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State and federal prosecutors in the United States may have begun tracking the director's movements more carefully this year after Polanski tried in December to have his case dismissed from abroad. (Moving to have your criminal charges dropped while you're still on the run is a good way to infuriate prosecutors.) When the United States asked for him to be arrested, the Swiss authorities had little choice but to comply with the terms of our extradition treaty.
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Even if the age of consent had been 14, the girl wasn't 14." Also, even if the girl had been old enough to consent, she testified that she did not consent. There's that. Though of course everyone makes a bigger deal of her age than her testimony that she did not consent, because if she'd been 18 and kept saying no while he kissed her, licked her, screwed her and sodomized her, this would almost certainly be a whole different story -- most likely one about her past sexual experiences and drug and alcohol use, about her desire to be famous, about what she was wearing, about how easy it would be for Roman Polanski to get consensual sex, so hey, why would he need to rape anyone? It would quite possibly be a story about a wealthy and famous director who pled not guilty to sexual assault, was acquitted on "she wanted it" grounds, and continued to live and work happily in the U.S. Which is to say that 30 years on, it would not be a story at all.
September 2009 Archives
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I drink caffeine free... but could get death by sugar!
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"Now the first cows bred with that technology, tens of thousands of them, are entering milking herds across the country — and the timing could hardly be worse. The dairy industry is in crisis, with prices so low that farmers are selling their milk below production cost."
SO WE KILLED 230,000 OF THEM SINCE JANUARY.
"There is no formal definition of complicated grief, but researchers describe it as an acute form persisting more than six months, at least six months after a death. Its chief symptom is a yearning for the loved one so intense that it strips a person of other desires. Life has no meaning; joy is out of bounds. Other symptoms include intrusive thoughts about death; uncontrollable bouts of sadness, guilt and other negative emotions; and a preoccupation with, or avoidance of, anything associated with the loss. Complicated grief has been linked to higher incidences of drinking, cancer and suicide attempts."
Nates post. EXCERPT: Certain statistical properties of the results reported by Strategic Vision, LLC suggest, perhaps strongly, the possibility of fraud, although they certainly do not prove it and further investigation will be required....There is a substantial possibility -- far from a certainty -- that much of Strategic Vision's polling over the past several years has been forged.I recognize the gravity of this claim. I've accused pollsters -- deservedly I think in most cases -- of all and sundry types of incompetence and bias. But that is all garden-variety stuff, as compared against the possibility that a prominent polling firm is making up numbers whole cloth.
EXCERPT: I have no idea whether Nate Silver's insinuations of fraud are real, but the burden of proof is shifting. Strategic Vision has to become considerably more transparent about their methods and data, or we will have little choice but to reach an ugly conclusion.
EXCERPT: Individuals who are legally defined as sex offenders. When you look at the ages of the offenders you see that 14-year-olds are apparently the most sexually dangerous group in America. The rate declines from there, but throughout adolescence the law is far more likely to deem kids as offenders. You may imagine the dirty old man down the street. But with age people are less likely to “offend”. One reason is that they are more mature. But another reason is clear. Once you reach a certain age, having sex with people your own age is normally not considered a crime. The explosion of “youthful sex offenders” is not the result of our kids becoming perverts. It is the result of the law criminalizing what is a normal part of growing up.
A blog called The Political Carnival is getting credit this afternoon for calling out the ridiculous "Should Obama be killed?" poll that showed up on Facebook over the weekend (and is now being investigated by the U.S. Secret Service).
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Modern misogyny at its best.
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Lying about rape does not make you a “whore.” It makes you a liar. And yet, critics have continually chosen to employ terms which shame the accuser not for lying, but for having sex in the first place. Some of the name-calling is a product of misguided outrage at a woman who committed a serious offense. The remainder is pure misogynistic release. They found an opportunity to scream “whore!” with impunity, and they seized it. When bystanders call a false accuser a “slut,” they tell her that her reasoning for lying was on-point; when they call a false accuser a “whore,” they tell her that her real crime was having sex, not lying.
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In most cases, we will never know. What we do know, all the time, is that rape is a problem, and false rape accusations are a problem. The meaningless squabbles between the two camps tend to overlook the fact that people concerned about rape and people concerned about fake rape accusations are both fighting against the same thing: rape culture.
Rape culture does not just encourage men to proceed after she says “no.” Rape culture does not simply teach men that a lack of physical resistance is an invitation. Rape culture does not only tell men to assert ownership over whichever female body they desire. Rape culture also tells women not to claim ownership over their own bodies. Rape culture also informs women that they should not desire sex. Rape culture also tells women that saying yes makes them bad women.
"One of the most famous gang-rape cases of the ‘80s, the case of the Central Park jogger, ended with five black teenagers serving twelve years for allegedly raping a white investment banker, until they were exonerated in 2002, after new DNA evidence suggested that all five had been intimidated into making false confessions."
On average, full-service car washes use between 8 and 45 gallons of water per vehicle. The average home wash with a hose and bucket can use more than 100 gallons.
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An oldie but goodie: But should you really take public transit to an anti-government protest?
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Here's the full audio and transcript of cshirky's excellent talk at Harvard on the future of news
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Print readers are happy and web readers won't notice: Very interesting reasons for keeping a story offline
Segway Advanced Development:
Think of it as a digital solution to an analog problem. Segway's P.U.M.A. (Personal Urban Mobility & Accessibility) prototype represents the shift that's needed for the future of transportation. It values less over more; taking up less space, using less energy, produced more efficiently with fewer parts, creating fewer emissions during production and operation, all while offering more enjoyment, productivity, and connectivity.
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Embargoes in the age of Twitter: "Embargoes do have their uses and sometimes ignoring them can have consequences. I know of one university official who received death threats because of an embargo breaking story. But in these days of a global, 24-hour news media the process appears to be broken. You can't shut up bloggers and you can't shut down Twitter. The only thing that can go is the embargo system itself.
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Two professors analyzed the 2007-2008 coverage of ACORN by 15 major news outlets and found that more than 60% of all ACORN stories during the two years were published in October 2008, "creating a well-orchestrated 'October Surprise.'" The profs, who didn't receive outside funding, write: "Although the 2008 presidential election is long over, conservative opinion entrepreneurs and the conservative media echo chamber remain fixated on ACORN, and poised to inject their frame about ACORN as an issue in the 2010 and 2012 national elections."
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The next generation of online education could be great for students—and catastrophic for universities.
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Students starting school this year may be part of the last generation for which "going to college" means packing up, getting a dorm room and listening to tenured professors. Undergraduate education is on the verge of a radical reordering. Colleges, like newspapers, will be torn apart by new ways of sharing information enabled by the Internet. The business model that sustained private U.S. colleges cannot survive.
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For Americans looking to get a college degree, online education is one way to side-step tuition fees and demanding lecture schedules. Education experts explain why thousands of Americans are logging on to web seminars and online courses.
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If SpreadingSantorum.com is going to remain Google's top hit when you search "santorum"—and it should—then the site needs to come back to life. So I'm looking for a few folks who want to torment Rick Santorum by following every twist and turn of his sure-to-be-disastrous run for the White House on SpreadingSantorum.com. (I may dip in every once in a while and post myself.) It would be labor of love—read: a nonpaying gig—but you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you're driving Rick Santorum and his supporters absolutely batshit (batshittier?).
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Zarrella ...the avid Twitter-er and author of the upcoming The Social Media Marketing Book spent nine months analyzing roughly 5 million tweets and 40 million retweets, which are usually symbolized with an "RT" on Twitter.
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FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski proposes formalizing rules and adding mandates that he says would keep online traffic moving freely. The proposals would also cover wireless Internet service.
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Six Republican senators have introduced an amendment that would block the Federal Communications Commission from implementing its recently announced Net neutrality policy
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[T]he number of tuna has begun dropping precipitously in recent years because of overfishing. This has given Oma another, less celebrated distinction, as a community that has stood out by calling for greater regulation of catches in a nation that has adamantly opposed global efforts to save badly depleted tuna populations.
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Quotes NYTimes story, w/other links.
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New findings suggest President Obama is positively influencing black students' performance on standardized tests.
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EXCERPT: "researchers have documented what they call an Obama effect, showing that a performance gap between African-Americans and whites on a 20-question test administered before Mr. Obama’s nomination all but disappeared when the exam was administered after his acceptance speech and again after the presidential election."
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The Times' critic says it's "a somewhat crude reworking of old ideas, one that looks especially unoriginal when compared with the sophisticated and often dazzling stadiums that have been built in Europe and the Far East over the last few years. Worse for fans, its lounges and concourses are so sprawling that I suspect more than a few spectators will get lost and miss the second-half kickoff."
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The giant video screen is so low that players have hit it with a kicked ball.
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I hadn't realized before that the school I work for and the one I graduated from both have a Bobcat for their mascot.
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A drone pilot's nightmare came true when operators lost control of an armed MQ-9 Reaper flying a combat mission over Afghanistan on Sunday. That led a manned U.S. aircraft to shoot down the unresponsive drone before it flew beyond the edge of Afghanistan airspace. The U.S. Air Force stated that a manned aircraft took "proactive measures" to shoot down the Reaper, which ended up crashing into the side of a mountain.
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Parsing white opinion, it's not as bad as the numbers seem. Obama's doing roughly now what he did whenhe won.
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EXCERPT: "What we've shown in this study is that someone's entire brain chemistry can change in a very short period of time. Our findings suggest that when you eat something high in fat, your brain gets 'hit' with the fatty acids, and you become resistant to insulin and leptin," Dr. Clegg said. "Since you're not being told by the brain to stop eating, you overeat."
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A problem w/ self-response: people rated countries that don't exist, thinking they should have an opinion...
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Bobb Barr on the Supreme Court ordering hearing on the "actual innocence" of Troy Anthony Davis: "Strange as it might seem, the Supreme Court of the United States has never directly and explicitly held that it is unconstitutional for a state to execute a person about whom substantial evidence of innocence has been presented."
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Corsicana Daily Sun archive of Willingham stories. REsponse to David Grann piece
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Nina Morrison, Innocence Project pens point-by-point response to Judge John Jackson's assertion that Willingham was guilty
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Did Texas execute an innocent man? It sure looks that way. By David Grann
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Judge John Jackson editorial response to David Grann New Yorker article.
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Response to op-ed that John Jackson, the prosecutor in the Willingham case, published in the Corsicana Daily Sun
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Collection of links and summary of the Nation magazine's Food Issue
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"From the start, Leibovitz’s perfectionism led her to pay little or no attention to budget restrictions, and she spent money recklessly, losing cameras, accruing parking tickets, and even abandoning rental cars."
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EXCERPT: Liz Cheney, the easily exasperated eldest daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, has become a one-woman TV juggernaut in 2009, racking up more airtime than a cloud as she defends her daddy's administration records.
And boy, is she wrong. Unlike so many TV pundits who spin and slide around the facts, Cheney makes no fuss about completely ignoring them, and sticking to talking points that have little relation to the truth.
Michael Masnick points to Copycense for a thought-provoking editorial pondering whether or not Creative Commons is good or bad for copyright.
ONLINE. But teachers matter: According to the New York Times Bits blog, a recent study funded by the US Department of Education (PDF) found that on the whole, online learning environments actually led to higher tested performance than face-to-face learning environments. “On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction,” concluded the report’s authors in their key findings.
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"Look at Expose in the Dock — the new feature that reveals all an application’s open windows when you click and hold the application’s icon. It’s tailor-made for fingers. Even more convincing is Stacks in the Dock. Hit a folder icon in the dock, and up pops the folder and all its files. Each icon is a big target for your finger, and the window has a big, fat slider for scrolling up and down (no more fiddly little arrows at the top or bottom). Both of these UI tweaks scream ‘touchscreen.’"
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Pollan says, in part, "John Mackey’s views on health care, much as I disagree with them, will not prevent me from shopping at Whole Foods. I can understand why people would want to boycott, but it’s important to play out the hypothetical consequences of a successful boycott. Whole Foods is not perfect, however if they were to disappear, the cause of improving Americans’ health by building an alternative food system, based on more fresh food, pastured and humanely raised meats and sustainable agriculture, would suffer. I happen to believe health care reform has the potential to drive big changes in the food system, and to enlist the health care industry in the fight to reform agriculture."
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Jon O'Brien, President, Catholics for Choice.
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