I agreed some weeks back to help out a friend and teach a book-arts class at one of the local colleges for a two week ‘camp’ thing they do to interest high school students in the school. The pay is less than I’d bill for one solid day’s work, but I do enjoy teaching my craft now and again – you get a fresh perspective from young students that is hard to find anywhere else.
Anyway, this morning I had to go over to the campus HR department and fill out all the necessary paperwork to be allowed this honor. Most of it was the usual junk you expect from any employer – wage and tax forms, et cetera. They also had a confidentiality agreement I had to complete – fine, as I doubt I will have any information in my hands at any time that I *could* disclose. And then I came to the form allowing a background check.
Whoa.
I know that it is routine. And I know that it is required, to protect the school from employing some kind of child molester. But had I not already given my friend a commitment to teach the class, I would have just left the paperwork on the desk and walked out.
No, I have nothing in my background which raises the slightest concern. I couldn’t have passed a CCW permit background check if I did. I just really resent having my privacy violated. Because the background check could include financial and credit reports in addition to criminal records and legal judgments – it was worded broadly enough to allow the school to do everything short of giving me a colonoscopy, if they wanted.
It’s funny. My small-“l” libertarianism seldom shows up in my day to day life. But when it comes to my privacy, I really don’t like having to hand over the keys to my life to someone else. I’ve got nothing to hide, but I hate having to let others root around and see that for themselves.
Damn, I hate starting a holiday weekend devoted to liberty with this taste in my mouth. Maybe that’s why it’s bugged me so much.
Jim Downey
Well, I’m back to reading the Orwell Diaries, after just browsing them now and again for the last two years. Why now? Well, what was happening in the world 70 years ago?
Oh, yeah, that.
Specifically, the fall of France. Dunkirk.
Orwell’s diaries have gone from mundane reporting of how many eggs his chickens laid to a preoccupation with the war news, and observations on how few people in the British public seem to be engaged in it yet. It’s funny, from our perspective we think of WWII as “total war” which completely took over the countries involved. But of course that’s not how things actually unfolded – those who were experiencing it saw it within the other aspects and concerns of their lives. It took time for the full scope of the war to become clear, and as always some people understood what was actually happening sooner than others.
Anyway, if you fell away from reading the Orwell Diaries, you might want to pick the habit back up. Interesting stuff.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Aldous Huxley, Augmented Reality, Government, Health, Music, Psychic abilities, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Synesthesia, Writing stuff
Almost 30 years ago I took psilocybin for the first time. I repeated the experience several times over the next couple of years, and have largely spent the time since making sense of the whole thing. Some of this is reflected in Communion of Dreams: descriptions of synesthesia in the book were based largely on my own experiences while under the influence of ‘shrooms, and the use of ‘auggies’ (drugs designed to increase neural processing) were also inspired by those experiences.
But the use of psychedelics was largely from another time. Not the first instance of my having been out-of-phase with the rest of society.
So it’s somewhat surprising to see new research being conducted using these drugs. Research which really should have been conducted decades ago, were it not for the paranoia of the “Just Say No!” years. This weekend’s edition of To The Best Of Our Knowledge provides a nice insight into this:
It’s taken decades for study of mind-altering drugs to be taken seriously. Now a handful of scientists are at the forefront of new research. One of them is Roland Griffiths is a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins. He’s just turned his attention to psilocybin, a classic hallucinogen commonly known as magic mushrooms. He tells Steve Paulson about his findings.
And:
We hear a clip from Annie Levy who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. In the late stages she took part in an experimental study designed to see if taking psilocybin could help with the fear and panic about dying. In her case, taking a single dose was a life-changing experience in her final months.
It’s a shame, really, that the therapeutic use of hallucinogens has been stymied for so long. There is such a long tradition of using these drugs to access deeper insight and spirituality in many cultures that one is almost tempted to say that humankind’s evolution has been influenced by psychedelics as much as learning to use fire. That we have cut ourselves off from these natural psychotropics is a shame – and again is reflected in Communion of Dreams in how we have artificially lost part of our natural birthright.
Jim Downey
*From the Moody Blues, of course.
I haven’t written much about it, though it is mentioned in my bio and most of my close friends know: I lost both parents when I was just entering adolescence.
Well, no, I didn’t “lose” them. They died. My dad was a cop, killed on the job, and my mom died in a car accident about a year and a half later (no link here – believe it or not, relevant newspaper archives online don’t yet cover the 1960s and 70s). I’m not being pedantic – it was crucial for me to face the hard reality of my parent’s deaths in order to come to terms with them being gone. Why? Well, because everyone just wanted to dance around the fact that they were dead, relying instead on the usual euphemisms about death in our society.
And that’s why I mention it here, and now. Because there is a new survey out showing that we as a society do not deal well with children who have lost a parent. Here’s a bit from a Wall Street Journal article sent to me by a friend:
Their responses, part of a wide-ranging new survey, indicate that bereavement rooted in childhood often leaves emotional scars for decades, and that our society doesn’t fully understand the ramifications—or offer appropriate resources. The complete survey of more than 1,000 respondents, set for release later this month, was funded by the New York Life Foundation on behalf of Comfort Zone Camp, a nonprofit provider of childhood bereavement camps.
Among the findings: 73% believe their lives would be “much better” if their parents hadn’t died young; 66% said that after their loss “they felt they weren’t a kid anymore.”
Childhood grief is “one of society’s most chronically painful yet most underestimated phenomena,” says Comfort Zone founder Lynne Hughes, who lost both her parents before she was 13. She says she is worried that educators, doctors, and the clergy get little or no training to help them recognize signs of loneliness, isolation and depression in grieving children—and in adults who lost parents in childhood.
Yet 1 in 9 Americans lost a parent before they turned 20.
I have sometimes surprised people by saying that my experience of losing my parents isn’t unusual – not in the span of human history. Given normal lifespans and mortality rates, a lot of people through the ages grew up without having one or both parents. But our culture is really in denial about death, and so we don’t have the same traditions and rituals that may have been in place to help in other times.
Now, I came to terms with the deaths of my parents many years ago. Not all at once, but over time, and in my own ways. That’s what grieving is, and we each do so on our own schedule. But there are things which could have helped – and even to this day, occasionally I come across an insight that helps to explain some of my own emotional landscape.
A decade or so ago I read a book that helped to explain a *lot*: The Loss That Is Forever: The Lifelong Impact of the Early Death of a Mother or Father. It showed me that many of the things I just assumed were my own personality quirks were in fact common reactions to the death of a parent. What I wouldn’t have given to have that information decades previously.
And that is why I mention this today. I told my friend who sent the WSJ link that I was not surprised by the results of the survey, but that it would probably be very much a surprise to anyone who hadn’t had this experience. And that should change. Because there are things that we could do to help make the lives easier of those who lose a parent while still a child. And it would help our society at the same time.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Bruce Schneier, Expert systems, movies, NYT, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Terrorism, Travel, Violence
In listening/reading about the Toyota car crashes earlier this year, a thought had occurred to me: if it was a software problem with controlling the brakes or throttle, could that be something which could be used maliciously against the owner of a car? I mean, I could see where it would make an interesting plot point in a mystery – someone gets into the car’s computer system, mucks around, and then a couple of days later the car crashes, killing the driver. But since I don’t write mysteries (though there are elements of that in Communion of Dreams), I let the idea just slip away.
Now it seems that I wasn’t thinking on nearly a large enough scale:
Cars’ Computer Systems Called at Risk to Hackers
Automobiles, which will be increasingly connected to the Internet in the near future, could be vulnerable to hackers just as computers are now, two teams of computer scientists are warning in a paper to be presented next week.
The scientists say that they were able to remotely control braking and other functions, and that the car industry was running the risk of repeating the security mistakes of the PC industry.
“We demonstrate the ability to adversarially control a wide range of automotive functions and completely ignore driver input — including disabling the brakes, selectively braking individual wheels on demand, stopping the engine, and so on,” they wrote in the report, “Experimental Security Analysis of a Modern Automobile.”
Well, it’s too late to enter this year’s Fifth Annual Movie-Plot Threat Contest by Bruce Schneier, but that’d be a great one: terrorists design a computer worm which targets the control systems of cars, and when the worm is activated on a certain date, all the cars will suddenly go out of control on America’s roads, killing thousands and spreading mass panic. Given the level of dependence we have on cars & trucks in the US, this would quickly cripple the economy and destroy the country.
Make a hell of a book or movie, wouldn’t it? It could even be done as a 24 style TV show, where the protagonist has to track down and stop the mad computer genius behind the plot.
Gah. Now I suppose Homeland Security will be paying me a visit for coming up with such an idea . . .
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
Communion Of Dreams 