Filed under: Blade Runner, movies, Predictions, Science Fiction, tech, YouTube
Though I think they’ll have a hard time upgrading it to full Spinner status in just 9 years:
Jim Downey
Rolling out some stats for June and July . . .
Complete versions of Communion of Dreams were downloaded 780 times in June, and another 692 in July, putting the total a bit shy of 26,000. Whew.
But the real news is with BBTI. On May 23 I wrote this:
Just a quick note: yesterday we crossed 2.5 million hits – total is 2,505,951. We’re averaging over 7,000 hits a day now, and at that rate we’ll break 3 million hits in about 10 weeks.
Well, we haven’t broken 3 million yet. But we will sometime late today, about a week earlier than I predicted. The total as of yesterday was 2,993,557 hits. That breaks down as 192,007 hits in June and 224,458 hits in July. That puts July as the second-highest all time total, with only the first full month the site was up beating it.
Well. Bit stunning, all in all.
Jim Downey
*Victor ‘Boss Vic Koss’ Kosslovich. Cross posted to the BBTI blog.
Gah. I hate to be right, sometimes.
In January 2009 I wrote this:
As usual, it’s only in hindsight that you recognize it. The typical seasonal downturn is something more. Oh, you’re aware of the symptoms. The intense introspection. Desire to sleep more. Lower level of creativity. Difficulty in finding the motivation to do anything. Lack of enthusiasm for the usual things you enjoy. Tendency to drink more, without getting the slightest buzz from it. You’re aware of the symptoms, but until you’ve been dealing with them for a while they don’t all add up to something that you can see.
The ‘black dog‘.
And as noted previously, my bipolar condition tends to run on an 18-to-24 month cycle, though that can be effected by external factors.
Count months. Yeah.
Which explains why teaching my class the last two weeks was so hard, so draining, for all that it was also very enjoyable. Being a public person in the midst of a depressive slide is doable, it just takes an inordinate amount of energy.
Ah, well.
But the good news is that once I realize how deeply I am into this cycle, it usually means that I don’t have a whole lot further down to go. Typically, just a matter of weeks. Something to look forward to. And now that the class is done I can put my energy back into the other things which need my attention, and slowly build on the small accomplishments.
Walk. One foot in front of the other. It’s the only thing that helps.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Genetic Testing, Pandemic, Pharyngula, Predictions, PZ Myers, Science, Science Fiction, tech, Violence
Last week I mentioned the genetic breakthrough accomplished by J Craig Venter and his team: the creation of functional man-made DNA. Since then, lots of very smart people have been trying to sort through the implications of this development. One of the better collections of such discussion I have seen can be found at Edge.
Here’s a bit from PZ Myers (also on his blog) that I find particularly insightful:
Nature’s constant attempts to kill us are often neglected in these kinds of discussions as a kind of omnipresent background noise. Technology sometimes seems more dangerous because it moves fast and creates novelty at an amazing pace, but again, Venter’s technology isn’t the big worry. It’s much easier and much cheaper to take an existing, ecologically successful bug and splice in a few new genes than to create a whole new creature from scratch…and unlike the de novo synthesis of life, that’s a technology that’s almost within the reach of garage-bound bio-hackers, and is definitely within the capacity of many foreign and domestic institutions. Frankenstein bacteria are harmless compared to the possibilities of hijacking E. coli or a flu virus to nefarious ends.
Let me repeat that last sentence: Frankenstein bacteria are harmless compared to the possibilities of hijacking E. coli or a flu virus to nefarious ends.
It’s almost like he’s read Communion of Dreams, eh?
Jim Downey
Whew – this morning I completed transferring entries for Her Final Year from the website my co-author set up so we could jointly work on it, and organizing them into files by “month” (this allows me to print out the entries and shift them around to find a good organic narrative in each month). Anyway, it was the first time that I had an actual sense of just how large a body of material we’re working with. And that material is 98,470 words in the current form – the length of a solid, commercial novel.
Now, there will be some adjustments to that total. Some editing will be done, and we still need to do the introductions for each month. Also, the entire body of the second (shorter) part of the book – His First Year, which is the recovery period following caregiving – still needs to be tallied. Even with trimming, I expect the final version of the book will still be in excess of 100,000 words – likely more on the order of 110,000 to 120,000.
No wonder it seems like a lot of work. It is.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Civil Rights, Constitution, Failure, Government, Guns, Politics, Predictions, Press, Society, Violence
I was gone over the weekend, and didn’t get back home until last evening. Since returning, I’ve been playing a little catch-up to our drug raid debacle, which has continued to get attention nationwide. So, some quick follow-up . . .
First, the issue hasn’t died down at all. The YouTube vid in question has now been seen by almost a million people, and the issue has now shifted from being one about pot laws to being more one about civil liberties in general and the use of paramilitary force by police in specific. It’s not often that I am in agreement with political commentary on FOX News, but this whole interview from yesterday is almost something that I could have written.
The initial response from the mayor and police chief last Thursday was seen as entirely inadequate, and yesterday afternoon the Chief held another press conference to announce a number of changes. The Missourian has the best coverage of this news conference so far. Here’s a bit from that article:
The changes include:
- A captain in charge of the area where the raid is to take place has to approve the operation.
- The location has to be under constant surveillance once the warrant has been issued.
- A raid is not to take place when children are present except “under the most extreme circumstances,” Burton said.
“We will always police with common sense,” he said.
This *is* a step in the right direction, but it hardly goes far enough, and it remains to be seen whether it does much to quiet the tumult here locally or even nationally. Why do I say this? Because they have not yet addressed the basic issue of when it is appropriate to use paramilitary levels of force. There is a growing awareness that this policy question has to be resolved: why is SWAT being used when there is not an imminent threat to the public safety? The local discussion boards have gone nuts (full link round-up of the Tribune’s coverage and discussion here) and appropriately so. Tomorrow night there will be a meeting of the new Civilian Review Board and next Monday during the regularly-scheduled City Council meeting there will undoubtedly be discussion of the matter. Supposedly, the internal review of the raid is to be completed and released later this week, and I bet that will just fuel the debate further. People are really pissed off.
This is not over. Whether it will lead to any changes here locally or perhaps even nationally remains to be seen.
Jim Downey
Filed under: ACLU, Civil Rights, Constitution, Failure, Government, Guns, Politics, Predictions, Press, Reason, Society, Violence, YouTube
Yesterday I wrote about the latest local battle in the War on (Some) Drugs, which led to the shooting of two dogs, the terrorizing of a family, and the diminution of our civil rights as police departments adopt increasingly militarized tactics. But not like I was alone in this, since the story has been picked up and published in countless posts online as well as getting attention from the mainstream media. Facebook posts, hits to the YouTube vid now over 200,000 (it was 2,000 when I posted the vid yesterday), et cetera.
So, the heat is starting to build. Of course, this can’t be ignored by the local police department, so they chatted with the Tribune to give their side (a bit). And what did they say?
“It was unfortunate timing,” said Lt. Scott Young, SWAT commander. “We were in the process of considering a lot of changes. We were already having meetings to improve narcotic investigations, then this happened.”
Columbia police spokeswoman Jessie Haden said there sometimes was a lag between the time a warrant was issued and when SWAT could execute the warrant. The problem was SWAT members’ primary assignments, such as their role as beat officers or investigators, would take precedence over SWAT and they would have to work overtime to participate in SWAT operations.
Well, OK then. It was just a case of unfortunate timing. The warrant was going to run out, you see, so they *had* to act in the middle of the night when the SWAT team was available.
Er, what?
SWAT teams were developed to cope with particularly dangerous situations – something which presents a major threat to the safety of the public. They train to deploy quickly, to secure a dangerous environment while dealing with someone who is heavily armed. Almost by definition, anything which presents a major threat to the public safety and security requires a very fast response – you don’t want to leave a hostage situation hanging until you can make sure no one is going to be getting in too much overtime. And likewise, if narcotics distribution is going on, if a major drug deal is happening, you don’t want to wait more than a week to schedule your SWAT team.
In other words, if it ain’t an emergency, SWAT shouldn’t be used.
Think about that. If the situation requires the use of such militarized tactics and equipment, then how the hell can you just let it wait until you can make sure that everyone on the team has completed their other routine job requirements?
Yet that is what they did. Again, from the Tribune:
The warrant authorizing SWAT and investigators to enter Whitworth’s home was approved by Boone County Associate Circuit Judge Leslie Schneider on Feb 3., and the raid happened Feb. 11.
8 days. They waited 8 days to act. How the hell does that qualify as the sort of emergency situation for which SWAT is required?
It doesn’t.
Here’s the video, again:
Yet they had been sitting on that warrant for 8 days. 8 days during which they hadn’t even determined that there would be a child inside the home.
Welcome to your police state. When the SWAT team can be used for any police action, so long as there’s a justification of War on (Some) Drugs involved. And time to make sure the bust doesn’t mess up any of the officer’s schedules.
Jim Downey
Filed under: ACLU, Civil Rights, Constitution, Failure, Government, Guns, Politics, Predictions, Reason, Society, Terrorism, YouTube
Wait, I thought we were no longer at war with our own people? Seems someone forgot to tell the local cops, who sent their SWAT team out in the middle of the night because of a pot pipe and a misdemeanor’s worth of pot (which is decriminalized here, and subject only to a ticket).
Here’s the video. Warning, it’s tough to watch, particularly for anyone who cares for dogs:
The comments at the local paper’s site are now pushing 500 – that’s easily 2x the size of just about other story I can think of, and I pay attention to what people are thinking. And it’s been picked up by Radley Balko, who is a nationally-read proponent of limiting the militarization of police forces around the country. And folks are posting it to their Facebook pages as well as to other sites. It is, in other words, going viral.
Now, a couple of things. First, the SWAT team was executing a legal warrant, signed by a judge. Second, the warrant was issued because it was thought that the culprit was a drug dealer – not just some low-level user. Third, cops always have to make sure that they secure a site when they go on such a raid, and in doing so will use whatever force they think is necessary.
But . . .
The information provided to get the warrant was extremely poor – the police didn’t even realize the man listed in the warrant was married, nor that there was a small child in the home. This could have easily led to a tragedy. And the video, released due to Sunshine Law requests, is decidedly at odds with how this raid was characterized when it was announced by local police spokespersons (one of whom I know) back in February.
Readers of this blog will know that while I support the police (my dad was a cop, after all), I have often objected to the absurd increase in military tactics and weaponry being used at the local level – which is entirely due to the way the War on (Some) Drugs has been conducted over the last decades. The sort of things shown in this video just sour the populace on their police, and put people (including cops) unnecessarily at risk. And it is frighteningly indicative of a slide into a true police state.
Watch that video. And think – who is served by this sort of debacle?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Emergency, Predictions, Preparedness, Society, Terrorism, Violence
…for ages that if someone *really* wanted to hurt our country, they could do so with a bunch of small-scale bombs at tourist sites and malls around the country. The bombs wouldn’t have to be big, or kill a lot of people – just scare people enough that they stop going to those places unless they really needed to. The economy would collapse in a matter of weeks, given that about 70% of our GDP is generated by consumer sales.
So let’s hope that this isn’t the first such instance:
Car bomb scares Times Square but fails to explode
NEW YORK – Police found an “amateurish” but potentially powerful bomb that apparently began to detonate but did not explode in a smoking sport utility vehicle in Times Square, authorities said Sunday.Thousands of tourists were cleared from the streets for 10 hours after two vendors alerted police to the suspicious vehicle, which contained three propane tanks, fireworks, two filled 5-gallon gasoline containers, and two clocks with batteries, electrical wire and other components, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
So far, reaction to this event seems to be calmer than I would expect. But we’ll see what happens when it’s no longer the weekend and people start using it to try and score political points on one side or the other. Remember, fear sells.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 