Monthly Archives: November 2011

View 702 Tuesday, November 22, 2011

The occupy people heckled President Obama, who told them he is their leader, and he is in office for them.

I’m still catching up with things. My time was consumed by locusts yesterday, and I returned to find my bathroom – mine, the one in my office suite – has been stripped of its flooring and a huge machine has been set up in there to dehydrate the subfloor. The room is functional but just barely. Things are even more chaotic than usual at Chaos Manor.

I’m trying to catch up. Thanks for your patience, particularly to those who subscribe or renew just now.

The debate tonight will be interesting, with Newt now the leading candidate. The moderators will be after him, trying to goad him into blackguarding the other candidates and otherwise make enemies of the other Republicans. Newt is generally too smart for this, but I expect one of the press to go too far – they’re surely planning on what they can to do irritate Newt – and it will be interesting to see how he handles this. Newt is generally the smartest guy in any room he is in, and will be so tonight, and he’s used to having people gang up on him. I can remember the days when he was trying to rebuild the conservative wing of the Republican Party in the House, with those long after-session speeches. CNN used to pan the empty House chamber as Newt spoke. He said “it’s not important that the House is full or not if the speech is good,” and slowly and over time the logic of his speeches moved him to the position of Minority Whip, then Speaker. He was an effective Whip; many have forgotten that.

Pepper Spray and Public Order

One thing I am following is the problem of military control in cases of civil order. It’s relevant to the book we’re writing. If the army has to take control, what happens next?

Several of you have sent mail regarding the infamous pepper spray incident. I have selected two:

Campus Pepper

Hi,

I have been trained in the use of pepper spray and been sprayed myself many times. It is a safe way to gain compliance. Probably not fun for those getting sprayed but oh well. You need to give somebody a good blast to make sure it gets into the eyes and mucus membranes. It is not often that you get such an ideal opportunity to methodically spray somebody outside training but they were doing exactly what they should have.

The officers were methodical and pretty much emotionless about the whole deal because they’ve been sprayed (probably with the order to keep their eyes open while getting sprayed) and know that it does not harm them. The worst after effects are that you smell enchilada sauce for a couple days until it clears out of your hair and sinuses.

Thanks,

Don

BTW protesters have in the past led to the death of people in aid cars and such. I feel no sympathy for the idiots in the road.

Also:

Pepper spray

Dear Jerry:

First of all, all campus police officers are police officers, not security guards. I state that because a lot of people get it wrong. They are POST trained and certified. That said, these guys deserve to be fired. Pepper spray was a gross overreaction to the situation they confronted. The stuff is supposed to only be deployed in defense against a violent act or overwhelming threat. The protesters showed great discipline, did not break ranks or respond and the cops lost the battle right there. They were in the wrong even if what they did was permitted by law and custom because they were shown to be bullies and thugs rather than law enforcement officers dealing with a difficult situation. Martin Luther King used similar tactics against the police in the South during the Civil Rights marches and demonstrations. A recent poll showed that six out of ten people are indifferent to the Occupy movement and its actions. These images may change that. Nothing like a little righteous indignation to recruit people to a cause. My own response would have been to simply turn on a garden hose in a place where water would flow down the sidewalk to the protesters. Just a gentle, but cold stream. An hour or so of that would have broken their ranks. Pepper spray made martyrs. It provided images that the public will not soon forget. Cold water would not be as memorable and more effective in making people move.

Sincerely,

Francis Hamit

I certainly find Mr. Hamit’s solution to the problem more elegant than the pepper spray was. I don’t know the status of Campus Police in California. When I was a (part time; I needed a job while in graduate school) Campus Police Officer at the University of Washington in the 1950’s, we were State Police Officers, authorized and encouraged to carry weapons off duty. There wasn’t a lot of training involved, but there wasn’t a lot to do either. For amusement we might patrol lover’s lane areas, and we did have to keep watch on people visiting the campus at night in search of unlocked offices with calculators and typewriters to be stolen, but little else. We weren’t encouraged to make arrests, but in one case I had no choice, a chap who had no student ID and was carrying a burlap bag containing a typewriter and two calculators out the door of the business administration classroom. His claim that he was taking them to a student study conclave was not believable, in part because his grammar left much to be desired and he couldn’t name any of his teachers or any of the students awaiting his arrival to do their homework. The resulting paper work didn’t encourage me to make any other arrests. We did have instructions to look out for the Library Naked Guy, who wandered about in a trench coat in the library stacks (a maze and warren in which one could easily get lost) in search of young women to whom he could expose himself. Eventually he tried that on a female campus cop out of uniform, who although unarmed was able to arrest him by simply ordering him about. But I ramble.

I agree with Francis that the campus police played into the hands of the demonstrators by giving them a safe way to be heroic. I might even go so far as to require the command officer who actually ordered the pepper spraying to take a class on strategy and tactics, but really, no one there exceeded his authority. Bad judgment, perhaps, but there’s a lot of that going around.

Of course the incident will be used to take away attention from the real question, which is what the heck are we paying for at these terribly expensive universities? The students come out loaded with debt, the number of administrators rises without limit, and the notion that we are investing in our future by funding the Department of Ethnic Studies and the Department of Electrical Engineering at the same pay scales is patently absurd. This is investing in the future?

I agree that the Campus Police were out of line here, and the commanding officer needs some attention, but he didn’t give an illegal order, Firing the police who carried it out is not justified. As my first correspondent notes, the pepper spray makes you uncomfortable, but it’s not unreasonable to prefer it to the use of batons and physical force.

Me, I prefer Francis’s notion. It’s a cold day. Turn on the water upstream of the sitting students, and let them watch the water slowly come toward them. If that doesn’t work there are similar tactics. Of course you’ll be accused of brutality for turning the water on. Ah. Well.

The Mamelukes seem to be in trouble in Egypt. We will see how their resolve holds up. One alternative is a regime similar to Syria or Iraq under Saddam. Another is simply to take the money and run. After the treatment of Mubarak the Marshall and the Generals understand what their future will be if they do nothing. They have seen the fall of Qaddaffi. So has Bashar in Syria. Arab Spring has already lead to Christian Disaster. The Middle East story continues. The Cairo protestors now demand that the Marshall “Leave”, which was the demand made of Mubarak. We have seen what happened to him.

My radio is telling me that the Egyptians are people with legitimate concerns. Now they want the fruits of their victory. It doesn’t mention that one of those fruits was pillaging the Christian communities that have coexisted in Egypt for a very long time. This isn’t your Occupy Wall Street movement. It’s not clear just who it is, or what the vast majority of the Egyptians think of this. At least some have their doubts: they’ve seen what happened in Iran.

It’s lunch time and I’m still behind. There’s a lot of mail, and I’ll try to deal with some of that, but I also have fiction to work on. I’m making up the viewpoint characters.

Anne McCaffrey, RIP

Annie was an old friend, a fellow WOTF judge, and all around good to know. I’ll miss seeing her every year at the WOTF events.

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/11/anne-mccaffrey-in-remembrance

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Te decet hymnus, Deus, in Sion,
et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem.

I have now watched the Republican debate. No one seriously injured, no clear winner. Newt as usual ‘won’ in the sense of being the best prepared. I note his references to rebuilding the armed forces according to a strategic design. A conversation we had many times when I was associated with him.

View 702 Monday, November 21, 2011

I have my medical class again this afternoon, and this morning I had to go out to get my fasting blood work done, so the day is a bit shot. I have been hard at work creating a new character for our book, and that part goes well if a bit slowly. I had hoped to have more words done, but that won’t happen today of course.

The storm over the pepper spray event at UC Davis continues. The protestors got what they wanted, except that there doesn’t seem to be any message from the protestors. The incident was ugly and won’t go much to the credit of the police, but it was an incident. It wasn’t Kent State. Now they have suspended the campus police chief. That’s silly, as is the campaign against the chancellor.

And the long knives are out: some Democratic Party officials are suggesting that President Obama ought to announce that he will not run for re-election, thus making things smooth for Hillary Clinton, who would certainly get the nomination.

As expected, the Supercommitee could agree on nothing, and will disband as Congress takes flight for the holidays. Now we will have the automatic drastic cuts: Medicare and the Military budgets will grow only 16% over the next five years instead of 21% as was planned. There will still be a huge deficit, spending will continue to go up, and the National Debt will continue to increase. We will still be dependent on borrowed money to run the federal government. The media will continue to tell us about the drastic budget cuts, only there won’t be anything cut. There will still be bunny inspectors and the TSA will continue its Kabuki Safety Dances, while planning to expand to trains, and busses. And the beat goes on.

Regarding my corrections in mail yesterday:

CERN, FTL, and evolution

Jerry

You wrote: "Evolution is hardly in danger from CERN."

But wait! Given FTL information transmission by neutrinos, can time reversal be out of the question? In that case, could not a rabbit be sent back to the pre-Cambrian era to become fossilized for future excavation?

Mike

I should have thought of that!

David Em is a long time friend and advisor and a very early pioneer in the use of computers to generate fine art. His “The Art of David Em” was one of the first computer-generated books of art ever published. I met him at a presentation at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science back when using computers to do presentations and art was science news – I forget precisely when, but during the 1980’s. Today I got this announcement from Michelle:

THE SHAPE OF THE UNIVERSE:

Recent Deep Space Photography

Curated by David Em

November 30, 2011 – February 9, 2012 (Gallery closed for the holidays, Dec 17 – Jan 8)

Reception: Wednesday, November 30, 6 – 9 PM.

Pasadena City College art gallery

—————-

The Shape of the Universe is an exhibition of deep‐space photography, curated by artist David Em. The exhibition features recent images captured by NASA’s Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra space telescopes, as well as several ground‐based astronomical telescopes.

Assembled with the cooperation of NASA’s Spitzer Science Center at Caltech, the European Southern Observatory and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, curator David Em presents high-resolution prints in a way that encourages their consideration both as photographs in the context of fine art and as documents of new discoveries in cosmology. Additional information about the exhibit is at http://pasadena.edu/artgallery

—————

This exhibition was made possible by support from the Pasadena Art Alliance, the PCC Foundation, the Division of Natural Sciences and the Division of Visual Arts and Media Studies.

Image credit: NASA/JPL—Caltech. Infrared image of our Milky Way galaxy produced by NASA’s Spitzer space telescope, 2009.

GALLERY INFORMATION:

The gallery will be closed from December 17 through January 8.

DECEMBER HOURS: Monday through Thursday: 11:00 A.M. to 8:00 P.M; Friday, Saturday: Noon to 4:00 P.M. Closed Sundays and school holidays.

WINTER HOURS: (Jan. and Feb.): Monday – Thursdays: 11:00 AM – 4 PM. Closed Fridays and Weekends.

Recorded Gallery information: (626) 585-3285 <tel:%28626%29%20585-3285>

Gallery admission, reception and related events are all free of charge and open to the public.

PASADENA CITY COLLEGE ART GALLERY

1570 East Colorado Blvd.

Pasadena, CA 91106

I certainly intend to go see that!

View 701 Sunday, November 20, 2011

The big flap today is that at UC Davis a bunch of protestors were pepper sprayed. The various on line photos show the campus police simply walking up to the kids and spraying them down; one commentator say the police were nonchalant and acted as if they were spraying insects.

Actually the story isn’t quite that simple. The students were blocking access to the area the officers had been sent to finish cleaning out camping stuff. One of the officers read the riot act – well, the section of the California code that they students were defying – and told them to disperse or move to another area where they were not blocking public access. When that got no response he produced a large can of pepper spray and read the code section again, said that if they did not disperse he would use the pepper spray, and when they responded with silence he methodically sprayed each one (presumably inspired by a desire to be seen to give equal treatment to each?).

Which raises an interesting topic for discussion. The students were not making threats of violence. They were not told they could not assemble, but they were ordered to do it somewhere else. One presumes that the police could have simply started arresting them. Is that what they should have done? Or would it have been acceptable had they used their batons to prod the students? Or –

At what point do the police have the right to remove people from blocking others’ access, and what means are acceptable for accomplishing that result? The law seems pretty clear, and the police complied with the requirement that the demonstrators be made aware that what they were doing was breaking the law, and which law they were violating. At that point what should they have done?

The chancellor of the campus says

"During the early afternoon hours and because of the request to take down the tents, many students decided to dismantle their tents, a decision for which we are very thankful. However, a group of students and noncampus affiliates decided to stay. The university police then came to dismantle the encampment. The events of this intervention have been videotaped and widely distributed. As indicated in various videos, the police used pepper spray against the students who were blocking the way. The use of pepper spray as shown on the video is chilling to us all and raises many questions about how best to handle situations like this." http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/11/uc-davis-police-defend-use-of-pepper-spray-on-protesters.html

It’s not what I would have done had I been in charge because I have not enough information on the effects of pepper spray and possible allergies. The students certainly weren’t doing anything that required instant action or deadly force. On the other hand, the liklihood of someone being injured during a physical arrest is not zero either. The urgency of the police action can be questioned, but surely the Constitution does not give any random group of people the right to sit with locked arms in any public path they choose to occupy.

Would it have been better had the police simply dejnied access to the students by anyone else, and waited until the calls of nature did their work? Perhaps distribution of bottled water to hasten the process?

I am reading SEAL Target Geronimo by Chuck Pfarrer, a retired Navy SEAL described as “assault element commander” of SEAL Team 6. I put it that way because oddly enough I have been unable to find his Navy retirement rank. A Special Ops spokesman, Colonel Tim Nye, says the book is completely untrue. Pfarrer claims his version of the raid is based on interviews with the people who were in on it. Colonel Nye says that the government version is true and Nye is making things up, and probably never talked to any of the team members. We can believe the official version.

There is apparently no question that Mr. Pfarrer is a former SEAL team commander, making him a former member of one of the most formidable outfits in the history of the world. He is honorably retired. He has directly contradicted the President’s version of the raid:

In SEAL Target Geronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama bin Laden, Pfarrer, a former SEAL, offers an alternative version of the raid arguing the SEAL team shot bin Laden within 90 seconds of arriving at the Pakistan compound where the al-Qaida mastermind was holed up.

Pfarrer claims the White House issued a fictional and damaging account of the raid that made the SEALs look inept.  He says President Barack Obama’s speedy acknowledgement of the raid was a political move that rendered much of the intelligence gathered on the raid useless.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/navy-seals-controversial-book-not-true-261817

It makes for an interesting study. Of course nothing ever goes according to plan, but the official story does seem to make the SEALs look less competent than most of us think they are. More when I know more.

I have just heard that a recent survey says

One in three college grads said that access to social media sites like Facebook and the ability to choose their own devices was more important to them than salary when considering a job offer. This according to a study of 2,800 college students and young professionals worldwide conducted by Cisco. More than 40% went so far as to say that they would accept less money for a job that was down with social media at work on a device of their choosing if it also included telework.

http://hothardware.com/News/College-Grads-Say-Salary-Is-Less-Important-than-FacebookFriendly-Work-Policies/

Words fail me.

Don’t claim that water cures dehydration. You may go to jail.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/11/20/business-leaders-will-reportedly-face-jail-time-for-claiming-water-prevents/?test=latestnews

Fortunately that’s just in Britain now, but the FDA is watching…