Obsidian Wings

Your 2015 Spoilers Open Thread

by Doctor Science

To paraphrase comic writer/artist Ian D. Sharman:

Dear Australians People Living in Japan,

Please remember to be considerate and not post 2015 spoilers.

If there are jet packs and flying cars then the rest of us would like to enjoy the surprise for ourselves.

However, if we’re facing thermonuclear annihilation then a heads up would actually be appreciated.

Cheers!

I have to go run around like a crazy person, getting everything ready for our New Year's Eve party. Talk about how glad you are to see the back of 2014, and what (if anything) you're actually looking forward to in 2015.

The charity spreadsheet

by Doctor Science

Speaking of 501(c)3 organizations, I'm putting together our yearly charity donations spreadsheet -- what we've given so far this year, who we'll give to between now and midnight Dec 31, what our plans are for next year.

We were already donating to Doctors Without Borders, but we're definitely upping the amount this year, and I think we'll put them on a monthly plan for 2015.

I don't know how I'd manage this without Charity Navigator and a spreadsheet. We try to have a mix of local, national, and international charities, for a variety of issues -- but only one or two charities per issue & level because, as Charity Navigator says, investing needs diversification, giving should be concentrated for best results.

huh, looking over our list, I see we've got mostly state and local orgs for environmental issues and homelessness/poverty, national/international for health & medicine (e.g. Doctors Without Borders) and "culture" (e.g. Organization for Transformative Works). We also support the ACLU, which isn't a 501c(3) but which does a lot of work that really needs doing. Mr Dr Science isn't sure they're the best choice, but I don't know who else is doing so much work to, as they say, "keep us safe".

The Bishop Giving Alms, by Domenico di Bartolo; fresco in the Santa Maria dellla Scala Hospital, Siena, painted 1442-43. The official site says:

This scene of the Limosina (Almsgiving) represents a pompous procession where the bishop, in the center and mounted on his heavy roan horse, is about to knock over one of the master workers waiting outside the work site of the Hospital.

The hospital was run by a Rector and friars independent of the Bishop, and this fresco strikes me as unusually and pointedly satirical. It makes a good illustration of the danger of supporting the wrong charities -- the kind that spend your money on themselves instead of the needy, or that do more harm than good.

the Sony hack

by liberal japonicus

I had started a post that tried to draw a connection between Gamergate, the Rolling Stone UVA rape report debacle and the Sony hack, noting that the common thread that tied all these together was the release of information that should have been kept private. I also wanted to note how small of an impact the Sony hack story has made here in Japan as well as riff a bit on the fact that the way this has played out, if it is indeed North Korea, shows that they are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. This Guardian article talks about how NK is not funny, perhaps because it is evil, which is in part true, but also, the West has typically used NK as a punchline, but, again if it was really NK, they were able to play the channels of journalism and news like a concert violinist. But further thinking is below the fold...

Your Open Thread of Holiday Cheer

by Ugh

Or not.  Talk about whatever, holiday related or otherwise.  

It seems this Friday is the perfect day for a nice government document dump, who knows what will happen!  Related, and to the surprise of no one who knows anything about the inner workings of the IRS, Darrel Issa has yet to find anything linking the White House to the Tea Party targeting scandal.  But it must be in those missing emails!

Related to Darrel Issa, Zombie Baby Jesus (or, at least, the two are related in my mind).  When you think about it, for those of you who watch the Walking Dead, Jesus is the original walker.  Nothing in the Bible about him munching on the living though, AFAIK (maybe it's in those missing emails).

Also, too, Jeb!  I'm looking forward to the Chelsea/Jenna Presidential election of 2032....

Anyone going anywhere interesting this/next week?  We're off to Jamaica, same as last year only a different place.

That's it.  Happy New Year!

I don't know if I can keep watching Brooklyn Nine Nine

by Doctor Science

So a guy in Baltimore with no known gang connections shot his ex-girlfriend, then went up to Brooklyn, assassinated two police officers, and killed himself when confronted. His social media posts claimed he did this to avenge the death of Eric Garner -- though I've heard no explanation of why he started by shooting his ex. It does continue the American custom of start by shooting a woman, so I think it possible that attacking his ex was the original crime, assassinating NYPD cops was just a particularly dramatic suicide plan.

The NYPD is enraged -- after all, "up in arms" is already in their job description. When Mayor de Blasio visited the hospital where the officers died, the crowd of police waiting there deliberately turned their backs on him. Patrick Lynch, the head of one of the police unions (I don't understand why there are so many; is this just a NYC thing?), has said that the slain officers' blood is on de Blasio's hands -- I guess for the way he's been willing to listen to some of the protestors. Any criticism of the NYPD, as far as Lynch is concerned, is unfair, inappropriate, and "throwing cops under the bus".

Lynch's attitude is not new, for him or the NYPD. Back in the summer of 2000, Lynch was urging New Yorkers to boycott Bruce Springsteen, because the singer had the effrontery to write about the killing of Amadou Diallo.

Samir Chopra describes his encounter in 1997 with the deadly self-pity of the police, from an officer who was taking a philosophy class from him. That was the year that the big MYC police brutality case was the beating and rape of Abner Louima, and Chopra's student was deeply unhappy.

I was talking to a man who seemed curiously consumed by self-pity. He was not happy his profession was being maligned, but he didn’t seem to think it had anything to do with the way his colleagues–other than a few bad apples, who he wanted to disown all too quickly–behaved with the communities they policed. The police were the real victims here, unfairly made to bear the brunt of a community’s wrath. Louima might have suffered one night, but all the agitators and demonstrators–sometimes folks who didn’t even live in Brooklyn!–were now making life oh-so-difficult for the rest of the police, forced to deal with this daily reminder of their brutality.

What makes policemen really dangerous, I think, is that their implements of destruction do not end with the deadly firearms that they discharge so easily and so carelessly. They carry around too, a toxic mix of self-pity, righteousness, and resentment at a deliberately obtuse world. When they walk the streets, they do not see a ‘community’ around them; they see the sullen, non-compliant subjects of their policing.

And via Balloon Juice, I'm reminded self-pity wasn't new then, either:

In 1992, more than 4,000 off-duty NYPD cops stormed City Hall, blocked Brklyn Bridge, beat up reporters. No arrests. http://t.co/MFKrPmqDta

— Mister Bunny (@AskMisterBunny) December 21, 2014

While the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association had called the rally to protest Mayor David N. Dinkins's proposal to create an independent civilian agency that would look into police misconduct, the huge turnout -- estimated by the Police Department at 10,000 protesters -- and the harsh emotional pitch reflected widespread anger among rank-and-file officers toward the Mayor for his handling of riots against the police in Washington Heights last July, his refusal to give them semiautomatic weapons and his appointment of an outside panel to investigate corruption.

In contrast, the police officers in Brooklyn Nine Nine aren't self-pitying, self-righteous, and resentful. The worst of them are goldbrickers, just waiting for retirement; none are aggressive, authoritarian assholes. Not all police officers are like that, of course, but I've never heard of a precinct without at least a few -- it would be like having all children above average.

I know B99 is "just a TV show", but as the months have passed it's become more and more difficult for me to just relax and suspend my disbelief. It starts to see less like an innocuously pretty picture, where attitudes have been cleaned up along with the cussing, and more like out-and-out propaganda.

I know B99 is better than other cop shows , which generally glorify the ~drama~ of police work and the shootings police do. In our last discussion about police culture, someone suggested disqualifying officer candidates who'd watched COPS. I don't know if they were joking, but I don't think such shows *help*. In an article about police militarization and community policing, DOJ analyst Karl Bickel talks about the dangers of

hiring officers in the spirit of adventure, who have been exposed to action oriented police dramas since their youth, and sending them to an academy patterned after a military boot camp, then dressing them in black battle dress uniforms and turning them loose in a subculture steeped in an “us versus them” outlook toward those they serve and protect, while prosecuting the war on crime, war on drugs, and now a war on terrorism

-- bold mine. Even police officers have seen far more shootings on TV than they have in real life, and that will tend to shape their expectations -- about who gets shot, and why, and whose fault it is.

B99 may be just too close to reality for my taste. I'm now watching The Librarians, and looking forward to Gallivant and Agent Carter.

Obama surrenders to Castro! Viva la revolucion!

by Ugh

I always thought our post-Castro Cuban policy was insane (and the embargo continues to be insane).  It certainly has been insane since the fall of the USSR.  

How is it that we could normalize relations with Vietnam and China, each of which killed thousands of U.S. soldiers in, you know, actual full blown shooting wars?  But not with Cuba because....why?  It's too close?  The beaches are too nice?  It's just been ridiculous all the way down.

So, good for Obama.  Here's hoping the embargo gets lifted too, although that seems doubtful given the current state of Congress.  

Your New Car Smell Open Thread

by Doctor Science

We now have enough money that when my old car (2001 Honda Accord, 147K miles)'s transmission decided to bid farewell to this mortal coil, we could just go out and buy a new car:

A 2015 Subaru Legacy. In "Twilight Blue Metallic" so it's not the same color (black, white, or beige/gray) as every other damn car in the mall parking lot.

The ability to just plain go out and buy a new car, instead of laboriously finding an acceptable used care you have to constantly repair and worry about, is a classic example of the Sam Vimes "Boots" Theory of Economic Injustice, which states that it's much more expensive to be poor than to be rich. Even when, like me, you didn't figure out how to use Consumer Reports' Build and Buy Service until it was too late. ugh, even though we're not poor anymore, making money mistakes makes my stomach churn.

Anyway, there are whole new levels of car tech taking place -- this is *definitely* living in the future. The car has all kinds of assisted-driving features: a backup camera, lane drift warnings, "there's someone in your blind spot" warnings (I *really* love this feature already), and assisted cruise control so you can use it in the kind of traffic you get on I-95. It also had a lot of voice-activation, which I predict I'll really appreciate because my driving glasses don't really let me read a lot of the interior buttons without squinting.

And now we have to think of a name. I'll be the main one driving this car, so I'm thinking of naming it Arod, so I can imagine Legolas & Gimli are riding along with me. No way it's a Shadowfax -- maybe if our next car is the midlifemobile Mr Dr Science yearns for.

So, Happy Hanukkah to us! Talk about presents you're anticipating, or automotive technology, or whatever.

My favorite books of 2014: Fiction

by Doctor Science

For my own reference, and in case any of you are looking for gift-giving suggestions. This list is all fiction I read for the first time in 2014, whether it was published this year or not. In order by author's last name.

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (2014). Maybe the best and most realistic "Surprise! You're suddenly the hereditary monarch!" story I've ever read. The hero may be a goblin in an empire of (mostly) elves, but the fact that his royal life is filled with meetings, paperwork, no privacy, and very little freedom for actual action is very realistic. That his success is due more to a good heart than anything else is probably completely within the realm of fantasy, but it's just what I want in a book.

City of Stairs, by Robert Jackson Bennett (2014). A complex fantasy about gods, how imperialism works (and doesn't), how humans are bound by history & culture and how we make and re-make them. Both a spy story and a murder mystery, I have no idea who the character on the cover is supposed to be -- our heroine is, in appearance, a mousy bureaucrat, not a figure from Assassin's Creed.

The Tropic of Serpents: A Memoir by Lady Trent, by Marie Brennan (2014). Less romantic than the first book in the series, more political & anthropological as Lady Trent travels through meta-Africa. Another book wrestling with how imperialism & colonialism work, and which appreciates the variety of human cultures.

A Darkling Sea, by Jim Cambias (2014). Human and alien points of view on a Callisto-like planet. It reminded Mr Dr Science & me very much of Hal Clement's classic Mission of Gravity for the viewpoint of a species in a deeply inhuman environment.

Cibola Burn, by James S. A. Corey (2014). The latest in The Expanse series takes our sundry heroes and other PsOV outside the solar system, to a planet where the first human exploration and settlement is going as messily as you might expect, with people being stupid in characteristically human ways. I particularly liked the character of Elvi (unlike many reviewers, I see) because she never magically gets over her problems communicating with non-scientists.

Full Fathom Five, by Max Gladstone (2014). Another fantasy novel featuring gods and their (possible) deaths, in a culturally-complex parallel world. Despite the misleading cover, this entry in the series is set in sort-of-Hawaii. The characters are IMHO Gladstone's best yet, with multiple PsOV I was really rooting for.

Ancillary Sword, by Ann Leckie (2014). The sequel to Ancillary Justice, which swept the awards for 2013. I just re-read both, and I think Sword is even better than Justice, for its deeper development of society, politics, and moral dilemmas in the Radch. In that way, it's reminding me of the Vorkosigan novels, which about how to make good choices, as much as they are space opera -- one of my favorite combinations.

Something More Than Night, by Ian Tregillis (2013). It starts out as a noir detective pastiche with a fallen angel as the gumshoe, and twists and turns to a *deeply* satisfying ending -- the kind where everything, even what at first seemed like silly or arbitrary style choices, comes together.

The Martian, by Andy Weir (2014). An incredibly realistic story about adventure on Mars, in which the plot involves very little human-to-human conflict, but the universe is *definitely* out to get you. Part of the realism is that the action isn't non-stop: our hero endures brief times of desperate danger, but also long stretches of soul-crushing boredom. Important principles for all space explorers and other adventurers: do the math, practice everything you can ahead of time, and bring duct tape.

Senate Intelligence Committee Report

by Ugh

It seems it's been released.  Washington Post copy here.  WaPo story on the report here.  From the WaPo story:

After being transferred to a site in Thailand, Zubaida was placed in isolation for 47 days, a period during which the presumably important source on al-Qaeda faced no questions. Then, at 11:50 a.m. on Aug. 4, 2002, the CIA launched a round-the-clock interrogation assault — slamming Zubaida against walls, stuffing him into a coffin-sized box and waterboarding him until he coughed, vomited and had “involuntary spasms of the torso and extremities.”

More to say later.  Keep in mind the report's limitations.

Update - also, too:

There are also references to other procedures, including the use of tubes to administer “rectal rehydration” and feeding. CIA documents describe a case in which a prisoner’s lunch tray “consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts, and raising was ‘pureed’ and rectally infused.” At least five CIA detainees were subjected to “rectal rehydration” or rectal feeding without documented medical necessity.

Update the Second - Glenn Greenwald "live coverage" here.  (Note:  it's Glenn Greenwald, you do not have to click the link.)  I will post a link to the CIA's "rebuttal" when I see it (or feel free to post it in comments).  But will be offline for a bit.  

Update in Round:  Andrew Sullivan "live blogging."  His (accurate) paraphrase of part of the report, "Even after a torture victim is so broken that the interrogator only has to snap his fingers to get this shell of a human being to get back on the waterboard, they continued to torture him." 

Update 4:  The CIA rebuttal.  

Can police culture be changed?

by Doctor Science

The only good news I've seen about American police-citizen relations is this: Conservatives Join Outrage Over Grand Jury Decision In Eric Garner's Death. When Charles Krauthammer and I agree that the situation is borked, there's actually a possibility that something might change.

The essential problem, as I see it, is: American police kill way too many people, and they face no accountability for their mistakes. Which possible approaches might help solve this problem? And which have a chance of being tried?

I made a list a while ago, it could be a start.

One of my suggestions was that *any* "police-involved death" should have mandatory consequences, whether it was intentional, accidental, justified, or whatever. I don't mean mandatory prison terms, I mean consequences, for the officer and for the department. *Every* death should be treated as a system failure, whether the victim "deserved it" or not.

One possibility: any officer who is involved in a "police-involved death" loses the right to carry a weapon (including a Taser) and to have contact with the public where weapons might be appropriate. In the first place, because it's *really bad* for people to be killers, it's traumatic and damaging. If police officers can kill and go out on the streets again, they will feel -- and act -- like soldiers.

This suggestion really riled up some of our more conservative commenters, who thought it would, among other things, undercut police recruitment. After the past couple of months, I'm inclined to see that as a feature, not a bug -- because law enforcement seems to have attracted a disproportionate number of, frankly, bullies, the kind of people we should be keeping away from the authorized use of force. I get this impression partly from anecdotal evidence, but also from actual statistics, e.g. of the high rate of domestic violence by police officers.

Anecdata also tell me that, while the really bad cops are a minority, the "us versus them", Thin Blue Line culture of policing is far stronger than any desire for accountability or justice. So *all* cops protect the bad ones, and it's less like "a few bad apples in the barrel" and more like "a few ounces of poison in the wine". Most of the wine is still good! Why do you hate all wine?

It's definitely by Rembrandt, and the model is definitely Saskia, but what is the topic? The Prado calls it "Judith at the banquet of Holofernes", but it's also been identified as Artemisia or Sophonisba. I personally vote for Artemisia, because the nautilus shell was supposed to deactivate poisons (don't test this), and because Saskia is clearly pregnant -- as in the portrait of Saskia as Flora, which he also painted the year they were married, 1624. Hmm. Although the record shows that their first child (who died infancy) was born in December 1625, I really wonder if Saskia was pregnant when they married -- and then miscarried.