| The US Supreme Court is hearing a case on prosecutorial immunity right about now. The case centers around a couple young African Americans that got framed for murder and put away for a decade or so until somebody with some heart and brains got them released. Naturally, they wanted to discuss this with the DA that framed them, so they're challenging the law so that they can sue the establishment that framed them.
The prosecutors assert that there is "no freestanding constitutional right not to be framed." IOZ is understandably not amused.
Thought experiments help tease out the boundaries of laws like this, and the Supreme Court in particular likes to toss out little "what if" scenarios to see if the lawyers in front of them have figured out all the ramifications of what they're proposing. To wit:
Leading the charge against Clement's position were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, both recent Bush appointees. Alito, who served for seven years as a federal prosecutor, asked the most practical question. Suppose, for example, a prosecutor is investigating an insider-trading case, and the chief financial officer tells one story, then under pressure, tells another, and in exchange for a lighter sentence, implicates the CEO of the company. Could the prosecutor be sued later?
In my field, when we are optimizing a system, we look for the most common cases, and attack those first. Things that aren't done very often will benefit least. Things done all the time will benefit most. So, in that vein, I've got a thought experiment of my own. Calculate the ratio of prosecutorial misconduct in cases involving CFOs and insider trading to prosecutorial misconduct in cases involving middle to lower income African American men.
If you come up with a number that's even measurable, let me know. | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment   |
| It struck me this morning as I was driving to work: someone made money off of that, perhaps quite a bit.
NPR was doing a bit on pig farmers, and how life has pretty much sucked for them (more than usual) since April when H1N1 first came out and was called "swine flu". Now, I'm no Martinus Beijerinck, but even I know you can't get swine flu from eating pork. Clearly I'm smarter than most folks, because pork prices plummeted as the summer cookout season came upon us.
(an aside worthy of further research would be to figure out if barbeque places in the South experienced a drop in attendance, and do a little demographic research on that. I have my suspicions (rural rates of barbeque consumption remained unaffected, urban/suburban were depressed), but I'd love to see the data)
What struck me is that someone heard "H1N1" and "swine flu", and (and this is key) even though they knew you couldn't get swine flu from eating pork, they sold pork commodities short and cleaned the hell up; because they knew that people were stupid.
Clearly my brain works like that, just eight months too late. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| I posted this article on Facebook yesterday more or less without comment, and I'd like to take a moment or two to discuss it further with you and you and you. You see, articles like this make me really happy.
"Good Lord, why?" you ask. I only ask you to take a moment to consider: How long was this going on without anyone saying "Wait, this is bullshit."? Answer: probably a really long damn time. It's not like that Justice of the Peace woke up a few weeks ago and decided to stop doing this. He's been doing this for 34 years, and it's clearly been going on before that, and folks presumably put up with it all this time.
A side note: What are the logistics of this? Does he rely on what they say on their driver's license? What qualifies as "interracial"? Does he have a paper bag by his desk? What does Bobby Jindal think of all this? Has he ever used the word "octoroon"? What about miscegenation? I realize this may be simply a judgment call on his part, but there's science to be had here!
Further reading says that he "asks them" beforehand. Just say "no"! We're both human, so clearly this is cool.
The people of course "just returned to Louisiana", which explains why this made the news. Outsiders! Stirring up trouble! It all reminds me of the capture of Eric Rudolph, which was done by a rookie cop who just joined the Murphy force. Now, part of that is luck, but certainly part of it is a willful blind eye to what's going on around you that is obviously wrong. Clearly there are still pockets of resistance to things that are awesome (people who love each other wanting to express their commitment, capturing and prosecuting domestic terrorists, that sort of thing), and the more light shined into those the better. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| I'm at college and taking a test. I'm not in a class, more like getting it personally administered in the hallway. The questions all seem to be pretty easy, actually, except that I'm expected to provide an essay answer to one of them (my choice) and they're all engineering questions (you know, with an answer) so essay answers are sort of stupid in this case.
I finish up anyway. It's the last day of class, and there's sort of a celebration outside. One dude gets up and tells everyone how glad he is to leave, and how much he hates State and Raleigh and will be glad to hit the road. I shout at him to shut the fuck up, and for some reason get all aggro and physically threatening.
Mr glad to leave is sort of apart from the regular group, but I notice a guy who looks sort of like Chris Farley get up and point a Taser at me, while screaming something I can't make out. He fires the Taser, which I dodge, and I go after him and chase him around a bit.
I have no idea. I'm not an aggressive dude, even though I'm big and can apparently do that sort of thing. Glad I dodged the taser though. Not sure what a dream taser would have felt like, but having been shocked several times I've got a bit of a clue. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| I've long been a fan of John Stewart. I don't depend on him for hard hitting news or insightful commentary, but he's not my trained monkey, and he unabashedly gets gooey over Sarah Vowell's titanic brain. What's not to love?
Chris Rock has also impressed me as of late, I'm totally going to see "Good Hair", and his comments on the whole Polaski thing have pretty much hit the nail on the head for me (I was especially enamored of the OJ comparison)
But it's Franken who's got my number this time, first with his "No really, let me read the fourth amendment to you, since you seem a little unclear on the whole thing." which was cute enough, but now with his "Government contractors shouldn't be able to make their employees sign away their rights not to get raped and beaten and stuff" amendment to the DoD budget. What ho! A useful, timely, and sensible piece of legislation.
(Just so you know. The pro-rapist-protectors can be found here. Senator Richard Burr, I'll be asking for elaboration on your "Nay" vote directly.) | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| Raleigh's implemented mandatory plastic bottle recycling. It's actually mandatory across the state. While this sounds like a good idea on principle, there are a lot of municipalities that don't recycle, and also don't take recycled goods in the trash. This leads to lots of folks driving their cars to drop off recycling. In the case of plastic bottles, the energy used to recycle them seems like a net loss. The real money quote, however, is
here:
Currently the average Raleigh resident recycles 384 pounds each year. The goal of the City?s Solid Waste Department is to increase that number to 451 pounds per year by 2012
It doesn't take a statistician to see the problem here. These figures are better expressed as a percentage, lest I get the crazy idea that buying more stuff is the key to meeting the goals. I think a better plan would be a program of buyer education to take care of this sort of thing at the source.
It'd be also rad if everyone composted, but I bet if I looked at the organic waste stream emanating from folks houses, the amount of stuff that's safe to compost (pretty much only vegetable matter) is shockingly small. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| I knew when I picked EE as a field that I was going to be with a bunch of dudes, for the most part. I did what I could where I could. I found lab classes more or less astonishing. I think I was one of two or three guys in the entire school that expected female lab partners to pull equal weight. Most of them just did the work and let the women watch. I hope it's gotten better.
And once in a while I think it's getting better and I'm corrected. I've nothing but respect for Limor. She's awesome, and apparently making a living doing what she loves (something we can all aspire to): being an electronics nerd. Still, there is that element still out there.
To give you a hint of how much of a douche this guy is being (aside from being an Anonymous Coward on Slashdot, which is sort of a running start at douchebaggery): a "2GHz diode sampler" is something that Agilent would send a team of seasoned engineers to design (at least for a commercial product). In fact all the things he mentions are things used in RF design, and so this smacks of a stereotypical dickhead amateur radio guy.
With this kind of warm, supportive environment, it's no wonder women are falling all over themselves to get into engineering! Limor doesn't need me to defend her, for sure, and there's people on Slashdot already calling this guy out. I'd just rather people like that keep their opinions private and hurry up and die off so we can advance as a society. | | comments: 13 comments or Leave a comment |
| I'm not a big fan of Internet petitions. As no less than Bart Simpson says "We have to reach people whose opinions actually matter!" I think we're still at the point where opinions on the Internet, with the exception of maybe a blogger or two, can be safely ignored.
That being said, I'm happy to see that one has gotten the desired response (The only other caveat being that if Bill Clinton taught us anything, it's that it costs nothing to apologize for stuff you haven't done, and it gets a good response). Alan Turing was no less than a giant of computer science, a pioneer of formalizing the fledgling fields of research, and a pivotal force in winning WWII. The way he was treated in postwar life was nothing short of shameful (not to mention the stuff he could have done, had he lived).
This doesn't bring him back, of course, but an acknowledgment is nice. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| I'm in a weird sort of department store attending a weird sort of class, and for some reason everyone has to perform a song every Friday, and I've made the mistake of signing up for NEXT FRIDAY. I slowly remember I have no musical instruments, and debatable talent. At first I think the old keyboard I have is broken, but then I remember I've sold it. I think about asking Steve to use one of his basses, but then other folks get in the way. I then luck into a single-string bass guitar, which I then proceed to play a well-known Michael McDonald song on, and realize I'll have to do a bit of arranging to make it work. Kevin shows up, if for no other reason than to make an appearance. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
|
- Create a blog with mockable pictures following some sort of vague theme.
- Get book deal.
- Profit.
| | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| The New York Times magazine had a pretty excellent series of articles this past Sunday about how the dangers faced by women and girls around the world are much greater than most people realize, and how targeting aid directly at women and girls multiplies the benefits of that aid, because (to put it bluntly) women generally put the aid to better use. The evidence they present is both statistical and anecdotal.
But that's not what interested me, what interested me is how some folks got awful caught up in their perceptions of the headline. Quoting:
Saving the World's Women? When I tweeted last week that the "we Westerners must save women!" phrasing rubbed me the wrong way, a few folks piped up to offer alternatives. Emily Douglas suggested, "How about getting out of the way so women can save the world?" I like that perspective much better.
How about that indeed? See, if I were reading that last suggestion in the same tone as they were reading the headline, I might be inclined to think "So you're saying guys fucked up the planet, and we're just in the way. You don't need our help or our money?"
Thank goodness I don't go looking for things to be offended by! I do often end up feeling that too much time is spent on "tone" or whatever, and not enough is spent on getting stuff done. It's possible I'm just tone deaf in those situations. I could care less if they called it "Helping Uppity Broads Around the World", as long as they were actually doing good work.
I'll note that Will Smith also thought guys of the world were nothing but trouble. | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| So yesterday we were at a wedding and talking with some Indian folks about weddings, and how Indian weddings can go on for like three days. I said "Oh, like a cricket match.", which got a few laughs and a brief conversation about cricket (which I know only a little about), and how there was a game here tomorrow (today) and a league and everything. More or less the end of the conversation. No e-mails, IMs, text messages, or even phone calls involved.
Today, this shows up in my Google "web clips" line on gmail.
Yikes. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| All the things I used to read Wonkette for, I now find in Who is IOZ?. At the very least, you'll get sentences like this:
[...]True Blood is The Worst, having this past Sunday jumped into the water with a motorcycle, hunted down a shark, tied the motorcycle to the shark, ridden the shark, goaded the shark nearly to madness, and forced the shark to jump over another shark that was, in turn, jumping over a third shark.
That sort of stuff makes the whole thing worthwhile. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| When I'm stuck on a hard problem, I'll send my brain off on a task designed to divert my attention in hopes that some sort of subconscious engine will chew on the problem until it spits out some hints towards a solution.
Some questions should have answers, but don't. Ergo: Where in the heck did the phrase "Bow-chicka-wow-wow" originate? I mean sure, we all know "porn films", but the specific cadence of the onomatopoeic phrase implies a specific origin. Turns out this question has been asked before. Still no answer.
The one that's bugging me right now is this: Who do you root for in "Alien vs. Predator"? A very recent screen rant post ruminates about Michael Meyers (of Halloween fame) battling Aliens or Predator. Of course you'd root for Meyers in this situation.
My theory is (obviously) the more human of the contestants is the one we're inclined to root for. The Predator is the more human of the two in AvP, so we root for him. Hannibal Lector vs. Dracula? Hannibal Lector. One could go on picking things like this forever, but I think I've heard my subconscious calling. | | comments: 11 comments or Leave a comment |
| "Star Wars" came out at a bad time: the 70's, when the cultural blender was set on "frappe" (not like now, when it's on "liquefy"). Vaguely identifiable chunks of misappropriated culture floated together in a sort of unappetizing stew, and films like "Star Wars" popped out.
This article sums up quite a bit of the bad design of Star Wars, but is notable for the author's almost throwaway comment in the comments section.
But you know what? The failure mode of science fiction is NOT "fantasy," it is "bad science fiction."
Amen to that. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| So, the Super! Dangerous! Terrorists! turn out to be nothing so much as the same-old-story-with-different-details redneck boasting. Color me shocked.
Sure, they got some guns and stuff, and they TOTALLY DUG A PIT IN THEIR YARD. OH NOES (if that qualifies as a terrorist bunker, I was a threat to Our Way of Life in middle school). Heck, they probably even deserve some time for something or other; but I'm only getting less impressed with their destructive capabilities, and they didn't start out very high on the scale to begin with.
Onion provides the appropriate title, and I probably don't need to remind you that this sort of nonsense isn't region-specific (interested parties can visit Lebanon, NH). | | comments: Leave a comment |
| So I was listening to NPR this morning and caught the story about the dustup between Kelly Clarkson, Beyonce, and Ryan Tedder. Don't know who Ryan Tedder is? He's the Grammy-nominated songwriter responsible (at least in part) for both Kelly Clarkson's "Already Gone" and Beyonce's "Halo". Apparently, Kelly Clarkson is a little upset because her song (which is coming out just now) sounds remarkably similar to Beyonce's (which came out a little while ago).
Tedder denies any reuse.
I decided to spend a little while with Audacity (which inexplicably crashed and made me almost repeat my work) and present the evidence to you in MP3 form. "Your Halo is Already Gone". Snag it and spread it around, please.
(Nerd notes: I slowed the Beyonce song down by about 7.25 percent, and lined up the beats. The tempo was changed, but the pitch was kept the same. These songs really are in the same key. I did not use the Beat Finder tool in Audacity, just free-hand-eared it) | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| It came to me in a roundabout way. Labeled simply "Grayson", and accompanied with a stern warning "This smells like death". As an avowed aficionado of all things cheesy and smelly, I allowed it into my home.
Perhaps I waited too long to try it.
See, there's another in this house, so I needed time alone to let the cheese come up to temperature and mellow out. It was decidedly unmellow when I took it out of the fridge, and after washing my hands twice, I donned latex gloves for additional protection and the desire to have my fingers not smell like feet forever.
I usually like feet. Or cheeses that threaten feet. Or something like that.
Anyway, this cheese has a rich smell, where "rich" is used as if you were a hippie that poops in an outhouse and hates capitalism. The texture, however, is awesome; somewhere between brie and gouda. Yielding but with integrity, kind of like that college girlfriend in the liberal arts department that [much text redacted as this wandered off into an unrelated topic] cheese. If I could just remember the texture (of the cheese), I'd be set.
But the smell knocked me off my feet (feet again!). There were subtle flavors cowering behind that smell, begging me to pinch my nose and discover them; whimpering quietly behind the rind.
I shall have to get a more recent vintage and test again, before the smell has had chance to dig in and establish fortifications. | | comments: 12 comments or Leave a comment |
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