Herzog II

Mississippi Could Soon Jail Women for Stillbirths, Miscarriages | Mother Jones

Sat, 25 May 2013 12:14:09 -0500

Mississippi Could Soon Jail Women for Stillbirths, Miscarriages | Mother Jones:

Tragic circumstances, and situations where people are intentionally inducing abortions through drug use may justify prosecution for some people, but this is nuts, right?

We need good prosecutors. Vote accordingly.

Don Jon - Movie Trailers - iTunes

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:57:58 -0500

Don Jon - Movie Trailers - iTunes:

I’m not sure if I say this too often but I could not be more excited for this movie. If you’ve ever talked about movies with me you should know that I absolutely love Joseph Gordon-Levitt and the porn vs. romantic comedy debate, believe it or not, was a surprisingly large part of campus dialogue a couple semesters at Wheaton. I’m not sure where I fall on the spectrum of thinking they’re both evil but this take on it should be great and seriously, I’m already in love with Don’s character.

This will do. (at The Wiggins Pool )

Sat, 18 May 2013 15:53:57 -0500

This will do. (at The Wiggins Pool )

"Fifty years ago, a simple, uneducated man — “the poorest and least powerful of men,” Lewis called..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 01:51:21 -0500

“Fifty years ago, a simple, uneducated man — “the poorest and least powerful of men,” Lewis called Gideon — asked the justices for help and got it. Such a response from the current Court is virtually unthinkable. The fact today is that there are two levels of justice in America, one for the rich and one for the poor — the very essence of the unequal justice that Gideon was supposed to end. As Bright pointedly puts it, “it is better to be rich and guilty than poor and innocent” in America today.”

- http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/how-americans-lost-the-right-to-counsel-50-years-after-gideon/273433/

Get to know my courtroom life. Really, good for NHTSA I suppose...

Mon, 06 May 2013 01:37:06 -0500

Get to know my courtroom life.

Really, good for NHTSA I suppose in establishing these. In theory, and in a lab/controlled environment, they’re likely useful. In the field/on the street where officers aren’t scientists (or even remotely well instructed) and suspects have a great variety of physical ailments…these “tests” suck.

God is good, you guys. All the time. It’s pretty incredible, while also terrifying, to...

Mon, 06 May 2013 00:13:17 -0500

God is good, you guys. All the time.

It’s pretty incredible, while also terrifying, to recognize the power we have as believers in simply sharing the gift we’ve already received.

In New York today as part of a series called Sunday Sessions,...

Sun, 05 May 2013 18:40:00 -0500

In New York today as part of a series called Sunday Sessions, The National performed one of their more popular songs repeatedly for six hours. I am real jealous of those that just got to walk through the “exhibit.”

Here is one of many writeups on the presentation that I’ve seen and here is the setlist of the “show.”

Mistaken For Strangers Official Trailer #1 (2013) (by...

Sun, 05 May 2013 18:34:12 -0500

Mistaken For Strangers Official Trailer #1 (2013) (by FilmFestivalVideos)

I DESPERATELY want to see this with my brothers. Love this band.

The National - Trouble Will Find Me: track by track

Fri, 03 May 2013 23:15:09 -0500

The National - Trouble Will Find Me: track by track:

I expect to like this album as much as it is possible to like an album. Good to see it’s gaining approval already.

Every time, for just a second, I think Lincoln’s a real...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 15:11:28 -0500

Every time, for just a second, I think Lincoln’s a real person. (at Mclean County Law and Justice Center)

George W. Bush Is Smarter than You | RealClearPolitics

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:32:28 -0500

George W. Bush Is Smarter than You | RealClearPolitics:

Yep.

Man jailed 56 extra days; officials spar over why

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 01:25:46 -0500

Man jailed 56 extra days; officials spar over why:

No comment…

Bush the "Self-Correcting"

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 01:11:42 -0500

Bush the "Self-Correcting":

A glance at “W” as a President that arguably was most successful at climbing out of holes of his own creation.

I just began to follow Douthat at the NYT and I’m really enjoying his writing (even more so than that of David Brooks). This last week he’s written a couple of great pieces on the Boston bombings and the reaction to them as well as “terrorism” in general. He also wrote an article on the Gosnell trial that’s worth checking out. His columnist page with links to all articles is below.

[http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/rossdouthat/index.html]

"Last week, one of my college friends, who now manages vast sums at a hedge fund, visited me. He’s..."

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 15:33:08 -0500

“

Last week, one of my college friends, who now manages vast sums at a hedge fund, visited me. He’s the most rational person I know, so I asked him how he would go about deciding whether to go to grad school in a discipline like English or comparative literature. He dealt immediately with the sample bias problem by turning toward statistics. His first step, he said, would be to ignore the stories of individual grad students, both good and bad. Their experiences are too variable and path-dependent, and their stories are too likely to assume an unwarranted weight in our minds. Instead, he said, he would focus on the “base rates”: that is, on the numbers that give you a broad statistical picture of outcomes from graduate school in the humanities. What percentage of graduate students end up with tenure? (About one in four.) How much more unhappy are graduate students than other people? (About fifty-four per cent of graduate students report feeling so depressed they have “a hard time functioning,” as opposed to ten per cent of the general population.) To make a rational decision, he told me, you have to see the big picture, because your experience is likely to be typical, rather than exceptional. “If you take a broader view of the profession,” he told me, “it seems like a terrible idea to go to graduate school.”

Perhaps that’s the rational conclusion, but, if so, it’s beset on all sides by confounding little puzzles; they act like streams that divert and weaken the river of rational thought. Graduate school, for example, is a one-time-only offer. Very few people start doctoral programs later in life. If you pass it up, you pass it up forever. Given that, isn’t walking away actually the rash decision? (This kind of thinking is a subspecies of the habit of mind psychologists call loss aversion: once you have something, it’s very hard to give it up; if you get into grad school, it’s very hard not to go.) And then there’s the fact that graduate school, no matter how bad an idea it might be in the long term, is almost always fulfilling and worthwhile in the short term. As our conversation continued, my friend was struck by this. “How many people get paid to read what they want to read,” he asked, “and study what they want to study?” He paused. ”If I got into a really good program, I would probably go.”

”

- The Impossible Decision: On Whether or Not to Go to Graduate School : The New Yorker (via ayjay)

Makes you really want to go read a book, right?

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 15:39:22 -0500

Makes you really want to go read a book, right?

"No, they aren’t right about the Gosnell story. If you’ve never heard of the Gosnell story, it’s not..."

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 09:39:45 -0500

“No, they aren’t right about the Gosnell story. If you’ve never heard of the Gosnell story, it’s not because of a coverup by the liberal mainstream media. It’s probably because you failed to pay attention to the copious coverage among pro-choice and feminist journalists, as well as the big news organizations, when the news first broke in 2011. There would be something rich, if it weren’t so infuriating, about these (almost uniformly male, as it happens) reporters and commentators scrambling to break open this shocking untold story. You know, the one that was written about here, here and here, to name some disparate sources.”

- [Since work has been ridiculously demanding the last couple of weeks I have missed a lot of Gosnell coverage myself. Since seeing initial stories about his “this baby is big enough to walk me to the bus stop” comments I’ve fallen into the “can’t bear to watch” category. The fact that words can’t describe the horror of this story doesn’t justify the failure to report on it.]

There is no Gosnell coverup - Salon.com.

Just a few notes: (via ayjay)

1) Though the New York Times ran three brief stories when the Gosnell story broke in 2011, they have, as of this writing, only mentioned the trial in one story just when it started, on March 18: not a word since.

2) The Washington Post’s health issues reporter directly says she’s not covering the Gosnell trial because it’s just a local issue with no broader significance.

3) As for the commentators on the lack of coverage of the Gosnell trial being “almost uniformly male,” well, there’s this woman and this woman and this woman and this woman and this woman and this woman. And that’s just the result of two minutes’ googling.

So so ahead, Irin Carmon, just say stuff. Your audience won’t bother to find out whether any of it is true.

But Carmon is right about one big thing: that seriously left and passionately pro-choice people have covered the story. As Ross Douthat tweeted earlier today: “Gap in Gosnell coverage between lefty blogs and MSM reflects the difference between consistent pro-Roe view and pro-choice self-deception. In consistent pro-Roe view, Gosnell just makes case for having more doctors trained/willing/brave enough to perform safe late-term abortions.” And Matt Frost added, “One side sees the Gosnell case, thinks: ‘abortion is an atrocity.’ Other side says, ‘abortion is too unsafe.’ The ‘center’ just can’t look.”

Politics, Abortion, Humanity, Medicine, Law, News

Twitter / ReElectStockman: IF BABIES HAD GUNS THEY WOULDN'T ...

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 09:34:29 -0500

Twitter / ReElectStockman: IF BABIES HAD GUNS THEY WOULDN'T ...:

Man, this guy’s a real winner, amIright?

#voteStockmanforCongress

tusamdclide: A Late Tribute to The Belated Master EbertHe was...

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:19:20 -0500

tusamdclide:

A Late Tribute to The Belated Master Ebert

He was the Spielberg of the critics land. He was a reigning messiah, beyonding all of noisy, stubborn, tasteless Michael Bays of the overpopulated land of criticism. I remember one day, I watched ‘Knowing’ staring Nicholas Cage. It was one of those movies that blanched my heart a little from knowing that people would not call this ‘a good film.’ I enjoyed it and I saw some potentials that maybe seeing it once again would make more apparent and more realized. People who I saw it with, also fellow amateur vagabonds of criticism, hated it. The box office hated it. I think that was about when decrescendo of Cage magic was transiting from an idea to a theory. It saddened me really. I could see why the film could be deemed horrible. It lacked flowing intuition. It possessed a nice concept but the portrait of it scarcely had the deserving weight of it. But I thought Cage was brilliant. I thought that each scene was thought out well and maybe the flow was not opulent enough - but attachment one scene had with another was quite vivid and righteously peevish. There is something mellifluous about Cage’s acting- though the acting itself is not sweet- the acting itself is rather stiff and a bit burnt. But when you think of watching him acting, think of his scenes - there is romance to it. The magazines hated him. The Rollingstone hated it AND him. The reviewers (Michael Bays AND Wes Andersons of the critic Island) abhorred it.

But not Roger Ebert.
He gave it four stars.
He praised Nicholas Cage
He approved Knowing.

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/knowing-2009

I read the article. It was not as unnatural as what I just did up there- but He was struggling to. I was relieved. Not because the greatest critic of the world agreed with me, but because as long as I was on Ebert’s side- I felt safe. One must venture and be free of others - I know, but to feel nestled by someone whom you had admired for long time - while silently against others felt royal.

Dear Mr.Ebert- this is late and I am sorry for that. I will sincerely miss your reviews. I will sincerely miss the safety net. The greatest leveler of movie industry.

May you rest in peace with two thumbs up.

Nostalgia. (at Home)

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:15:50 -0500

Nostalgia. (at Home)

Cruel and Unusual Punishment: The Shame of Three Strikes Laws

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 01:04:37 -0500

Cruel and Unusual Punishment: The Shame of Three Strikes Laws:

Is there a worse and more destructive term in criminal law history than “soft on crime?”

Probably…but this has obviously caused some problems.