Monday, February 29, 2016

The Elevator Dream

Elevators might be scary places. Upon waking up this morning I recalled a dream that involved an elevator, and it brought back memories of past dreams with elevators.


In my dreams, I will get into an elevator and press the button to get to the floor I want to go to, but the elevator doesn't always take me to that floor. Sometimes the elevator drops me off on a floor that is eerily deserted, dull-colored and dim with a narrow hallway; rather than risk going back into the elevator, I make my way gingerly through the confines of a very long hallway to the stairs.

Sometimes the elevator refuses to take me up and instead keeps taking me down to a parking basement. Other times the elevator takes me up higher than is possible in the building I'm in and it won't take me back down.

Once in a while, I'll be in an elevator and the building becomes translucent, allowing me to see the entire network of elevators, rooms, hallways. As I watch, the elevator pathways physically change their connections between spaces.

Then there's the dream where no matter which button I push and regardless of the number of times I step out and back into the elevator, I keep getting dropped off on the same floor, seemingly trapped.

When the elevator door closes, do you know where you're going?

Quoting Lincoln to make the case for lower GINI

The GINI Coefficient is a measure of income equality / inequality; zero means perfect equality while one-hundred means perfect inequality. I think this Lincoln quote I just came across, represents well, the cause for greater income equality, particularly between those who make money from money itself and those who earn a living making, growing, and contributing towards tangible goods, and services.
"I hold that if the Almighty had ever made a set of men that should do all the eating and none of the work, He would have made them with mouths only and no hands; and if He had ever made another class that He intended should do all the work and no eating, He would have made them with hands only and no mouths." Abraham Lincoln, 1859

Saturday, February 27, 2016

1st Amendment and the right to record police.

A recent decision by Judge Kearney in the District Court of Eastern Pennsylvania has caused some uproar online. According to the news, Judge Kearney has determined that the act of recording police activities is not always protected by the 1st Amendment. We've long been told that in fact, recording police activities is protected by the 1st Amendment, so naturally I was curious about the case. What follows is a mid-level dive into the issues surrounding the case.

Background


The case involves two separate incidents.

In Richard Fields' incident, he stopped to take a photo of a house party that was being attended to by 20 police officers. When his actions were questioned by a police officer, he replied that he was just walking by, but when asked to leave Fields stayed his position and proclaimed his right to stand his ground, upon which he was detained (handcuffed) and his phone seized and searched. He was later released (after being cited for a violation) along with his phone, and the image that was taken was not deleted. Fields filed two claims, one for retaliation against his 1st Amendment right and another for a violation of the 4th Amendment right against illegal search and seizure.

In Amanda Geraci's incident, she was videorecording a protest against fracking at a convention center. Police officers moved to direct protesters in order to allow access to the convention center, at which point an arrest was made of one of the protesters. Geraci moved in close to record the action, at which point she was directed to move back. According to Geraci an officer physically pinned her to a column to prevent her from recording the arrest. Geraci filed two claims, one for retaliation against her 1st Amendment right and another for a violation of the 4th Amendment right against excessive use of force (an illegal seizure).

In Fields' case, his 4th Amendment case was allowed to proceed to trial, while Geraci's was denied. In both cases, their 1st Amendment complaint of retaliation was denied.

Discussion


It turns out, what we commonly assume to be a right, is in fact not applied equally across the country.

While other Circuit Courts have established within their jurisdiction that recording of police is itself a 1st Amendment right, the 3rd Circuit Court has not.
"We find there is no First Amendment right under our governing law to observe and record police officers absent some other expressive conduct." - Judge Kearney
Contrary to popular belief in the news media, back in 2012 when SCOTUS declined to review ACLU v Alvarez, their action did not itself establish a 1st Amendment right to record police in public. What it did do is establish that a ban on recording police violated the 1st Amendment. In the former there is a presumption that the public has an automatic 1st Amendment right to record police activities; in the latter there is a presumption that there are times where a 1st Amendment right to record police activities is established, and therefore a blanket ban would violate the 1st Amendment.

Accordingly, it requires careful parsing of Judge Kearney’s words, to understand what he is saying. He is not offering a personal or political opinion on the automatic establishment of a 1st Amendment right to record police activities. He is stating that, under the jurisdiction of the 3rd Circuit Court, he is obliged to stick to his circuit’s decisions.
“While acknowledging activities observing and recording the police may be protected, our [3rd Circuit] Court of Appeals has never held speech unaccompanied by an expressive component is always afforded First Amendment protection.” - Judge Kearney
In fact, Judge Kearney specifically cites Heffernan v. City of Paterson, where the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals required that a 1st Amendment right be expressly established, rather than implied, before one could determine that retaliation against that 1st Amendment right had occurred. While SCOTUS is currently deciding Heffernan v. City of Paterson, you shouldn’t hold your breath on that one, as conservative jurors have tended to side with the requirement to expressly establish a 1st Amendment right.

That case notwithstanding, Judge Kearney is still bound by his jurisdictional circuit.
“We recognize courts outside the Third Circuit and at least one noted commentator have found observing and photographing police activity without any criticism of the government fall within the realm of First Amendment protected activity. While we understand these opinions, the present law in this Circuit does not recognize a First Amendment right to observe and record without some form of expressive conduct and photographing police is not, as a matter of law, expressive activity. - Judge Kearney

Since SCOTUS has never directly dealt with this particular issue of the expressed or implied 1st Amendment right to record police activities, whatever the separate Circuit Courts say, applies to their regions.

Conclusion


The bottom line is, the rights you enjoy in the west coast are not the same as in the east, and until SCOTUS explicitly says otherwise, you can't assume to have the blanket right to record police activities. With this case highlighting the disparity between Circuit Courts, it appears this ruling may wind its way to SCOTUS, at which point we may finally have clarity throughout the country.

More importantly, if you read any ACLU advice on the matter of police confrontations, it is clear that you do not have a right to disobey an officer's direction. That people are frequently allowed to disobey an officer's direction, is really at the officer's discretion.

Finally, local ACLUs are starting to post apps that allow you to record activities that are simultaneously uploaded to their server, in order to preserve evidence. Use it, but don't be a jerk about it; no one likes to have a videorecorder shoved in their face and spoken to, belligerently.


PS. I'm too lazy to cite all of the source materials, but they're all directly from the cases involved, and no third-party opinions were culled and misrepresented as mine.

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Cam Newton's 6 Excuses For Throwing a Tantrum


Cam Newton prematurely left the NFL press conference stage Sunday evening, when he overheard comments from Denver's Chris Harris over the Broncos defensive plan to load the box and force the Panthers to throw the ball. Today, he offered excuses for his tantrum on Sunday:
  1. "I'm human." -- Where he claims to be imperfect with a glint of humility.
  2. "Who are you to say that your way is right?" -- But then demands that his way is the right way for him, after all.
  3. "I'm a sore loser." -- The admission speaks for itself, right?
  4. "Who likes to lose?" -- But then he offers a non sequitur.
  5. "You show me a good loser and Imma show you a loser." -- So he insults good losers to defend his actions.
  6. "It's not a popularity contest." -- And finally relieves himself of responsibilities by explaining that his motives are pure.
He can dish it, but he sure as hell can't take it. Then, despite having a day to think about it all, he offered us a plethora of excuses for his actions. That's the league's MVP.

Monday, February 8, 2016

3D Print: Ceramics.

I just finished a longer, in-depth post at my design blog about my latest 3D print to come back from Shapeways: a porcelain shot and base. Here's a quick image:


5 Thoughts for February 8, 2016

  1. Super Bowl: Now that's what I call an excellent upset -- that Bronco defense was bad-ass! It's not that they stopped Carolina from moving the ball, but that they stopped them from scoring, created timely turnovers, and made Cam Newton feel uncomfortable so that his passing efficiency collapsed. I made no small secret of my tremendous dislike for Cam Newton, so to see the ball stripped from him and to see him sacked 7 times, the day after his being named MVP of the year, was delicious. That Von Miller was named MVP of Super Bowl 50, was the cherry on top. It was really awesome to see Peyton Manning potentially cap his long career with a SB win, even though the king of the game was the Bronco defense. Trivia: Denver's Malik Jackson went to USC in 2008, 2009 before transferring -- that was the period when the NCAA installed what amounted to Free Agency on USC, as part of the penalties handed out in the Reggie Bush case; Carolina's Ryan Kalil is also a former Trojan.
  2. Confronting Cognitive Dissonance: I somewhat enjoy confronting the cognitive dissonance of others, online. Last month I was badgering a white guy who then tried to use his Asian wife as proof of his color-blindness with African-Americans. Yesterday I was able to get this one chap to admit that he was no different than Hillary Clinton, upon which, he called the similarity an abstraction. Oh the things people do, to alleviate their cognitive dissonance. 
  3. Binge Watching: I just finished watching Unbranded, a Kickstarter-funded documentary about a group of young men from Texas who rode American wild horses from the Mexican border to the Canadian border. If you know about the issues and the fallacies surrounding Ammon Bundy and his ilk down in the Malheur Refuge, you'll definitely enjoy Unbranded. Also finished BBC's Sherlock Holmes, which was an interesting take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic. Currently, I'm watching Ripper Street -- another BBC series.
  4. USC Football: Last week, USC's football recruiting class started Letter of Intent signing day at the bottom or just outside of the top-25 list of various recruiting services. By the time the class was full and all signatures had been collected, they'd ended up in or just outside the top-10. They flipped three commitments, from Oregon, Florida State and Boise State.
  5. Bernie Sanders Has Already Lost: The media took to the weekend airwaves to proclaim that Bernie Sanders was a mere 2 percentage points below Hillary Clinton. What they hadn't explained was that this particular Quinnipiac poll was a clear outlier. We regularly use poll aggregating to remove the influence of outliers, and it turns out three other polls (PPP, Rasmussen, Morning Consult) taken during the same period show Sanders with an average of 17.7 point deficit. Now, let's look at Iowa's caucus. It's no secret that Bernie's greatest support comes from the youth vote, but according to Iowa's caucus numbers, Bernie's youthful supporters did not come out to caucus; in fact he massively underperformed Obama in 2008. This means that all the positive poll numbers for Bernie are worthless. But there's more. Out of 44 Democratic senators, Hillary has the endorsement of 39 with the remaining 5 undeclared; of the 188 Democratic Representatives, 151 have endorsed Hillary while two have backed Bernie. Vermont's other senator, Patrick Leahy, backs Hillary. Vermont's governor also backs Hillary. While Bernie's backers suggest that this supports Bernie as the anti-Establishment candidate, what it really is, is proof that Democrats think Hillary is the party's best chances to win the White House. So here's my first prediction of the season: Bernie will be running on fumes after Super Tuesday, March 1, and will concede before the end of April.

Sunday, February 7, 2016

5 Thoughts for February 7, 2016

  1. New Hampshire Democratic Primary: It is assumed that Bernie Sanders will win the New Hampshire primary, with some folks projecting north of a 20-point margin as a result of some polling data. But what if the margin ends up in single digits? I happened to look at RCP's data while considering 538's odds and noticed that in New Hampshire, there were two tracker polls. The benefit of any given tracker poll is that you can discern a usable direction in the data as they're using the same methodology; add two trackers and the direction is reinforced. You can do the same thing with any given poll, but your direction is generalized over a longer period of time. In New Hampshire, the two trackers -- ARG and UMass -- seem to show that Bernie Sanders peaked one week ago. The only thing that seems linked to this is the Iowa caucus. Bernie got a bounce, but it has since deflated. Don't be surprised if Bernie wins by just a single-digit margin.

  2. Binge Off: If you're like me, you don't stream a lot of video on your phone, so T-Mobile's Binge-On program is completely unnecessary. Here's how to turn it off: Using your phone's dialer, call #263#. I don't know if the program will survive a net-neutrality test before the FCC, but I do know that were I to binge watch on my phone, it would be dead after just a couple of hours.
  3. Besaws: Last weekend I walked the dog to New Seasons at NW 21st / Quimby to grab some coffee and a croissant (shared the croissant) at night and saw that the building in front of it now housed Besaws, which had been previously kicked out of its old digs at NW 23rd and Savier. They're in a brand new building, but the interior was designed to look like it's been there for decades. Definitely need to visit.
  4. 3D Prints: I just got back my latest batch of 3D prints, and it's mostly good. The bad part of the prints seems to me to be an issue of quality control. My ceramic pieces were overglazed, such that you can see the pooling of fired glaze at the bottom which made top part incompatible with the lower part (does not fit inside one another). Immediately, I modified the 3D model to accommodate for pooling of glaze, but were the sprayer of the glaze more careful, I would not have to accommodate for a very bad glaze job. In other words, I've glazed my own ceramics and have never had such an acute problem of over-glazing. I'll post a separate, in-depth entry on the prints, later.
  5. Portland's Homeless: KGW reported that the McCormick Condo Association closed access to the greenway -- a public right of way -- as a result of the homeless situation under the Steel Bridge. I happened to ride my bike right through the homeless settlement two weeks ago, and it was much worse than what KGW's news report showed. In their video, you might think there a handful of homeless people; when I rode my bike, it was easily 40+ people with well over a dozen large tents. Closing off the greenway was probably as much about security as it was about these homeless people using access to the Willamette River as a toilet. Yes, I have personally seen homeless people defecate under various bridge / freeway areas, pee on trees, and pee on building facades. The Mayor then demanded that the condo association open up the greenway. Last week the Mayor doubled down and placed a homeless storage locker at this exact spot. This does not end well. How do I know? Because between the Steel and Broadway bridges there are currently five encampments. This will only further incentivize the growth of homeless encampments in this geographical area.