Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2010/06/28/japanese-eel-related-quotes/
Several years ago I watched a Japanese film titled “Unagi” which is the Japanese word for “eel.” The film was one of those 1960s-type free-form free-spirit no-plot-really affairs, where the protagonist one day comes home early to find a guy schtuffing his wife, murders his wife and her lover, then reports himself to the police. He serves his time as a model prisoner, and although prisoners are not allowed to have pets, he was allowed to feed the eel in the prison pond, and the warden gave him the eel to take home with him at the end of his sentence.
That is the beginning of the movie. First five minutes or so. After that, there’s not much plot. At least, not that I recall. The movie then lingers on a bunch of folks in his town who don’t have much going on. But the protagonist, Yamashita, did leave a quote I still adore:
“Nobody knows your father, but you’re still a fantastic eel.”
Just now, I saw a YouTube video about a Christmas tree that was lit by the power of an electric eel. When the eel swims, it discharges electricity, and the tree lights up. What could the commentator on the video possibly have to say about this wonder?
“If we could gather all the electric eels from around the world we would be able to light up an unimaginably large Christmas tree.”
Yes! Exactly what I was thinking. (Well, not really, but far more enchanting than my whimsical musing regarding the feasibility of electric eels as an alternative energy source.)
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2010/06/28/pizza/
I like the New York pizza for its own sake, and I like the Chicago pizza for its own sake. They’re just different dialects of the same Sicilian mother tongue, equally valid, and equally susceptible to variance of quality among speakers.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2010/06/29/dreams/
I had a dream last night. I was riding the subway to my new job as Mayor of New York City. I was amused and a little relieved that nobody recognized me. I had been late out the door so after the crowd in the car eased somewhat I started changing in to my suit. That is also when I got some face time with a few of the remaining passengers, who told me they knew who I was, and were glad to see me going to my new job.
I had another dream last night, where we stopped at Grand Army Plaza because I’d seen a Blue-Footed Booby lay a big blue egg and walk away. We were concerned for the safety of the egg, so I went to move it into the shrubbery and bury it a little, except first my companion stepped on it a bit, cracking the shell. I sat the egg upright so the yolk wouldn’t leak and on my companion’s advice we began covering it with leaves. I found the egg was kind of like a potato and I could cut some skin from one side to patch the hole over the yolk. Things were going well enough until my partner did something I don’t remember that caused the egg to fail. I was upset, mad, discouraged, but got over the tragedy quickly enough. When we got back on the bus The Oppressor started criticizing my partner for her failings. This made me mad. I got up in his face and reminded him about his karma.
That dream was a pretty obvious reference to an episode earlier in the week where we “rescued” a fledgling from another corner of Grand Army Plaza, but due to bad advice and my own complacency, and the inherent difficulty of avian rescue, the little thing perished. I was upset, mad, and discouraged, and my partner was mad at me for the whole thing, which made me mad at her. In the following days I had more sympathy for her view because she’s working in a difficult, complex, high-stress, high-stakes environment where saving weak fragile little newborns is their passion. And there is always the fear of screwing up, which means suffering and often death, for the meekest of human beings, followed by blame, criticism, lawsuits. She shouldn’t have brought that home and laid it on me, but on the other hand when you live in a pressure cooker the steam is going to find your cracks. This will happen sometimes in a relationship and it is important to handle trouble gracefully. And she is certainly forgiving of my own shortages of equanimity. We didn’t talk about it, but she made me some cookies.
I read somewhere that in interpreting a dream, it is less important to figure out the imagery and symbolism, and more useful to study how you react to situations. Where earlier in the week I had wanted to defend myself against harsh, unfair criticism from my partner, in my dream I wanted to defend my partner against harsh, unfair criticism. I was pleased.
My coworkers were discussing the “stateless” nature of our periodic weeks on the pager rotation. I said that on-call was like driving across the country, a space outside of the normal flow of life, where night and day are flexible and after the first few days the miles all blend together. We’re moving back to California, where I have a job as a senior member of my team. A lot of the crowd won’t recognize me, but the old timers at the end of the commute will be glad to see me.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2010/06/30/python-list-comma-comma-and/
Well, I am working on extending a Django application to add log entries to the django.contrib.admin.models.LogEntry which may be fodder for another post, but while composing a change_message I wanted to convert a list of “changes” into a string like “Changed this thing, that thing, and that other thing.”
Here is what I have got, and since it is Python I bet $1 that someone will comment with a better way. (I couldn’t figure a good search query for seeking the answer so I had to use my brain.)
if len(updated_list) > 1:
rs = "Changed " + ", ".join(map(str, updated_list[:-1])) + " and " + updated_list[-1] + "."
else:
rs = "Changed " + updated_list[0] + "."
>>> updated_list = ['just one thing']
>>> print "Changed " + updated_list[0] + "."
Changed just one thing.
>>> updated_list = ['one thing', 'another thing']
>>> print "Changed " + ", ".join(map(str, updated_list[:-1])) + " and " + updated_list[-1] + "."
Changed one thing and another thing.
>>> updated_list = ['this thing', 'that thing', 'that other thing']
>>> print "Changed " + ", ".join(map(str, updated_list[:-1])) + " and " + updated_list[-1] + "."
Changed this thing, that thing and that other thing.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2010/07/01/bp-mini-rant/
When 9/11 happened we grounded all the planes until we got the situation sorted out.
When the volcano erupted in Iceland we grounded all the planes until we got that situation sorted out.
When one of many many offshore, deep-water oil rigs begins spewing oil all over the Gulf of Mexico we don’t shut down all the other disasters-waiting-to-happen. No, instead we complain that the President’s temporary moratorium on expanded off-shore drilling is reactionary and counter-productive.
(Posted as a comment to Tom’s Livejournal.)
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2010/07/08/cutting-off-unemployment-insurance/
I spent my share of time collecting unemployment insurance in the previous recession. I managed to land a job just as my benefits were nearly expired — I thanked my lucky stars on that one! Sure, the job paid 60% of my previous salary, but that was still several steps up from unemployment insurance.
Now I worry that the Republicans, in an uncharacteristic bow to “fiscal responsibility” have put the kibosh on extending unemployment benefits. It is rough out there and everyone expects the economic recovery that seems to have begun to possibly take a very long time. We have millions living hand-to-mouth somewhere between earning a living and being desperately poor. Now we want to cut the cord and let them plunge?
And, okay, let us say we are rugged individualists and we don’t care about the suffering of the unemployed. But . . . these unemployment payments go straight back in to buying groceries and other necessities . . . we’re taking a huge chunk of consumer spending offline! That means falling retail profits, that means more layoffs, a tumbling stock market . . . we are inviting upon ourselves the next Depression, or at least a “double dip” recession.
We need to not f*ck the economy in the rear while it is still teetering on its knees. I wish the nation were more shrill about this issue . . . I hope I am wrong but this just seems incredibly stupid and self-destructive. Americans will be hungry, times will be harder, and Obama will go down in history as one of those hapless liberal presidents who couldn’t rally the nation in a moment of crisis, to be replaced by some jingoist reactionary.
I hope I am wrong.
Update: Obama has a petition going . . .
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2010/07/13/i-like-to-type-on-my-smartphone/
I still fondly recall the nice rubber keyboard of my Sidekick 2. So nice, I was reluctant to “upgrade” to a G1, which has a nice enough keyboard. A few months back I got to spend some time with a Nexus One, which was really nice . . . but I just could not adjust to the on-screen keyboard. The on-screen keyboard has gotten very good for inputting addresses and short messages, but if you’re a compulsive typer like me you need an excellent physical keyboard.
So, I keep my eye out for an Android device with an excellent physical keyboard, and naturally I do a little research on this HTC “T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide” . . . the name is truly awful, but it sounds like the keyboard shows promise. (It sounds like the physically-similar HTC “Touch Pro2” has an excellent keyboard, but I don’t want to run Windows on a mobile phone.)
So, in case, like me, you have wondered if the keyboard is any good, here is what various online reviews have had to say:
From http://www.intomobile.com/2010/06/14/review-t-mobile-mytouch-3g-slide-is-this-this-the-android-youre-looking-for/:
Of course, the main reason to get the myTouch Slide is for the full QWERTY keyboard. There are a few negatives but, overall, it’s an excellent way to bang out messages on the go. The shape of the keys are just right and the feedback and “clickability” make it easy to write long e-mails wherever you are. Hitting the secondary function or Caps lock key will bring up a handy light above the keyboard and I always appreciate dedicated comma and period buttons. There’s also pretty good auto-correction software with the keyboard so you don’t have to worry about throwing in apostrophes. The sliding mechanism produces a satisfying sound and it feels like it will hold up over time.
On the downside, I found the Tab button and A a little too close together and this led to multiple frustrating typos. What’s even worse is that the top row doubles as the number keys. This happens on many keyboards but usually you’ll have the letters and numbers a different color or font size to help you quickly find what you’re looking for. The myTouch Slide has “T5” “Y6” “I8” and others the exact same color and size, which can take some time to get used to. None of these quibbles are deal breakers though, as I was quickly able to get up to speed with my typing.
(The keyboard has four rows instead of five, and the top row reads “Q1 W2 E3 R4 T5 Y6 U7 I8 O9 P0” which looks dumb and would take some getting used to. Alas, the Touch Pro2 has five rows, like all the keyboards I am used to.)
From http://mobile.engadget.com/2010/06/01/t-mobile-mytouch-3g-slide-review/:
The keyboard is one of the best four-row designs we’ve used in recent memory (LG, seriously, take some pointers from this before you go releasing an Ally 2) with great feel, spacing, and clickiness — it’s readily apparent that HTC’s deep experience in making these kinds of keyboards is paying dividends. They’ve made room for all of the most important keys that you should be able to access without pressing Shift or Alt, notably the comma, period, and “@” symbol, plus you’ve got Home and Search keys and duplicated modifiers on the left and right sides. HTC aficionados will also be pleased to see that they’ve carried over the lit Shift and Alt symbols above the numeric row, which makes it super easy to see what character you’re about to press. It’s a nice touch.
From http://www.phonedog.com/2010/06/03/noah-s-mytouch-3g-slide-review/:
Keyboards are a very personal thing, and personally I love Slide’s QWERTY. While not quite as luscious as the Touch Pro2 on which it’s based, mT3G Slide’s thumbboard has been a joy to use save for some minor issues I have with the labels on the keys. Buttons on the keyboard are offset and isolated and have decent travel and solid tactile feel – in other words, its the exact opposite of the Moto Droid‘s flat grid of near motionless buttons, which I can’t stand. If you just read that sentence and wrote off the rest of my review because you love, love, love Droid’s QWERTY, then you may well hate Slide’s keyboard. Like I said, QWERTYs are a highly personal matter.
From http://www.mobileburn.com/review.jsp?Id=9572: “the keyboard has great feel, but is visually flawed.”
From http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/06/10/review-t-mobile-mytouch-3g-slide/: “who is this for? It’s for folks who miss their Sidekick and want a keyboard for messaging. The MyTouch 3G Slide’s processor won’t win the blue ribbon at the County Fair, but it is an impressive bit of cellphone.”
My verdict? I would want to try it out in the store, but it sounds like the keyboard would probably be “good enough” for me. That said, I think I will continue to hold out on upgrading for the following reasons:
- My current service plan is $55/mo+tax, but these days it seems extremely difficult to get “smart phone” service for under $70/mo.
- The Slide’s display could be better, its processor could be faster.
- I want that 5-row keyboard, or at least one less stupidly designed.
Given that it may be either a hassle or an impossibility to upgrade my phone without paying more money each month, an expensive “upgrade” had better be worth it. The Slide sounds like it would be good enough as a new phone–a better alternative to the G1–but it has a few too many compromises to justify the cost of upgrade.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2010/07/13/books-for-demetrius/
We are preparing to move back to California, and my nephew has reported that he has no plans for this summer before his senior year of high school, so late one night I tore through the shelves for volumes I thought might find a suitable home with his family. I figured to create an “annotated bibliography” and why not post such a thing online for the sake of possible discussion?
See the World
“Vacation Work’s Work Your Way Around the World” by Susan Griffith
An outdated guide that can give a sense of ways one might spend more time overseas. (Though the first advice is that the best place to work and save money for travel is usually the USA.)
“Dark Star Safari” by Paul Theroux
Paul Theroux is best known for his books about railroad travel, but in his overland journey from Cairo to Capetown, there are few trains. A taste of travelling in Africa, including an actual wild life safari.
“Japan” by Lonely Planet
An out-of-date guidebook which might have interesting stuff for a Japan-o-phile to read.
“Teaching English Overseas: A Guide for Americans and Canadians” by Jeff Mohamed
Worth a skim if you think you might want to live overseas one day.
“Overseas Timetable: Surface Transport for Africa, Asia, North and South America and Australia” by Thomas Cook
Outdated, but fun “travel porn” if you wanted to fantasize or estimate the different ways you could get around the world’s surface. Europe has its own book of the same size.
Coming of Age
“The White Boy Shuffle” by Paul Beatty
A fictional coming-of-age experience of a nerdy young black man in California. I particularly enjoyed the parts that recounted the LA Riots.
“Not Without Laughter” by Langston Hughes
Another fictional coming-of-age of a young black man, this time in the 1930s.
“Apartment 4B, Like in Brooklyn” by Evan Ginzburg
Short stories of what it was like to grow up in 1960s Crown Heights, as the neighborhood turned black. (This year I have lived in the same area, which is “gentrifying.”)
“Son of the Revolution” by Liang Heng
An autobiographical account of growing up in Communist China, through the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. This is a book I had to read in college which I held on to because it is such a great story of what it is like for a young man to grow up under vastly different circumstances.
Question Convention
“No More Prisons!” by William Upski Wimsatt
A very different kind of book: Wimsatt explores different ways to make life more fulfilling and successful. It was originally published by the anarchist Soft Skull press, if that gives you any idea. The title serves as both a call against our modern prison system, but also for emancipation from the less visible prisons we find ourselves trapped in.
“Heart of a Dog” by Mikhail Bulgakov
A short, sweet novel narrated by a dog in Moscow.
“Death at an Early Age” by Jonathan Kozol
Explains the numerous failings of public education in 1960s Boston. It was weird how much similarity I had personally witnessed in the Chicapo Public Schools of the 1980s.
“The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan
A long-winded exploration of the failings of our contemporary food system, and how we might go about eating right.
“The Years of Rice and Salt” by Kim Stanley Robinson
An alternate history of a world in which no Europeans survive the 14th century Black Death.
“The Diamond Age” by Neal Stephenson
Science fiction set in a near future where there is no longer any shortage of food or stuff: now humanity has thoroughly different problems. Totally blew my mind.
“The Myths of Innovation” by Scott Berkun
How great technological advances actually come about. (And how they don’t.) Good storytelling helps to better understand the creative process. (Signed by the author.)
“Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything” by Levitt and Dubner
Applying the science of economic statistical analysis and field research to explore questions economists don’t usually explore, like the economics of drug distribution in Chicago. A fun way to look at things from a different angle.
“Fast Food Nation” by Eric Schlosser
The history of fast food in America and how it works today, between government and industry, and how it is hurting us.
History
“A History of the World in Six Glasses” by Tom Standage
A unique and enjoyable World History told from the point of view of how different beverages through history influenced the shape of particular civilizations.
“A Little History of the World” by E.H. Gombrich
A quick way to get up to speed on the idea of history, and some of Western History in particular. The intention is a good story-telling narrative for kids, but the narrative quality is inconsistent, and there is a definite German cultural bias. Possibly worth a quick read.
“David Thompson: The Epic Expeditions of a Great Canadian Explorer” by Graeme Pole
Among the things one might do with one’s life, surveying the Western Wilderness of Canada in the early 1800s . . . definitely an excellent adventure!
“To Live” by Yu Hua
Inspired the Zhang Yimou film of the same name, a fictional autobiography that starts at the end of Imperial China, through personal tragedy, the Japanese occupation, the civil war, and trying to raise a family through the difficulties of the Communist era. The protagonist and his story are so engaging I couldn’t put the book down.
“How to See Europe on 50 Cents a Day: A Tramp’s Trip” by Lee Meriwether
This guy sounds like Uncle Bill or maybe even Grandpa Howard: Lee Meriwether travels around Europe, mainly on foot, in the 1880s, conducting surveys of the economic circumstances of Europeans. It is fun to see what “backpacking” was like in a much earlier time, and I enjoyed the peeks into traditional European peasant economics.
Art
“Drawing for Older Children and Teens: A Creative Method for Adult Beginners, Too” by Mona Brookes
I never got in to this book, so hopefully some people with more free time than I have can dig it.
“Sams Teach Yourself GIMP in 24 Hours” by Joshua and Ramona Pruitt
An outdated edition that might still help someone learn a thing or two about editing computer graphics.
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2010/07/13/black-and-white-beyond-the-oakland-hills/
So, if you don’t live anywhere near Oakland, CA the long and the short of it is this past New Years Eve there was a bunch of youthful rowdiness at a train station, and the transit police came in to try to deal with the situation, and at one point a cop named Johannes Mehserle had a kid named Oscar Grant pinned to the ground, then he reaches for his gun and fatally shoots Oscar Grant in the back. (He said he thought he was reaching for his taser, which doesn’t make a lot of sense, but who knows what was actually in his mind?) The shooting was caught on grainy cell phone video from multiple angles.
Also, Oscar Grant is black and Johannes Mehserle is white, so . . .
Last Friday the verdict was read out for Mehserle, and Oakland braced for race riots, which aside from some vandalism downtown didn’t really happen. Thank goodness. Mehserle was found not-guilty of murder, which requires “malice aforethought” but he was found guilty of “involuntary manslaughter” which on the one hand sounds about right: it would be difficult to prove that he intended to kill Oscar Grant but a lot of people get upset at “involuntary” because the man voluntarily pulled his gun out of his holster and pulled the trigger. Due to the firearm, Mehserle faces 5-14 years in prison when he is sentenced.
Now, it seems there are only two ways to see what happened:
If you are a liberal person of color living in the flat part of Oakland then you never know when your kid will go out at night and be harassed, even killed by racist cops, who will then be slapped on the wrist because the system doesn’t care about the life of a black kid.
If you are a white Republican racist living in the posh Oakland Hills or beyond, then you see a poorly-trained officer of the peace working overtime on New Years to maintain public order in the face of black kids acting all “gangsta” on the train system. Dude made a horrible horrible mistake, and has to live with Oscar Grant on his conscience the rest of his life. He has to be sent to jail otherwise those kids down below will riot and burn their town again and blame it all yet again on white people.
I feel both ways about this. I’m dubious of Mehserle and I’m dubious of kids who want to run around fighting and acting like fools at night. I feel for Grant’s family and I also feel for Mehserle and I’m glad that when I screw up in my job nobody dies by my hand. I feel a vague sense of outrage at the entrenchment of black poverty and continued racism, especially when it involves cops, who do have really rough jobs and hell yeah I think rioting is about the most stupidly self-destructive reaction we could expect. And I’m really effing glad riots didn’t happen and I think that is something for which Oakland should hold its head high.
There have been demonstrations and what not in support of Oscar Grant. Today, apparently, there will be a rally for Mehserle in Walnut Creek, which if you don’t know is in the dry, hot inland just beyond the Ocean-cooled hills of Oakland. I have lived in different parts of the Bay Area, including Walnut Creek: it is the fault line between the outer fringes of Bay Area liberal orthodoxy and what I can only describe as “frat boys and wealthier rednecks.” So when word gets out that the inland rednecks are rallying for the trigger-happy cop, the reaction from the likes of sfcitizen.com reads:
“Anyone who supports Johannes and our Law Enforcement Officers may attend. This is a peaceful rally to show our support for Johannes and the injustices he is experiencing.”
I don’t know, I’m not sure which “injustices” we’re talking about here. Killing somebody by mistake, that can put you in prison, right? Is anybody saying that the jury verdict of manslaughter is an injustice? (Obviously, the absurd murder charges* just weren’t going to happen, right? So, what else was there for the jury to choose from?)
Anyway . . . I don’t think I’d call the verdict an “injustice” and I doubt I’d want to attend this rally but dammit, if a few folks out beyond the ocean-cooled hills want to get together and have their own rally for the other party to this awful tragedy, we can snicker at their obviously racist delusions, or we can accept that this is a complicated mess and not merely the simple black-and-white 1960s oppressor-victim narrative that is so precious to Bay Area social-political orthodoxy.
This is 2010. In this day our hearts should be large enough that we can afford compassion not merely for Oscar Grant and his family and friends, for the life cut so suddenly and brutally short, but also for Johannes Mehserle and his family, the other lives that are forever derailed in this stupid tragedy.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2010/08/10/hawks-breakfast/
You realize that I don’t know the names of different kinds of plants and birds and rocks and things. So when I say I saw a hawk this morning flying off with something in its talons, and settle on a roof, and I could see that it had caught a chickadee, what I mean to say is that I saw a larger bird with a hook-shaped beak catch a smaller bird. I found this really interesting and so I stopped and stared up at the hawk, to better see what was going on. The hawk felt a little awkward about my staring. It was just trying to eat breakfast . . . was the hairless bipedal ape going to try to disrupt its meal? No. The smaller birds had become very quiet, because one of their own had just been snatched away for someone else’s meal. I admired the hawk for catching its breakfast, which seems more appropriate than the way I get my meat.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2010/08/17/dream-tim-gunn-drops-the-n-bomb/
(In my dream) Tim Gunn referred to two separate folks with the N word. Not in a hostile manner, just as if n*gg*r were just another perfectly acceptable word for referring to someone. The whole world was upset. In my mind I worked to conjure a sufficiently witty rejoinder around the F word. Really, Tim, you should know better!
So, we were all of us walking down a mosaic-tiled road, as if towards the city of Oz, where we expected to learn from an all-knowing wise man why it was that Tim Gunn had become a racist potty-mouth. The mosaic-tiled road began to break up in to sand dunes, finally coming to an end. I looked around the desert and saw mushroom clouds blooming behind us in a regular pattern like a planted forest. The Earth was being carpet-bombed with nuclear weapons and I briefly wondered to myself if that was possible and practical: why would you carpet-bomb a desert?
I knew the end of everything was at hand, so as the bombs drew near I wrapped my arms around my lover and smothered her fall to the ground. As the heat arrived and I woke from my dream I wasn’t sure if I was holding my sweetheart or a large sack of cat food. I think my brain was trying to plan ahead, because I often feed the cats after I wake up.
Anyway, Tim Gunn, if you ever read this, please don’t ever start to use the N word, especially if Sarah Palin gets elected president.
2 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2010/08/19/if-facebook-cloned-gmail/
Inspired by Anil Dash:
If Facebook built Gmail, only you could see your Inbox.
Six months later, your friends could see your Inbox.
Six months later, friends of your friends could read your Inbox.
Six months later, the Internet could read your Inbox.
Because, although you don’t know it, you really want to share yourself with the world.
Of course, each time the defaults change, you would be able to reconfigure the defaults, but you would have to find the new and improved settings pages and learn how they work.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2010/08/19/sister-helen-prejean-describes-an-execution/
From the August, 2010 issue of The Sun Magazine:
Cook: You’ve said that if executions were made public, people would realize the brutality of this system and work to end it. Yet, in our past, crowds would show up for public executions, some with picnic lunches. In our age of violent media, what makes you so sure average citizens wouldn’t applaud the execution of a killer they were certain was guilty?
Prejean: There would be some, no doubt, who would pull out a beer and cheer that this terrible murderer had been killed. But for most people who see it up close, capital punishment is very unsettling. The head of the Department of Corrections in Louisiana has to arrange the protocol for executions, and part of that is gathering witnesses. At first he thought he’d have a line of people stretching across the Mississippi River waiting to get in, but soon he realized that no one who witnessed an execution asked to come back. When you’re in the death chamber, you see when they have to jab the needle eighteen times into the arm of the condemned. You hear the stumbling last words of those who are killed: “Mama, I love you,” or “I’m so sorry.” Imagine an ordinary American family having their evening meal, and the news comes on, and the kids ask their parents, “Isn’t that murder too?” and, “Why are they putting antiseptic on his arm if they’re going to kill him?” It would not take long for people to cry out against this, and that’s why it will never be public. You have to keep it from the eyes of the people.
Cook: You have served as spiritual advisor to six men who were executed. What were their last days, their last hours, like — for them and for you?
Prejean: Being with someone who is about to die is surreal. When you’re with someone in the hospital who is dying, it’s at least a natural process; you can see them leaving you. When someone is fully alive, and you’re talking to him in the way you and I are talking, you can not get your mind around the fact that in two hours, now one hour, now forty-five minutes, he’s going to be killed.
The death itself is almost scripted: Now they’re walking in. Now I’m telling him goodbye and kissing him on the back. I’m praying for him and asking him to remember me to God. Now the guards have me by my arms. They are sitting me down in a witness chair. There’s the big clock on the wall. There’s the exhaust fan, already turned on, that will suck from the room the stench of the human body burning. There’s the blank glass with the executioner on the other side. They’ve already tested the chair. It’s run on a seperate generator, so nobody can prevent the execution by throwing the main switch. The lights are bright floursecents. There are two red telephones on the wall: If one rings, it is the court issuing a stay of execution. If the other rings, it’s a pardon from the governor. Neither phone rings. The victim’s family is sitting in the front row to watch. The other witnesses and I are sitting behind them. There are two newspaper reporters writing vigorously on narrow spiral pads. And the condemned man is looking at me. And I put my hand out. And he can see my face. And they put the leather mask over his face, so tight I worry he can’t breathe. How quickly they strap him in the chair and step away. It’s an oak chair. They put a cloth soaked with saline solution on his shaved head and then the metal cap. A thick, curled wire runs from the cap to the generator. And then the strap goes across his chest.
I didn’t look the first time, because with the mask I knew he couldn’t see me anymore. With lethal injection he can see me, but not with the electric chair. I closed my eyes and heard the sound of it. The huge, rushing, powerful sound of the fire being shot through his body. Three times. They run 1,900 volts, then let the body cool, and then 500 volts, and then 1,900 volts again. What’s terrifying is that they’ve done autopsies of people who have been electrocuted, and the brain is mainly intact. We don’t know what they feel. We really don’t know, when we kill a human being, what’s going on inside, the pain of it.
Cook: You believe that the days leading up to an execution amount to torture.
Prejean: I don’t say this lightly. According to Amnesty International, torture is “an extreme mental or physical assault on someone who’s been rendered defenseless.” Just imagine if somebody took you hostage in a room and said that in twenty-four hours they were coming to kill you. And, when the time comes, they put the gun to your head and pull the trigger. It clicks. It is an empty chamber. They laugh and walk out and say, Not today. Maybe tomorrow. That’s torture.
Everybody I’ve known on death row has had the same nightmare: they dream it is their time, and the guards come and drag them out, and they are screaming and sweating, and then they wake up and realize they are still in their cell. Just think about when you have to go to the dentist for a root canal. If the appointment is for Friday, all week you are living in dread. That’s just for a root canal.
You can read a longer excerpt at the Sun’s web site.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2010/08/31/blogger-the-internets-tacky-trailer-park/
In case you have ever wondered what I think of Google’s Blogger:
Seriously, Blogger has all the glitz and glamor of Geocities: it is the Internet’s tacky trailer park where people end up because they figure Google (or, in the old days, Yahoo!) must know something about managing blogs, but in reality it is just a neglected, wayward, red-headed stepchild from a former acquisition that one night that Larry Page got drunk after the company ski trip and woke up in Reno . . .
This from the “Blogger” forum after I had an issue posting a comment on one of their blogs.
I like to think they have gotten better over the years, but right now it looks like the way they handle errors is that they have replaced a vague, general error message with a series of codes, and if you feel really enterprising you may eventually learn that there’s a form somewhere where you can paste in details regarding the error code you encountered in to a Google spreadsheet. But no, linking the error display to the part where you describe how you provoked the error . . . that would be too obvious . . .
Yeah, anyway.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2010/09/07/ossements-parisien/
I wasn’t comfortable taking too many pictures of the deceased, so this pile of femurs is all you get.
The sign says “Bones from the Cemetery of the Innocents, deposited July 2, 1809”
Long story short, Paris has had a lot of people buried in it, and every so often they needed to clear old cemeteries–often the mass graves of the very poorest people–and store the bones underground in retired quarries. It was a grim job that was eventually turned in to a spectacle, because once you’ve shuffled hundreds of thousands of femurs you have a lighter perspective on the whole life-death cycle.
The modern catacombs aren’t so garish as they once were. All the same, there’s a cop waiting at the end to reclaim “souvenirs” inappropriately retrieved by tourists.
Feedback Welcome
« Older Stuff . . . Newer Stuff »
Arrr!
. . .
Avast!
Site Archive
