First Looks category archive

The north wall of the garage is now lined with 68 linear feet of shelves.

Next: 70 linear feet plus pegboard for the south wall.

Status: Dubious.

Social-networking users should be on the alert for shady investment schemes being pitched on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and eHarmony by their “friends,” state (Delaware–ed.) officials said Wednesday.

Although social media websites connect users more easily to family, friends and acquaintances, they also have opened the door to con artists who prey on unsuspecting victims, state Attorney General Beau Biden said.

Scams committed through social-networking sites are rapidly spreading versions of the traditional “affinity fraud,” in which criminals connect with victims through common interests shared through social networks, Biden said.

Home improvements.

Beating plowshares into swords exacts a toll.

Bloomberg looks at the report on eye-witness identifications in criminal cases from the Innocence Project, the American Judicature Society and the Police Foundation.

The failings have been exposed through some 2,000 studies of eyewitness identifications over the past three decades. As investigations of human psychology, the studies are fascinating; as assessments of American justice, however, they are deeply disturbing, documenting an extraordinarily high prevalence of error in eyewitness identifications in both lab experiments and cases in the field. As a report from New Jersey’s court- appointed special master concluded, “At a minimum, almost one third of witnesses who make identifications are wrong.”

If that seems implausibly high, consider this: Three- quarters of convictions overturned on the basis of DNA evidence involved eyewitness identifications. In more than a third of those cases, multiple eyewitnesses identified the same innocent suspect. (There is no way of knowing how high the rate of eyewitness error might be in cases where DNA is not a factor, though there is no reason to think it is lower.)

Some witness errors result from faulty memories that have been further clouded by the stress that often accompanies seeing a crime. Witnesses are especially prone to error when identifying a suspect of a different race. Other misidentifications are a product of everyday human frailty combined with substandard — yet widespread — police procedures.

Read the whole thing.

You can’t believe what people say they saw, especially when the reputation of police and prosecutors is judged on convictions, not on justice.

When I was a young ‘un, in the days of men of iron and computers of wood, schools taught “printing,” then “writing.”

When my kids came home (in the brass age, when computers were made of brass) and told me they were learning “cursive,” I wondered, “What is this thing called ‘cursive’?”

Turned out it was “writing.” (That was about the same time that “typing” became “keyboarding”; it was also coincident with an overall decline of typing skills. Fancifying the name of something seems often coincident with two things: A proliferation of consultants who take money to tell you how to do it better and the overall decline of whatever it is that has gotten a fancified name.)

Now, the fancified name for “writing” is taking its toll:

Pennsylvania is among the states that have adopted the Common Core Standards in English language arts and mathematics. These standards seek to unify what children across the country are taught. Cursive writing is not included.

“Cursive really is on its way out,” said Jill Kennett, who teaches third grade at Brownstown Elementary School in the Conestoga Valley School District. “However, it’s not there yet.”

Kennett, who is in her 23d year of teaching, said she taught second graders in the Manheim Central School District in 1989. Teachers then blocked out time for teaching cursive, and students had cursive workbooks.

Now, she said, “the emphasis is completely different. It has completely lost its importance.”

Clinch.

Phillies clinch fifth straight NL East title with win over Cardinals

And in this part of the world, what we get on the telly vision is the Washington Senators Nationals, who are first in war, first in peace, and last in the American National League, and the Baltimore Starlings, who used to play in the Bigs and are now struggling to get to Williamsport.

Afterthought, Corrupt and Contented Dept.:

There were five college football games on the telly vision today.

But no discussion of which college violated the most NCAA rules.

Words fail me.

Facebook postings led to an animal cruelty investigation that culminated with the arrest of a south Jersey man on a weapons charge.

I am pretty much a civil liberties absolutist. I avidly support the ACLU, both the organization and its mission.

Nevertheless, I find it difficult to see beer ads in college newspapers as a free speech issue. This seems to be not about speech, but to be a Trojan Horse for more beer ads, as if there were a shortage of them already.

The Virginia Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday on whether a publication produced on campus by university undergraduates is a “college newspaper” if at least half of its readers are 21 or older.

The answer could determine whether the student newspapers at Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia, which claim a mostly adult readership, are subject to a state prohibition against liquor advertising in college newspapers.

A decision is likely by early November.

The narrow issue is a remnant of a 2006 lawsuit filed by Virginia Tech’s Collegiate Times and UVa’s Cavalier Daily challenging the decades-old ban. U.S. Magistrate Judge Hannah Lauck overturned it in 2008, ruling that it violated the papers’ constitutional rights to free speech.

That was reversed by a federal appeals court, which said the ban is narrowly tailored to serve the state’s interest in curbing underage drinking.

Off to drink liberally.

I am violating my promise to myself not to post 9/11 stuff, because Mike Littwin’s article is too good to pass up. A nugget:

If there’s a legacy from 9/11, it’s the lack of faith in American institutions. Polls for politicians and virtually all institutions are at record lows. More than 80 percent of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. The richest country in the world somehow nearly stumbles into default. The most powerful country in the world somehow gets bogged down in two unpaid-for wars — if you don’t count the huge price paid by the men and women who were lost and wounded.

Drinking Liberally is a support group for liberals, where you can realize you are not alone.

We are still considering new venues.

When: 6 p., Wednesday, August 10.

Where:
Cogan’s
901 Colonial Ave
Norfolk (map)

Details here.

The cable from the modem to the router was ill and had to be put out of my misery. I had it fixed yesterday, but decided to punt the internet for an evening.

The tech support person at my ISP, who helped me rule out the modem as the cause of the problem, was excellent. The phone call lasted fewer than 15 minutes, including name-rank-account number and crawling around messing with cables.

A snippet of our conversation, from when I jacked my laptop directly into the ethernet port on the modem.

“Okay,” said I, “I’m going to reboot this puppy so it starts clean.”

“Good idea,” said she.

“It’s only going to take about a minute and a half.”

“Oh,” she said, “You must be using Linux.”

My Internet connection is making dial-up took good.

I’ll be back when it is.

There is a new venue for tomorrow’s DL in Norfolk.  Follow the Meetup link in the sidebar for details.  My cellphone is not suited to editing HTML.

Creator of Project Gutenberg and inventer of the e-book.

I have about a dozen Project Gutenberg publications in my Android as I type this and am actively reading four of them, hopping back and forth depending on my mood.

There are more scattered about on various computers.

Mr. Hart has left quite a legacy.

I’ve volunteered for a little computer project for a candidate I support, though I’m not in her district. It will occupy me for most of the weekend.

I expect to get off a few drive-by posts along the way, if only for break-time.

PodioBooks dot com.

I am currently listening to a reading of H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines.

I credit KPO for introducing me to the site.

Another terrorist gets locked up, but you won’t here much about this one, because he’s the white, right, homegrown kind:

A man with extensive ties to white supremacists pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges he planted a bomb along a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade route in Washington state early this year.

The Phillies are on the television tonight.

’nuff said.