I don't like Daily Kos, but I visit because there's information there and a perspective on a certain kind of Democrat, so it's a finger on the pulse of "Blue" America.
Lately, I've noticed a trend that deserves a quick comment. After the last debate, there was a post lauding Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro, and buried amid the mild plaudits was the satisfaction that he was "not afraid to call [Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro] a dictator." Well, calling Maduro a dictator should be embarrassing because it is so wrong. He was fairly elected, does not enjoy many of the perks of autocratic rule, and faces circumstances in Venezuela created by a hostile foreign power and a (mostly unmolested) fifth column in Caracas that would have led Barack Obama to suspend the constitution completely if they happened here.But that's beside the point for now. The point is, what courage! Castro has only about 100% of the foreign policy establishment, 99.99% of the mainstream media and 95% of the Democratic Party behind him on that bullshit. What is he afraid of? A Venezuelan hit squad putting him down as number 768 on its kill list?
Today, I got an email from "Amy." It looked more like some kind of political garbage than a virus, and sure enough, I was being asked to stand with Amy Klobushar, who "isn't afraid" to call out Trump on his unpopular trade policies. Again, I wonder, "afraid?" Of what?
I realized after this came up how familiar this was all getting, and I'm sure I would be able to find (or will soon receive) more examples of this particular strain of American political "courage" of standing up and saying something extremely popular. Was Castro the first to misidentify Maduro as a dictator? Was Klobuchar the first to notice Trump is an idiot on trade? Here you have two Democratic hopefuls (right word? 1-percent-pollers have little cause to be hopeful) being lauded for the courage and integrity it must have taken to stand up after having a finger in the wind for a year or two and waiting for a consensus to form with at least a hundred million backers before finally committing.
Someone start polishing the medals. If this is the standard for courage, we are going to have a lot of them to pass out.
Thursday, September 19, 2019
Wednesday, August 07, 2019
A tiny bit of physics
Back in high school physics, I remember, I had been part of a classroom discussion regarding friction. A scenario had been proposed that without friction, someone who started walking down the street would have nothing to oppose their forward inertia and would just slide forward uncontrollably. What if the person grabbed a tree to stop himself? Without friction, he would keep going. One of my classmates, Nick, opposed this view, saying there was something else that would keep the person bound to the tree and the tree stuck into the ground. The teacher semi-mockingly called this new fifth force "grab." I knew what Nick was talking about, and he was right.
I couldn't quite explain it at the time, but I can now. I don't know exactly why, but this is something I find important and interesting.
If friction is the force that resists the motion of one surface sliding against another, a fairly accurate and common definition, then we can imagine a frictionless world by imagining every object in it as having been greased with a perfectly effective lubricant. The person slides down the street with nothing to slow his inertia. Ordinarily, millions of tiny impacts with the air and between the bumps and grooves of your shoes (knees? face?) and those in the ground, absorb some of that momentum. You slow, shoe rubber streaks the ground, which is likewise worn smooth, and heat is generated. Not so here. But there are still the larger impacts: slamming into the tree. It's the same kind of force at work, only on a macro scale, so we don't normally think of it as "friction." It's just an impact.
To keep going, either you or the tree would have to break, or you'd have to go right through the tree, or it would have to pop out of the ground, its entire root system and a ton of earth either bending, breaking, or interpenetrating.
None of these options are possible, because there are forces that hold the tree together, hold you together, and hold the ground together, and also keep solid objects from passing through one another. In high school physics, you spend a lot of time ignoring these forces because you take it for granted in so much of mechanics that you are dealing with solid objects. Solid here means they hold together and don't occupy the same space as other solid objects. But those forces are necessary. They are the reason gravity doesn't pull you through the solid ground, or that the ground itself doesn't fall, shrinking the earth until the nuclei of atoms are pressed together.
Electromagnetic forces. Good to have. Time is cool because it keeps everything from happening at once. Space is cool because it keeps everything from happening in the same place. But that space would be a lot smaller without good old EM.
Don't know why, just wanted to post that.
I couldn't quite explain it at the time, but I can now. I don't know exactly why, but this is something I find important and interesting.
If friction is the force that resists the motion of one surface sliding against another, a fairly accurate and common definition, then we can imagine a frictionless world by imagining every object in it as having been greased with a perfectly effective lubricant. The person slides down the street with nothing to slow his inertia. Ordinarily, millions of tiny impacts with the air and between the bumps and grooves of your shoes (knees? face?) and those in the ground, absorb some of that momentum. You slow, shoe rubber streaks the ground, which is likewise worn smooth, and heat is generated. Not so here. But there are still the larger impacts: slamming into the tree. It's the same kind of force at work, only on a macro scale, so we don't normally think of it as "friction." It's just an impact.
To keep going, either you or the tree would have to break, or you'd have to go right through the tree, or it would have to pop out of the ground, its entire root system and a ton of earth either bending, breaking, or interpenetrating.
None of these options are possible, because there are forces that hold the tree together, hold you together, and hold the ground together, and also keep solid objects from passing through one another. In high school physics, you spend a lot of time ignoring these forces because you take it for granted in so much of mechanics that you are dealing with solid objects. Solid here means they hold together and don't occupy the same space as other solid objects. But those forces are necessary. They are the reason gravity doesn't pull you through the solid ground, or that the ground itself doesn't fall, shrinking the earth until the nuclei of atoms are pressed together.
Electromagnetic forces. Good to have. Time is cool because it keeps everything from happening at once. Space is cool because it keeps everything from happening in the same place. But that space would be a lot smaller without good old EM.
Don't know why, just wanted to post that.
Tuesday, August 06, 2019
Fix the Pardon Polcy
I was looking into the governor's pardon policy recently. I had not realized how strict the policy is. For one thing, the governor will not commute a life sentence no matter how unjust. At best, he will issue a posthumous pardon for a wrongly convicted person five years after they die. This is because, even though the state constitution gives the governor almost plenary pardon power, the governor has decided that he will not exercise his power until five years after a sentence concludes.
It may be justified to issue pardons to persons who have had their civil rights restored for half a decade, and may even be justified to prioritize some of these cases, but to make it a "no exceptions" iron-clad rule is just boneheaded. There are lots of good things that could be done with pardons and commutations that such a rule prevents.
First, many sentences are just excessive. This is especially true of very long sentences. If a twenty-year-old commits a very serious crime, the benefit of keeping him locked up to age 80 can't be much better than the benefits of keeping him locked up to age 60. When I was taking public defender cases, one common pattern was a murder in which the killer would get out in six years and someone who helped him would get 50 or 70. Sentences like this were theoretically based on all sorts of factors but in reality they were based mostly on nonsense, and often racist nonsense.
Second, some offenses are barely worth punishing. Mere possession of marijuana of the tiniest amount is illegal. More than that, a second offense of this type is a felony. The penalties for smoking weed in your house accelerate much faster than the penalties for drunk driving. You really have to wait five years to have one of these charges erased?
Third, our system of crimeless revocations means that some prisoners have their sentences extended long past the time they should have been free and clear. A person is sentenced to five years prison plus five years supervision. They do a few years on supervision then get revoked for a rule violation. They go back for a year and lose all their credit for the three, so they come out and have four years left. This happens again in a year and a half and they get another year in. Just before 18 months have passed, they get revoked for the remainder of their time. Voila! A ten-year sentence has taken more than 15 to complete, and the guy gets out the last time from prison to the street with no supervision left. Lots of these people deserved to be out long ago. Here's another twist. Suppose the guy does go out and reoffend. There can be an enhancer for a second offense within so many years. They guy's time may be doubled for the new offense because nearly five years that he was on the street without committing any crimes do not get counted in the passage of those years.
Fourth, there are life-ruining collateral effects to many convictions. There are literally thousands of restrictions out there saying you can't do this particular job or get that particular license if you are convicted of a certain offense. Occasionally people with a decent defense will plead guilty not knowing the consequences it will have. A plea offer that includes lengthy probation and no prison may sound pretty attractive, But then an innocent person winds up with no possibility of working in their field, and has to wait till five years after the end of the probation to ask for these collateral consequences to be dropped.
Fifth, there are plenty of cases out there where convictions are quite dubious. Our system favors finality which means that if you lost a badly conducted, error-ridden trial, or lost because of an overworked underprepared public defender, and let your appeal rights expire, or blew them because you relied on your own instincts or the advice of a jailhouse lawyer, then you can seldom get the case reopened without the unlikely emergence of genuinely new, previously unavailable evidence, or actual proof that you are innocent. After the trial, the presumption of innocence is gone and you have to prove by clear and convincing evidence that you didn't do it (even if the original trial didn't prove that you did). This is the most infuriating case. An innocent person who falls between the cracks of the procedural rules has nothing left but a possible pardon to consider his claim of innocence. Then the governor says, "sure, I'll consider the pardon request, but only after you've served your 15-year sentence, and then gone an extra five years just for giggles." That strikes me as reprehensible. The governor is effectively saying, "I don't care if you're probably innocent; I don;t care if your trial was a farce. Go tell it to the judge."
There are good government reasons not to overuse pardons. We assign the writing of the laws to the legislature and the trial of cases to the judiciary. Pardons are traditionally few. Politically, issuing large numbers of pardons seems like overstepping. What if the next guv abuses the pardon power? But on the other hand, a dramatic use of pardons could save on excessive prison spending, put more able workers into the economy, reduce the gross racial disparities in prison population that are hard to account for without some contribution from institutional (or individual) racism; and likewise cut the disparities for mentally ill and otherwise disabled folks who need treatment, not confinement. The pardonees are likely to be politically loyal, which in the case of Wisconsin today under a democratic governor would counter the effects of undemocratic gerrymandering that should be illegal.
I think Evers should get out his pardon pen and go to town.
It may be justified to issue pardons to persons who have had their civil rights restored for half a decade, and may even be justified to prioritize some of these cases, but to make it a "no exceptions" iron-clad rule is just boneheaded. There are lots of good things that could be done with pardons and commutations that such a rule prevents.
First, many sentences are just excessive. This is especially true of very long sentences. If a twenty-year-old commits a very serious crime, the benefit of keeping him locked up to age 80 can't be much better than the benefits of keeping him locked up to age 60. When I was taking public defender cases, one common pattern was a murder in which the killer would get out in six years and someone who helped him would get 50 or 70. Sentences like this were theoretically based on all sorts of factors but in reality they were based mostly on nonsense, and often racist nonsense.
Second, some offenses are barely worth punishing. Mere possession of marijuana of the tiniest amount is illegal. More than that, a second offense of this type is a felony. The penalties for smoking weed in your house accelerate much faster than the penalties for drunk driving. You really have to wait five years to have one of these charges erased?
Third, our system of crimeless revocations means that some prisoners have their sentences extended long past the time they should have been free and clear. A person is sentenced to five years prison plus five years supervision. They do a few years on supervision then get revoked for a rule violation. They go back for a year and lose all their credit for the three, so they come out and have four years left. This happens again in a year and a half and they get another year in. Just before 18 months have passed, they get revoked for the remainder of their time. Voila! A ten-year sentence has taken more than 15 to complete, and the guy gets out the last time from prison to the street with no supervision left. Lots of these people deserved to be out long ago. Here's another twist. Suppose the guy does go out and reoffend. There can be an enhancer for a second offense within so many years. They guy's time may be doubled for the new offense because nearly five years that he was on the street without committing any crimes do not get counted in the passage of those years.
Fourth, there are life-ruining collateral effects to many convictions. There are literally thousands of restrictions out there saying you can't do this particular job or get that particular license if you are convicted of a certain offense. Occasionally people with a decent defense will plead guilty not knowing the consequences it will have. A plea offer that includes lengthy probation and no prison may sound pretty attractive, But then an innocent person winds up with no possibility of working in their field, and has to wait till five years after the end of the probation to ask for these collateral consequences to be dropped.
Fifth, there are plenty of cases out there where convictions are quite dubious. Our system favors finality which means that if you lost a badly conducted, error-ridden trial, or lost because of an overworked underprepared public defender, and let your appeal rights expire, or blew them because you relied on your own instincts or the advice of a jailhouse lawyer, then you can seldom get the case reopened without the unlikely emergence of genuinely new, previously unavailable evidence, or actual proof that you are innocent. After the trial, the presumption of innocence is gone and you have to prove by clear and convincing evidence that you didn't do it (even if the original trial didn't prove that you did). This is the most infuriating case. An innocent person who falls between the cracks of the procedural rules has nothing left but a possible pardon to consider his claim of innocence. Then the governor says, "sure, I'll consider the pardon request, but only after you've served your 15-year sentence, and then gone an extra five years just for giggles." That strikes me as reprehensible. The governor is effectively saying, "I don't care if you're probably innocent; I don;t care if your trial was a farce. Go tell it to the judge."
There are good government reasons not to overuse pardons. We assign the writing of the laws to the legislature and the trial of cases to the judiciary. Pardons are traditionally few. Politically, issuing large numbers of pardons seems like overstepping. What if the next guv abuses the pardon power? But on the other hand, a dramatic use of pardons could save on excessive prison spending, put more able workers into the economy, reduce the gross racial disparities in prison population that are hard to account for without some contribution from institutional (or individual) racism; and likewise cut the disparities for mentally ill and otherwise disabled folks who need treatment, not confinement. The pardonees are likely to be politically loyal, which in the case of Wisconsin today under a democratic governor would counter the effects of undemocratic gerrymandering that should be illegal.
I think Evers should get out his pardon pen and go to town.
Save the Airplanes!
The conservatives have been having a blast ripping apart the green new deal. As far as I can see, the actual bill doesn't really do anything but set out goals, which is a baby step. It has one defect, which is a failure to define some of its absolutist-sounding language. If you want to do something to the maximum extent technologically possible, it doesn't leave much room for other considerations. I guess one could argue that the abandonment of buildings to nature is in some way more efficient than occupying them, heating them, lighting them, and spending energy to keep them upright. This could be corrected by adding one sentence toward the beginning. Technically that should not be needed because there are rules of construction intended to avoid reading legislation in absurd and counterproductive ways.
(This does not go for participants in the Democratic debates who say they want to reduce fossil fuel use to zero. Which of these has a plan for converting our military vehicles to biodiesel?)
My view of the Deal, if it were followed up with specific requirements to reach its goals, is that it would do the exact opposite of what the right slams it for. Rather than legislating that no one could have a car or use a plane, or heat a home in winter, the idea of the Deal is to save these things. Because the sooner we start democratically deciding on a fair plan for saving the world, the less likely it will be that the plan arrives in the form of an emergency decree some years down the road. We should be all getting together to decide what climate-destabilizing activities are the most important to us, and how to preserve and regulate them, rather than waking up one morning with our socks full of saltwater and martial law having been declared.
(This does not go for participants in the Democratic debates who say they want to reduce fossil fuel use to zero. Which of these has a plan for converting our military vehicles to biodiesel?)
My view of the Deal, if it were followed up with specific requirements to reach its goals, is that it would do the exact opposite of what the right slams it for. Rather than legislating that no one could have a car or use a plane, or heat a home in winter, the idea of the Deal is to save these things. Because the sooner we start democratically deciding on a fair plan for saving the world, the less likely it will be that the plan arrives in the form of an emergency decree some years down the road. We should be all getting together to decide what climate-destabilizing activities are the most important to us, and how to preserve and regulate them, rather than waking up one morning with our socks full of saltwater and martial law having been declared.
Monday, August 05, 2019
Those New Milks
I've been interested for a while in trying one of those newfangled "milk" products that aren't really milk, like soy milk, almond milk, oat milk, and so on. So today I finally tried one. It was called "chocolate milk" and I have to say that I was very impressed with the spot-on imitation of a dairy product. You could almost believe that the stuff came from a cow except that you could really taste a very strong residue of the cacao from which t was extracted. They tried to mask it with sugar, you can tell, but it was still very strong. Too strong to say, use the milk on a bowl of cereal. While I might enjoy drinking it alone from time to time, I can't imagine using it as a general milk substitute for cooking. Moreover, the chocolate taste was so strong that it really put me off ever trying something like soy milk. If soy milk tastes as much like soy sauce as chocolate milk tastes like chocolate, I really see no use for it.
Monday, July 29, 2019
Coming Back
It has been a long, long time. I will start doing this again. I just don't have anything to say right exactly now.
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