Saturday, November 29, 2014
How much does luck and privilege bear on libertarian ideas of meritocracy? Plenty
There is an article by Elbert Ventura on p. 122 of the
Fall 2014 Democracy Journal, “Self-Made I America”, link here.
The subtitle is telling. “Self-reliance is good thing –
but its fetishization has created an elite oblivious to the role luck and
privilege play in people’s lives.
He makes an example of Mitt Romney in his essay, and
coins the words “Randian” or “Randiose” from the John Galt character of Ayn
Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” (which, by the way, is even mentioned in “Boys in the
Band” way back in 1970). He also mentions our “libertarian age.”
He says that Elizabeth Warren stops short when she
says, “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.” Warren keeps it in the range of depending on
government and public infrastructure and services, like all good Democrats. But
her analysis is “transactional” – and that doesn’t mean “I’m OK, you’re OK”,
such a popular mantra in the 1970s. Earlier writers about this, like David Callahan with "The Cheating Culture" (2004), while criticizing the inheritance of privilege, had kept the ethical discussions within more traditional ideas of "personal responsibility."
Elbert talks about “the capacity to be humble in the
face of success, and grateful in the face of privilege.” He also notes, “the concomitant of
self-satisfaction over one’s own achievements is smugness about others’
failures.”
All of this puts me in a double-edged position, of
seeing two worlds from the same mountaintop (which might get removed). If I remain unwillingness to extend myself in
the mode of complimentarity at some point, when it really costs something, the
less lucky can reasonably get the idea that rules don’t matter. Indignation and even rage follow. Just look at current events. It can get personal. Besides Noam Chomsky, even teenagers know
that now.
Friday, November 28, 2014
"Service" and "shark tanks"
David Ignatius has an op-ed on p. A21 of the Washington
Post this Black Friday (or “Brown Friday”), “The healing power of service”, or
simply and bluntly “The case for national service” online, link here. (He could call it "the equalizing power of service", as below.) I’ve covered Stanley McChrystal’s call for
national service in the 18-28 age range before, and the Franklin Project, on
the Issues blog Sept. 13. 2014. Needless
to say, it could pose issues for the plans of young people in college now,
including some whom I know. The idea of
some help with tuition or eliminating some student debt in return would make
sense, prospectively (as part of a “service year exchange”, perhaps). Others will say they have to get right to
work, and some are already “independently employed” adults even as
undergraduates if talented and industrious enough.
The idea of service has always been spotty and
mixed. The “unfairness” of the Vietnam
era draft, with the system of student deferments and then the idea that better
educated men were less exposed to combat, is an important theme in all of my
three DADT books (especially Chapter 2 of DADT 1, and the first “fiction” piece
of DADT 3). The male-only aspect, while
ruled constitutional in 1981, says something about the values my generation
grew up with and that today’s more privileged young men seem unaware of. The Iraq war effectively implemented a “back
door” draft with the stop-loss provisions.
The issue was more significant in ending “don’t ask don’t tell” than
most people realize.
The willingness of medical people (Doctors Without Borders)
to serve in Africa and risk their own lives with exposure to Ebola (and other
diseases in the future), and deal at least with the mandatory isolation or
sometimes quarantine says something to. Overseas
service in undeveloped countries will always be challenging, particularly for
LGBT people because many authoritarian countries see LGBT values as culturally
or religiously disruptive (to say the least).
For retired people, it pretty obviously poses
questions, too. The Peace Corps actually
has taken people as old as 80. It’s easy to imagine rhetoric that gives seniors
living on retirement (and on social security which some conservatives say we
should means test now – as in the debt ceiling debate) “something to do”, and
since I’ve already set myself up with my own goals, that can become rather
threatening.
There are two components to all this in my own
mind. First, service can attract
customers and be “good business”, in the thinking style of “Shark Tank”. Many of Donald Trump’s “Apprentice” tasks
were charity drives. In this mode, one’s
efforts at service would be in areas of one’s own interests and talents. That’s why I participated in two “Chess4Charity”
events (Tuesday, Nov. 25 here, and Oct. 20 on Issue blog). Music is the other area. I don’t know how far efforts have gotten to
use music to help patients with dementia (in eldercare environments) or even
autism have gotten, and whether startup companies are getting into this – I will
find out. (The film is “Alive Inside”,
reviewed on the Movies Blog July 26, 2014). Another area is whether more musicians, who
may need income, would perform more at senior centers – I am somewhat familiar
with how that works from the eldercare period I dealt with for my mother. I can look into these more.
The other component, though, is about coercion. It’s about responding to needs as they
appear. That is what I find disruptive
and challenging. But I understand where
it comes from. My mother used to have a
phrase, “getting out of things”. It is
easier to do what you should in life if you believe that others will, too. This kind of thinking sounds a but Maoist, but it has a point: society is more stability if everybody learns to walk in the shoes of others at least sometimes, and shares the common risks (as with the military draft of the past). One does not always get to deploy one’s own talents, and one may wind up experiencing
subservience in a bureaucracy (as I talked about Sept. 30). Of course, one is supposed to connect into a
virtuous circle that brings one into more contact with others. Retired people
may be more in a position where “radical hospitality” could naturally be
expected.
Somewhere in between these poles are other ploys. Religious groups are very good with service, but (as with the LDS two year missions) often turn this into proselytizing (or “evangelism”). Companies that cajole people into “selling” have a point in saying that you should like people enough to want to sell to them, or have enough real responsibility for others that you really have to sell, not just pontificate.
Somewhere in between these poles are other ploys. Religious groups are very good with service, but (as with the LDS two year missions) often turn this into proselytizing (or “evangelism”). Companies that cajole people into “selling” have a point in saying that you should like people enough to want to sell to them, or have enough real responsibility for others that you really have to sell, not just pontificate.
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Gates Foundation will require open access to research papers it supports
The “Bill & Melinda Gates” Foundation will take a
swing for open access by requiring all research that it funds to be open to the
public for free with open access when published in journals. This is what Aaron Swartz would have
wanted. The Vox story, by Susannah
Locke, is here.
I did not find the new policy on the Foundation
website yet, link.
Open access is more common in some fields (like
physics, as here) than in
others, especially medicine, where the bureaucracy pays big bucks for
papers.
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
If you're going to hold a charity bazaar, make it easier for visitors to find their own causes; a bust at Tyson's
Sunday night, I did a little experiment with “giving”. I had played in the “Chess4Charity” event on
Oct. 19 in Vienna, VA and seem that the group was going to have a presence at
the “Giving Back” night at Tysons Corner Mall in northern VA Sunday night, Nov.
23. Washington Nationals baseball player
Ryan Zimmerman was to be present with the charity.
I found the concierge desk on the lower level, and
indeed in a ring there was a giant chessboard set up, and a ping pong
table. But then the game turned to
checkers. I was told that the Mall did
not have an index as to whether all the various charities were. You had to walk the entire Mall to find them
(which meets the self-interest of the Mall).
I never did find a table for “Chess4Charity” (link ) . I see that I covered this on the Issues blog Oct. 20).
I had brought a chess set and old mechanical clock, and was ready to play. So I played my MacIntosh MacBook today the “makeup game” and actually lost with White to an Albin Counter Gambit. I’ll have to take more time and care when playing the computer (which will change defenses every game). (The computer uses the Stephen Hawking voice.) The computer was a proxy for Ryan, whom I presume knows how to play chess as well as baseball. (I’ve often tweeted that the Nationals and Redskins both [yes, would like a name change] should lean the game.) OK, I lost my game to Ryan Zimmerman. If I were a character in "South Park" I could lose a chess game to Brian Boitano,
Some of the charities were for rather personal causes
(like a last wish for a child), but one was for rescuing animals. I showed them, on my iPhone, the link for
Reid Ewing’s pet adoption cause (Facebook link)
. (See also, Feb 23, 2013 here. Former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg said
recently (in the CNN film “Ivory Tower”)
that “nothing in life is free”. Wish
Reid’s films about “what in life is free” would reappear.)
The charities were spread out among all the entrances
on the lowest level. I even looked
upstairs at the Food Court, near the AMC Theaters, and spotted someone outside
Friday’s familiar to me from my past life in Minneapolis.
At First Baptist Church of the City of Washington DC
on Sunday (followed by a catered Thanksgiving dinner) Rev. Deborah Cochrane
spoke about “Inheriting the Kingdom” (source Matthew 25:31-46). For all the importance of charity, that wasn’t
what this passage is about. Yet, all the
moral paradoxes in the gospels do seem to address the idea that in any
civilized culture, people will be “unequal” and will have to deal with it.
The “chess for charity” idea does sound like something
I should be able to do something about. Note also, that in front of Ted's Bulletin, Match Factory and Angelika Theaters in Merrifield, VA, there's a giant chess set that is missing two white knights.
Update: Nov. 28
The Washington Nationals on the MLB site report that Ryan Zimmerman (and his wife Heather) volunteered packing Thanksgiving dinners at Food and Friends, MLB video link here. Wikipedia reports that Ryan's mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1995, so he had to take responsibility for others in family earlier in life than many people.
The Washington Nationals on the MLB site report that Ryan Zimmerman (and his wife Heather) volunteered packing Thanksgiving dinners at Food and Friends, MLB video link here. Wikipedia reports that Ryan's mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1995, so he had to take responsibility for others in family earlier in life than many people.
Labels:
baseball,
chess,
free content issue,
personal ethics
Monday, November 24, 2014
SCOTUS to hear case on when metaphorical expression online can be taken as a criminal threat (case of Anthony Elonis)
Robert Barnes has a front page story Monday morning,
November 24, 2014, in The Washington Post, on the upcoming Supreme Court oral arguments on the Anthony
Elonis case (Elonis v. U.S., apparently to be heard Monday, December 1 in oral arguments). The story
title is “A social media test for justices; Facebook rants spawn speech case;
Was PA man venting or making real threats?”, link here. I see that I had discussed this case previously
here June 8, 2014.
The SCOTUS blog has links to all of the briefs here. Wikipedia has a brief history of the
conviction of Elonis in PA, resulting in 44 months in federal prison, here. The
applicable statue was 18 USC 875(c).
A major issue in the case is whether metaphorical
statements (in this case, sometimes based on parody by “Whitest Kids U’ Know”)
online should be taken as threats. The
amicus brief says that “this case presents an ideal opportunity for this Court
to determine whether its current True Threats Doctrine is compatible with
contemporary modes of communication.”
Also, “Internet users may give vent to emotions on which they have no
intention of acting, memorializing expressions of momentary anger.”
There’s another related area, as to whether statements
of potential threats made to mental health professionals are confidential, or
must be related to law enforcement. Back
in 1964, when I was undergoing therapy, a psychiatrist told me that all
communication was absolutely confidential.
Today, the situation has obviously changed, given all the history of
rampages (Holmes in particular). One
could expect that to be litigated eventually.
While the news story emphasizes the danger to female
spouses and children in domestic violence situation, the other very obvious
place where this case matters is schools.
Often, school administrators feel that they are in a position of taking
zero chances if any sort of threat is implied.
This has often expanded to social media posted outside of school. In the June 8 posting, I mentioned an
incident that occurred in 2005 when I was substitute teaching. I had posted a fiction screenplay treatment on
a flat site (not on a social networking site as such) in which an older male
substitute teacher arguably resembling me gives in to advances to a precocious
student and is arrested at school, and dies in prison. There are some other complicating factors in
the story (the student had used a defibrillator – not quite in common use in
schools in 2005 – to revive the teacher when “teaching” PE, and the student
performs the teacher’s music posthumously, and there was no “actual sex”
itself, just inappropriate lower level contact.
Nevertheless, this story was apparently (after apparently being found by
a student or teacher after another teacher had in fact been arrested at the
school in an unrelated incident) viewed as an indication that I might have a “propensity”
(in parallel to the language of the old DADT law) to give in to an advance and
that I could create a risk. This was
never litigated. (Maybe there were
competing “strategies”, to put it mildly.) I actually got the sub job back
eventually and left for other reasons, so I would have no clear “standing”. But this Elonis case might give an indication
on how the Supreme Court feels about “implicit content” in general. Part of my situation would have involved whether fiction can be interpreted as a "threat" (Bindrim v. Miller in California, 1979), as demonstrated in a film about a Canadian case in schools, "Blackbird" (reviewed on Movies blog, Nov. 2, 2014).
While the case refers to Facebook, the ideas would
apply to any web or forum posting, to email, tweets, text messages, or other
social networks like Myspace, which is older.
Would it apply to Snapchat? The idea that posting might be found by interested others
through search engines and not just by “friends” or “followers” would seem to
be important in my situation. Dr. Phil
had covered some of this in a program called “Internet Mistakes”, on Myspace,
reviewed on the TV Blog Jan. 15, 2008.
There are cases somewhat related to Elonis in Florida (mentioned here June 8) and Texas (where a teenager Justin Carter was prosecuted for Facebook "threats", Matt McCann's story in the Austin Chronicle, Feb. 28, 2014 here (Internet safety blog, July 3, 2013).
There are cases somewhat related to Elonis in Florida (mentioned here June 8) and Texas (where a teenager Justin Carter was prosecuted for Facebook "threats", Matt McCann's story in the Austin Chronicle, Feb. 28, 2014 here (Internet safety blog, July 3, 2013).
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Will "the right to be forgotten" come to the US?
There is an interesting column on p. A15 of the
Washington Post, Saturday November 22, 2014, p. A15, by Richard J. Peltz-Steele,
“A second chance online.” The online
title is more telling, “The ‘right to be forgotten’ online is really a right to
be forgiven,” link here.
The article notes that Google and other search engines
(like Bing) are inundated with over a thousand “forget me” requests daily in
Europe, and the EU court did not give any guidance as to how to implement. It also says that the policy is in force only
in European countries, and does not currently affect searches done in the
US. It is not completely clear that US
search engines never will decide to prune some US search results, for whatever
reason they decide suits their business models.
This already happens with “content quality” and that concept could
extend someday to older news stories or older postings; otherwise, will search
engine results expand infinitely, like the Universe?
The article gives an example with the case of killer
Robert Castree, where news stories were removed from European search results
because of another person identified in news coverage, when he wanted to be
forgotten. The whole idea of “forgetting”
started in Spain with a man humiliated by a 1998 debt.
In fact, If you search for Robert Castree here in the
US, you find many results, and a Wikipedia article. In fact, that’s one idea that would defeat
the European concept. Could the EU order
Wikipedia to take some coverage down? So
far, the order seems to apply only to “true search engines”. What about a flat site like my
“doaskdotell.com”, that has its own indexing. Could I be ordered someday to
honor this in Europe? I have no capacity
to change content according to country of destination. The site has been blocked in some
authoritarian countries, but Urchin stats shows plenty of traffic in those
countries anyway, especially Russia, China and Islamist countries.
A more relevant point for me might be that sites like
mine (the older flat sites like doaskdotell.com or its predecessor hppub.com) tended
to magnify persons who might have remained obscure but who had become important
in my own world slice. That was particularly true when my I put my DADT-1 book
online in the summer of 1998, one year after paperback publication, and allowed
it to be searched. Now Google Books does
the same. There was a case in early 2006 when someone, in an offhand
conversation in a bar, mentioned his concern over finding a reference in a
footnote in my book whenever he “Googled his name”. I changed the HTML copy be just initials (it
was actually an attribution for a 1996 press release) but it could remain
online in any other third party book searches. (This happened shortly after my
substitute-teaching debacle in late 2005 over my web screenplay, so it was a
but spooky at the time.) There were two other instances (in 2001 and 2003) when
individuals asked that their name be removed, and in both cases the
circumstances were unique or unusual enough to warrant doing so. All of this took place before “online
reputation”, as Michael Fertik defined it, became an everyday concept, and it
all happened before Facebook (and two of the incidents even before
Myspace).
Saturday, November 22, 2014
"Let's Encrypt" could make encryption of all web content routine by end of 2015
Electronic Frontier Foundation (with partners Mozilla,
Akamai, Cisco, and IdenTrust) has announced that a new security certificate
authority, “Let’s Encrypt”, to be “free, automated and open” will arrive in the
summer of 2015. It will use TLS (the
successor to SSL) which it says every major browser uses now. The main link is here.
The new standard will make encryption much easier for
the “novice” webmaster than the current procedure.
Again, a good question is whether a website that does
not require users to log on (as my doaskdotell does not) needs encryption. I’ve noticed more traffic in recent years from
non-democratic countries, so certainly there is an issue for those
visitors. I’m far less convinced that
the NSA really cares when an average American accesses information about, say,
bitcoin, because there is simply an overwhelming amount of data to
collate.
A related ability, as recently noted, would be the
capacity to encrypt email correspondence.
Friday, November 21, 2014
Fake "scholarly journals" pretend to do peer reviews when paid; more on print farms
There is a whole cottage “industry” of “scholarly open
access” where “journals” charge writers to publish scientific papers, and
pretend to do peer reviews without really doing them.
The paper “Get me off your f__ing mailing list” really
got published by “The International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology”,
with peer review by an automated robot.
SOA has a typical story about this particular paper
(by David Mazieres and Eddie Kohler) here. SOA has a list of these “publishers”,
compiled by Jeffrey Beale, here. IO9 has a humorous account of the incident
here.
Joseph Stromberg has an account on Slate of his sting
with a print content farm here.
I sometimes get requests from people to publish their
articles on my blog (I did used to do it on “doaskdotell.com” on the Readers page),
but I always tell them, create their own blog and self-publish, and I will
link.
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Large sunspot is again within sight-line of Earth, meaning that technology and Internet disruptions from solar coronal mass ejections (if Carrington-like) are possible.
Brian Van de Graaff of WJLA in Washington DC
interviews Dr. Alex Young of NASA about the huge sunspot that is reappearing in
the Sun’s rotation.
Relatively few television stations have covered this concern much in the past two days.
The sunspot threw off several large solar flares in
October but no damaging coronal mass ejections.
Not all flares cause CME’s, and the most intense part of a CME is likely
to miss the Earth unless the Earth is right in front of the location of the CME’s
path. A flare can cause some satellite and
radio disruptions in eight minutes; a
CME typically takes about 2-3 days to reach Earth, and with current technology,
the severity of it isn’t known until about an hour before it arrives.
The largest CME’s can cause severe damage to power grids,
which in the worst cases could take months or years to repair. One problem is that we don’t make many
transformers within the US. For a really
large flare, damage to the grid could be mitigated by deliberate brownouts or
blackouts, and by adding extra capacity and improving the grounding of
transformers with newer technology, which isn’t discussed often but which
business interruption insurance companies follow and say is progressing.
The sunspot is somewhat smaller than it was in
October.
A big practical concern, in the case of a damaging CME
incident, would be how the Internet would be affected by brownouts, or whether
less “essential” services, like social media or publishing platforms, would be
shut down for some time.
The largest CME in recorded history was the Carrington Event of 1859, which disrupted telegraph service just getting going at the time. That could be catastrophic today, as we have become dependent on technology without securing it against rare events. There was a large incident in 1928, and another in 1989 that disrupted power in Quebec. We may have missed a big CME by a few days (having moved out of line for a direct hit just in time) in July 2012.
The largest CME in recorded history was the Carrington Event of 1859, which disrupted telegraph service just getting going at the time. That could be catastrophic today, as we have become dependent on technology without securing it against rare events. There was a large incident in 1928, and another in 1989 that disrupted power in Quebec. We may have missed a big CME by a few days (having moved out of line for a direct hit just in time) in July 2012.
Power disruptions are more likely at polar latitudes,
and at this time of year might be more affected in the southern hemisphere.
Wikipedia attribution link for CME illustration.
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
SCOTUS needs to take major case on API interoperability (and the java language)
The federal circuit in Washington DC (the appeals
circuit for the District of Columbia), in its infinite pretense of wisdom on
technology, has recently ruled that “application program interfaces” (or “API’”)
are protected by copyright. The problem surface
when Google used the “characteristics of functions” from Sun’s java programming
language (and its many “methods” from basic algebra), believing it was doing
what Borland had done years before with respect to Lotus. The actual opinion is on Finnegan, here.
Timothy B. Lee has a major op-ed on Vox, in which he
argues that this is a potentially existential case that can affect future
consumers, particularly of mobile devices or of Apple (as opposed to PC and Microsoft)
products, as well as the “free services” that companies like Google still find
it profitable to offer. The link for the
story is here. The case is Google v. Oracle America. Lee,
and others, argue that the Supreme Court needs to take this case.
Copyhype has another account of the problem here.
Java isn't the only language with "methods" that have "characteristics". Consider C++ and C#.
Public Knowledge has an amicus brief to the Supreme
Court on the case here.
An d Electronic Frontier Foundation has a similar
brief, Nov 7. 2014, here.
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Wordpress service company "Automattic" announces transparency policy (with Github) for DMCA takedowns, posts frivolous complaints on "Hall of Shame.
I noticed on my Wordpress panel today a link to a story, that “Automattic” (the company that runs Wordpress) is not placing its DMCA complaint processing on Github so that all can see any frivolous claims. It also reports claims to Chilling Effects.
The “Wptavern” story link is here. The specific story concerned a complaint by
Janet Jackson (famous for the 2004 Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction” with
Justin Timberlake) of both copyright and trademark infringement. The trademark complaint seemed to occur
because of a mere mention of Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” video, as in this
posting on “Blue Stocking Red Carpet” here (in a “Dinner Party Conversation” called “What
Would Your WWE Smackdown Name Be?”) Is a
“dinner party” here like one of my “pot luck suppers” in NYC back in the 1970s
when I was “coming out” a second time?
Well, there’s no way merely mention of a celebrity or company name, even
if unfavorably, infringes on a trademark.
(On the other hand, sending spam pretending to be from the company or
celebrity definitely does.) The
copyright infringement was claimed for an image of Jackson that appears to be
with Timberlake in 2004. The copyright
for an image usually belongs to the party that took the image, not the people
in the photo. (There are emerging other
issues, though, with photography, normally legal in public places, but
nevertheless provoking legal and ethical controversy when they circulate in social
media – say, like dirty dancing disco photos, for openers.) “Automattic” placed this complaint in a “Hall
of Shame”, like a pillory in Williamsburg (“Sorry, Ms. Jackson”, here). The "Tavern" story has a nice picture of Automattic HQ, presumably in San Francisco. EFF may not be far away. (By the way, the Jackson-Timberlake incident found its way into honorable mention in Dov Seidman's "How" book. It was all over AOL the Sunday night that it happened.)
I’d love to have the celebrity status to attract this
kind of gossip on dinner party sites.
The last Commandment is “thou shalt not covet”.
GOP used Twitter "illegally" to manipulate mid-term elections
There is a new flak over the way the GOP apparently
used bizarre Twitter accounts to coordinate polling data with PAC’s and “non-profits”,
a practice that is said to still violate campaign finance reform laws. The detailed story and video by Chris Moody
of CNN is here.
It’s easy to dismiss this episode as an example of
hyper partisanship. It’s rather
silly. And I have to add, sometimes I
get very unwelcome approaches from people to become involved in partisan
activity. They don’t understand my lax “loyalty”.
The story rings a bell for me because back in 2005
there was a debate on whether campaign finance reform could affect even amateur
blogging. Through a sequence of
coincidences that now seem improbable in retrospect, this led to my actually
stopping substitute teaching (as explained July 27, 2007). In the long run, the FEC eventually said that
“ordinary” blogging and web activity would not be viewed as indirect campaign
activity, even though an appeals court had told it to look at the issue.
I’ve worked as an “election judge” in Arlington three
times, although I haven’t done it since 2007.
I can do without the 5 AM start time and 18 hour day. But it is a kind of “service”. I wonder what the needs for election judges
will be in November 2016. The voter
check-in process is now even more automated, as I saw when I voted Nov. 4. I still know some of the people.
But "Dem Republicans" act like a grad student who thinks his course grade comes from "a mid term and the final." Oh, I had a professor who gave his final on a Sunday, too (not Tuesday).
But "Dem Republicans" act like a grad student who thinks his course grade comes from "a mid term and the final." Oh, I had a professor who gave his final on a Sunday, too (not Tuesday).
Monday, November 17, 2014
Jury duty (especially on a "grand jury" or a big trial) can cause issues for bloggers and journalists
The current media attention to the grand jury
convening in Ferguson, MO to consider whether to indict a particular police
officer for the death of Michael Brown brings up and important topic for
bloggers and journalists: what happens
when a news person is called for an extended period of jury duty?
I do see that I last took this up in June 2012 but
it’s time for another look.
When I lived in Dallas in the 1980s, Texas had a “one
day or one trial” system. My name came
up about every two years. I actually
served on two trials: a two-day weapons trial in 1982, where we convicted
someone, and a malpractice civil trial in 1986 where the parties settled on the
second day. Both of these experiences
yield some detail that is worth further exploration at another time, probably
on my Wordpress blogs. The Texas system
tends to promote very brief periods of jury duty that don’t usually create
significant conflicts.
In Arlington VA, the procedure is to send a
questionnaire to a randomly chosen group of voters every year. The summons must be answered within 10
days. Then during the following calendar
year the person may be called for one week or more (if a trial lasts longer). Persons over 70 can refuse to serve. The site
is here.
From 1949 to her passing in 2010, I believe my mother
received questionnaires twice, and served once, for a week, I believe in
1987. I don’t believe my father ever
served (he passed in 1986). This seems
like a low probability event.
Federal procedures seem to be similar (site)
with pay now $40 a day with expenses, possibly $50 a day for longer periods. There is a questionnaire and a separate
summons for actual service.
In northern Virginia, criminal federal trials would
occur in Alexandria. There is a slight
possibility that few trials can be prolonged and high-profile, as related to
terrorism or major corruption. In recent years, federal trials, such as for
sex offenses involving minors or child pornography, seem to have become a
little more common, and some could be controversial. But frequency of service seems to be very
low, maybe once in 25 or 30 years in northern Virginia.
A big wild card is grand jury duty, as noted by
circumstances now near St. Louis. Grand juries come from the same pool as petit juries (for civil and criminal trials). Grand
jury terms can run from one to three years.
And “retired” people, like those in my circumstances, are more likely to
be “invited” to actually serve on grand juries if their names come up randomly. The typical pattern, in both federal and
state courts, is for the number of days a week to go down after the first 30-60
days of the term. Often, a grand jury
may meet only one day a week, if there are no controversial cases around.
This raises the obvious question, for me at least: use
of social media and the web. We all know
that in the most extreme trials (like OJ Simpson in the 1990s in Los Angeles),
jurors may be sequestered and kept from all media contact, including now
Internet use. But these cases are rare.
The possibility that juror Internet use could amount
to misconduct and could nullify a verdict later is serious. Online articles on the topic vary widely
right now on how courts handle this.
It certainly is not a problem for me to avoid mention
of a case (online or even in person) while I am on a jury, particularly if is
an “ordinary”, short trial that is over in 2-3 days. But grand jury service, since it is more
likely at my age, and because it runs a long time, can present “conflict of
interest” issues similar to those of other (management) employment.
In fact, my activity would be problematic because I
don’t use it for “socializing” directly the way others do, as to present my own
news commentary, which because of the nature of the “concentric” positions I
take, covers almost all topics, including crime and intellectual property torts
(like libel, copyright and trademark) that could wind up in court on my own
plate as a potential juror. The problem
for me that a comment online on these blogs about almost any topic could be
viewed as at least indirectly showing prejudice or a propensity to view a
certain defendant or plaintiff a certain way from preconceived ideas. Similar
conflicts, as I have noted, can exist between self-published online writings
and the workplace (where there are subordinates), schools (where students get
grades) and even election law. Ideas in
my world (like race and sexual orientation) are always presumed to be
potentially connected.
Certainly, I would allow (even invite) attorneys in a
voir dire to look at my materials online and draw their own conclusions. It is certainly possible the pre-emptory
strikes could result.
However, I could not “afford” to stop online social
media or blogging activity for an extended period just out of “hyper-concern”
over a particular case (especially in “OJ-like” circumstances). The problem is that, under the circumstances,
I might lose the sites or never be able to resume. So this would indeed involve “sacrifice”.
Grand jury duty invokes other ideas about “service”
indeed, because it can run so long and create conflicts. There
are other areas where “seniors” do some of the service, such as working on
election days as “election judges” where the days are very long and there is a
shortage of “volunteers”.
If I do ever get a questionnaire summons (and I am
probably “overdue” for one), I might refer to this posting in the answer.
Sunday, November 16, 2014
"The Parable of the Talents" keeps getting retold; indeed "life isn't fair"
Today, Sunday November 16, 2014, the Trinity
Presbyterian Church in Arlington VA held its annual stewardship service and
potluck lunch, in the contemporary format in the gym. The sermon, by Rev. Judith Fulp-Eickstaedt, “Not
just giving – Thanksgiving” took up a passage I’ve talked about before, The
Parable of the Talents, one of three parables in Matthew 25. I’ve talked about that here before, such as
on Dec. 23, 2007.
I’ll sidetrack myself for a moment on the title of the
sermon, “giving”. That recalls to mind a
particular confrontation in my life back in 1974, which I take up on one of the
Wordpress blogs, here . At a Sunday night talk group right
after the Friday night encounter described here, I immediately started with the
topic of “giving” without actually doing it.
I’ve always seen the Parable of the Talents as a way
of saying, “Life isn’t fair; It’s not
supposed to be; get used to it.” Even
Donald Trump says that!
Pastor Judy did talk about it in terms of capitalism –
we think about it as “stocks and home ownership long term, bonds short term”. Pastors, she said, typically want to use the
parable as a rod to prod people into tithing or more. Bu the scripture doesn’t say that.
A “talent” in ancient society and in this context
represented a huge amount of labor, which might amount to $300,000 or so in
today’s money. So for even the lowest “slave”
(and we can take hint from the idea that slavery was accepted in Jesus’s time
and in his teachings) one talent was a big bequest.
I can’t help but reflect on the idea that the world is
indeed very “unequal”, in terms of basic opportunity as well as income and
wealth. People are brought into the
world by parents in very different circumstances, and grow up not only with
different amounts of financial support, but with varying levels of personal ability
whose effectiveness depends so much on parental and community nurture. At this particular church, in north
Arlington, all the young people seem to do super well (and I can speak to that
from my days in the past as a substitute teacher – in Arlington and
Fairfax). The church has a very liberal
social and political bias (it would support universal healthcare and same-sex
marriage). Across the street, there is a
Mormon stake which is the opposite, very conservative. But again, all the young people, brought up
by attentive parents with resources, and with some kind of foundation in faith,
do well in school in life. Parenting, opportunity, and culture, and some sort
of faith and exposure to critical thinking matter; partisan political
affiliation does not.
So, with my libertarian background, I talk about “personal
responsibility”, Cato-style, as a moral absolute. (So does a lot of the GOP, too.) We get so we talk about it as a shield from having
to deal with the real needs of other people with any real personal or emotional
involvement. It’s easier to give
conscience money (including church offerings) than it is time, or particularly
personal attention. Isn’t “minding your
own business” a virtue?
In fact, I often find that when someone else not from
this “sheltered world” knocks on the door, the person lives in a totally
different world, and doesn’t share any of the same cognition. The person does not know how to function in
an individualistic society, and was not only given the proper parenting to do
so, but lost the ability to develop any idea of “personal responsibility” was
we would see it.
Inequality is inevitable, and we indeed need to use
our talents “on our own” for a while, to be good enough at something to learn a
living and have something to say. To be
good at piano, you have to practice, alone.
The same goes for math, for skills in computer coding (Zuckerberg) and
many other things (like surgery). When
individual skills (“talents” in the broadest sense) are developed, we can
innovate. Hopefully, innovation raises
the living standards for everyone. That’s
the libertarian to conservative argument.
Western music, if you think about how it evolved from Bach through
modern times, provides an interesting parallel lesson in innovation.
Yet at some point, people have to turn attention to
the needs of others. If they don’t,
inequality leads to desperation and hopelessness, with instability and frank
threats to security. There may be less
crime today quantitatively in major cities than in the past, but that which
does occur sounds more brazen. Even all
the international threats (whether from ISIS or North Korea) can be understood
as ultimately having a personal component.
(In a sense, we are responsible for what our leaders do because we
consumer resources from other parts of the world, and we are capable of
exploiting the sacrifices of others without realizing it.)
Conservatives, particularly (at least in the past) are
used to seeing “interpersonal helpfulness” as predicated on a society that
promotes monogamous heterosexual marriage and some personal success with gender
conformity. The old idea was that, if
you’re a man, to help others you need to be able to protect women and children
(and prove it if drafted), and then, prodded by the monopoly marriage was
supposed to enjoy on all sexuality, found and raise your own family first – and
then reach others. In social capital
verbiage, you needed to master “bonding capital” (which used to be
gender-based) before moving to “bridge capital”. If you didn’t conform to your gender (even in
terms of sexual intercourse), you were less than equal, and so attempts to help
others were compromised. The solution
for many decades as parity and “urban exile” (a kind of perversion of “separate
but equal”).
People “like me”, in a more
permissive society, set ourselves separately, outside the usual ties of the
family, and with society becoming not only tolerant but accepting enough, were
often successful in our own ways. But to
remain visible and prosperous, we often did depend on others in unseen and
unhealthful ways. We could not always
give back, and we might not find the necessary personal interaction with some people we may depend on "meaningful"; so we could stoke the resentment of inequality even further, from those who might find more sense in the system if everyone really did something to earn his station and pay if forward (or back). There comes a point, eventually, that when one does not give back, if challenged, one will share for paying for the sins or crimes of others anyway. Without forgiveness, there is no posthumous honor or comfort in being called a "victim".
So, “giving back” does have something to do with
socialization. There are connections
between marriage (now including gay marriage), learning to provide for others,
reaching into the community, and stepping back from one’s own agenda and being
able to fit into the group, even if one does not always like the group’s
leadership, bureaucracy, or suppression of critical thinking. There is, indeed, service, and submission
(Sept. 30). All of these things (as they
come up in national service proposals from people like McChrystal) are
interrelated, as if forming some kind of “virtuous circle”. It’s hard to jump on the merry-go-round, and
as, in “Strangers on a Train”, easy to fall off.
Saturday, November 15, 2014
Should "ordinary" journalists and "amateur" bloggers learn PGP encryption for their emails? Maybe
I’ve started reading Glenn Greenwald’s “No Place to
Hide” (and the movie “CitizenFour”, Oct, 27, 2014 on the Movies blg) about his
interactions with Edward Snowden and Laura Poitras. I’ll discuss it soon in my “Book Reviews”
blog soon, but I wanted to mention now that right off the bat Greenwald
mentions the fact that when Snowden first contacted him, Snowden encouraged him
to learn how to encrypt his emails.
It’s not real simple to implement PGP (“pretty good
privacy”) but here’s one typical tutorial.
Does an “ordinary” journalist need to do this? First, I suspect that by now big corporate
news organizations are providing email encryption, so a more important question
could be, do freelance journalists and “amateur” bloggers need to do this?
Well, if they’re working in authoritarian countries or
with clients or sources in these countries, probably yes. (TOR is another discussion.) If they’re
totally within the West, in most cases, no, unless the circumstances are
dramatic enough, like those in Greenwald’s book. However, I have received emails from foreign sources
in dubious countries on a few occasions.
I don’t promise immunity or anonymity if it is a warning of an attack or
crime. If I did, and if I offered PGP in
response, would I get more tips, even given my own operation? Possibly. I might get more info in areas that I give
special attention to, ranging from power grid security to the Russian anti-gay
law.
Greenwald mentions that after his Salon article,
filmmaker Laura Poitras found herself under less scrutiny when she traveled. According to Greenwald, The government regards
Wikileaks as a criminal group.
Another topic, though, worth exploring: to get into real journalism, how do you "pay your dues"? I hope not by going to Syria.
Friday, November 14, 2014
US Government spying on cell phone conversations with surveillance planes, fake towers
The United States DOJ is using spyplanes (perhaps
drones) and fake cell towers to gather cell phone metadata on ordinary
Americans, as well as getting more specific information on targets. It’s called “man in the middle”
technology. The Wall Street Journal has
a story by Devlin Barrett on this “Dragnet” technology today (with video) here.
It’s also called the “Spy from the Sky”
program and is a military program used overseas.
The government will maintain that this is an important
tool in gathering intelligence about possible domestic terror attacks, whether
Islamist or other sources, like the extreme right-wing. It would have been used to track down Eric
Frein, and might be useful in kidnapping and disappearance cases (just as GPS
was used to break a recent kidnapping in Philadelphia)
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
High school teacher near Dallas suspended (and probably fired) for "racist" tweets on personal account; is this a matter of "conflict of interest"? Was she just using hyperbole?
A high school English teacher, Vinita Hegwood, at
Duncanville High School in the Duncanville Independent School District of Texas
(directly south of Dallas) has been place on unpaid leave and will presumably
be fired as a result of several “racist” tweets she posted from her personal
account recently. The news story on CNN is here. The tweets related to the
controversy in Ferguson, MO, where a grand jury meets now to determine whether
to indict a police officer. From playing
YouTube comments about the tweets, it sounds as though to me that the tweets
were a form of extreme hyperbole and may not have been meant to be taken
literally – from a 140 character limit.
The teacher reportedly had implied that she thought it
was “safer” to talk on Twitter than Facebook!
The school district will say that the abrasive content
of the tweets, and the public attention they will attract from students, will
interfere with her ability to do her job. The teacher reportedly was in her second year of permanent teaching.
I have previously explained on this blog how I got
into trouble when I was substitute teaching back in 2005 for a fictive
screenplay treatment that I had posted on my own personal website. The details are on this blog in a posting
July 27, 2007, and that post links (at the bottom) to an even more detailed
account of the computer forensics afterword, where I analyze the accesses to my
server and propose a detailed theory as to what must have happened “behind the
scenes”. This incident had centered
around West Potomac High School in Fairfax County, VA (not far from
Alexandria), and concerned a history and fact pattern from June to December,
2005. My content issue was much more ambiguous, and concerned whether my
fiction story could be viewed as self-defamation. (And I wasn’t limited to 140
characters.)
My situation was quite different from hers in that I
was “just a sub” and not “even” a long term substitute, so I did not have the
authority to affect students’ grades.
I had written, in the past, that people who have
direct repots in the workplace, (authority to control performance appraisals or
compensation) or who have the authority to give grades in a school setting (as
permanent teachers normally do) should not “self-publish” their own political
or social views online without the supervision of a third party “gatekeeper”. I had attracted some attention to this view
with a “whitepaper” back in 2000, where I argued that embedded opinions about
personal characteristics of people (anything – race, age, religion, appearance,
gender, fitness, smarts, sexuality) could, if found by students or subordinate
employees through search engines, could suggest prejudice in the classroom or
workplace with possible legal consequences.
I had expressed this view well before social media as we know them today
had become accepted. At the time of my
own mishap in 2005, Myspace was popular but Facebook had barely been
invented. I had not used Myspace or even
blogs, however; all of my material was on a flat site. I continue to develop this material on my
Wordpress blogs.
I had viewed this whole problem as a “conflict of
interest” matter. I have sometimes
thought that one way to manage the issue is to require people in the position
to judge others to whitelist all their own materials (publish only in “private
mode” to approved friends or followers lists – effectively limiting self-publishing
to listserver-like or forum-like use – but this probably wouldn’t be very
reliable, if incidents like the one in Texas are to be avoided.
Public school teachers, as public employees, have a
presumed first-amendment right to free speech, even self-published, but it can
be heavily limited by the possibility that it can disrupt a school
environment. A film relevant to this
matter is “Blackbird” (by Jason Buxton), reviewed on the Movies blog Nov. 2,
2014; a book that is relevant is Dov Seidman’s “How”, reviewed on my Books blog
Nov. 10, 2014.
It's perhaps just coincidental, that I lived in Dallas from 1979-1988 and know this geographical area very well, and have often visited.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)