The Yin Blog

Has Huckabee now killed his 2012 ambitions?

As is now well-known, Maurice Clemmons, the alleged killer of four police officers in Washington state, was once serving a 90+ year sentence in Arkansas, when Governor Mike Huckabee commuted his sentence.  Today, Huckabee had this to say:

"I take full responsibility for my actions of nine years ago. I acted on the facts presented to me in 2000. If I could have possibly known what Clemmons would do nine years later, I obviously would have made a different decision. But if the same file was presented to me today, I would have likely made the same decision."

The first part of the statement seems quite defensible to me.  In 2000, he believed that Clemmons warranted a second chance, so Huckabee gave it.  He's acknowledging that he's not omniscent.

However, I'm more skeptical of the last part of the statement.  If the same file were presented today, why would he likely make the same decision?  This suggests to me a serious problem in Huckabee's thinking, because the original decision to commute Clemmons' sentence, given his prior violent felony convictions, was something of a leap of faith.

Of course, Huckabee pardoned or commuted lots of sentences while he was Governor, and presumably few if any of the others have gone on a cop-killing spree.  But the relevant pool of comparison is with repeat violent offenders.  Youth and criminal history are in fact predictors of future criminal behavior, so Huckabee must think that he can spot those criminals worth a second chance.  Yet, apparently not.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that he needed to be perfect in his assessment.  But given the horrendous result here, I would think that a reflective person would think about whether his ability to make such assessments needs readjustment.

The Civil War: who to root for?

Wow, this is pretty cool.  My first year here, and Oregon and Oregon State are playing their annual rival match for the right to go to the Rose Bowl (and trash Ohio State)!

Since I'm new to the area, though, now I'm at a loss about which team to root for.  When I moved from Los Angeles to Iowa City, it was easy, since my employer was the University of Iowa, and I had no preconceived reasons to root against it (as I would have against a number of "bully" schools).  Here, however, it's entirely different.  I'm not teaching at the University of Oregon, so there's no employment-related reason to favor the Oregon Ducks.  Indeed, Oregon has a law school, so in a very indirect sense, it's a competitor!  Oregon State, on the other hand, does not have a law school.  So that favors the Oregon State Beavers.

When we turn to the mascots, the duck is not a particularly fearsome mascot, though neither is the beaver.  The beaver, at least, is a mammal that engages in engineering feats (dams), which is appropriate given Oregon State's engineering focus.  On the other hand, the beaver is also Caltech's mascot, and therefore brings up the negative memories that I have of that place.  I suppose this points in favor of the Ducks.

In the end, I'm drawn to the underdog.  Although both teams have been strong in the 2000s, I remember how much of a doormat Oregon State was during my time at Berkeley, and it's been almost 45 years since the Beavers have gone to the Rose Bowl (compared to 15 for the Ducks).

So . . . go Beavers!

How incompetent was Capt. Picard, anyway?

Last night, while watching the preposterous but nevertheless entertaining "Star Trek: Next Gen" episode where a rampant virus makes everyone on the Enterprise "devolve" into giant spiders, lemurs, and other creatures, I had an insight.  This is yet another episode where if it weren't for the fact that the Enterprise happened to be fortunate enough to have had Data on board, it would have been destroyed or lost.  (Don't even get me started on the times Wesley Crusher saved the ship!)

Yet, we know that Data is the only sentient android serving in Starfleet.  That means no other Starfleet vessel has a Data-like being on-board.

We don't hear about tons of Starfleet vessels being lost.  Does that mean that Captain Picard is incompetent, failing to protect his ship where other captains do?

Of course, the Enterprise is the flagship of the fleet, so perhaps it's put in dangerous situations more than other ships are.  That might absolve Picard of blame for the near-destruction of the ship in highly hazardous situations like the Borg episodes.  But in the devolving virus episode, there was no special danger; and in the "Die Hard on the Enterprise" episode, where the ship is almost hijacked by terrorists during Barion radiation cleaning, it's just routine maintenance taking place.

I used to think that Picard was more competent than Kirk, but now I'm not so sure.

US to prosecute KSM in federal court

Not all Guantanamo detainees are going to face trial in an Article III (federal) court, but September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his key associate Ramzi Binalshibh will.  President Obama's statement was:

“I’m absolutely convinced that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice,” Mr. Obama said. “The American people insist on it, and my administration insists on it.”

I have to admit, I'm not altogether certain what it means that KSM "will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice."  Does that mean that he will get the highest level of due process rights?  That would seem to be the sentiment behind trying him in a civilian court, as opposed to a military commission.  Yet, if that's the intent, "subject" is a strange way of putting it.  Subjecting someone to something connotes a negative, not a positive; otherwise, you'd say that the person was entitled to whatever it is.  Plus, is it fair to say that the American people want the highest level of due process for KSM?  I'm sure some do, but I'd be surprised if it's a majority, or even close to a majority.

So, if subjecting him to the most exacting demands of justice is meant to convey that, if guilty, he'll be treated harshly enough by the civilian criminal justice system, does it follow that this is "better" (more efficient, etc.) than a military commission?  I have a hard time seeing that the punishment will be more severe here.  KSM could get the death penalty in either forum.

The only thing that jumps out is that, because of the greater procedural protections and greater openness about Article III court trials, a conviction and death sentence in federal court will carry more legitimacy than the same verdict and sentence in a military court, notwithstanding President Obama's efforts to increase the procedural protections in the latter.

This suggests in turn that the Obama Justice Department believes that it can convict KSM and others despite the fact that KSM's initial confession was obtained through seriously coercive interrogation (i.e., 180+ instances of waterboarding) -- a fact that defense counsel will no doubt highlight.  It seems like the Obama lawyers may believe that KSM's subsequent re-confession, obtained at Guantanamo by new government lawyers without any coercion, is valid because he could have, but did not repudiate his prior confession.  We shall see.

A quick thought on ABC's "FlashForward"

Spoilers up to 11/5/09!

I've been watching ABC's serial sci-fi drama "FlashForward" almost in real-time, meaning that it just sits on my TiVo for an hour or so.  (To put it in context, I haven't gotten around to the "V" re-make yet, despite having high hopes for it.)

In "FlashForward," everyone on the planet -- except for one creepy person spotted in a baseball stadium surveillance camera -- blacks out at exactly the same time, for 2 minutes, 17 seconds.  Thousands are people are killed in plane crashes, auto accidents, hospital operations, and the like.  Most, but not all, of the survivors had a glimpse of where they would be in six months.  Some had happy visions, others not so happy.  The ones who had no glimpse at all begin to fear that they're going to be dead.

It's a pretty intriguing set-up, and the producers have been doling out small answers regularly, for which I'm grateful.  The one big complaint I have is that the producers have revealed too much, yet not enough, with regard to two characters -- Lloyd Simcoe and Simon Costa -- who are revealed to have caused the global blackout.

Now, the difference between American mysteries (as opposed to British, Agatha Christie type mysteries, where there's no action at all) and thrillers might lie primarily in the fact that thrillers generate suspense by showing you things from the point of view of the protagonist and the antagonist, whereas mysteries show you only the point of view of the detective.  I think Alfred Hitchcock once explained how he built suspense -- if two men are in a room playing chess and a bomb blows up, that's shocking but not suspenseful.  On the other hand, if you see someone plant the bomb before the chess players walk into the room, that's terribly suspenseful!  With a mystery, on the other hand, it works if the detective unravels the clues pointing toward the planted bomb, and then the detective must race the clock to get to the room before the bomb blows up.

Back to "FlashForward": it's nice for us to know that Simcoe and Costa are responsible, but it's frustrating that we aren't told everything they obviously know.  Why do they think they're responsible?  What project were they working on together, and how might it have caused the global blackout?  They might not know, but they obviously have suspicions.  By not sharing those with us (the viewers) -- only showing us the same conversation over and over ("We're responsible for killing 20 million people!"), the producers are artificially dragging things out.

It's too late to unring the bell, but really, I think it would have been better to have shown us nothing about Simcoe's and Costa's conversations, and simply give us only the same information as the FBI agents have.

I moved to the right state!

Because of Halloween trick or treating, I didn't get to see all of the Oregon-USC football game, but what I saw, including the end, was plenty satisfying.  It's hilarious to think that the USC football team has not won in the state of Oregon in four years now!

Sleeplessness, state by state

This CDC study looks at sleeplessness rates by states.  Oregon does pretty well, with only 8.8% of the population reporting insufficient sleep for 30 out of the past 30 days.  (That's pretty severe, every night?!?)  I don't know about other states that also have a low incidence of this problem, but for me, it's soothing to hear gentle rain thumping on the skylights at night.  I think Eddie Rabbit had it right: I love a rainy night. 

We're #3 (but we should be #1)!

Forbes has ranked the 40 biggest U.S. metropolitan areas in terms of safety, and Portland comes in at #3.  The top five are Minneapolis-St. Paul, Milwaukee, Portland, Boston, and Seattle. 

While MSP certainly has a good claim to the top spot, Forbes uses a pretty weird methodology.  All of the metro areas are ranked ordinally in four categories (violent crime rate, traffic fatality rate, workplace fatality rate, and natural disaster risk).  The ordinal rankings are then added together, and the lower the overall score, the better.

So, first of all, the ordinal ranking can obscure big differences between seemingly close metro areas.  In crime rate, for example, what if the per capital crime rates (per 1000) are something like #1 (1.1), #2 (2.5), and #3 (2.6)?  The simple ordinal ranking doesn't take into account how much better #1 is than #2, and how trivial the difference between #2 and #3 is.

Second, what exactly is "natural risk disaster"?  The West Coast areas get slaughtered in this category, with Portland the least bad at #25, then San Diego (#26), and everything else in the 30s.  Presumably, this is anticipating major earthquakes or something, as well as wildfires and mudslides in southern California, I guess.  But it seems awfully weird to be making 1/4 of the ranking based on something that you can't really estimate with precision.

Even if you could, what's the death toll from earthquakes?  Focusing just on the Los Angeles & San Diego areas in the last 50 years, the only quakes with fatalities were the 1994 Northridge earthquake, which caused 72 deaths, the 1987 Whittier Narrows quake, which killed three people, and 1971 Sylmar temblor, which killed 65 people.  (I'm not counting ones like the 1992 Landers quake, which did kill three people, but none in the L.A. or San Diego metro areas.)  So, that's 140 people over 50 years, or less than 3 per year.

Granted, ~3 per year on average is greater than that you'd expect from, say, tornados, but the risks posed by natural disasters like earthquakes seem miniscule compared to traffic fatalities and violent crime.  In Los Angeles County, there were 168 murders, 233 rapes, 1910 robberies, and 5148 assaults reported in 2008.  Granted, L.A. County is not the same thing as L.A. metro area, but that only means that we'd expect even more violent crimes in the latter.  In short, the number of deaths via violent crime in L.A. dwarfs that caused on average by earthquakes.

And it's not as if L.A.'s violent crime rate is off the charts -- it's ranked #21, so just one spot above average.  Yet, the ~3 earthquake deaths (on average) per year is weighted the same as the 168 murders in 2008 in terms of significance, even though violent crime actually carries more than 50 times the numerical weight in reality.

I think the same criticism could be made about workplace fatalities.  The number of people who die in workplace fatalities can't be that high compared to violent crime or traffic, so equating the ranking in this category with that in any other is also silly.

Now, if you focus on the two categories that seem most significant to me -- violent crime and traffic -- and re-rank using Forbes' criteria (in other words, still summed ordinal rankings), the new top 5 looks like this:

1. Portland (#1 in crime, #5 in traffic); total 6

2. San Jose, CA (#2 in crime, #6 in traffic); total 8

3. Seattle (#3 in crime, #8 in traffic); total 11

3. Boston (#10 in crime, #1 in traffic); total 11

5. New York (#11 in crime, #2 in traffic); total 13

I have to admit, I am quite surprised to see Boston and New York do so well, but I guess my impressions of Boston are colored by a 1987 visit where I nearly got run over 5 times in 30 minutes as a pedestrian, before I learned that the drivers didn't think pedestrians had the right of way.  And my impression of New York is pretty much colored by the movie "Escape from New York" . . . .  Anyway, seeing the relatively smaller Pacific Northwest cities and San Jose atop the list does make some sense to me!

How law schools are like cruise ships

Like the last cruise I went on, our law school facility here is full of stand-up dispensers of hand sanitizers!

That's some love!

Wow, this is some love that the husband has for his wife, enlisting in the Army so that he can make sure she has health coverage for her cancer treatment!

Why I didn't ask for a Blackberry during my last at a law firm

This story sums it all up.

Overweight at 5'10" and 120 lbs?

This is pretty weird -- the model who was picture in the supposedly Photoshopped Ralph Lauren ad is 5'10" and 120 lbs, and she says she was fired for being "too fat."  Wha???

It just happens that when I started college, I was 5'10" and 120 lbs.  No one considered me overweight.  I was extremely skinny, and stayed that way the entire year in part because I ran cross-country.  No freshman 15 for me, which means someone else gained 30 lbs to balance me out!   

Now, I realize that weight for males versus females isn't directly translatable, because men are supposed to have more heavy muscle mass.  Still, I gained that mythical 15 pounds over the next four years so that I was 5'10" and 135 lbs when I graduated.  I was still considered very skinny.  By the time I started law school four years after college, I was 5'10" and 150 lbs.  I'm pretty sure that my law school classmates would remember that I was still skinny back then.  So even if you can't compare men and women directly, I gained 30 lbs between my weight at the beginning of college to when I went to law school, and I was skinny the whole time.  I just can't see how a woman could possibly be considered fat at 5'10" and 120 lbs.  I think maybe the term we are looking for is "too skinny"?

NBC, Desperation, and Jay Leno

TV Guide has an interesting column titled "Is Jay Leno Killing NBC?," that basically wonders whether NBC's decision to give the weeknight 10-11 pm time slot to Jay Leno has doomed the network.

To recap -- a few years ago, NBC announced that Conan O'Brien, host of "The Late Show with Conan O'Brien," would take over as host of "The Tonight Show" in 2009.  Jay Leno, who had been host of "The Tonight Show" since the early 1990s, was apparently going to be put out to the pasture, except that Leno wasn't ready to retire.  Since Leno routinely beat his competition (David Letterman) in the late night ratings, he was a hot commodity for other networks, and there were serious talks about bringing him over to ABC.  To keep Leno, NBC offered him a 5-night-a-week prime time show that he could develop as he saw fit, which meant he was basically taking his version of "The Tonight Show" to prime time: same skits, same monologue, same soft celebrity interviews.

You couldn't expect him to match the ratings of scripted shows, but then NBC's been essentially a disaster in that department, and -- this is the key thing -- an hour of Leno would be A LOT cheaper to produce than an hour of a scripted show.  So NBC expected big cost-savings as a result of airing Leno, even if he didn't boost ratings.

One problem is that the NBC affiliates (that is, the local markets) aren't happy at all, because Leno is delivering smaller audiences to the late night local news . . . .

But what the TV Guide article crystallized for me is basically how *bad* NBC's other shows have become.  When I was in my formative years in the 1980s, it seemed like NBC was THE network, with "The Cosby Show," "Cheers," "The A-Team," "Family Ties," "Miami Vice," and "L.A. Law."  NBC dominated in the 1990s as well with that Thursday night block of "Seinfeld," "Friends," "Mad About You," and "ER" -- whatever it aired in the middle of that group did well, even when the shows sucked (ahem, "Caroline in the City," "The Single Guy").

But now?  Bleech.  My boys are starting to like football, so I actually had "Sunday Night Football" on last night.  Apart from that . . . it's pretty barren as far as the Peacock network goes on my TiVo.  CBS has the best reality TV shows ("Survivor" and "The Amazing Race"), Fox has the best thriller/dramas ("24," "Fringe") as well as "So You Think You Can Dance," and ABC has some interesting serial shows ("Lost," "FlashForward") and the predictable but amusing "Castle."  It just goes to underline how desperate NBC has become that airing Leno five nights a week in prime time may make sense from a financial standpoint.

Don't have Amazon.com teach geography to the kids!

Amazon sure has some weird ideas about geography.  I mean, I live in Oregon, which isn't *that* far from Nevada.  Yet, look at the route that my package is taking:

October 12, 2009	12:24:00 PM	LOUISVILLE KY US	Arrival Scan
October 12, 2009	11:42:00 AM	LOUISVILLE KY US	Arrival Scan
October 10, 2009	12:10:00 PM	LAS VEGAS NV US	Departure Scan
October 10, 2009	01:43:00 AM	LAS VEGAS NV US	Arrival Scan
October 10, 2009	12:54:00 AM	LAS VEGAS NV US	Departure Scan
October 9, 2009	06:58:00 PM	LAS VEGAS NV US	Shipment received by carrier
October 9, 2009	05:39:08 PM	North Las Vegas NV US	Shipment has left seller facility and is in transit

Kentucky?!?  Why is my package going to Kentucky first?

Oh my, I don't think I can resist tuning into this

This is not a joke, apparently.  Have you ever wondered what "COPS" would be like if Steven Seagal was the officer?  Now you don't have to.

I don't think I'll be able to resist checking this out to see how much of a trainwreck it could be.

Roman Polanski, a flight risk?

Hmm, the Swiss Justice Ministry has denied Roman Polanski's request for bail, apparently because he's a "high flight risk."

Why, there's no reason to believe that he would ever flee a jurisdiction . . . oh wait. . . .

Winning by losing, Olympic bid edition

My good friend Nick Johnson has a funny and insightful post arguing that Chicago is better off for not having won the bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games, because cities that host the Olympics usually end up paying for the privilege, rather than making money on tourism, etc.  

In a vaguely analogous way, it kind of reminds me of what happened in Los Angeles after both professional football teams left -- the Raiders to Oakland and the Rams to St. Louis.  Instantly, Sunday football improved tenfold!  Instead of blacked out games (because neither team sold out), we were treated to the *best* games of the day.  Good riddance, I came to see.

Just when I thought the Polanski saga couldn't get more disgusting

It's bad enough that there are people -- including French government officials -- who are jumping to defend Roman Polanski the fugitive.  It's bad enough that his underlying crime, to which he pled guilty, is pretty heinous.  What's even worse is that, per this news story, that (1) Polanski agreed to pay his rape victim $150,000 but then apparently never actually paid her; and (2) that he fled the U.S. because he didn't want to serve an additional 48 days in jail:

Polanski pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse and a judge sent him to prison for a 90-day psychiatric evaluation. However, he was released after 42 days by an evaluator who deemed him mentally sound and unlikely to offend again.

The judge responded by saying he was going to send Polanski back to jail for the remainder of the 90 days and that afterward he would ask Polanski to agree to a "voluntary deportation." Polanski then fled the country the night before he was scheduled to be sentenced, Feb. 1, 1978.

That's why he fled the country?!?  He was so spoiled that seven additional weeks of prison was too much for him to bear?

And you have to love this -- when his lawyer was asked about whether Polanski had ever paid the victim the amount he agreed to to settle her case, the lawyer apparently responded like this:

Polanski's attorney, David Finkle, said he couldn't remember details of the case and declined comment.

"It's ancient," Finkle said.

You can't remember whether your client ever paid off a settlement that he agreed to?!?

Last one standing?

I'm the last one standing in the house. . . .

Last Friday, my older son woke up with a fever and threw up four times that morning by the time he saw the doctor.  He had pneumonia in one lung, a severe asthma attack, and what we later learned was type A influenza (which means it's almost certainly H1N1 "swine" flu).  He spent three nights in the hospital with an IV drip and an oxygen feed.  My wife stayed with him the whole time, while I stayed at home with our younger son -- though we did go visit twice daily.

By Monday, when he was released from the hospital, he was doing much better, though not cleared to return to school.  Of course, my wife had a fever and headache and other flu symptoms by then(!).  I did my best to keep our younger son away, but by Wednesday night, he too developed a fever, and last night he ended up in the emergency room with croup, probably brought on by the flu.

I feel kind of silly wearing a hospital mask when I'm around them, sleeping in a different room, and so on.  I haven't really felt any different, so I'm hoping it's not inevitable that I'll get sick too. . . .

I have good taste in movies?

Wow, I have seen exactly *zero* of the 100 worst movies of the 2000s, per Rotten Tomatoes.  Of course, my moviegoing has dropped to pretty much zero since 2004, but even so, I haven't even seen these on TV.  Well, except for maybe 20 minutes of "Ballistic: Ecks v. Sever," which didn't seem that bad to me.  I mean, it wasn't good, but the worst movie of the decade?