(Re: today’s news.)
News
LA Manhunt Getting Ridiculous
The first time police opened fire on a completely innocent person was bad enough, but now we’ve got two separate instance of LA cops spraying bullets because they thought that they saw Chris Dorner. Dorner, who has killed three cops and is still on the loose with a promise to kill more, is nothing to joke about. But neither are cops blasting away at innocent civilians who driving cars that aren’t like Dorners and who look nothing like Dorner. In the first case, they wounded a newspaper delivery woman and her mother who were driving a truck that is not the same make, model, or even color as Chris Dorner’s. The second example is no better:
His pickup, police later explained, matched the description of the one belonging to Christopher Jordan Dorner — the ex-cop who has evaded authorities after allegedly killing three and wounding two more. But the pickups were different makes and colors. And Perdue looks nothing like Dorner: He’s several inches shorter and about a hundred pounds lighter. And Perdue is white; Dorner is black.
“I don’t want to use the word buffoonery but it really is unbridled police lawlessness,” said Robert Sheahen, Perdue’s attorney. “These people need training and they need restraint.”
It reminds me of the way that gun-control advocates are always saying that we can’t afford to have concealed carry permit holders because only highly trained specialists would be able to react to a crisis rationally. Every time I hear that, I know that I’m talking to someone who has never actually followed stories of police violence. Sadly, these embarrassments are pretty much par for the course.
I don’t want to make light of this situation, but as Michael Yon has pointed out (Facebook), police incompetence and media lust for blood are making this so much worse than it has to be. And it’s already bad enough.
Saving the Relics of Timbuktu
If you haven’t read the story of how the ancient library of Timbuktu–with manuscripts dating back to the 13th century–was saved from Islamic militants who torched the library before they fled advancing French troops, you ought to.
Their final act before leaving was to go through the exhibition room in the institute, as well as the whitewashed laboratory used to restore the age-old parchments. They grabbed the books they found and burned them.
However, they didn’t bother searching the old building, where an elderly man named Abba Alhadi has spent 40 of his 72 years on earth taking care of rare manuscripts. The illiterate old man, who walks with a cane and looks like a character from the Bible, was the perfect foil for the Islamists. They wrongly assumed that the city’s European-educated elite would be the ones trying to save the manuscripts, he said.
Amazing News: Little Alabama Boy Rescued!
I’ve been so afraid to follow this story because I was afraid the ending would be tragic, but this time it wasn’t. The little 5-year old boy, Ethan, who was kidnapped from his school bus after the driver was killed for refusing to hand over any children has been rescued and he is unharmed, at least physically. The kidnapper did not survive.
A six-day standoff between an angry and violent survivalist who held a 5-year-old boy hostage in an underground bunker and a legion of local, state and federal law enforcement officials ended on Monday with the death of the kidnapper and the freeing of the boy.
The article goes on:
On Monday afternoon, sensing that [the kidnapper] was becoming rattled and that the threat to the boy was growing more severe, the authorities dropped two devices into the bunker that created loud explosions, heard by people across the highway. The explosions disoriented [the kidnapper], and immediately afterward two or three men moved into the bunker and retrieved the child. [The kidnapper] was killed in the rescue.
Although the story has a happy ending for Ethan, I think it’s important to remember the bus driver who did not survive:
The standoff began last Tuesday afternoon when [the kidnapper] approached a bus driven by Charles Albert Poland Jr., saying he wanted to give him some broccoli he had grown in his garden. The two knew each other; Mr. Poland had given [the kidnapper] a gift of eggs and homemade jam several days earlier. Once on the bus, [the kidnapper] handed Mr. Poland a note and demanded two children between the ages of 6 and 8.
Mr. Poland opened the emergency door in the back of the bus and as the children escaped he blocked [the kidnapper]’s way; [the kidnapper] shot him four times, killing him. [The kidnapper] then managed to take Ethan and set off the six-day siege of his bunker.
Because of the bravery of Charles Albert Poland, Jr. , 20 children escaped safely that day, and that makes him a big, damn hero. On Sunday, he was buried at a service attended by hundreds.He left behind a daughter, son-in-law, and grandson. And today the law enforcement officers successfully finished the struggle that Charles started. No part of his sacrifice was in vain. This time, every child gets to come home.
The Georgia Daily article describing him also quotes some friends and coworkers of Charles:
A former colleague described Mr Poland as, ‘A fine man. It was an honor to know him and absolutely no surprise that he acted as he did.’
Friend, Glenda Walker, 54, from Newton described him as a ‘dear friend who will be greatly missed,’ as she recalled ‘many time drinking hot tea and eating toast and just talking,’ with Mr Poland and his wife.
He sounds like an absolutely ordinary, everyday, American hero and I hope to God that for once people remember his name instead of the bad guy’s. We owe him, his family, and ourselves at least that much.
Oops: Gun Buy Back Becomes Gun Show
At first I only found references to this story from right-wing sites like InfoWars and The Blaze, then I found the Daily Kos reporting basically the same story, so I guess it’s true. (Besides, there are pics. And therefore, by Internet Law, it must have happened.)
So the cops in Seatle decided to do a gun buy-back this past Saturday (Jan 26). They were offering $100 for shotguns, rifles and handguns and $200 for “assault rifles”. What with gun prices being what they are and a lot of folks deciding to stock up out of fear of impending gun-control regs, a bunch of enterprising gun collectors showed up with homemade signs offering to outbid the cops if they liked your gun. What’s more, the cops were handing out Best Buy gift cards, and the gun collectors were paying in cold, hard cash.
Since private citizen sales are still legal (this is the “gun show loophole”), what they were doing was perfectly legal. They had limited success at first, but after 2 hours the cops ran out of gift cards and started issuing IOUs, and at that point the crowds flocked to the gun buyers.
The Daily Kos poster was horrified: “I have to admit I am sort of shocked at the effort these guys go through to prevent guns from being taken out of circulation/off the streets.” The Independence Declarataion quoted a private gun buyer who took a different view, however: “Why not offer them cash versus a gift card? I’m still taking the guns off the streets; they’re just going in my safe.”
I’m guessing that’s the primary motivation for the private buyers: getting more guns intheir safes. Sticking it to the man is probably a nice fringe benefit, however.
Oh, and while we’re on the topic, one of the private gun buys also purchased a Stinger surface-to-air rocket. That’s what the Salon headline would have you believe, anyway. It was actually just the used launcher (they’re one-time weapons), and after the private citizen bought it the police confiscated it because they suspect (quite reasonably) that it’s stolen property.
The Blaze mentioned that fact, too (and gave a more complete story), and it’s just another reminder of how incredibly differently people see this whole issue.
(Note, all images from The Blaze which in turn credits local news station KING 5.)
Eerily Ringing Cell Phones After Nightclub Inferno
On Sunday a nightclub fire in Brazil killed 231 people. The nightclub was rated for a crowd of 1,000, but there were 2,000 inside when the fire broke out. Confused security guards initially locked the doors because they didn’t see the fire and thought people were trying to run without settling bar tabs. The insulation in the building released toxic smoke as it burned, confusing people and leading about 50 to cram into the bathroom, apparently believing that they had found an exit door.
When first responders enetered the building they were confronted with piles of bodies both in the bathroom and near the exist. There was complete and total silence… except for the ringing of cell phones. Many of the victims died from asphyxiation or being trampled, leaving their cell phones intact. Since only a few hours had passed, the batteries were still charged. And since word of the disaster had gotten out, anxious friends and relatives were calling, getting no answer, and leaving messages their loved ones would never hear.
This is the first time I’d heard of this happening, but according to a CNN.com article it’s actually fairly common:
The dead can’t speak. Their cell phones do.
And, for police, firefighters and paramedics, the incessant chirping, bleating and incongruously cheerful boom box beats of victims’ cell phones comprise a soundtrack of disaster.
It happened at the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007, a commuter train crash in Los Angeles the next year, the movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado, last July and, again, at the night club fire in Brazil that killed 231 people on Sunday.
The article, bearing the headline “Eerie sounds of cell phones amid disaster adds to first-responder toll”, explains that it’s not just a haunting image for folks reading newspaper accounts. For the first responders on the scene, it’s a genuine psychological problem:
The incessantly ringing phones and the realization that someone is desperately trying to reach someone else who is now dead, short-circuits the psychological defenses first responders need to do their jobs, said Jim Crabtree, a registered nurse who helps train them for the Los Angeles County Emergency Management Services Agency.
First responders at the Aurora shooting, where 12 peopel died, had to contend with a few cell phones. At the Brazilian nightclub there were nearly 1,000 cell phones ringing without owners, and one had already registered over 100 missed calls. There may be some glimmer of solace in the fact that 3 out of 4 of the discarded cell phones in Brazil actually had survivors (only 231, not 1,000 people were dead), but how do you balance that against the memory of a a cell phone ringing from inside a body bag?
First responers want permission to be able to turn off cell phones while they are doing their work, but according to policies written in decades past, this could technically be tampering with evidence. It will take new policies to address the problem–and new training to prepare first responders–and that will take some time.
It’s a 21st century problem, and we just haven’t figured out how to handle it yet.
Secular Pro-Life Founder on WBEZ
My friend Kelsey Hazard founded a pro-life group to help diversify the largely religious tenor of the movement called Secular Pro-Life. I think it’s a great new voice to add diversity to the pro-life cause.
A couple of days ago she was interviewed along with Erin Matson (representing the pro-choice side) by WBEZ Chicago Public Radio. Check out a recording, and read Kelsey’s thoughts on the interview.
Standing Up for the Vulnerable
There are lots of stories of people doing dumb, stupid things. Then there are stories of people doing the right thing. I like those kinds of stories. And I especially like stories of regular folks taking a stand for the defenseless.
Here’s how this one goes down:
Family goes to their usual restaurant with their little boy, Milo. Milo has Down syndrome.
Another family at the restaurant makes disparaging comments about how special needs kids should be separated from regular people. In response? The waiter refuses to serve them. Well played, waiter.
Story gets out, people flock to the restaurant to shake his hand and congratulate him. Well played, humanity.
Search Wars: Google vs. Facebook
One of the things that is the strangest to me about following tech news these days is that it’s awfully darn hard to keep track of who is rivals with whom. The basic reason for this is that all the new technologies: portable devices, search, operating systems, advertising, and online retails are all interconnected. In the old days it seemed like the rivalries were pretty distinct: Apple vs. Microsoft for OS was more or less totally distinct from AMD vs. Intel for microprocessors.
These days none of that applies. One day Apple and Amazon are rivals (iPad vs. Kindle Fire) on hardware and the next it’s Google vs. Microsoft (with Bing, Microsoft’s entry into search), but in between it’s also Google vs. Apple. In a word: it’s one great big free-for-all and the prize is information about you and me.
So here comes the newest entrant into this melee: Facebook is taking on Google in search. It might not seem like an obvious battle at first, but an article at SearchEngineLand.com goes into the advantages Facebook has over Google (and, along the way, sheds new light on the launch of Google’s ill-timed G+ competitor to Facebook). The give the following kinds of searches that will be easy to do in Facebook, but virtually impossible in Google:
- Restaurants run by employees of a particular cooking school
- Pictures by friends who live in London
- Friends who are friends with people who work for a particular company, say all the people at Facebook who know people who work at Apple
- Product managers who have turned into company founders
- Movies that your friends like
Even if the search wars don’t really get a new front, this is just one application of Facebook’s announcement that they are going to make their information available via Graph Search. At a minimum, you should finally be able to search easily for all photos you ever liked. That’s actually pretty awesome for me as a writer, because I’ve got well over 150,000 words on Facebook and a lot of the time it’s clear, focused writing that I’d love to find and then turn into articles, but it’s basically impossible for me to find anything I’ve written more than a couple of weeks ago.
If you’re interested in some more background on Graph Search announcement, Slashdot has an initial rundown.
New Asteroid Mining Company Launched!
You know the future is really here when you get to write about not the first, but the second company founded to mine asteroids. I’m on the mailing list for the first, Planetary Resources, which was founded last April. The new one is called Deep Space Industries, Inc.
They plan “to launch a fleet of prospecting spacecraft in 2015, then begin harvesting metals and water from near-Earth asteroids within a decade or so.” The plans are exciting, obviously, but I still remain a little bit skeptical. According to DSI the point is not to ship the raw materials back down to earth (those asteroids would have be pure platinum to make that worthwhile, I’m guessing), but instead to have the raw material ready for in-space cosntruction of more ships and habitats for more exploration. Sounds awesome, but now we not only need to figure out how to mine the asteroids, but also how to build an assembly line up there.
Still, given advances in robotics, this doesn’t sounds that far-fetched in terms of technical capability. It’s the economic profitability that has me wondering.
In any case, I can’t help but be excited!