The four rules of question safety:
With a tip o’ the hat to Jeff Cooper and, er, “jdog” (yes, I tracked that through and know who that is).
The Economist strikes again:
If Dr Lammers and Dr Galinsky are right, the sense which some powerful people seem to have that different rules apply to them is not just a convenient smoke screen. They genuinely believe it.
I’m ashamed of my country again. I’m posting about the Peter Watts thing, of course.
I stole the title from Jo Walton, because it is perfect.
The story started popping up on my friends list after it appeared on Boing Boing this morning.
If you don’t know at least the bare outlines by now, you’re living under a rock; but you can find out at the links above, so I’m not going to repeat any of it.
Here’s what’s terrifying about this: there are quite a number of people commenting on the basic theme of “that’s the way things are.” That’s terrifying—apparently police (in the broad sense; I believe these were border guards) have been jack-booted thugs above the law for long enough that people have learned to take it for granted. That’s really, truly, deeply, terrifying.
The concept that the Constitution protects our rights is…incomplete. Nothing static can really defend against hundreds of years of political maneuvering. What it can do is give some basis for fighting back. Rights always need protecting. Ours in the USA have been fairly badly ignored over the last couple of decades, so we need to work extra hard for a while to recover from that.
There are the usual claims that Watts “must have” done something to bring this on himself. It’s entirely possible he did some things that I would describe as “inadvisable” in his situation. Nobody who knows him thinks he started hitting the policemen, though, so I don’t either. At worst, from what I’ve read, he asked questions, perhaps more than once, and he got out of his car. Those are not actions that could justify a police beating! As Jo put it, “he should have cringed more”.
We’ve given money to Watts, and to the ACLU, and I have written to one elected official already.
Special offer, today only—donations to qualifying charitable organizations are being matched by a bunch of big players.
Organizations to consider include: Minn-StF, the Gilbert & Sullivan Very Light Opera Company, Down Syndrome Association of Minnesota, Minnesota Literacy Council, Planned Parenthood, Carleton College, the Minnesota Association for Children’s Mental Health, and a huge number of others (looks like they’ve pulled the records and included everybody). You can do your own search at GiveMN.org.
Fans of photographer and writer Kyle Cassidy presumably already follow his Livejournal. However, fans of the Dalai Lama may be interested to know that Kyle has a three-part post up about photographing his recent visit to New York, with photos.
