping across the country. And Southerners find out that the holiday isn’t that bad after all."

"There had been 18 wives on the Mayflower, 14 of whom had died in the first winter. And so most of the married couples now were separated by death.
Large numbers of the children had lost a parent, there were some children present who had lost all parents and siblings. It was an overwhelmingly male, now single gathering, and also a young gathering, in that about half of the group was teenagers or younger."

Some put the relationship with the indigenous peoples into a different perspective like this one titled "The Real Story of Thanksgiving" (again, some excerpts)

"The story began in 1614 when a band of English explorers sailed home to  England with a ship full of Patuxet Indians bound for slavery. They left behind smallpox which virtually wiped out those who had escaped.  By the time the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts Bay they found only one living Patuxet Indian, a man named Squanto who had survived slavery in England and knew their language.  He taught them to grow corn and to fish, and negotiated a peace treaty between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Nation. At the end of their first year, the Pilgrims held a great feast honoring Squanto and the Wampanoags.
But as word spread in England about the paradise to be found in the new world, religious zealots called Puritans began arriving by the boat load. Finding no fences around the land, they considered it to be in the public domain. Joined by other British settlers, they seized land, capturing strong young Natives for slaves and killing the rest.  But the Pequot Nation had not agreed to the peace treaty Squanto had negotiated and they fought back. The Pequot War was one of the bloodiest Indian wars ever fought.
In 1637 near present day  Groton, Connecticut, over 700 men, women and children of the Pequot Tribe had gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival which is our Thanksgiving celebration. In the predawn hours the sleeping Indians were surrounded by English and Dutch mercenaries who ordered them to come outside.  Those who came out were shot or clubbed to death while the terrified women and children who huddled inside the longhouse were burned alive. The next day the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared "A Day Of Thanksgiving" because 700 unarmed men, women and children had been murdered."

Or give the indigenous credit for being more than the 'savages' that they were portrayed as in this more academic look at the government to government relationships between the new country and Indian tribes in Flashpoint:

"When Christopher Columbus thought he had discovered the “New World” in 1492, it is estimated that 10-30 million native people lived in North America, that is, in the present day countries of Mexico, United States and Canada. These millions of people lived under governments of varying sophistication and complexity. These native governments were viable and fully operational political bodies which controlled their citizens and their territories and were an important factor in the development of the United States government we live under today."

This National Geographic article says the population dropped in half not long after Columbus arrived.

European Americans justified their decimation of the Native population first on what they saw as their obvious superiority - based on not only their technical superiority, but also on their Christianity.  They also, of course, justified killing Indians based on self-defense.  The fact that they had invaded Indian land didn't seem to cross their minds.

The wealth of the United States - national and personal - is based on the take over of the land that had been inhabited by the indigenous people, through lopsided treaties (often signed by representatives of a tribe picked by the whites), through removal (ie Trail of Tears), and through massacre.

Our debt is so massive that for most US citizens, repaying that debt is inconceivable.  But it's a debt we owe, and which should be repaid, if not in whole, in a significant way that is more than a token reparation.

We need to start imagining how this can be done.  As well as recognize how much we still commit the kinds of crimes against other people today, that we committed against North America's indigenous people.  

[Sorry, this one is rushed - being called to dinner.]

"created a parallel universe that combined medieval theology with twenty-first-century communication."

"But the three jihadi commanders, who had gotten used to act icing with near-complete autonomy, ignored Droukdel's admonitions - and they even bragged about their brutality.  In the new jihadi state, the Islamists created a parallel universe that combined medieval theology with twenty-first-century communication.  They flaunted their absolute power and their Sharia punishments in YouTube videos, Twitter feeds, and website communiqués" (Emphasis added)

This comes from pp. 171-172 of Joshua Hammer's The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu.  

I picked up the book at the library because of its title.  But as I started reading it, I found a world I knew nothing about:  the golden age of scholarship when Timbuktu was a center of learning and produced hundreds of thousands of manuscripts.  And despite the way Western textbooks (and a current US president) depict Africa as backward and illiterate, these manuscripts have been preserved and hidden over the centuries to keep them from being destroyed.

The book then veers into an overview of some of the more modern jihadist leaders who, enriched through smuggling, drugs, and kidnapping ransoms, have risen to power in the Sahara in this century.

The book is about those Malians and others who worked to keep the manuscripts safe from the new marauders who claim better knowledge of Islam than those who have read and guarded the centuries of manuscripts.

I'll leave readers to contemplate the quotation and its implications.  

Trump As Pres Is Like Living With An Abusive S[p]ouse

and no one will help you.  Every day is a new outrageous violation of the relationship.  [In a previous post I argued that the Republican Senators were the battered spouse, but they really are the officials who should be doing something but are looking the other way.]  And he brags about it each day.  But no one can help.  His behavior is reprehensible, but he controls the escape routes and those who should be rescuing us are either afraid to confront him, in denial, or complicit.  The people who know and are outraged too, can only voice their frustration.    The police are busy gathering evidence so they can arrest him and he can be prosecuted.  But meanwhile he abuses us and steals from us and taunts us and laughs.

I'm sure this must be something like what an abused spouse feels like,

But you can call or email your Republican senators and let them know how you feel.  Remind them of the long list of outrageous they've condoned.  Can't remember them all?

Amy Suskind listed the first year's outrages in THE LIST: A Week-By-Week Reckoning of Trump’s First Year

The Weekly List (This is how Democracy Ends) is here.

The Daily Trump: Filling a Time Capsule in the Oct 6, 2018 Atlantic is another source.

But letting them know how you personally have been affected is probably the most effective - it will be unique and personal.

For some, the only issue that will move them is fear of losing the next election.  Remind them that there are Beto O'Rourkes in every state.  And by 2020 and 2022 a number of them will actually win.
For others, appealing to their legacy might work.  Remind them that their children and grandchildren will know that they had the power to do something,  but looked the other way while Trump destroyed the United States.

You can find your Senators' contact info here.

Here are the Republicans who are up for election in 2020.  Links go to their email pages.  This is not a one time exercise.  This should be repeated at least twice a month.  And get friends to do the same.  Invite people for dinner and make writing part of the after dinner activities.

Republicans

Alexander, Lamar (R-TN)

Capito, Shelley Moore (R-WV)

Cassidy, Bill (R-LA)

Collins, Susan M. (R-ME)

Cornyn, John (R-TX)

Cotton, Tom (R-AR)

Daines, Steve (R-MT)

Enzi, Michael B. (R-WY)

Ernst, Joni (R-IA)

Gardner, Cory (R-CO)

Graham, Lindsey (R-SC)

Hyde-Smith, Cindy (R-MS) [Hyde-Smith is in a runoff on next Tuesday - Nov. 27, 2018]

Inhofe, James M. (R-OK)

McConnell, Mitch (R-KY)

Perdue, David (R-GA)

Risch, James E. (R-ID)

Roberts, Pat (R-KS)

Rounds, Mike (R-SD)

Sasse, Ben (R-NE) [One of the few who's criticized Trump publicly.]

Sullivan, Dan (R-AK) [This one's my responsibility to work on.]

Tillis, Thom (R-NC)

Gramping In And Around Seattle

Not much time for blogging.  Here are some pics.

After soccer Chinese lunch at Din Tai Fun.

Enjoying the sunny side of the ferry deck.

There's something about the lines of a skyline that call out to a camera.

And a jelly fish floating on the tide this morning.










Oh, I forgot the Saturday market.

Hockney Pool Painting - One Of My Favorites - Sells For $90 Million

When I took a computer art class with Prof. Mariano Gonzales at the University of Alaska Anchorage years ago, I realized on the first day, that everyone else in the class was a real artist.  Mariano tried to reassure me.  He said that all the others began with a different medium - water colors, oils, etc. - and had to adapt it to the computer.  I was coming to this fresh, with the computer as my first medium.

At the end of the class, we had to copy a masterpiece.  Simply duplicate it completely digitally.  I started to panic.  First I thought of doing a Mondrian.  For example.  At first that seemed like a copout, but when I looked at some of his paintings closely, I understood that they were much more subtle than I first realized - lots of subtle shades blended.

So I picked out one of my very favorite pictures - David Hockney's “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures).”   It has the feel of the chaparral hills that I knew so well growing up in Los Angeles.  It has a sparkling swimming pool.  And a man in a salmon colored jacket by the side of the pool and another man swimming.  Except for the people and the vegetation on the hillside in the background, it's pretty angular.  Or so I thought.  

Image from larger LA Times photo

 I had to recreate it from scratch.  I think in that class we were using Corel Draw.  It's amazing how much of a picture you don't see until you really, really look at it.  

But I managed to get a reasonable copy of the picture - at least for someone who didn't know the picture well.  

It was good enough that Mariano has told me that he showed students in later classes - an example of what someone who is not an artist did.  I'd show you my version, but my copy is on an old disk that doesn't fit any current computer I have.  And I'd show the copy I have hanging in the garage.  Except we're with family for Thanksgiving out of state.  And our house sitter isn't technologically savvy enough to take a picture of it and send it.  

But here's a picture from the LA Times article from the auction the other day where it went for $90 million.  I don't think that's a particularly good thing - monetizing art like that.  But that is several more blog posts.  For now, it's important because this is a picture I love and know fairly well. There are some arrangements where the artist gets a percentage of future appreciation of their work.  But I don't think this one is likely to be covered.  It was sold long ago.  

Here's a link to the whole LA Times story.

Seattle From Afar - And Bird Feathers

I biked over to a little rocky beach to enjoy the unexpected sunshine.  Across the water was Seattle.

A few ravens went by- this one was the slowpoke


If you click on the image, you can see the bird's flight feathers.  That caused me to try to find more about them.

First I got descriptions of bird fingers and how they derive from dinosaurs.  This research argues that the three bird fingers are derived from the index, middle, and ring fingers.

Then I got info specifically on the feathers at the end of the wingtips and end of the tail.  I found this Wikipedia page on flight fingers most interesting.

"Flight feathers (Pennae volatus) [1] are the long, stiff, asymmetrically shaped, but symmetrically paired pennaceous feathers on the wings or tail of a bird; those on the wings are called remiges (/ˈrɛmɪdʒiːz/), singular remex (/ˈriːmɛks/), while those on the tail are called rectrices (/rɛkˈtraɪsiːs/), singular rectrix (/ˈrɛktrɪks/). The primary function of the flight feathers is to aid in the generation of both thrust and lift, thereby enabling flight. The flight feathers of some birds have evolved to perform additional functions, generally associated with territorial displays, courtship rituals or feeding methods. In some species, these feathers have developed into long showy plumes used in visual courtship displays, while in others they create a sound during display flights. Tiny serrations on the leading edge of their remiges help owls to fly silently (and therefore hunt more successfully), while the extra-stiff rectrices of woodpeckers help them to brace against tree trunks as they hammer on them. Even flightless birds still retain flight feathers, though sometimes in radically modified forms."

Where Do People Stand On Global Warming? The Numbers.

Saturday's monthly international Citizens Climate Lobby meeting featured Anthony Leiserowitz, Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.  They do a new survey every year to test the political climate of climate change.   They've been doing this for fifteen years.  The new survey is just starting now, but we heard about this year's survey.

The news is good and bad.  Climate change is more politically divisive than abortion.  That showed up in one of the best slides.  It showed how different shades of political thinking rank about 28 issues.  I'd post it here, but it's got so much on it, that it would be hard for anyone to read here.  Here are the categories they used.

All Reg. Voters

Liberal Dems

Mod/Cons Dems

Lib/Mod Repubs

Cons Repubs

Global Warming was the 4th most important issue for Liberal Democrats and ranked 28 for Conservative Republicans.  My interpretation is different from Tony's.  It were as divisive as abortion, it would be more important to the conservatives.

It just isn't that important to anyone besides the Liberal Democrats.  It only ranks 16 for the Moderate/Conservative Democrats.  But the upside is that with more education on the topic, it will gain a greater base of support.

Another chart shows that most American believe global warming is happening.

Click on the charts to enlarge and focus

He attributed the drop after 2008 to the Tea Party, and it's taken ten years to get back to 70%.  He mentioned that in Japan about 98% of the population believe it is happening.

The chart on Potential Political Movement shows a huge potential of people who would be ready to work on action to reduce global warming.





More encouraging, perhaps, was this chart that showed across the board strong support for moving to more Climate Friendly policies.





















You can see the presentation here.  Actually the link takes you to the whole meeting.  Tony starts at 3:32 or so (there's a dot on the video timeline there).  His presentation is short, but packed with interesting data and interpretation.  And the charts are easier to read than here.

I've been going to these monthly meetings for many years now and I'm almost always impressed by the quality of speakers and I almost always get some new data or thought that significantly adds to what I know on this topic.

The Anchorage Chapter meets at 8:30am, second Saturday of the month, at the Rasmuson Building 220, at UAA.  Free parking Saturday mornings.  Here's where others can find out about their local chapters.  Don't be shy, everyone is delighted when a new member arrives.



Here's a link to the Yale Climate Connections where Tony works.  There are lots of videos on different climate related topics.