Panglossian Notes

Mr Befuddled strikes yet again

Re: the Proposed wage freeze for US federal public servants (other than the sainted ones) and the OFA (Organizing for America) plea to the unwashed base to join in a letter writing campaign to counter "bunk*" being said by the rabid media.

As some point you really have to wonder what Obama does with his supposed above average brain. I think now he simply takes it out and plays with it on the floor of the Oval Office. If he isn't doing that then it's a mystery to me what he uses the damn thing for. He definitely does not seem to use it to do what most average or below average people use their brains to do. Maybe he enjoys kicking it around the oval office because it sure doesn't seem as though he uses it to think, imagine a bit or reason.

Why do I wonder? Because, I'm puzzled that a reasonably educated adult at the beginning of the 21st century would, as Obama's statement implies, suggest that a government is similar to a family or small business and must be run as such.

Ah, you say, the poor dumb bunny has to deal with GOP and blockhead "conventional wisdom". Well, I say, actually he doesn't. He could maybe explain that governments aren't households and definitely not small, medium or even large businesses. But instead we get the "belt tightening" analogy and, of course, the "sacrifice" word is trotted as though daddy Obama is addressing the kids and letting them know that its lumps of coal and bread and water again this Xmas. Relative to the sacrifice notification of hairy shirts for all civil public servants you have to admit that even for Obama it's pretty rich given the new Wall St. pre-Xmas bonuses frenzy. The bs about belt tightening and sacrifice are however likely a good indication that Obama operates in a well protected bubble surrounded by couriers oozing sycophantic niceties at every opportunity; a perfect cone of silence.

He really seems befuddled but as adept as the current gang of politicians in DC, or any where else right now, at deliverying large amounts of bunk.

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*(short for bunkum**) applies to an utterance that strikes the popular fancy even though it is lacking in worth or substance; political clap-trap; political speaking or action not from conviction, but in order to gain the favour of electors, or make a show of patriotism, or zeal.

**ORIGIN mid 19th cent. (originally buncombe***): named after Buncombe County in North Carolina, mentioned in an inconsequential speech made by its congressman solely to please his constituents ( c. 1820).

***Note: "The phrase originated near the close of the debate on the famous `Missouri Question,' in the 16th Congress. It was then used by Felix Walker -- a naive old mountaineer, who resided at Waynesville, in Haywood, the most western country of North Carolina, near the border of the adjacent county of Buncombe, which formed part of his district. The old man rose to speak, while the house was impatiently calling for the `Question,' and several members gathered round him, begging him to desist. He persevered, however, for a while, declaring that the people of his district expected it, and that he was bound to `make a speech for Buncombe.'"

Spartacus or music from depictions of him. No New Zealanders

First various versions of Alex North's Love Theme from the Stanley Kubrick film Spartacus, then 3 variations of Khachaturian's adagio from the ballet Spartacus - should mention Santana in Guatemala is doing a combo of Love Theme and Green Sleeve:

YouTube - Ahmad Jamal - Spartacus love theme

YouTube - Yusef Lateef - Love Theme From Spartacus

YouTube - love theme from spartacus-James Connolly-Duc des lombards 19/07/09

YouTube - Tessa Souter - Love Theme From Spartacus

YouTube - Love theme from spartacus Santana en Guatemala

YouTube - Herbie Hancock - Spartacus Love Theme - 07/26/81 Tokyo

YouTube - Spartacus love theme by violin

YouTube - terry callier love theme from spartacus cover

YouTube - Bill Evans with Jeremy Steig - Spartacus Love Theme

YouTube - Love Theme From Spartacus

YouTube - Love theme from spartacus November15 2007

YouTube - Khachaturian - Adagio From Spartacus

YouTube - "Adagio" from "Spartacus" (Aram Khachaturian)

Best Moubakis' ever!!

Ella

Sorry but I think she's lovely - a very young Ella:

The picture of Ella gives me some strange sense of well being. As she aged I'd not say Ella was attractive though her voice only matured beautifully. But her pictures as a young woman to me are always quite beautiful. Her voice was always stunning but when she was young I think she was also a stunning woman. Gad.

The Norfolk 4

I just finished watching the Frontline program on the Norfolk Four . The name of the program refers to four individuals, all former sailors stationed in Norfolk VA, who were convicted of rape or rape and murder based on false confessions extracted from them during long extended interrogations. The interrogations were conducted by a detective who has recently been convicted of extortion and lying to the FBI. The DNA evidence provided voluntarily by all four indicated they were innocent however the confessions ruled the day in old Virginny. People certainly wonder about false confessions. After all why would someone confess to something they had not done.

The Frontline program focused on the interrogation method - long, aggressive and leading - and the failure of what might be expected to be normal checks and balances by a prosecutor in considering whether or not to charge the individuals. There was no physical evidence pointing to any of the individuals and DNA results indicated they were not the culprits. Also, the police and the prosecutor were convinced the individuals were guilty and continued to spin elaborate and fanciful stories to justify this believe even as the facts continued to change, always indicating the four were innocent. This farce culminated in an individual whose DNA tied him to the crime confessing and telling authorities that he committed the rape and murder alone and had no idea who the Norfolk Four where.

Happy ending, the Four are released, oh, but no way in old Virginny. The false confessions and the police and prosecutor phantasmagorical tale meant off to jail for you Four.

Other than the appalling incompetence, at the prosecutorial level, and, setting aside, the matter that the detective interrogator would later be charged and convicted for crimes related to interrogations, not including the Four's, a couple of things struck me as I watched the program.

First, though only briefly mentioned at the beginning of the video, the interrogator became convinced, on interviewing the first of the Four, that he had detected a deception in what he was being told. On the basis of this presumption the detective forced a confession from the suspect using aggressive and likely abusive interrogation methods - none of the interrogations were videoed. When DNA testing indicated the first of the Four hadn't raped the woman and the autopsy report contradicted the murder details in the confession the interrogator led the the suspect into modifying his confession to conform with the facts included in the autopsy report and to implicate the second of the Four. Thus began the remarkable journey of constructing the first of many fantastic stories to which the interrogator convinced the Four to eventually believe and confess, starting with one individual pointing to another, then that one pointing to another and on, as the State looked for guilty DNA. The stories concocted become more elaborate and fanciful as each individual was drawn into the plot. Prior to any of the Four actually going to trial an individual who didn't know any of the Four, nor they he, but who was a sex offender, and whose DNA was a match for the DNA found in the raped woman, confessed he had committed the crime alone. This inconvenience meant that the now close to comical story about the Four having raped and killed the woman was modified yet again to include the complete stranger. Remember now, journey starting with the detective interrogator believing he had detected a deception during a preliminary interview. His conviction was sufficiently robust to lead him, and likely convince the local prosecutor, to proceed with this farce. But how good are individuals really at detecting a deception (a pdf segment, pp 463-466, of Darius Rejali's Democracy and Torture, chapter 21 titled: "How Well Do Interrogators Spot the Truth?")? Not much, eh and police included even so-called trained police. In fact some studies have also suggested the “disturbing possibility that police training in the detection of truth and deception leads investigators to make prejudgments of guilt, with high confidence, that are frequently in error.” This prejudice can have unfortunately consequence as is, I think, evident in the case of the Norfolk Four.

The second thing that struck me was that I think you could draw a parallel between the Norfolk Four whose travesty is taking place in the long established institutional US Justice system and the individuals held by the US outside their organized institutional structure. I was thinking about the so-called terrorist held at Gitmo, Bagram and the various other hidden torture chambers authorized first by Clinton, then Bush and now by Obama. You really do have to love democracy's that pretend long histories of championing human rights, rule of law and principles as they are also the entities that take great pains to hide their breaches of human rights, laws and principles. Oh well, it's just the way of life within a myth, I guess, where nothing is real and in effect the psychotic view must be protected least the pillars of the dream collapse and everyone, elites of all sorts and the boys and girls in Shakespeare pit, are left only to sift through the mountains of sand you mistook for a firm structure.

Waiting and Watching

So the great $3 billion seat shuffling extravaganza is over for another 2 years. But not to worry, the next spectacle is only 24 months off and the parade marshals, buskers, carnival touts and clowns are already testing out new pitches and considering wonders to dazzle and entice the mobs to participate and enjoy. Of course some are wondering why the seats were shuffled in the first place but that just seems to assume the feast of metaphors, slogans and hi-jinx served during any extravaganza is somehow connected to the offal to be swallowed until the next chair shuffle happens. But we'll see this time if one side of the mob can actually scare the buskers, touts and clowns to substitute a few choice cuts for the usual heavily spiced offal served on fine china with a smirk to an easily tricked and willingly gullible mob.

Me, I'm not going to hold my breath. I'm just going to wait and watch. What did P.T. say? Oh yeah, I remember.

Suicide in Nunavut - Update

Update: I thought I'd re-post this note written back in 2007 because of the editorial in the G&M regarding the new Suicide Prevention Strategy the Government of Nunavut (GN) recently table, in its Legislative Assembly. The Globe is optimistic and urges the GN to implement the recommendations in the document ASAP. It's good, I guess, to be optimistic and I hope that this new attempt by the GN et al can have some effect on this particular problem though I've yet to see any real analysis as to why the killing of oneself is so much more a Northern phenomenon in Western jurisdictions. One good thing, from my perspective, is that this latest document reference articles by people such as Dr. Laurence Kirmayer the director of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill. Kirmayer is one of the individuals front and centre in chapter 4 (link is to a summary) of Ethan Watters' book "Crazy Like Us"" which deals with suicide in Japan; the drive by pharmaceutical companies to introduce anti-depressants into Japan; and the impacts of, in effect, what I think of as culture imperialism when it comes to mental illness. Kirmayer seems well aware that different cultures have evolved unique ways of dealing with mental stress and trauma which I hope maybe a sign that this prevention strategy could have some success.   

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I dare say that anyone who has spent anytime in the North, the Arctic North, knows people who have committed suicide. It is also likely the case that people who live outside the North also know people that have done it. The difference is that in the North you won't just know one suicide, or even two, you'll likely know a slew of them.

In the North the odds are that some of your fellow workers will have killed themselves. You're also likely to work with people some of whom have had kids, brothers, sisters or parents, either one, who have killed themselves.

It is not an uncommon occurrence in the workplace to have a fellow worker abruptly leave in a panic because a friend, kid, brother, sister or parent can't be contacted. False alarms at the best times, but other times, and these seem, I remember, to come in rashes, to find a loved one or friend hung in a closet (the preferred way to go, it seems) or to see their legs sticking out from the back of the house or shed and find them on the ground dead from a gunshot wound.

It's maybe that Northern communities are very small in terms of population and isolated so that you are more aware when someone is gone than you would be in a Southern town.

Suicide statistics, similar to most mortality indicators, are usually provided on the basis of deaths per 100,000 of population. For Nunavut, an area which accounts for just about a fifth of Canada's mass and contains 26 communities, if you count the "summer camp" at Bathurst Inlet, measuring things in the 100,000 seems strange. The population in the territory now is just over 30,000 or about 1/10th of 1 percent of the population of Canada. Some ways to go yet to the 100,000 mark. Yes, I do know the 100,000 is just a datum, but using it for Nunavut makes the suicides seem more of a fantasy to me then a real event.

In land mass, a really, really, big place, but in people terms hardly a blip within the country as a whole. The table below shows a comparison across the major administrative jurisdictions in Canada of suicides per 100,000 of population and for me, to make the statistic seem just a bit more real, per 10,000 of population.

Nunavut certainly stands out relative to the other politically defined sub-divisions of the country, though the worst area, based on the Statistics Canada 2001 data, is actually Nunavik, a Northern sub-division included in the province of Quebec and not shown separately in the Table above. Nunavik's suicide rate, at about 133 per 100,000 of population, dwarfs even Nunavut's.

As I said in the beginning, the average Northerner has had personal experience with the impact of suicide and is generally aware that more people kill themselves in their jurisdiction then in other jurisdictions in the country.

Those outside the North may simply know that there are more suicides "up there" then in their region, if they are aware at all of the suicides and jurisdictional comparisons.

A number like 80.2 per 100,000 compared, to say, a much lower number of 7.7 per 100,000 certainly would give the casual observer an indication that there are differences in the average number of people killing themselves in locations across the country. But, also, anyone that can do simple arithmetic has already figured out that the absolute numbers of suicides for Nunavut are small: 8 suicides per 10,000 of population, Nunavut's population is roughly 30,000 people, so (30,000 / 10,000) X 8 = 24 - i.e. an average of 24 suicides in 2001. Easier to forget this way because though higher than other jurisdictions it's still a relatively small number.

Let's put the statistics into some context that maybe has a more dramatic effect by trying to actually convey the real impact that a number like 80 suicides per 100,000 of population would have in Canada and two of its largest urban centres (I know these type of comparisons are flawed but they service well, I think, as an illustrative tool).

I've pick Toronto - the GTA - and Vancouver as the urban areas. The following table shows the number of suicides if the rates that occurred in Nunavut and Nunavik had been the rates for the country and the two cities in 2001. You'd not exactly have to be wary of bodies falling on you as you strolled around downtown Toronto but, then again, 10 to 17 self-inflected daily deaths by hanging, poisoning, gunshot, or other means would likely cause some concern amongst the more empathetic proportion of the population. Least I'd hope so.