Zimmerman trial

The jury in the George Zimmerman trial reached a verdict of not guilty last night. Many of my lefty friends are outraged and, while I haven’t followed the trial at all, I’ve found the emotional reactions most alarming.

Many people have thrown common sense to the wind and are calling for vigilante justice against George Zimmerman, yet these same people condemn Zimmerman for taking the law into his own hands. It’s crazy to hear all the calls for more blood.

Gun violence is a scourge on humanity. Racial profiling is shameful and wrong. It’s a shame that Trayvon Martin is dead. So many people think they know exactly what happened during that encounter and yet none of us really do. Those who are second-guessing the verdict are as guilty of jumping to conclusions as they accuse Zimmerman of being.

I had no investment in the trial’s outcome but I am appalled at how this incident has stirred some frightening reactions, divorced from all reality. I’m appalled at how the media hype surrounding this incident has been used to further divide us rather than to bring understanding.

Don’t buy into the hate. Don’t buy into the violence. Let go of the stereotypes that blind you to the truth. If we can learn to do this, perhaps we can salvage something useful from this tragedy.

Hackers Are Now Leery About Inviting the NSA to Their Conventions

Ruh-roh.

The announcement appeared at the conference website yesterday, in a post titled, “Feds, We Need Some Time Apart.”

For over two decades DEF CON has been an open nexus of hacker culture, a place where seasoned pros, hackers, academics, and feds can meet, share ideas and party on neutral territory. Our community operates in the spirit of openness, verified trust, and mutual respect.

When it comes to sharing and socializing with feds, recent revelations have made many in the community uncomfortable about this relationship.

via Hackers Are Now Leery About Inviting the NSA to Their Conventions – Yahoo! News.

Morsi and Egyptian revolutions

Last week’s military ouster of Egypt’s first freely-elected president, Mohamed Morsi, had me troubled about what to think. Is this a coup and, if so, how do we address it? One can’t say one supports democracy and then support the overthrow of a duly-elected candidate, right?

Then I decided there might be more than meets the eye here. Morsi may have won a relatively fair and clean election but once he did, did he uphold democratic principles? Once president, he essentially put himself above the law by flatly refusing to be bound by judicial oversight. Was that the will of the people? It’s hard to argue that it was.

This is the inevitable tension that arises in a democracy, where the majority rules but must still respect the rights of the minority. I don’t believe you can have democracy without this balance.

So, do I think the Egyptian military took power in a coup? I’m not convinced. Instead, I think what Egypt has is more of a democracy “do-over.” The country’s been ruled autocratically for decades: it doesn’t have much experience with true democracy. Morsi’s ouster may actually be Revolution Part II in a country still trying to sort itself out.

Regardless of the pros and cons of the lastest activity, Egypt’s transition to democracy remains incomplete.

My experience with Gulf War Syndrome

USS Elliot (DD-967) in North Arabian Gulf, circa 1998

USS Elliot (DD-967) in North Arabian Gulf, circa 1998


On the Gulf War Veterans Facebook group, one of the members asked if anyone had mystery illnesses. It sparked a lively discussion – one that sometimes veered off into black helicopter land – but it did inspire me to share my mystery symptoms with the group. I’ve alluded to these previously but have not shared them in this detail on my blog before.

As I said in my Facebook post, my desire for answers outweighs my reluctance to post this info in a public forum. If you know me you know what a statement that is. I hope it draws out others to share their experiences, too.
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Weaver’s waste

In a recent city council session, Mayor McFarlane asked then-city manager Russell Allen for an estimate of how much the ongoing Moral Monday protests were costing the city. Allen replied there’s an interagency agreement where the Raleigh Police Department cooperates with the General Assembly Police and vice-versa. “We could ask,” he replied when the mayor asked if the GA Police could reimburse the city.

This interagency arrangement seems a bit one-sided if you ask me. There’s what, probably a dozen or GA officers at most, compared to over 700 Raleigh police officers? What does Raleigh get in return from this arrangement? A dozen officers wouldn’t even cover a shift in one Raleigh police district.

General Assembly Police Chief Jeff Weaver could hand out citations to these protesters rather than put them through the booking process but he chooses to so he could “disperse the protesters.” That sure is easy for him to say, with RPD muscle doing all the work, the City of Raleigh paying overtime for their cops, Wake County doing the booking, and Colin Willoughby having to schedule court time. It seems to me that Jeff Weaver is happily spending other peoples’ money when he could be taking a more sensible approach by handing out tickets.
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Hot then stormy weekend

It was a swelteringly hot weekend that ended with nightly storms but we managed to have some fun, anyway.

I spent Saturday morning installing a trailer hitch on the minivan. While it could conceivably tow our boat, I got it to hold a hitch-mount bike rack. Installing it meant a few hours contorted under the rear of the van on the hard garage floor while wearing thick work coveralls. Early on in the work, it rained about 20 minutes. When the sun returned, it returned with a vengeance. Soon it was 85 degrees F with 85% humidity. Meanwhile, I was hand-tightening each stubborn bolt into rusted bolt-holes of the van’s frame. The good news is that by lunchtime it was ready for the new rack, which I love.
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Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays, Not $16.89

Here’s another rebuttal for David Lowery, who recently asserted that Pandora was ripping him off. It turns out his record company is ripping him off, which should be old news to him by now.

Lowery told kids to get off his lawn about this time last year, blaming Creative Commons.

David Lowery’s “My Song Got Played On Pandora 1 Million Times and All I Got Was $16.89” article has been picked up over and over and over, including by very respectable folks, often without comment.

This has left many readers with two impressions:

Pandora only paid $16.89 for 1 million plays.1

Pandora pays much lower royalty rates than Sirius XM and especially terrestrial AM/FM radio.

Music royalties are complex, but both of these are patently untrue.

via the understatement: Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays, Not $16.89.

What It’s Like to Get a National-Security Letter : The New Yorker

Nice first-person account of what it’s like to get a “national security letter” from the FBI.

I spoke with Brewster Kahle, the founder of the nonprofit Internet Archive, perhaps the greatest of our digital libraries, and of the Wayback Machine, which allows you to browse an archive of the Web that reaches back to 1996. He is one of very few people in the United States who can talk about receiving a national-security letter. These letters are one of the ways government agencies, in particular the F.B.I., can demand data from organizations in matters related to national security. They do not require prior approval from a judge, only the assertion that the information demanded is relevant to a national-security investigation. Recipients of a national-security letter typically are not allowed to disclose it.

via What It’s Like to Get a National-Security Letter : The New Yorker.

Ancient DNA mapped from 700,000-year-old horse

Fascinating.

Gene experts said Wednesday they’ve been able to unravel the genetic blueprint of a prehistoric horse that lived in Canada some 700,000 years ago, the oldest DNA mapping effort ever attempted.

A dramatic extension of the limits of ancient DNA recovery, the advance re-creates a gene map, or genome, which is roughly 10 times older than the previous record-holder. The feat suggests that ancient DNA may be recoverable from frozen remains almost a million years old, raising the possibility of someday recovering even more ancient gene maps of humanity’s primitive ancestors.

via Ancient DNA mapped from 700,000-year-old horse.

Coyotes!

Looks like you can add another urban critter to the list of critters seen in my East Raleigh neighborhood: coyotes! A neighbor reported an encounter with one this morning in the Woodcrest neighborhood:

This morning at about 6:30 AM I saw a coyote walking across Dennis down towards Banks Street. I also saw a couple of foxes around Lions Park late Wednesday night.

Keep an eye on your pets when you let them out. There seems to be several predators living in or around the neighborhood.

Last week, a friend told me of an encounter he had last month on the Middle Crabtree Creek greenway. I described it to my friend John Connors who works at the Nature Research Center:
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