Welcome Mat

Sean Penn has concerns:

"This week, the distributors who wouldn't show The Interview and Sony have sent ISIS a commanding invitation. I believe ISIS will accept the invitation. Pandora's box is officially open."

You may believe that you're saving,
yourself from grief when you're caving.
But that sort of grief has a way,
of returning to stay the next day.

Instagram Ka-Blam

It's not easy being a celebrity. You need to keep your star shining. You're famous partly just for being famous.

And one way to prove your famousness is by having many followers... social media followers... let's say Instagram followers in particular... some of whom were recently eliminated as being fake accounts:

"On Thursday, we noticed about 1.3 million of Kim Kardashian’s vanished. Rihanna’s decreased by about 1.2 million. Katy Perry’s went down 300,000. Even Oprah lost 100,000."

You may think it's funny,
but I bet they paid good money,
to make their numbers surge.

Gone now, in a purge.

A Kind of Luck

Usually captains of police are not on the front lines of shoot-outs, but earlier this year a Chicago police captain took 2 bullets. He lived, and has now returned to work.

'Next time, he joked, he'll know to duck a little better, "so I wouldn't get this big head shot again."'

That's rather cool and self-deprecatory, but the story makes clear that getting shot was a big emotional experience. I remember talking to a police officer once, shortly after he had been shot at. He was in no mood to make light of it at the time. He was still quite shaken by the experience. Well, I don't blame him. I've never been shot at, but I bet I wouldn't like it.

Struck in the head,
lucky not to be dead,
ducking next time instead.

Censored Rhyme

I came across a discussion of "censored rhyme", a.k.a. "mind rhyme", a technique I'm familiar with, although I don't think I had a name for it. Anyway, here's my news-of-the-day contribution.

I put all my money in rubles,
because I thought Putin was smart.
But now my big bubbly investment,
is starting to smell like a... foully aromatic raspberry tart.

Accusations

Key event in American history:

"The infamous Salem witch trials began during the spring of 1692, after a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft."

Whether they were insane,
or whether they merely lied,
panic ran amain
and innocents died.

Firebringer

Some say it was a titan,
who long ago enlightened,
our cold and shivering kind.

But surely Prometheus,
was merely one of us,
with bold and questioning mind.

The Theory of Everything

Spoiler alert.

Seriously, spoiler alert.

Okay, that's out of the way.

We saw this movie, characterized as a romantic drama, it's very much about the relationship between Stephen Hawking and his first wife.

I knew that they were both married to other people now, and I wondered how they were going to handle that. In particular I wondered it they would end the story before the marriage broke up.

But, no. And the culmination of the movie is really that they're still friends after the marriage ends. Curiously, it mentions that she remarried, but doesn't mention that he did, although we do see the budding of his relationship with his current wife, who perhaps comes across as a bit of a hussy. Well, the story is based on the first wife's memoir.

The acting, particularly the guy playing Hawking, and his physical deterioration, seemed spectacular.

I really expected the story to be terribly sad,
but somehow it wasn't. For that I am glad.

The Accused

"An Alabama educator is picking up the pieces of her life after a student wrongly accused her of sexual abuse."



She's got guilty eyes,
but to my surprise,
it seems like she's innocent.

She gave up her job,
moved back with her mom,
but avoided imprisonment.

Illinois Constitutional Conundrum

Our state comptroller just had a stroke, and died, after being reelected. She was just finishing one term, and about to start another.

And we just elected a Republican governor, to replace our Democratic governor. But the new guy hasn't taken office yet.

In Illinois, the guv gets to appoint a replacement comptroller. But which guv gets to do that? Old or new?

Our new guy's position is that they should split the difference. The old guv can appoint someone to fill out the current term, and the new guv can appoint someone to fill out the next term.

What I want to know is: why on earth is our constitution vague on this point? Who wrote this thing?

When your constitution is murky on questions of this sort,
it just makes more work for your state supreme court.

Underlying

Morning frost reveals

Structure roof conceals. 

Doing the Dew

There was an amusing article in the WSJ today about "The Athletes Who Train With Soda". It proceeded to document:

"...a surprising truth: Many high-level athletes not only drink the occasional soda, they use it strategically to fuel their performance. This persists amid the vilification of sugary soft drinks as a contributor to the nation’s high rate of obesity."

This is surprising? Really? Who do they think these people are? These are not people struggling with obesity. These are people struggling to shovel enough calories into their bodies.

Also, these are not people who are obsessed with their health, not exactly. Rather they are obsessed with their performance level.

As for me, although decidedly non-elite, I do sometimes drink the stuff. I often put a mix of half-soda, half-water in my bottles for long bike rides. Mostly because I really don't think that's much different that "sports drinks".

And towards the end of a marathon training run, I will sometimes stop in a 7-11 along the way, and buy a bottle of Mountain Dew sometimes. I know, the research tells us that it's too sugary to be absorbed efficiently by the average body. But my body tolerates it well. And sometimes I am very glad of that caffeine kick.

Was it supposed to be hush-hush
that athletes crave the sugar-rush
and sometimes chug down cans of Crush?

Hostile Witness

I can't quite follow what the point of this was.

'Federal prosecutors said Tuesday they will not call one of President Barack Obama’s closest friends, Dr. Eric E. Whitaker, before a jury hearing a multimillion-dollar grand-fraud case because of “baseless accusations” they say Whitaker leveled the day before.'

We have a stinky fraud trial here, a federal trial concerning money siphoned from our state treasury. Dr. Whitaker was apparently close to one of the accused perpetrators.

Federal prosecutors complained he wasn't cooperative enough, and asked the judge to declare Whitaker a "hostile witness" so they could question him more freely. The judge agreed to designate him as hostile, but now the prosecutors have declared they don't want him to testify after all!

They are nonetheless entering some stuff about him into the trial record.

I don't get it. I don't think the reporters get it, either. I suspect it's some tricky technical legal thing.

But, but, but...
I'm baffled as to what.

Credulity Rationalized

From a writer in The Guardian:

"I choose to believe Jackie. I lose nothing by doing so, even if I’m later proven wrong – but at least I will still be able to sleep at night for having stood by a young woman who may have been through an awful trauma."

Again, belief is here justified not on the basis of evidence, not as a matter of plausibility, but as an evaluation of cost. Not utilitarian social cost this time, just self cost: "I lose nothing by doing so."

Whether you know it or not, you pay a terrible cost.
Your tether to reality is lost.

Police Involved Shootings

I was slow to notice, but lately, at least here in Chicago, whenever a cop shoots someone it's called a "police involved shooting".

In the old days, I think we just would have called it a "police shooting".

What do we gain by adding that "involved"?
That mystery, I fear, will not be solved.

A Matter Of Default

A utilitarian theory of belief, as put forth in the Washington Post:

"We should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says. Ultimately, the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a rapist."

So you shouldn't believe based on likelihood of truth. You should believe based on likelihood of relative costs to the accuser and the accused?

That form of deduction
suffers from suction.

UPDATE:

To be fair to the Washington Post, their media critic wrote:

"Under the scenario cited by Erdely, the Phi Kappa Psi members are not just criminal sexual-assault offenders, they’re criminal sexual-assault conspiracists, planners, long-range schemers. If this allegation alone hadn’t triggered an all-out scramble at Rolling Stone for more corroboration, nothing would have. Anyone who touched this story — save newsstand personnel — should lose their job."

Untruths

I worked as a reporter one summer for the City News Bureau, here in Chicago, way back in 1972. I would not call it glamorous, but it had its educational moments. On one of my very first days on the job, there was a story about 2 young women who claimed to have been raped and held overnight.

I thought it was a story to take seriously, but a lot of the older reporters were scornful, assuring me that this was a made-up story, an excuse concocted by the young women as a story to tell their parents about where they had been. As I recall, they turned out to be correct. The young women recanted.

I don't know how the older reporters knew better. Maybe friends on the police force had tipped them. Maybe there were unlikely details in the young women's stories. I don't recall. But I remember being shocked.

Tonight I went to call-backs for Arthur Miller's The Crucible, which is a play about a true event: young women accused other people of witchcraft, leading to the Salem witch trials. There were many unlikely details in the stories that the young women told. But they were believed. For a while. But a lot of people died before the town came to its senses.

It can be a harsh fruit to chew,
but it's something you have to do.
You're crazy if you deny
that people sometimes lie.

Also, today was the day that the Rolling Stone / UVA fraternity-rape story fell apart.

'“In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced,” wrote managing editor Will Dana in “A Note to Our Readers” posted on the magazine’s Web site. (The magazine did not return calls for further comment.)'

Their reporter had failed to check out both sides of the story.

There's an old joke among journalists about the need for verification: "If your mother says she loves, you check it out." Sometimes the joke includes an admonition to come back with at least two other sources establishing the claim of maternal affection.

It may be hoary advice,
but check your story twice.

Loosies

You might wonder why the sale of loose cigarettes is a crime. The FDA specifically bans the practice:

"Do NOT sell single cigarettes, also called 'loosies'."

Apparently it's to protect the children! African American children in particular:

'In many urban areas, the widespread availability of single cigarettes known as "loosies" poses a significant threat to anti-smoking initiatives—and may be contributing to the high percentage of young adult African Americans who smoke, according to a Bloomberg School study published in August's American Journal of Public Health.'

This can lead to people accidentally dying while being forcibly arrested.

It may seem like a gentle nudge
but if one refuses to budge
in comes a swarm
of men in uniform.

Auditioning: The Crucible

Tonight I auditioned for a production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible. It's my favorite of his, although I haven't seen or read them all.

Back when I was a kid, everyone thought Death Of A Salesman was his masterwork, but I have the impression that Crucible gets more attention nowadays.

In the scene I read, I played Danforth, a deputy governor of Massachusetts, one of the officials running the Salem witch trials.

He's a scary dude in the scene I played.

He's making a witness sweat
while controlling his own inner panic
trying to deal with the threat
of secrets dark and Satanic.

Time is Money

The NY Times picks up a press release about a deteriorating situation:

"The vast majority of students at American public colleges do not graduate on time, according to a new report from Complete College America, a nonprofit group based in Indianapolis."

Some bachelors of arts
take more years to come to fruition.

The only bad part
is you have to keep paying tuition.

Also She Missed Her Plane

A scary headline at the Sun-Times:

"Security line at Midway Airport Sunday morning was reportedly a mile long"

Connoisseurs of the editorial arts will have noticed that "reportedly" disclaimer, which is kind of amusing, because I don't think they'd use that if one of their own reporters was vouching for the measurement. But in this case, it seems to have originated with an out-of-town TV reporter who tweeted she had measured the line at 1.2 miles.

It's hard to keep your Thanksgiving smile
when security stretches over a mile.