You might want to mention that you're not linking directly to Gladwell.
You might want to mention that you're not linking to essear's helpful comments.
I find this interesting because the seed of the idea that there was a cultural aspect here was planted while reading pro pilot forums, where people who (claimed to be) pilots who had worked with Korean pilots said that this was a problem. But they probably just believed it already for the same sorts of nonsense reasons Gladwell did.
That is a pretty thorough evisceration of Gladwell, all right.
3: No kidding. The author almost lost me after the first few paragraphs.
Each landing of a jumbo jet may as well be a small miracle.
Is it really?
Thanks for posting that. When I saw the airline name, I knew the Gladwell thing would be everywhere. I especially like:
[This theory is] beneath the dignity of a respected public intellectual and one of the best-selling nonfiction writers of the last decade. Even under the most kindly light, Gladwell is guilty of reckless and gross negligence. Under a harsher light, Gladwell's work on the connection between culture and plane crashes is a shoddy fraud.
10. Obviously it was the journalism culture of being first that allowed such an error.
The link is worth clicking just for the block-quote from the Pinker review of Gladwell. I felt that one land right through the monitor and three years later.
Sorry. My first reaction was "oh hell no, I'm not clicking a link to Gladwell", followed shortly by remembering that neb wouldn't do anything so appalling as to link to Gladwell. I guess the clarification isn't really necessary.
The linked article is excellent (and I liked the opening golf analogy).
10,11: As I've said elsewhere, the most obnoxious thing is the "apology" which refers to their "error." It ain't an error if it happens on purpose.
More golf related to Gladwell-propogated ideas. 10,000 hour rule!
Yeah, I guess he does a good job in this case. I have never read Gladwell, and never will. I have a little more interest in Pinker, but not much.
I am not so sure about what is meant by "culture," but we should be careful about completely and always dismissing it as a factor, because that would mean dismissing history and contingency as factors.
Modernism, which might be described as an attempt to deny history and culture, and especially American culture, finds it very tempting to try to escape history and pretend to have nothing but "blank slates" and atomistic individuals.
I encounter or confront "other cultures" every day, but then perhaps we all do. Are we going to stop speaking of "Southerners", "Republicans," "racists and sexists"
Usually, when I read the kind of article linked, it is mostly saying don't judge me or mine by my culture, unless you have something really nice to say.
Last night, NHK's "Begin Japanology" started as usual, by asking:"And what does Parcel Delivery says about Japanese values?" Really good things!
I was hoping it would be a strange carol (On Gladwell, on Korean pilots, on pinker, on wolfson!)
And now after reading the linked post and clicking around, I'm reading a long comment thread about the existence or nonexistence of fan death.
I was pleased to learn, recently, that there's a record label called Fan Death.
And maybe I should read it again, but on first read I found the arguments about "deferential culture doesn't apply here because..." and "they were speaking English" to be defensive and offensive.
Asian peoples have been doing hard stuff, as a team, really fast and efficiently, for a long long time.
Deferential or hierarchical culture and ambiguous language are used when it is useful (to somebodies), or fun, or interesting; and ignored, to the necessary degree, when they get in the way.
Yes, bob mcmanus, please correct the Korean author of the post about Korean language use.
People lie about their own cultures.
For God's sake, I'm an American. Understanding that is part of every American's education.
Are you actually agreeing with the author, if this is what he says, that Korean is unsuitable as a language for aircraft cockpits?
This is the entire page of the transcript. It has one Korean phrase. There is no room for all the peculiarities of Korean language that Gladwell dutifully recounts. There are no honorifics, no indirect, suggestive speech. Just a series of regular English phrases that any airline pilot from any country may utter as he prepares to land.
Offensive.
And having just finished Panitch and Gindin, the way evil American Imperialism does its dastardly deeds.
Are you actually agreeing with the author, if this is what he says, that Korean is unsuitable as a language for aircraft cockpits?
That isn't what the author says, at all. Take your own advice in 25.1 and reread the article.
The implication of the blockquote is that "honorifics, no indirect, suggestive speech" are simply inescapable when speaking Korean.
Culturalist, and although I know Japanese usage better than other Asian, simply untrue.
The language of artillery crews and firefighters is not the language of tea ceremony. People are more aware and adaptable than that.
And people sometimes exaggerate the flaws and constraints of their native cultures, just as they exaggerate the virtues.
No, it says that there are no honorifics or indirect speech in the page of the transcript at issue. You really should try to read more carefully.
Let's keep in mind that much of bob's knowledge of Asians seems to be gleaned from watching movies from their countries rather than spending time with actual people from those countries.
30:Yeah, yeah, technical reasons.
As I said, I just finished Panitch and Gindin, which is about exporting American financial culture and technology as a way of creating hegemony.
Yet the Korean still strongly implies that the use of English in cockpits is a very good thing. He implies it makes them safer.
Might be true, but see paragraph one, I am extra careful about saying that English is superior as a technical language. It may be dominant, but that doesn't necessarily make it better. It dominant because...Empire.
And people overseas are way too proud of their English abilities.
33:Bullshit. I have been reading 2-3 books a month about Asia for years.
Almost done with Randall Collins, which has more about Indian, Chinese and Islamic philosophy than Western.
Anime and the Art of Adaptation by the brilliant Dani Cavallero
And Andrew Barshay, . 2nd book I have read by him.
Meeting individual Japanese ("She/he/they is really smart and nice! I think I like the Japanese" is an idiot's way to learn a culture.
Personal experience sucks as a teacher. We have fucking books for a reason.
33: True, but we have some sunken evidence in Pearl Harbor and other places showing the Japanese can get their efficiency on when they want to.
||
Heh.
One of my Native friends just posted a picture to FB taken at "Tatanka Wild Wings."
Heh.
||>
Bad tags on the Barshay
State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan which is about how dissenters, an insider and an outsider, compromised, accommodated, or expressed dissent in the fascist thirties. And partly about how culture mattered.
The article in the OP is indeed good.
Also, there's a technical term for human interaction in the cockpit: crew resource management. It's not a new issue at all. Nor is it an issue specific to non-Western cultures -- the classic examples of ineffective CRM and safety culture are the crashes of a KLM 747 and a USAF B-52.
To be fair, although negative stereotypes of Asians get my attention because they affect me personally, I've also met quite a few Europeans who hold really nasty stereotyped views of American culture. So there's plenty of this stuff going around.
Anyway, in other aviation news, hooray for human-powered quadcopters! I just think that is so amazing. Pictures and video here.
If it helps make you feel better, several Europeans are mad at me for specific (but I think incorrect) reasons. And one Mexican, but he's just wrong.
26. I'm forwarding the EPA brochure linked in that article to everyone I know. I feel so very vindicated.
But jms, "you need to revisit the section in the EPA guidebook, which states that this is only in cases of extreme heat, which the EPA defined in the same section as exceeding 99F (just over 37C) which is within 3C of the highest temperature ever recorded in Korea (40C in Daegu way back in 1942)."
Oh, scientists. They don't know everything, after all!
Also, it feels hotter in Korea, because of peppers?
Oh hey, that linked blog has a post about Prince Fielder's Korean tattoo.
/baseball geek
Is bob mcmanus being right again?
39: also studied as "distributed cognition", e.g.
I am amazed to hear about Fan Death.
Before reading up on it, I assumed that "fan death" was analogous to "lesbian bed death," and referred to former fans of some popular culture phenomenon getting sick of it. "The 'Twilight' subculture has suffered a recent outbreak of 'fan death', with many former readers switching to Anne Rice novels."
10: Even worse, the NTSB originally confirmed those names as the pilots.
The CDC should hire whoever coined the name Fan Death for their public heath campaigns.
"Earlier today ... a summer intern acted outside the scope of his authority ..."
My favorite part of that is the idea that there is, in fact, somebody within the NTSB authorized to confirm that ridiculous, racist fake names for the pilots in a crash are real. You know, if necessary.
It's similar to the desk at the National Weather Service tasked with confirming that it is a hot day for fat folx.
"Yes, this is Deborah Hersman, Chair of the NTSB board. Yes, I can answer that: ordinarily, as you know, the NTSB never confirms names of persons in involved in air crashes, but checking with the White House I can now specifically tell you that, yes, Ho Lee Fuck was flying that plane."
Wait, it was a summer intern who did that? I find that hard to believe... government agencies are pretty cautious about talking to the media about high-profile cases. "Exceeded his authority," sure, I just find it hard to believe they let a summer intern anywhere near the press.
"The 'Twilight' subculture has suffered a recent outbreak of 'fan death', with many former readers switching to Anne Rice novels."
I thought that must be it as well, having never heard of fan death before.
At any rate, crapping out on "Twilight" in favor of Anne Rice would be a good decision.
Anne Rice is pretty dang trashy, though.
The CDC should hire whoever coined the name Fan Death for their public heath campaigns.
(Source.)
Friend-of-a-friend the second-tier '90s vampire novel author once egged Anne Rice's house. So there's that.
Holy shit, the NTSB really did confirm those names? I thought maybe the radio station was making that up. I despair for this nation's governmental bodies sometimes.
59: Eh, they're way more readable than the Twilight stuff. I devoured the Anne Rice novels. There's some complexity there, I do say, defensively!
60: Lee and I had a big fight about washing chicken ages ago where she scorned my entire family for not doing it and then had to bow to the CDC propaganda machine. Not the most fun we had while cooped up in a house on top of a mountain in Gatlinburg with a huge chunk of my extended family, but not all the way at the bottom of the list either.
I really hope essear's excitement above (can he really not have known about fan death before??) was inspiration and his next crackpot theory will be about dar/k fa/n mat/ter or something extra awesome.
60: I'm not sure even a name like Fan Death could convince my parents not to wash raw poultry or defrost meat at room temperature.
62: just remember, today's summer interns are tomorrow's career civil servants!
dar/k fa/n mat/ter
This works better than you realize.
60: So, as a mostly vegetarian who's been venturing into the meat (flesh) terrain, are you not supposed to wash the chicken, then?
This is why I hate preparing meat. It makes a mess; how am I supposed to dispose of the remains without racoons getting into it? I can't put it in the compost. How the hell do you dispose of these things? And of course there's the dedicated cutting board -- I don't have a dishwasher, so things are being washed by hand.
Further to 67, though, I don't know why nosflow's so excited.
67: the lurkers laugh at that in email, one must assume.
Further to 67, though, I don't know why nosflow's so excited.
The phrase pleased me.
Do you have something against my being pleased? It wouldn't surprise me. Everyone else does.
:'(
Nosflow the Paranoid Blogpostingguy
No, neb, I'm pleased that you're pleased, I just figured you wouldn't have been amused by the same thing I was.
Great name, not-so-great paper: entanglement sudden death.
||
By the way, does anyone in the roughly mid-atlantic region have cicadas? Because we don't. I did understand that they wouldn't be everywhere in the region, but still it's kind of weird: they seem nowhere. For some reason I'm disappointed.
|>
I remember cicadas around here the summer I got married, which was only 13 years ago. I thought it was supposed to be 17 years.
Sharknado was pretty good. Mostly about sharks, and traffic.
they seem nowhere
Whoa. My idiolect allows dropping "to be" in some places others don't, but that one weirds me out.
Or not, that is the question.
84: Presumably only after verbs, right? "This needs washed" is usually the example given. "Needs phys/ics o' Fan Death" is not as common, yet I know it rings true.
From the original link:
Why did we buy millions of copies of a book, and nodded our heads reading it, when the book is making an outrageous claim about Koreans without interviewing a single Korean person?
I blame American culture for that one.
I had the same reaction to the post title as TJ in 21.
Also the linked posted is indeed good, like everyone else said.
re: 84/86
The one that is common in lots of English dialects (and standard English, I think), is:
'This [noun] needs [verb-ing]'
As in, 'This window needs washing', 'That Tory MP needs beating', etc.
I'd never ever say it, as in my idiolect/dialect, that's only acceptable with the verb 'to be' in there somewhere (i.e. present continuous/present progressive, rather than gerund, I think).*
* ironically, I have a degree that includes English grammar as a major component, and spent years studying it, I even wrote seminar papers on verb tenses, and yet I still forget or get wrong the names for all of them.
For some reason "this Tory needs beating" to me sounds off grammatically while "this window needs washing" doesn't. I thought it might be animate vs. inanimate, but "my boss needs reassuring" or "these sinners need chastising" are fine. Maybe it's just that the first would more colloquially be "needs a beating" for me.
I'm from the "the floor needs washed" region too.
¦¦ A milestone for Unfogged... I think I have just successfully pitched a tv script in which the iPhone atlatl app uis.a key plot element. Will keep you updated...¦>
¦¦ A milestone for Unfogged... I think I have just successfully pitched a tv script in which the iPhone atlatl app uis.a key plot element. Will keep you updated...¦>
93 -- I had no idea there was such a place. One learns something every day.
Also, if you're not having us on, that's amazing.
How'd ajay get the other style for his pipes? ("¦" versus "|"...)
Anyway, clearly you need to negotiate royalty payments to Sifu and LB.
I'm not having you on; I assume the typography is because I am typing this on a phone; its' early days yet and the iPhone atlatl may not make it into the episode, though the idea of an ARG involving hunting city buses (which are "bison") definitely will, if the episode gets made at all. LB and Sifu will get some kind of kudos, for sure.
99.1: It was obviously done to express solidarity with gswift.
My phone keyboard used to only allow that version of the symbol. (And now that I look at it, the key I press to make | is inscribed with ¦.)
As usual, language log has it covered with lots of great links.
102: That's the most delighted I've been by anything I've seen online in months. Although god knows what I'd do with a kudu -- do you mean pre-or post atlatl encounter?
I think you fall upon it ravenously.
It was obviously done to express solidarity with gswift.
Ha, gross.
106: they're good smoked. Or you train it to carry your shopping.
Like the Yak. I will await it complacently.
Gotta have the windshield breaking.
OT: Has McMegan left/been fired from whatever her last gig was (at the Daily Beast, I think, after she left/was fired from the Atlantic?) She seems to be solo posting again as J/ane G/alt.
No need to click through, but if you do for some reason, you'll see that she has a book coming out in 2014! In any event, libertarianism really is feeling its oats these days.
Libertarianism should be rich enough to pay somebody to feel its oats.
She's at Bloomberg now.
||
Now reading Independent People, or as I call it, Ron Swanson Moves to Iceland.
|>
94, 94, 102: Fantastic! A herd of kudos to LB, Tweety, and ajay.
114: How embarrassing for them.
Regarding the Senate "nuclear option" for reforming the filibuster specifically (and only) with respect to executive branch nominations, I've been trying to find the story about the ultimate importance of this, as I understood it recently from .. somewhere. Democracy Now? Some MSNBC show?
The deal is/was that the NLRB will lack a quorum and be unable to convene or rule come August if Obama's new nominees to fill the slots aren't confirmed. This is pretty serious.
117 -- It's serious, and needed to be dealt with in January. I don't see it happening now: this is just bluster. Villagers selling soap.
In other Senate news, BS won't be running for Baucus' seat. Odds of turnover of the seat just went from 40% to 60%, imo. Everyone can adjust their national odds accordingly.
I did not realize that the "needs washed" construction extended much beyond Pittsburgh SW PA. As I am in all things, I am lazy and inattentive in my speech and often fall prey to the colloquial. Drives my wife nuts. I (half-seriously) defend myself as being in the vanguard of a usage shift to a more "streamlined" form. "The car needs washing" sounds off to me, and I argue--surely incorrectly--that it itself is a shortening of "the car needs a washing." Thus do we pass the time.
And, I guess, Reid making a show now that the WH is asking him where his deal with McConnell went. No one over there is fooled, I'm sure.
118: You really think this is just bluster? I thought there was actually a chance of some action this time: there's a deadline. It's possible that serious-sounding bluster from Reid will cause McConnell to relent, but I'm sort of doubtful.
This stuff has been making me pretty angry, and if Reid is just blustering, well, fuck him.
118: In other Senate news, BS won't be running for Baucus' seat. Odds of turnover of the seat just went from 40% to 60%, imo. Everyone can adjust their national odds accordingly.
I'd seen that earlier and tossed it off. But yes, it's extremely important that the US Senate remain in Democratic hands, and Montana is one of the toss-up states for switching to Republican. (McMegan thinks there's a 70% chance that House, Senate and Presidency will be Republican in 2016, and we must prove her wrong. Bleah.)
This write-up on Nate Silver's accounting provides a decent overview of Senate races.
Villagers selling soap.
That's a new expression for me. Also, apparently for google as it gets no hits when searched as a phrase.
It's a combination of phrases Charley has often used in the past, but maybe not together.
Hey, Charley:
A Politico post notes three potential Dem candidates who might have a shot at the Montana Senate seat:
potential Democratic candidates include Denise Juneau, Montana's state public schools superintendent; Stephanie Schriock, the president of Emily's List; and Monica Lindeen, Montana insurance commissioner.
So maybe there's a shot.
Shot shot. Shot. Well, it's Montana, you know.
OT: My neighbor is having her rocks vacuumed and that's not a euphemism.
Whatever kind, they are whitish rocks of about fist size. She uses them as super-mulch.
And Capitalized weirdly, while I was At it.
Is there a test? I don't suppose it would say on the bags even if she still had them. They must have been there for a while if they needed (to be) vacuumed.
Just trying to seem like I knew what I was talking about after cursory googling.
OT: Twitter says Zimmerman verdict is about to be announced.
Continuing OT: Acquitted, according to boston.com.
Yep. Otherwise they'd have waited until morning.
Bob was reporting, not predicting?
138: For rocks, they are smooth. Not like polished marble smooth, but no jagged edges.
Sure. We're hundreds of feet above the current elevation of the river, but it once covered this area. Also, the rocks look like the kind my other neighbor had delivered. They come in plastic bags which might, like a glacier, carry them far from the source.
God, juries are such a clusterfuck. Break out the alcohol.
I know the rational response is "stand your ground laws are some fucking bullshit," but it feels like, "Your black kids don't matter much" and I am crying. Fuck all this.
148: yeah I dunno it seems to be a kind of rock you can buy.
150: the whole thing make a mockery of the idea of civil society. But yeah, so too does the fact that this would almost certainly have never happened to a white kid.
Thorn, you're certainly not alone in thinking that's the clear message. Now, parents get to teach their kids not only how to act in front of cops to stay safe but also how to stay safe with random angry gun-toting assholes. Nice progress we've made.
152: I know, and to some extent it's not hitting hard because it's exactly the response I'd expected, but I'm also terrified for Mara's brother and both girls' male cousins and so on in a way that I know is manipulated and yet... Here I am on the committee hiring kindergarten teachers specifically who can meet the needs of the black boys so they can go on and get themselves killed in another ten years. I don't even know how to talk about this, but it hurts. And the microaggressions are so clear and so prevalent, even with what we deal with now. Argh.
153: To be fair, responsible parents of black kids have always done that. I suspect Trayvon Martin's did too. Training only goes so far.
Now, parents get to teach their kids not only how to act in front of cops to stay safe but also how to stay safe with random angry gun-toting assholes.
I honestly have no idea what to tell people now. I just said this on Twitter, but the message of this case is that there is no good advice for young (black) men.
Walk away? Stand still? Call a friend? Don't reach for your phone? Yell for help? Be calm? Every answer can be deadly.
It's so painful and awful. It terrifies me, and I'm not even a parent.
154: that the verdict was anticipated doesn't make it any less horrifying, especially given the fear that this emboldens an army of Zimmermans, who, one fears, will now provoke in ways large and small.
A society set up so that you have to reassure the most unbalanced is certainly going to get worse before it gets better.
I am unusually fearful at the moment, and I'm rich (relatively speaking) and white (after a fashion).
Now hearing helicopters. I hope this is law enforcement preemptive fear and not reality-based reaction to something.
Everything sucks. I'm going to bed.
159: Right, but the limp is a major drawback if those two privilege markers don't add up to anything!
159: I'm still flipping off everybody who honks at me.
Just to clarify, I was making fun of myself for having used "fear" twice in 157. Insofar as I'm unusually anything at the moment, I'd go with "angry" and "sad" in something like equal measure. That said, my limp is worse than it has been in some months. And it switched sides! I'm like Igor from Young Frankenstein.
155, I didn't mean to imply that they didn't, more trying to say that the parents' task is basically impossible, extremely unfair (not that the unfairness is new), and the level of danger just increased exponentially because there will be aggressive assholes with guns who just got a big boost of confidence. Tragic.
One redeeming feature of facebook: that, while almost every post in my feed is a lament about the Zimmerman verdict, some people are still posting about what they had for dinner and what their cats are up to.
165: No disagreement, and I don't have words to be clear about it anyway. I've only gone through smaller versions of this, with Rowan and Colton, neither of whom reads as black and both of whom were living with other families full-time by the time they got lectures fron me. I'm not trying to claim moral high ground, but this does hit particularly close. I blame gun rights zealots even more than racists, though.
I blame gun rights zealots even more than racists, though.
There's probably quite a bit of overlap on that particular Venn diagram.
I like Denise Juneau, and would vote for her if she ran. No one should think, though, that her close call winning reelection with a good record against a marginal figure with no relevant experience means she's some kind of powerhouse. 2014 is a Republican year. Lindeen ran for Congress years ago, didn't do very well. I don't think anything has much bad to say about her work as Auditor, but it's not a very high profile position. The Emily's List person is the kind of candidate suggested by people who have no understanding of either politics or human behavior. (But maybe she'll surprise us all.)
On the Republican side, expect either our current sitting Congressman or our recently retired 10 term Congressman. And tons of out of state money.
this emboldens an army of Zimmermans, who, one fears, will now provoke in ways large and small.
This.
I don't blame the jury, really, given the law.* I blame the law. Imho, "stand your ground" laws are a reactionary attempt at the legal codification of white-panicky racism. They are all about race; or mostly about race, at any rate.
*But I'm prepared to be talked out of this lack of jury-blaming.
The Stand Your Ground Law was never applied in this case. It was standard (Florida) self-defense law.
171: Clarification. While it's true that SYG wasn't used as a defense at the trial, there are multiple points in the process where it can be raised. I understood that SYG was why police didn't arrest Zimmerman the night of the shooting (leading to some people's belief police did not do as much to investigate that night as they could have).
This Frontline piece gives an interesting (=painful) statistical analysis of SYG cases by race of defendant and race of victim.
The last couple of paragraph also spell out the various points in a case that SYG can be raised (in Florida, at least).
The Stand Your Ground Law was never applied in this case. It was standard (Florida) self-defense law.
Ah, well...in that case, I blame Florida.
172: I'm not suggesting that SYG is a good idea.
I'm with MC and it seems to me that SYG is taken as background in the case without having to be specifically summoned in some sort of Harry Potter-esque sense. Every news report I heard (prior to tonight, because I just can't) emphasized how it was the state's responsibility to prove Zimmerman had no rational reason not to shoot, not his to prove that he had a reason to kill someone.
(Can I parenthetically hide here that we've been asked to consider adding a 10-year-old black boy to our family and while this would have and does hit close to home regardless, holy fuck, how many years until he becomes automatically officially scary in a court of law?)
in that case, I blame Florida.
Exactly. This guy pulled a similar stunt here a few years back and he was convicted of attempted murder.
175:
The news people are morons who can't be bothered to read FL law where it clearly states SYG is not applicable if you provoke the situation.
178: I know, I know, but do you think that was clear to the jury? (I haven't paid complete attention because i just can't. I hope the instructions were clean, but the obvious counter-argument didn't seem to be.)
178: IANAL, but I thought that part of the Zimmerman argument was that Martin was "armed" with the sidewalk (against which he allegedly hit Zimmerman's head), and thus Zimmerman did indeed "reasonably believe[d] that he [was] in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm."
(174, right, I got that.)
Unfortunately, juries do all kinds of inexplicable shit, because they're made up of people and people are morons. Could there have been an easier case than the Casey Anthony trial?
Ok, in wine-induced ATM territory, I am a pacifist at an even deeper level than I'm an atheist. I can't imagine inciting the girls to violence, and yet encouraging them to be suffering objects of whatever sounds especially reprehensible tonight. (I've already gotten Lee to agree to talk to them about all the biblical sruff where G-d is super jerky, like wiping out everyone with the flood and so on, because it turns out I can't comfortably. But if I'm a worse parent because I'm a pacifist than an atheist, I'm cool with that. I don't wantthem to grow up with some of the Catholic female-self-denial I grew up with, though I have to respect my maverick spirit for being okay with anorexia and hijab as de-hottifying techniques but drawing the line at rubbing lime all over my face to burn it or wearing a crown of thorns, though I'd have tried it if it had beenculturally acceptable.)
It's not surprising but it's so fucking depressing and sad.
Could there have been an easier case than the Casey Anthony trial?
I believe that Casey Anthony was, indeed, tried by a "jury of her peers." Ahem.
(You couldn't pay me to live in Florida. Sunshine State? I'll take ice and snow for 200, Alex.)
Yes, thank goodness people sort into an orderly fashion and all shitty people live in Florida and Texas and nowhere else.
Sorry, didn't need to be bitchy about it. Home state, etc.
Home, home on the range.
Where the deer and the antelope slay.
Where seldom is heard,
A non-provoking word.
And the dude just gets blown away.
185-6: At least own up to being History's Greatest Monster by nature and nurture and raising your children as a master race of the same, because we're onto you,
185: Hey now, I believe we have amply demonstrated our shitty bona fides here in the Carolinas.
176: But, um... in that case, the self-appointed neighborhood watch guy who was trying to scare the other guy was the one who got shot. So... not the same?
Also, he didn't get killed. Lesson: Make sure to kill your assailant, or kill your victim if you happen to be the assailant, so he doesn't testify and make people sympathetic to him.
USA Today Article On Zimmerman Verdict Quotes A "Howie Felterbush"
all shitty people live in Florida and Texas and nowhere else.
Oh, shitty people live everywhere. And good people too.
Sorry! I've had a thing about/against Florida ever since I first visited the state and was horrified (but also oddly fascinated) by the brazen display of confederate flags in a neighourhood that had been touted as "charming." I blame Flannery O'Connor. For her short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" (but does the action in that story actually take place in Florida, or just on the way? Er, I can't recall. I just remember Florida, and psychotic murderer, and etc.).
Anecdotage: I had family in Florida since the 1920s or thereabouts -- fleeing the Ohio mob, is the story, and got one of the few pieces of Florida land that wasn't natively swamp. We all gave up and left the five adjacent houses built by my grandfather and his grandfather because the state as a body has gone insane, although there are some very nice people there. (A. Lakes on fire. B. Pumping sewage into the aquifers. C. Solar water heaters nearly illegal.)
My mother spent a while there as a nurse, which was unexpectedly embittering -- usually she likes her *patients*. We decided too much of Florida was sold as the place you go where everything is somebody else's problem, and her median patients hated everyone because people with friends were less likely to leave their home states. Are all the retirement zones like that? (Arizona...?)
In my grandfather's neighborhood, the sane neighbors all seemed to be immigrants from the southerly Americas or the Caribbean, who didn't think of the tropics as just a vacation. Oo, one of them had illegal PVs on the roof! Facing my grandad's lot, and camouflaged by a big ol' flag from the street.
These assholes always get away.
I may have to visit Florida soon. I don't want to. We'll be seeing some really nice people, but I don't want to spend a red cent in that shithole.
I'd seen the comparison to the case of the black woman who got 20 years for not killing someone. Hadn't seen this comparison. And that wasn't even Florida, I'm guessing deliberation is 3 hours instead of 3 days if it had been.
I've not the time nor the inclination to read Gladwell, nor to pitch into the row the Korean guy picked with an old mate of mine, but I would say that there's no real doubt that KAL had a terrible safety culture in the 90s, and indeed they agreed with this point to the extent of hiring a horde of expat pilots and managers to rebuild the airline from the ground up. Further, I would say that Malcolm Gladwell is one of the least likely people to say anything intelligent about CRM without being unintentionally racist. I mean, fuck off Gladwell.
Meanwhile, working on a blog post about this accident as a response to big-data surveillance.
20 years of jail for a black woman who didn't kill anybody just fired some warning shots, but acquittal for a murder of a black teenager, such is the state of affairs, but the results are if not as expected then unsurprising, after all america is the country of r8cist judges..
seems not much riots or coverage of them to expect on the internets, well, lawful sitizens are a thing to welcome
but what to expect from the world at large when you, the progressive unfogged, not only you of course, several other beautiful minded blogs too, cant tolerate *me* on your blog
A little late to be asking, but why didn't they pave the way for a lesser charge of manslaughter? Which seems like a slam-dunk to me offhand, but what do I know.
I blame the t-shirt vendor I saw selling shirts that read "keep calm and carry guns."
The jury had the option of convicting on the lesser charge of manslaughter, but, you know, Florida. I don't know if the result would have been different if they had just shot for that from the beginning. Apparently they also tried for a lesser charge of 3rd degree murder, death resulting from another felony which they claim was child abuse since Trayvon was under 18, but the judge rejected that theory. So the prosecution does sound rather incompetent. Which, you know, cutting government funding to make both public defenders as well as prosecutors more incompetent has the ancillary benefit of moving society toward the libertarian utopia of rule by the powerful.
I called this one too, didn't I?
Put your feet where your FB is:
http://trayvonoc.wordpress.com/
One of my colleagues on Facebook just posted something about hoping his flight home doesn't bring him into the middle of a race riot. What the fuck?
That Bazelon article is (very unusually for her) very misleading. The duty of retreat wasn't at issue in the case, since Zimmerman claimed he was attacked without possibility of retreat. Even if the duty to retreat had been at issue (as extensively discussed here) it wouldn't have exonerated Zimmerman had be started the fight. Zimmerman got off because of the (defense's ability to convince the jury of) a lack of evidence that he did start or provoke the fight, and the positive evidence of an attack possibly necessitating self defense. As a matter of statutory law, I don't see the arguments being any different in a non-duty-to-retreat state. The law that was actually applied here is basically the same throughout the US.
Of course, juries and their background assumptions are not the same throughout the US. To me, the race angle is this. If Martin had been a white teenager, and Zimmerman a black man, I think the prosecution's argument, which was basically "come on, use common sense, this guy started the fight and not the unarmed teenager" would have been much more automatically accepted by the jury. That's sad, but I think in most cases true.
19: I would think the lesson here is, "when examining culture, try to know what you are talking about." It isn't sufficient to be able to link concepts together into a coherent argument -- though it is necessary -- one also needs to choose concepts which are grounded in proven or accepted facts.
After you've been exposed as a bullshitter, how do you expect to get people to listen?
nor to pitch into the row the Korean guy picked with an old mate of mine
Why, you won't even engage in praeteritio with respect to this hitherto unsuspected episode!
I would say that there's no real doubt that KAL had a terrible safety culture in the 90s
And Asiana?