Phun, Phun, Phun

A couple of weeks back, K (the girlfriend) and I headed off to Philadelphia for a few days (sans critters this time). The motivation for Philly was Marillion returning to the United States on tour for the first time since 2004. It was the third time I’ve seen them, each time a little further from home. At this rate, I’ll wind up in Bangor, Maine, just to go to a concert.

I should mention that K is not a particular fan of prog in general or Marillion specifically. But she is a very patient, loving girlfriend and didn’t blink at the thought of going to the concert with me. The long weekend and short vacation didn’t hurt, of course. She also took a lot of the pictures.* Thanks, honey!

As is typical when we breeze into town for a few days, we stayed downtown (for the most part), on Penn Square.

The night view right outside the hotel, looking up at the Ben Franklin statute on top of city hall, was really cool, but I couldn’t get a good picture.

First day we spent on foot, basically wandering around the neighborhood. The Reading Terminal Market, a huge collection of ethnic food places, was just down the block. It took more than an hour just to work through it, much less decide where to have lunch. We settled on a Cajun place serving gator sausage gumbo. Good stuff!

We also wandered through Chinatown, in which K bought strange, odd, spiky fruit. Yes, we are that kind of tourist.

That night, we dined high style at Morimoto, restaurant of perennial Iron Chef champ Masaharu.

It lives up to the hype. I had the world’s best ramen soup and a kobe beef rice bowl, while K worked through an 8-course tasting menu. Aside from one of the “pallet cleanser” courses (some kind of strawberry and vinegar soda), it was all excellent. So I was told. The restaurant itself has a cool vibe, with subdued neon lights of shifting colors underneath every table. Very conducive to conversation.

We went to Philly a few years ago and managed to avoid one of its more famous attractions – the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It’s a fabulous old building with lots of neat stuff, most of which is arranged in period appropriate rooms. In fact, some of the Asian artifacts are housed in rooms transported from Japan and China. And, of course, that’s where Rocky is.

I wanted to try and check out the relocated Barnes Foundation collection, but it apparently takes an act of Congress to get in. It was outside of the Museum of Art, waiting on a cab, that I spied this abomination.

I hope all the money they’ve made on SUV’s keep Porsche warm at night, since they sold their soul to get there.

That night, it was concert time! The venue, the Theater of the Living Arts, is on South Street, just down the street from Jim’s, one of Philly’s premier cheesesteak venues. So we planned to hit Jims for a bite, then head to the show.

When we arrived, the line at Jim’s was out the door and around the corner. And so we stood. This would be a recurring theme for the evening. To be fair, Jim’s has a system and it works pretty quickly, all things considered. As for the sandwich? To be honest, I wasn’t overly impressed. It was good, don’t get me wrong, but not the revelation I expected.

The TLA is on the next block down from Jim’s, but there wasn’t anybody hanging around outside before the doors opened. Seemed odd, but then we found out why – they line formed down the block and around the corner (in front of another cheese steak place – they’re everywhere!). And so, with an hour before the doors opened, we were faced with this:

K was not particularly enthused about doing more line standing.

Neither was I, to be honest. The venue itself was mostly standing room only (the few seats in the balcony were reserved for VIPs), which meant we were going to spend the rest of the night on our feet. After about an hour, we were let out of the alley and into the venue. We quickly staked our ground at a post near the back of the main room, next to the sound guy’s station.

The TLA is an old movie theater, so the floor slopes down toward the stage, providing some vantage point from the back of the room. It was a good view, for me at least. K did her best to snap a few pictures (sans flash, due to TLA policy), though the conditions made it difficult. Some ended up interestingly abstract, tho'.

This one came out a bit better, H with his MIDI cricket bat. What? It's a cricket bat with MIDI technology for triggering samples and such. Doesn't everybody have one?

Technical problems were the theme of the night. One of H’s mics stopped working, Mark’s keyboards dropped out at the end of one track, and the aforementioned MIDI bat tanked. So no sax samples for “This Strange Engine.” But those roadblocks were easily overcome. The crowd was into it, the band was excellent, and the vibe was just what I’ve come to expect from a Marillion concert – the closest I ever get to a religious experience. I guess I’ll be due for another one in a decade or so.

There’s another Philly tourist attraction in the neighborhood up near the Museum of Art that K and I managed to miss last time we were there. This time, since we were uprooting from downtown a day early and had a car, I was compelled to check it out.

When most folks think of prisons today, the word “penitentiary” is synonymous. It was not always the case. The idea that a prison could be more than just a temporary warehouse for serious criminals (who were most likely to be executed, exiled, or heavily fined) started circulating in the late 18th-century. The first place it was tried was in Philly, at the Eastern State Penitentiary, opened in 1829. It is, truly, what one thinks of when “prison” pops into your head.

It was called a penitentiary because the core of its approach was to force prisoners to be penitent, or humble and regretful, about their sins . . . er, crimes, rather. To accomplish that task, prisoners were kept in isolation from one another at were required to remain silent at all times.

In the ceiling of each cell was a skylight. It was more than a simple way to get light into the cell. It was supposed to be a reminder of the omnipresent eye of God looking down upon them.

The system employed at Eastern State didn’t catch on in the United States very much (a similar system that emphasized work over penitence won out in Gilded Age America), but it was popular overseas. That being said, the general look and vibe of the place is similar to a lot of American prisons built not too long after, including the old West Virginia Penitentiary at Moundsville.

Eastern State was really a marvel of its age, architecturally speaking. It had a system of steam heat and running water (sort of – guards flushed the toilets twice a week, IIRC) long before most of the young United States did. The design itself, with its central control hub and cellblocks spiraling out from there. It allowed for maximum visibility with the fewest number of watchers. Thus, you get views like this.

At the time, it was a noble experiment. Looking back with hindsight and an increasing understanding of how solitary confinement turns people bugfuck crazy, to call it cruel would be an understatement. Thankfully, or maybe not, politics overwhelmed the experiment, as more and more people were sent to Eastern State (the cell block above is an example of one of the later two-tiered ones, built to house more people). It was closed in 1971.

After its closure, Eastern State sat a good long while as folks tried to figure out what do with it. Various plans came and went (including one for redevelopment as high-end condos, built behind the massive outer walls), but nothing materialized. As a result, by the time it became the tourist attraction it is today in 1994, a good bit of it had fallen into ruin. Most of it is maintained that way, and thus you have things like this:

That’s a tree growing down into one of the cells. As a result of the ruin, the place is plenty creepy. No surprise, then, that it’s often used as a set for films (including Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys), TV, and photo shoots.

As I said, we hit Eastern State on our way out of downtown Philly. We relocated because, in a completely happy coincidence, not only was there a Philadelphia Union game the night after the concert, but it was against DC United. I may never turn K into a prog fan, but she’s become quite a fan of the beautiful game.

My prior soccer experiences have all been at DC’s home stadium, RFK, which was built for the Redskins and (olde school) Nationals decades ago. To say it has “charm” is to oversell it a bit. It’s way too big for the average MLS game, but it does lend something to the atmosphere when Barra Brava and the Screaming Eagles can make the stands shake with their drumming.

By contrast, the Union play in a fairly new soccer specific stadium in the Philly burb of Chester, right near New Jersey and Delaware (our hotel was actually in Delaware that night), PPL Park. It sits right on the river, next to a big ass bridge that (thanks to Mapquest) would have spirited us away into Jersey. It’s a much smaller, more comfortable, and enjoyable place to experience a game than RFK.

It also made for some interesting moments during the match. I decided not to buy tickets in the designated “away supporters section,” because I rightly thought it would be full with drum pounding, chanting DC fans and figured we wouldn’t want to spend another night on our feet. As a result, we were in the middle of a section full of Philly fans, many flying the Union colors (I strategically wore my US national team jersey, not a DC one). We blended pretty well, except the grin on my face as the Union impotently tried to score again and again played out over 90 minutes.

As it happened, DC snatched a late goal to win the match. I celebrated quietly to myself.

With that, our jaunt to Philly was over. We ate well, heard some great music, and watch DC United snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Can’t ask much more than that.

* For more pix and bigger versions, see here.

The Vestiges Remain

A few weeks ago I wrote a review of a book, Slavery By Another Name, that makes the persuasive case that slavery in the United States extended well past its official abolition after the Civil War, in the form of a criminal justice system that imprisoned black men on trumped up charges and then rented them out to local businesses as excessively cheap labor. One aspect of the system that kept it rolling was that the county sheriffs who had control of most of those inmates had financial incentives to rent them out and pay next to nothing for their care and feeding.

Those kinds of odd financial arrangements that provided a motivation for state officials to do wrong have a long history in the United States. For example, in Georgia at one time the low-level judges who issued search warrants had only one means of getting paid – issuing warrants ($5 a pop). Obviously, this created a financial incentive for those judges to issue warrants, regardless of whether they were supported by probable cause. In Connally v. Georgia, the Supreme Court held that such system was unconstitutional, as it violated the Fourth Amendment’s requirement for a neutral, detached magistrate to issue such warrants. In doing so, it relied on earlier cases reaching similar results for cases where the judge was only paid if the defendant was convicted and fined and where a mayor, doubling as a traffic court judge, imposed fines upon conviction that went to the town coffers.

Given the sad history laid out in Slavery By Another Name and repeated decisions from the Supreme Court about the dangers of mixing financial motives with law enforcement, you’d think such incentives would be a thing of the past. You’d be wrong:

It took almost three quarters of a century, but one Sheriff in Alabama is finally speaking out against a 1939 law that allows for the state’s 67 sheriffs to keep leftover money the state provides to each municipality for feeding inmates in local prisons.

Sheriff Mike Rainey reportedly received $295,294 from the local, state and federal governments to spend on food for the county’s inmate population. But thanks to the old law, Rainey is entitled to pocket any money left over after he fulfills his responsibility of feeding his inmates.

It’s worth noting that Alabama was pretty much ground zero for much of Slavery By Another Name, so no surprise that the system has held on there for so long. But at least Rainey seems to view his charges as something kind of like human:

Rainey also has ordered the jail to serve healthy, fresh food to inmates.

‘Incarceration is punishment. I know some people think you shouldn’t worry about what an inmate eats, but I think it’s a moral issue,’ Rainey said. ‘They’re not getting filet mignon, but they’re certainly not being served green bologna, nor will they be served something like that.’

Wow, what an enlightened attitude. And he’s a Republican. Credit where credit is due. He’s pushing for the law to change, but prior attempts have stalled, so we’ll see.

What’s really pathetic about the whole thing is figuring out how anybody ever ended up with excess funds in this situation:

The state provides sheriffs with $1.75 per day to feed each inmate. The federal government funds inmates housed in state facilities at $3 per day.

Take This Ballot and Shove It

I’ve already said that I won’t be voting for Barack Obama this fall, as I did in 2008. As a result, it most likely means I won’t vote for anybody in the presidential race (sorry GOP friends – I won’t vote for Romney, either). Given the choices on the state and local races further down the ballot, I might skip out on most of those, too. I’ve decided I can no longer play the “lesser of two evils” game. My decision not to vote if those are the only realistic choices is a political statement, just as much as voting for one side or the other is.

Which is why this column (via) rubs me all kinds of wrong ways. In it, Peter Orszag, a former Obama OMD* director and current vice chairman at Citibank (but I won’t hold that against him, much), argues that the solution to our political mess is mandatory voting. Putting the power of the state behind the decision to vote would do all sorts of wondrous things. In other words, Orszag wants to turn the Government into Diddy:

Douche and Turd
Get More: SOUTH
PARKmore...

Orszag cites Australia as a success story for mandatory voting, which has seen its rate of participation jump from levels similar to ours up to 91%. I’m not sure how a 9% failure rate for “mandatory” voting is really a success, but put that to one side for now. I will concede that Orszag is correct that a mandatory voting law would increase voter participation. Most people do what they’re told, after all, particularly where there’s a punishment for not doing so. This is no shock.

But why take that drastic step? For one thing, Orszag argues that if people had to vote they would pay more attention to issues and thus become a better informed electorate.** I’m not sure that follows, but perhaps some people might take it more seriously if they have to do it anyway. However, his citation to another proponent who asks:

Jury duty is mandatory; why not voting?

makes me wonder what planet he’s living on. Because so many citizens eagerly jump at the chance to serve as jurors. There are no jokes about how a jury is comprised of 12 people too stupid to get out of it or anything, right?

Orszag’s second alleged benefit of mandatory voting is a bit rich, coming from a vice chairman of Citibank, namely that it would reduce the influence of money in elections:

Turn-out-the-vote efforts, often bankrolled by big-money groups, would become largely irrelevant. Negative advertising could be less effective, because a central aim of such ads is to discourage participation in the opponent’s camp.

I’ll assume that’s an accurate statement of where the money is spent now and why, but Orszag presents no evidence to support his argument that mandatory voting would make all that money magically disappear. Voters, after all, still have to actually get to the polls (for the most part), giving candidates and parties an incentive to continue efforts to get them there. And, again, if he thinks that all the money pouring into elections will simply evaporate if everybody has to vote, instead of finding other means of expression, he’s living in a fantasy world.

I’ll at least give Orszag credit for wanting to jump start public participation in elections and politics. After all, more democracy is a good thing, right? Who would argue otherwise? Turns out, Orszag did, just a few months ago:

To solve the serious problems facing our country, we need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.

I don’t even disagree with him that the ability of any group to govern these days is so limited as to make it almost worthless. But, still, I’m not the one trying to get everybody to the polls by force to vote for people who would be hamstrung by the kind procedural limitations Orszag was selling not so long ago.

In the end, what Orsazg doesn’t address is the fact that the decision whether to vote at all, as much as the decision about who to vote for, is a political act. If the slowly slumping number of those who think voting is worth their time concerns folks like Orsazg, trying to force them to vote is the wrong response. The right response is to wonder why people are so certain that voting is worthless and think about how the system might be revamped to change that. But that’s a long, messy, and inconclusive process. Much better to ladle on another legal requirement and declare the problem solved.

* Office of Management and Budget. Not Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, unfortunately.

** He cites research about what Ilya Somin at Volokh calls rational ignorance when it comes to voting. In other words, that since an individual vote is so unlikely to have an impact on an election, it’s rational for voters to spend their time doing things other than becoming informed on the issues. Nobody heeds the lesson of Futurama:

Fry: If I were registered to vote, I'd send these clowns a message by staying home on election day and dressing up like a clown.


Leela: You're not registered?


Fry: Nope. Not vaccinated, either. Besides, it's not like one vote ever made a difference.


Leela: That's not true. The first robot president won by exactly one vote.


Bender: Ah, yes. John Quincy Adding Machine. He struck a chord with the voters by pledging not to go on a killing spree.


Farnsworth: But, like most politicians, he promised more than he could deliver.

Super Lawyer Powers, Activate!

I’ll be the first to admit that the daily grind of being lawyer isn’t exactly glamorous or even all that exciting. In my job, there’s an awful lot of sifting through cases and cold records, heading down argumentative dead ends. My trial-level colleagues do the same with witnesses and such. It’s a grind most of the time, to be honest.

Which is why this story in the New York Times the other day tickled me so much, because it shows a lawyer springing into action like he was responding to the Bat Signal. The story involves a great specimen of a particular Tyranosaur that is only found in Mongolia. In fact, it’s a violation of Mongolian law for it such bones to even leave the country, which meant its presence at an auction in the United States raised a few red flags.

After a series of phone calls, a Houston lawyer named Robert Painter (who had previously done business with the Mongolian government) was retained to stop the auction. And thus he sprung into action, tracking down a federal judge on a Saturday to enter an order to halt the auction. But that wasn’t enough:

Mr. Painter said he sent the order electronically to Heritage [the auctioneers] and then flew to New York to make sure the auction did not proceed. He worried that once the fossil was sold, it would disappear forever.

He arrived to find the fossil being showcased in the auction room.

‘The auctioneer said the sale would proceed contingent on the outcome of a court case,’ Mr. Painter said in an interview.

Mr. Painter said he called the judge, Carlos Cortez, on his cellphone.

‘I stood up, raised my cellphone, and said, ‘I have the judge, and he’s ready to explain to you how this violates the court’s order,’ ‘ Mr. Painter said.

How brilliant is that? You’d think it would bring proceedings to a screeching halt, wouldn’t you?

Alas no, at least not immediately. The auction went forward (the skeleton fetched just over $1 million), although the sale itself it on hold pending litigation. One would think that violating a federal judge’s order would make people quake in their boots. Apparently not.

Still, well done Mr. Painter! I want an action figure, but only if the cell phone with the judge on it isn’t sold separately.

In Which My Irony Meter Explodes

Just before I went on vacation, I saw this odd story in the local paper:

A Boone County native was shot Saturday night in rural Montana while hitchhiking across the U.S., working on a memoir titled, ‘The Kindness of America.’

Ray Dolin, 39, originally of Julian, was sitting and eating on the side of U.S. 2 about three miles west of Glasgow, Mont., when 52-year-old Charles Lloyd Danielson III shot him. The shooting appears to be random, Valley County Sheriff Glen Meier said.
Dolin was shot in the upper arm.

His injuries are non-life threatening.

I didn’t give much thought to it, beyond the obvious irony of someone writing a book about kindness in American being violently attacked by a fellow American. But that’s not quite true, because I also thought that the story just feels weird. Whatever our faults as a people, Americans don’t generally just drive up and shoot people for no reason at all. But I put it out of my mind and went on vacation.

When I got home, what do I find but a follow up:

A hitchhiker’s chilling tale of being shot in a random drive-by along a rural Montana highway quickly unraveled when no gun could be found in the supposed perpetrator's pickup, authorities said Monday.

As usual, when something sounds too good to be true (in this case, like a coincidence out of a piece of fiction), it usually is. Dolin has admitted that he shot himself and carried out the whole hoax to promote his book.* Bad as that itself is, pity the poor bastard he fingered as the shooter – he spent time in jail based on this. Which, if anything, seems to ruin the thrust of Dolin’s book.

Or at least his willingness to talk about it:

Since authorities revealed that they think Dolin shot himself, he has not returned telephone messages seeking additional comment.

Ya’ think?

* Those who shoot people to “promote the sale of my book” generally don’t end well.

Where I've Been

Sorry for the lack of posting the last week or so. I was off on the road . . .












Details shortly.

Friday Review: Diving Bell

As I said in my ROSFest review a few weeks ago, Sanguine Hum was one of the band I went into the festival not really knowing anything about. Seriously, I had not heard note one from this band. All I knew was that their sole release, Diving Bell, had come out in 2010 and had just been rereleased by the new Antenna imprint from Esoteric Records.

My general policy, when it comes to festival bands, is that if they have only one album out I wait until after I’ve seen them perform to pick it up. For whatever reason, my brain has concluded that buying a band’s only album ahead of time and being disappointed is infinitely worse than buying one album out of ten but being equally disappointed. It’s music, I don’t expect it to make sense to anyone but me (and, at times, that’s a stretch).

That proved more difficult at ROSFest than I anticipated. I had seen Diving Bell at a couple of vendor tables during the weekend, but they slowly disappeared as the weekend went on. By the time the band finished it’s set on Sunday morning, everybody was sold out. But not to worry! Although the band explained that they had trouble getting their merchandise across the Atlantic to Gettysburg, they did have about 40 or so CDs with them. To the post-set meet and greet I went, then, with high hopes.

As it happened, the CDs the band had with them weren’t Diving Bell, but a pair of EPs from their prior incarnation, Antique Seeking Nuns (more of them later). I picked those up, anyway, but walked away feeling like an excellent album from a great new band had slipped out through my fingers over the weekend. So I did what any semi-modern man would do in such a situation.

I ordered it off Amazon.

Which is a roundabout way of saying I really liked their set at ROSFest. Thankfully, their studio output doesn’t disappoint, either. I have a hard time pinning down just what it is about this band that I like so much. Part of it, certainly, is the continuous sonic presence of Rhodes electric piano in their tunes. It’s one thing to hear it pop up here and there on a record. It’s quite another for it to be a defining tonality, which is something you generally see in the jazzier corners of the prog world (as I write this, I’m listening to the late and very much missed Alberto Bonomi of D.F.A. work it in that style).

That aspect makes more sense in light of the band’s work as Antique Seeking Nuns, which has a lot of Canterbury influence. Indeed, it’s almost neo-Canterbury in spots. As Sanguine Hum, the band’s sound has shifted somewhat to be more “rock” and incorporate some of the style of modern quasi-prog (think Radiohead or the like), but that Canterbury undercurrent is there all the same.

Long ago in an Email conversation with Robert Pashman of 3rDegree (new album due this fall!), he explained how one of the problems they had in finding an audience was that the band wasn’t “weird” enough for prog fans, but was too weird for the mainstream. I get the same vibe with Sanguine Hum (although they do it with different influences than 3rDegree). On the one hand, there’s nothing going on here that should scare away the music loving masses – this ain’t Magma or Present, after all. On the other, there’s just enough oddness infused in the music that folks interested only in simple background music will find it too dense and, yes, “weird.”

But questions of genre classification and prog purity are pointless – this is an excellent album from an interesting and talented group of guys. Get your own Diving Bell – you won’t regret it. Listen for yourself:



Details
------------
Diving Bell, by Sanguine Hum
Originally released 2010, rereleased 2012

Tracks:
1. No More Than We Deserve (5:08)
2. The Ladder (3:56)
3. Dark Ages (4:42)
4. Coast Of Nebraska (6:15)
5. The Trial (6:06)
6. Nothing Between Us (6:10)
7. Diving Bell (5:46)
8. There's No Hum (4:50)

Bonus tracks for 2012 rerelease:
9. Tonic For The Snoring (4:19)
10. The Eternal Abyss [excerpt] (5:41)
11. Circus For A Dying Race (6:19)

Players:
Joff Winks (guitars, vocals, drum programming & samples)
Matt Baber (Rhodes, synthesizer, percussion)
Paul Mallyon (drums, percussion)
Brad Waissman (bass)

‘Cuff ‘em All!

Sometimes I wonder whether cops are ever taught anything about the Fourth Amendment except for how to work around it. Consider . . .

Someone robbed a bank in Aurora, Colorado (near Denver). Police searching for the robber got a “reliable tip” that the suspect was in a car at a nearby intersection. So what did they do?

‘We didn’t have a description, didn’t know race or gender or anything, so a split-second decision was made to stop all the cars at that intersection, and search for the armed robber,’ Aurora police Officer Frank Fania told ABC News.

Officers barricaded the area, halting 19 cars.

That’s a pretty interesting definition of “reliable,” given the lack of detail in the tip. And since it provided no real way to sort through all the people in those cars:

From there, the police went from car to car, removing the passengers and handcuffing the adults.

‘Most of the adults were handcuffed, then were told what was going on and were asked for permission to search the car,’ Fania said. ‘They all granted permission, and once nothing was found in their cars, they were un-handcuffed.’

What a shock – innocent citizens jumped by cops, ordered out of their cars, and handcuffed for doing nothing at all willingly provided whatever consent the cops needed to finish their sweep. Sadly, I suspect such “consent” would hold up in court. After all, courts have held for years (in the context of when Miranda warnings must be given) that being handcuffed by police doesn’t mean you’re in custody. Why should this be any different?

By the time they found the “suspect” – in the 19th of the 19 cars searched (it’s always the last place you looked!) – the whole operation had taken nearly two hours. I put “suspect” in quotation marks because, based on the reportage, what they found doesn’t really support that conclusion. But that’s not important right now.

What’s important is that you’ve got dozens of people stopped, detained, and otherwise harassed by law enforcement based on the most general of tips. I agree with Eugene Volokh that this seems to be a clear Fourth Amendment violation. Alas, I’m not sure that anything will come of it. In the grand scheme of things, a two-hour detention probably doesn’t rack up much in the way of monetary damages (although I suppose a class action might juice things up a bit). And that assumes that the cops don’t have qualified immunity anyway, as they seem to in most Fourth Amendment cases. As for the “suspect’s” chances at suppression, I’ll leave that to one side for the want of facts.

But, hey, needlessly detained citizens, look on the bright side. Count yourself lucky that the cops were only looking for a bank robbery suspect rather than a designated terrorist. Then they would have just drone bombed the intersection and been done with it. And guess what? All those adults of military age who just happened to perish in the blast get to become terrorists posthumously, too! Collateral damage? What collateral damage?

A Slo Groove For Humpday

I very rarely go into the studio with any concrete ideas about what I want to do (and when I do, they tend to be things that popped into my head during CLE sessions – go figure). I usually just sit down, start plonking about, and see what comes out.

That’s what happened with this track. It springs from a simple two-note riff (if you can call it that) I settled into after twiddling the knobs on the Minitaur. From there I built some chords, some rhythm, and some things to dance on top. A laid back, easy going thing, perfect for the middle of the week. Enjoy!



For the gear heads, this is all Minitaur (basses, obviously) and M50 (pads, arpeggio, and electric piano). Plus the drum machine, of course.

The Sentencing Shuffle

I started my career as a public defender working in state court. Those cases, with a couple notable exceptions, were all about guilt or innocence. They may not have all been whodunits, but even the whytheydunits (as my boss called them) focused on culpability – manslaughter versus murder, self defense, what have you. Sentencing in such cases was mostly an afterthought, at least from an appellate standpoint.

Federal work is almost completely backwards. Fact is, we have very few cases where guilt or innocence is really an issue that can be fought over. Most often, the argumentative heavy lifting comes either before “trial” (of which there are vanishingly few in the first place) in suppression hearings or after trial at sentencing. My trial colleagues start talking about sentencing during their first meetings with clients, usually. It’s where the action really is in most federal criminal cases.

I say all that as background to this interesting story from the Washington Post (via) last week about Ricardo Urbina, a federal district court (aka trial level) judge who recently retired after 31 years on the bench. Largely, it argues, because he’s had enough of passing sentence upon people:

‘I do not have a passion for punishment,’ he said, a statement that helps explain why he is one of the more lenient sentencers on the D.C. federal bench, according to statistics. ‘If there is a way the court can contribute to the rehabilitation process, it is more likely the person will return to the mainstream.’

As an example of the kind of difficult analysis that Urbina is leaving behind, the story focuses on the sentencing hearing for a woman who had helped her boss in a fraud scheme, for which he had already been sentenced to four years in prison:

Because so much money had been stolen, federal prosecutors argued in court papers that Urbina should sentence the former office manager to the low end of the sentencing guideline range of 18 to 24 months in prison.

Her lawyer countered that Borgono deserved just a year of home detention and two years of probation because the Peruvian immigrant, who became a U.S. citizen in 2007, had not reaped a dime in the scheme’s proceeds beyond her $500-weekly salary. She also cooperated extensively with authorities and helped them build their case against her boss, a man sentenced by Urbina to nearly four years in prison. And, the attorney argued, she had the support of her community: The judge’s folder was filled with heart-felt letters from her relatives, friends and even her priest.

In the end, he gave her house arrest, probation, and restitution. Whether that’s the right or wrong sentence I have no clue – good defense lawyering, regardless. But think about what it must do to someone to weigh those kinds of things, day in and day out, and hold such power over the lives of other human beings. No surprise that, after three decades, Urbina would walk away.

As for judges with a passion for punishment . . . well, there’s them, too:

Friday Review: Storia O Leggenda

I’ve got a bad habit of buying my first album by a particular band, getting home and reading some reviews, and discovering that I bought the wrong album to use as an introduction. Thankfully, I didn't make that mistake with Le Orme, one of the classic bands from the 1970s Italian prog scene. My first exposure to them was a hunk of their 2005 NEARFest performance on the Rising to the Surface DVD. So I grabbed Felona e Sonora and Uomo di Pezza and was hooked.

Well, there’s a flip side to digging into a band's catalog in the right place and falling hard - you keep exploring and, eventually, you find a dud. That's the case with Storia O Leggenda. It’s not right to say it’s “bad” - it really isn’t. But it's not a classic and it’s not what really moves me when I think of Italian prog bands.

Le Orme was always one of the more lush, symphonic of bands – much more Genesis than King Crimson, if you catch my drift. So long as they were working through lengthy instrumental sections with occasional vocals, that’s cool..Technically, Le Orme avoided “epics,” but tended to run a lot of shorter tunes together to achieve the same effect. But here, the songs stay short, but are more individualized. There’s a greater emphasis on lyrics and vocals, with the music becoming less involving.

Which leads to a problem of my own limited faculties. One of the cool things about prog is that it really flourished in outposts around the world. Although it’s generally thought of as particular English, it first made popular headway in Italy and eventually spread all over. I’ve got albums from every inhabited continent except Africa, for crying out loud! That means lots of lyrics I have no chance of understanding since they’re, you know, in foreign and such.

Generally, that’s not a problem. With very few exceptions, prog is not about the words, it’s about the music. Vocals in another language don’t pose a problem because the voice itself is more important than the message. Hell, after all these years I’m still not sure what Jon Anderson is on about most of the time, and that’s in English! But it sounds good, right?

Yeah, until the words do start to become more important. It’s one of the reasons I don’t really get a lot of neo-prog with lyrics in other languages. That’s a subgenre where words make more of an impact and if I can’t understand what they’re saying, what’s the point? Unfortunately, that’s the problem I’ve got with really digging into this album. The music is nice enough, but it doesn’t do much more than support the vocals, which might as well be gibberish for all I know. Judging by the cover art, it has something to drooling horses. As a result, I just can’t get that much out of it.

Which is only to say, in the long and storied history of Le Orme, they had an off day. Everybody’s entitled to that.

Details
------------
Storia O Leggenda, by Le Orme
Released 1977

Tracks:
1. Tenerci per mano (4:40)
2. Storia o leggenda (5:05)
3. Il musicista (4:40)
4. Come una giostra (4:25)
5. Se io lavoro (4:20)
6. Un angelo (4:50)
7. Il quadro (4:10)
8. Al mercato delle pulci (4:05)

Players:
Antonio Pagliuca (keyboards)
Aldo Tagliapietra (bass, voice, Indian harp)
Michi Dei Rossi (drums, percussion)
Germano Serafin (guitars)

Saving Us From the Shootout

For the past few years, the UEFA Champions League final – the Super Bowl of European club soccer and, some would argue, the highest level competition in the world – has been played on Saturday, rather than the traditional midweek date for European fixtures. That’s mean good mid afternoon time slot and Fox has therefore run the match on the main Fox network (over the air, as it were) rather than one of its cable outlets. So more Americans get to feast their eyes on the final.

And what a final this year, huh? English club Chelsea’s improbable run ran into Germany power Bayern Munich, who had the benefit of playing the final in their home stadium (as with the Super Bowl, the site of the final is determined years in advance). The two teams slugged it out for more than an hour, before Bayern grabbed a late goal that surely looked like the winner. However, given the script, Chelsea struck back with an even later goal of their own, leaving the two sides tied 1-1 after regulation.

Which meant it all went pear shaped after that. Thirty minutes of overtime produced nothing but insomnia, before the inevitable – penalty kicks. Yes, it was dramatic. Certainly, if you were a Chelsea fan, it must have been sweet (Chelsea prevailed 4-3, with the kicks taken in front of the end of the stadium where Bayern’s fans were seated). But for a neutral or, gods forbid, someone who wasn’t a soccer fan looking in with curiosity, it was an anticlimax.

If you’re a fan of the game, you know that shootouts as means to determine a winner aren’t all that popular. If you’re not a fan, you might rightly wonder what is the point of crowning a champion based on a small part of the game, equivalent to a home run derby in baseball. Maybe that’s why Sepp Blatter, the enigmatic chief of FIFA, the game’s global governing body, is searching for an alternative. Maybe.

It was not always so that penalty kicks were a part of the game:

I was in River Plate stadium (before it was known as Estadio Monumental Antonio Vespuci), Buenos Aires, Argentina, June 25, 1978, when three goals were scored in extra time and the hosts defeated the Netherlands to win the World Cup.

No golden goal. No penalty kick shootout lurking in the minds of players and fans. In fact, I believe that was the last World Cup final that would have actually been replayed, two days later, before the major domos at FIFA realized that each and every final must come to a resolution. Travel plans. The demands of television. Not to mention the strain on the players.

Replays these days in such major tournaments aren’t really feasible, for those reasons (although the F.A. Cup manages to deal with them in most rounds, IIRC). So what’s the solution? In my opinion, the problem isn’t so much PKs themselves as a tie breaker (although I think the old MLS version was more interesting), it’s that the teams involved know that, if they hold out long enough, the game will change into whatever the tie breaker is.

So here’s my solution – let them play. In games where there must be a winner and loser (so the vast majority of matches aren’t impacted), tell the teams going in that they’re going to play until there’s a winner. I’m open to suggestions about allowing extra subs or what the overtime periods should look like (I’ve got no real problem with sudden death, or “Golden Goal” as FIFA dubbed it), but at the end of the day, the winner should score more goals that the other team.

Having watched lots of games that ended in PKs, the sense I get is that once teams get into extra time the goal becomes not winning the game, but avoiding losing it, because the PK scenario greatly equalizes the two teams’ chances. In other words, for large chunks of that half hour, it’s a slow speed kick around section, not a competitive match worthy of a major final. My theory is that, without the safety net of PKs hanging out there, teams would be forced to play to win and would, therefore, score goals.

Granted, there could be games that go on for hours and hours, as some Stanley Cup playoff games are famous for, but I think that would be really rare. After all, since a draw is meaningless neither side has a reason to play for one, right? It would be truly exceptional for two teams to be so well matched (or so astoundingly unable to score) that games would drag on and on as a regular exercise. And when they did stretch on to epic lengths, they would be truly epic. What’s the problem with that?

That being said, I don’t expect anything to change real soon. For one thing, PK shootouts only pop up in knockout matches which, even in tournaments like the World Cup or Champions League, are really rare. Easier just to hope the problem doesn’t pop up this year than worry about dealing with it. And, for all its flaws, the shootout does make things easy on the TV programmers, which more and more runs the sports world.

In other words, we’re presented with a long-term deadlock that nobody can seem to break. Hmm, which end do I want to take the penalties in?

Friday Review: Palimpsest

At the core of Palimpsest is an intriguing idea: people enter a truly weird otherworldly city (called Palimpsest, naturally) by having sex with others who share the same mark – something like a tattoo, but that is actually a map of one particular part of the city. Whom you plook determines where you go in Palimpsest.

But that’s not quite right. That’s sort of like saying that the core of Tommy is a story about a deaf, dumb, and blind kid who loves pinball or that at the core of Brave is a story about a mute girl wandering on a bridge. Since those are both concept albums, the real core of them is the music. The stories (such as they are) are secondary.

Palimpsest is kind of like that. It’s about words – lots of words – more than it is about the characters and what happens to them. It’s not surprising that Valente, in addition to writing a lot of fantasy and sci-fi prose, also writes a great deal of poetry. Palimpsest is, from beginning to end, a feast of words, of descriptions of the bizarre city and the people who are traveling there (not to mention how they’re getting there).

Language is clearly Palimpsest’s strength. Unfortunately, it’s also its biggest weakness, at least for me. Valente gets so wrapped up in descriptions and baroque prose that it’s easy to get lost in the words and skimp on meaning. As a result, character development suffers, as does any kind of real plot momentum, which greatly ramps up with about 1/3rd of the book left, as if Valente suddenly realized she had to actually do something other than have the characters wander around Palimpsest.

Which is understandable, because Palimpsest itself is an easy place to get lost in. Think of the most bizarre kind of world ever visited by Doctor Who, multiplied by a few levels of magnitude, and then given form by animator Hayao Miyazaki. Seriously, it is completely weird in the best sense of the word. For readers, anyway. For the residents there – including a cadre of mute wounded veterans of a war that may or may not be over – and our visiting main characters, the city tends to have some pretty rough edges. When the four characters decide they want to stay in Palimpsest forever, it doesn’t seem like a natural consequence of their nature, but rather a necessary engine to drive the plot.

Ultimately, what left me most unfulfilled about Palimpsest is the questions that I had about the world Valente created, both as it applies to our “real” world and the fictional city. Valente calls Palimpsest a “sexually transmitted city,” but is it the most communicable STD of all time (all four characters begin the book without the mark, sleep with one other person, then have it – a 100% transmission ratio)? Or is there some kind of volition involved in giving it to someone else? What is it about sex that opens the door to Palimpsest? What happens if the person with the section of the city on their body where you want or need to go isn’t attractive to you? What if you’re straight and that person is of the same gender? Three of the four characters are conveniently bisexual, which removes a potential area that would have been interesting to explore. Why do all four have to agree to go permanently for any of them to do so (another quartet had a member die and is permanently shut out)? And how exactly does Palimpsest work, anyway, with its combination of purely magical mythology and steampunk mechanics?

In the end, the word that jumps most to mind when thinking about Palimpsest is one that gets thrown at things like Brave and Tommy, too – pretentious. In and of itself, that’s not a bad thing – I love Tommy and Brave, after all. But I suspect how much one enjoys Palimpsest will come down to how enamored they are of Valente’s verbose style. It keeps me from being truly wrapped up in the book. But there are enough interesting ideas and audacious imagery that it made me think a bit. And that’s never a bad thing.

A final note on something I don’t comment about much when it comes to books. As with lots of books I “read,” I actually listened to Palimpsest via Audible. I’ve never really gotten thrown off by the reader/narrator, but this one really had some issues. Particularly when it came to one character who is Italian, whom she gave an outrageous “that’s a spicy a meataballa” accent (until, near the end, he thankfully lost his tongue). From a quick search in Amazon’s “look inside” feature, the dialogue doesn’t appear to be written that way. If that’s correct, it was a horrible off-putting choice on the reader’s part.

The Details
------------------------
Palimpsest
By Catherynne M. Valente
Published 2009
Nominee, Best Novel – 2010 Hugo Awards
Winner, SF/Fantasy/Horror – 2009 Lambda Literary Awards

Does Genre Matter? Sould It?

Let me tell you about a movie I watched recently . . .

It’s about a 17-year old girl, A, who is on the verge of big things, about to go off to a very prestigious college. She makes a grave mistake, driving drunk and causing a car wreck that leaves a man, B, in a coma and kills his wife and young son. A few years later, after A is released from prison, she seeks out B in order to atone or apologize or . . . well, maybe she doesn’t quite know herself. B, a shell of his former self due to the accident, doesn’t know who she is (juvenile records are sealed, remember). Predictably, yet improbably, they bond, until the awful truth is revealed. A makes one last gesture seeking forgiveness. The end.

If I asked you what genre that film would fit in, what would you say? Drama, broadly, and possibly tragedy, in the classic Greek sense. It’s also a small indie film, of the kind that focuses on only a few characters and their relationships with each other. So far, so good.

Now, let me add a little twist.

The story of A and B play out against the backdrop of a superbly improbable event – the appearance in the sky of a second Earth that, by all accounts, is just like ours (down to having the same people on it). And the last act of forgiveness A does for B is to give up her spot on a spaceship to the other Earth to B, so that he might find his alternate wife and son there.

OK, now what kind of genre are we talking about? It sounds like science fiction, except that the movie almost goes out of its away to avoid any “science,” ignoring the real world calamities that might arise if another planet suddenly appeared very near to ours. Fantasy then, maybe? Or maybe just the general rubric of “speculative fiction” – a simple “what if?” story, without any grander world building ambitions?

The film I’m talking about is Another Earth, a low-budget indie that took Sundance by storm a couple of years ago. It’s very good – the slow dance of the two main characters, although fairly predictable, is very well done – but I’ve seen more than one person up in arms that it dares to call itself sci-fi. Not just in a “this isn’t marketed the right way” sense, but in a “this isn’t sci-fi, therefore it’s crap” sense. As if they feel they’ve been duped. Does that make any sense?

In one way it might. If something is presented to a reader/viewer/listener as “science fiction” or “progressive rock” (to use another genre with hotly contested boundaries) that triggers some particular expectations in their mind. If those expectations aren’t met, they’re disappointed. I understand that. I’ve got albums in my collection that came out of the prog world but don’t really fit the genre, if we’re honest. It took me a little while to let go the “but they’ve got the wrong label!” observation and just get down to the music.

Similarly, while Another Earth is sold as sci-fi (by some, at any rate), it’s pretty clear early on that it isn’t really interested in any of the scientific ideas or problems raised by the sudden appearance of the additional Earth. It’s more of a big blue metaphor, hanging in the sky promising a second chance for our characters. I could understand the frustration if they had tried to deal with the scientific stuff and did it badly, but where that is so clearly not the focus of things, why get hung up on it?

At the end of the day, however, a movie, book, or album stands or falls on its own merits, not how its described, packaged, or sold. To say negative things about a movie because it doesn’t conform to your preconceptions of what you thought it was going to be is awfully closed minded. That doesn’t mean you have to like it – art is subjective, after all, and what moves some people will seem pointless to others. Fair enough. But unless you reach that conclusion with the blinders removed, it doesn’t really count.

At best, genre labels and descriptions are signposts that might guide you to art you would like. If you’ve seen movies X, Y, and Z and they fall under the heading “film noir,” you might want to explore other movies with the same label. But that label doesn’t guarantee quality. Sturgeon was right (or perhaps too generous) – 90% of everything is crap – even within your own pet genres.

I’ve written before about how frustrating it is when writers from outside the genre dip their toes into the speculative fiction pool but furiously deny that’s what they’re doing. It suggests that they have negative preconceptions of what science fiction or fantasy is – pulpy, poorly written, simple escapism, etc. – that they don’t want linked to their work. It’s unseemly and reeks of snobbery. Readers or viewers who do the same thing, and link genre purity with quality, aren’t any better.

Friday Review: Destination Moon

In his penultimate column for FilmCritic.com, John Scalzi laid out nine sci-fi flicks “you should see that you probably haven’t.” I was pleasantly surprised to have either seen all of them or have them in the Netflix queue, with one exception. I knew the name Destination Moon, but had no idea it was a George Pal production and was co-written by Robert Heinlein. With that kind of pedigree, I immediately hit Netlfix and put it at the front of the line. So, was it a journey worth taking?

I think so, although more for archaeological purposes than sheer entertainment. Made in 1950, Destination Moon has a hilariously overwrought “American industry, fuck yeah!” setup that makes you wonder if Ayn Rand, in addition to Heinlein, had a hand in the script. After a governmental rocket program is scuttled by sabotage (done, probably, given the times, by filthy commies!), private industry takes over. A rocket is built to take a crew to the moon (the mechanics of which are explained by Woody Woodpecker). Meddlesome bureaucrats try to stop the launch (due to concerns over its nuclear propulsion system), which proceeds just steps ahead of a court injunction. Really.

Once the rocket launches, things really get off the ground, so to speak. From there on out, Destination Moon is a solid piece of 1950s hard sci-fi, complete with mathematical calculations and legitimate concerns about the safety of the whole enterprise. Of course, some of what is on screen we know now is wrong – laughably so, in some cases – but given where we were at the time, it’s pretty solid.

Unfortunately, the focus on hard science makes for a somewhat dry dramatic arc. Our heroes reach the moon, but this isn’t the moon of Georges Méliès or H.G. Wells?. There are no natives who take our heroes hostage. Not even any man-bats or what have you. Only rocks, dust, and a spectacular view of the Earth. Supreme credit to Pal and his crew for not trying to create excitement at the expense of accuracy. Shame it makes things a little bloodless.

More to the point, it forces us to focus on the heroes themselves who are, to put it mildly, barely defined at all. The notable exception is the second-string radio operator, the walking stereotype of a Brooklyn dimwit, who becomes the audience surrogate when things need explained, in spite of the fact that we all saw the damned cartoon not too long before. He’s hammered in as comic relief that just doesn’t work.

Thus, when drama finally arrives on the Moon, in the form of a variant on “The Cold Equations,” it’s really hard to care that one of the four crew members might have to get left behind to die, especially if it’s the annoying guy from Brooklyn. In perhaps the only real sop to story ahead of realism, the crew has a “Eureka!” moment and figures out a way to leave the Moon safely. So nothing’s really lost, for all that.

If only they would actually get home. It’s ironic that Destination Moon ends with the rocket on its return journey to Earth, but before reentry. We know from Woody that the rocket will deploy a series of parachutes to slow its descent before landing. Unfortunately, nobody seems to have addressed the problem of reentry temperatures and, thus, it seems that our heroes are destined to escape from the Moon only to burn up upon return to the Earth (or die in a fiery crash). Again, it’s likely they didn’t know any better at the time, but still.

While Destination Moon lacks quite a bit as a film, one thing going for it are its exquisite visuals (it won an Oscar for visual effects). It’s clearly dated to 21st Century eyes, but they do a fantastic job of servicing the story and providing some unique views of places nobody had ever been before.

Destination Moon is a odd one. It’s got a cheesy 1950s B-movie sentimentality, but it’s visually impressive and scientifically rigorous (given the times). We rarely see that in modern sci-fi. So maybe it’s more impressive than I give it credit for.

The Details
------------------------
Destination Moon
Released 1950
Directed by Irving Pichel
Written by James O'Hanlon, Robert Heinlein, Rip Van Ronkel
Starring John Archer, Warner Anderson, Tom Powers, et. al.

The Virtual Sky Is Falling! Or Maybe Not

I’m all for good stories about media-fueled inflated panics. Y2K. The Rapture. The world coming to an end according to the Mayans. Good stuff, all. But there comes a point where it’s hard to tut-tut the media for feeding a public frenzy when there doesn’t appear to be any evidence that’s what’s going on. Sort of an inflated panic about inflated panics, as it were.

Did you know there’s going to be an Internet “apocalypse” on July 9? Me neither. But according to this article at Salon:

The apocalyptic story line was once reserved for truly apocalyptic events. Nuclear war. The return of Christ. Environmental or economic collapse. But it’s 2012, and the apocalypse has become the basis for everything from Super Bowl commercials to summer romantic comedies . . . Just read coverage of the so-called Internet Doomsday virus, which will supposedly strike and shut down the Web on July 9.

Here’s the thing – the Salon piece doesn’t cite, link to, or quote any of that coverage. If it’s so pervasive, I figured a quick Google search would provide a cascade of it. Alas, all I found was a few techy articles and links back to the Salon piece. This article at TechRepublic about the underlying problem (and how to fix it), too, begins:

If one were to believe some headlines, there’s an Internet apocalypse coming on July 9, 2012, when hundreds of thousands of computers will be unable to access the Internet because of actions by the FBI.

Again, however, there are not quotes, cites, or links to these pervasive headlines. I’m pretty plugged into the news cycle, especially when it comes to Net-related stuff and I’ve never heard of this impending doom. Given the roots of the alleged panic (the FBI is involved, after all), you’d think that it would have spawned some good conspiracy theories, at least. I haven’t found any. The actual details of the criminal investigation are kind of interesting, though, and are set out in the Salon piece.

Don’t get me wrong – the media frequently latches onto some small problem and blows it entirely out of proportion. Like this:

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or this:



So it’s good to hold them accountable when they do. But I’m not sure that’s happening in this case. If you’re going to get into a panic about a bullshit panic, at least provide some evidence of the panic in the first place, all right?

In Defense of Janus

In Roman mythology, Janus was the god of doorways, with two faces – one looking towards the future, the other two the past. In a column over at The Guardian, Bernard Harcourt invokes Janus in pondering what he sees as the “two-faced liberalism” of the United States (via) :

This tension, when it gets acute, gives rise to what I would call ‘two-faced’ or ‘Janus-faced liberalism’. Over the last 40 years, during a period characterized by increased faith in free markets, in deregulation, and in privatization, America's Janus-faced liberalism has worsened and fueled the uniquely American paradox of laissez-faire and mass incarceration. In the country that has done the most to promote the idea of a hands-off government, our government runs, paradoxically, the single largest prison system in the whole world.

As a kind of case study for his argument, Harcourt highlights two apparently contradictory recent bits of Supreme Court news – the oral arguments about the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act and the Court’s decision in Florence v County of Burlington, in which the Court upheld the policy of a pair of local jails in New Jersey to strip search everyone who comes into their possession, without any need for suspicion that they are dangerous or in possession of contraband. In particular, he notes that Justice Kennedy (ever the swing vote in close cases) appeared to have real difficulty with the ACA mandate during oral argument, but authored the opinion upholding the searches in Florence.

I saw a lot of similar comments on the web in the wake of Florence – it came out the week after the ACA arguments, which were still being dissect ad nauseum in the press. While I sympathize with them, I think they reflect a layperson’s misunderstanding of how courts work. Harcourt has his own theory about where the Janus stuff comes from in modern America, but he, too, overlooks the practicalities of court decisions.

Hard as this is to imagine, when lawyers go to court and ask a court to do something – or to stop someone else from doing something – the winning argument is not going to be “because it’s wrong.” Or “because it violates ideals of liberty.” Although those kinds of generic sentiments might come up in the rhetoric around an issue, when you drill down into things, courts deal with laws on the books and prior precedent, not first principles.

As an example, a lot of the populist outrage over the ACA comes from the “gubmint can’t make me do that!” standpoint, regardless of what gubmint it is we’re talking about. The actual legal case against the ACA mandate, on the other hand, is rooted in a much more technical and (usually) boring question – does the Constitution give the federal government the power to regulate this activity? Yes, “liberty” in the generic sense plays a role in the debate, but it’s really more about the Commerce Clause and the cases interpreting it.

By contrast, Florence isn’t about a grant of power to the federal government, but about limits on that power and the power of the states (via the Fourteenth Amendment). Again, the question isn’t whether a blanket strip search policy violates generic ideals of “liberty.” It’s whether the Fourth Amendment, and the cases interpreting it, prohibits the state from having such a policy. Whether such a policy is necessary* is not as important as whether it’s permissible. Like it or not, the Fourth Circuit is pretty much dead on its feet for civilians, much less inmates. Courts have to deal with that baggage when resolving new questions in that area.

When viewed in light of those realities, Kennedy’s position in both cases makes a bit more sense, mainly because it’s clear he’s not dispensing opinions based on generic concepts of “liberty” or what have you. He (and the rest of the Supremes and every other judge in the country) decide individual cases that raise discrete issues, not big picture questions of political philosophy. His views on those sorts of questions probably inform his decisions in some way, but they are hardly the only concern.

Popular reaction to court decisions, Supreme Court decisions in particular, tend to break down into either “good” or “bad,” and rarely go beyond that. To the extent that they do, reactions most often arise from a particular person’s political or philosophical positions, not the law that actually controlled the decision. I understand why such folks can find the Court to be two-faced in some areas, and maybe it really is. More likely, it is as I have said many times before, much more complicated than that.

* As Harcourt points out, none of the federal agencies responsible for dealing with prisoners use a blanket strip search policy and rely on individualized determinations of risk. Nonetheless, the Obama administration argued in favor of the decision the Court ultimately made. Another swing and a miss.

Friday Review: ROSFest 2012

For the second year running, I made the pilgrimage to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, last weekend for the Rites of Spring Festival, aka ROSFest. As I wrote in my review last year, Gettysburg seems like an odd choice for a prog festival, since it’s not exactly a huge population center. But between the venue and the small town amenities nearby, it’s probably the perfect place for such a thing. So how did this year’s fest measure up? Pretty damned well.

First up for the Friday night double header was British neo-proggers DeeExpus, who you may remember from a recent Friday Review. They led off with the killer title track epic from The King of Number 33, which was quite a bold choice. It’s always difficult to start off a set with 25 minutes worth a music, after all. Unfortunately for me, that choice meant that once that track was over, the rest of the set was downhill, as it’s by far my favorite of theirs. The rest of their set was enjoyable, but never hit the heights of their opener.

Friday night’s headliner was Sweden’s Karmakanic, one of numerous bands with links back to The Flower Kings that were part of this year’s ROSFest. Karmakanic is the project of bassist extraordinaire Jonas Reingold and owes more to his years with The Tangent that with The Flower Kings, bringing it more fusion and jazz elements. That being said, the almost annoyingly upbeat vibe of The Flower Kings pops up a lot, particularly in the lyrics. Their set was noteworthy for several lengthy jams that let Reingold, guitarist Krister Johnson (another alum of The Tangent), and keyboardist Lalle Larson to stretch out. Given ROSFest’s reputation for catering to the “safer” side of the prog spectrum, that may be as far out as any band’s been on that stage. They closed with a killer rendition of “Send a Message from the Heart” and an unexpected Genesis cover (“Undertow” from . . . and Then There Were Three – not exactly their proggiest moment). A highlight of the fest for me.

Opening up Saturday morning was the Aaron English Band, which I knew very little about, having only listened to a few samples here and there on the Web. My impression, confirmed by their set, was that they would be a good case study for the endless “what is prog?” debates, as their stuff sounded is more like well crafted grown up rock and roll than “prog” proper. In that way, their material reminded me a bit of Kevin Gilbert, whose stuff resides in that same region of progginess. Which has nothing to do with quality, of course. I enjoyed their set quite a bit and picked up a couple albums afterwards. They did several interesting covers (like this one) that really take the original and change it up in clever ways. A good opening to the day.

I picked up Resistor’s Rise prior to ROSFest, to get familiar with the band. It’s anchor is a whimsical 35-minute epic called “The Land of No Groove,” about four musicians who journey the world in search of real music. Not surprisingly, Resistor is a four-piece band (although the names have been changed to protect the innocent, I imagine)! Also, not surprisingly, their set led to a full presentation of “The Land of No Groove.” Resistor would be equally comfortable in the jam band camp, I think, with long instrumental excursions fueled by twin guitars (and, occasionally, flute or violin) and a loose, laid back feel. I enjoyed their set a bunch and will have to track down some more of their albums.

Hasse Froberg’s Musical Companion – HFMC – is the clunky moniker for the side project of Hasse Froberg, lead vocalist and secondary guitarist for The Flower Kings (see, there they are again). I hadn’t heard note one from them going into their set. On the heels of their just released second album, HFMC blasted through an energetic set of prog-tinged classic rock. They went over well, but I’ll admit they didn’t really do anything for me. I don’t think it’s a “not prog enough” situation (see above), there just wasn’t anything that jumped out to me about their set. It could also be that, on a late Saturday afternoon and five bands in, I was aurally drained.

Saturday’s headliner was IQ, one of the first bands I discovered when I plunged into the prog world back in college. I saw them at the late 3 Rivers Progressive Rock Festival outside Pittsburgh a few years ago and was stoked when they were announced for ROSFest. I was more stoked when they announced they would do their 1997 concept album Subterranea in its entirety. When they did, in its manifold multimedia entirety. Unfortunately, travel snafus got the band on late (killing planned encores) and things got a little rough in spots (Peter Nichols’s voice was going by the end), but those couldn’t take away from the epic sweep of the performance (aided, in one point, by Resistor main man Steve Unruh on violin). Great capper to a solid day of good music.

First up Sunday morning was British quartet Sanguine Hum, which would otherwise be the winner in the “best name” competition for the weekend if the previous version of the band hadn’t been called Antique Seeking Nuns. No kidding. This was another band I went into the festival without knowing anything about and was pleasantly surprised. Their keyboard player rocked a real Rhodes for their set, which set them off sonically in a different direction than anybody else. They were also the least epic of the bunch, which was a nice change of pace. If anything, they were a bit too laid back for the Church of Prog slot, but that’s hardly their fault.

IOEarth (also British) was the final blank slate for me this year. They went over like a house of fire and, no doubt, laid down a set full of energy, scorching guitar work, and powerful female vocals. Alas, their charms are mostly lost on me. I had the same reaction to the band in this slot last year – District 97 – which was also a minority viewpoint. They’re just too heavy, too riffy for my tastes. I was also put off by a lot of canned backing tracks early in the set. Having said that, it was an enjoyable enough set (the guitarist had a great rapport with the crowd). I just won’t be buying their back catalog.

Discipline is a band I’ve got a weird history with. Their 1997 release Unfolded Like Staircase was hailed as a classic (best album of the 1990s, I’ve read more than once), which meant that, by the time I got a hold of it, it was so dipped in hype that I was prejudiced against it. I’ve softened over the years, but I still wouldn’t call myself a huge fan. That being said, I wondered how they would come off live. Turns out, they came off really fucking well, by far the most intense set of the fest. Even with the guitar player having a decidedly off night (I heard someone say his hands were cramping), they were excellent. Whatever misgivings I’ve had in the past, I’m firmly a fan of Discipline now. Note the capital “D,” please!

Wrapping things up on Sunday night was Agents of Mercy, another Swedish offshoot of The Flower Kings, in this case including the King himself, Roine Stolt. Along for the ride are Jonas Reingold and Lalle Larson of Karmacanic. Agents is a little grittier and heavier than The Flower Kings, but otherwise you can see Stolt’s DNA woven throughout their symphonic prog. Confession time – I’ve never been a huge fan of The Flower Kings. They remind me of chicken soup for the progger’s soul, more than anything else. Not bad, mind you, but not particularly enthralling, either. So while I enjoyed Agents’ set, it wasn’t the high point of the festival.

What was a high point for a lot of people was the Agents encore, which became a kind of Flower Kings reunion, with Hasse Froberg joining Stolt and Reingold (among others). Neat to see and hear, if only for its uniqueness.

Some of these blurbs make it sound like I was less than enthused with ROSFest this year. That’s not really true. Fact is, none of the bands this year were “bad” in the sense that I thought of walking out and doing something else. And some of them were brilliant. In addition, I think there was a good deal of variety this year, within the bounds of the more melodic branch of prog that the fest caters to. You can’t ask for much more than that, can you?

Pulling the Monkey Wrench Out of the Machinery of Death

Last year I wrote about an interesting dispute playing out in New England about a man named Jason Pleau. To recap, Pleau, who is serving 18 years in prison in Rhode Island, has been indicted on several federal charges (including robbery and murder) that could expose him to the death penalty. When the feds invoked the Interstate Agreement on Detainers to have Pleau transferred to federal custody to be prosecuted, Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee invoked a little known provision of the IAD to deny the request, on the grounds that Rhode Island doesn’t have the death penalty and the feds shouldn’t step in and use it there. Undaunted, the feds filed a writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum to obtain Pleau. Rhode Island again said no, arguing that it’s denial under the IAD controlled.

The case went to federal court and, to the surprise of lots of observers (including me!), the First Circuit Court of Appeals held (2-1) that the feds had no right to Pleau. Once the feds used the IAD procedure, they were bound by its outcome. Last week, the entire First Circuit, sitting en banc, vacated that decision and held (over two dissents) that the IAD provisions don’t trump the good old fashioned Supremacy Clause in the Constitution, meaning that the feds get what they want.

The en banc decision produced a dissent that I find fairly compelling. If nothing else, the court’s ruling makes the IAD almost superfluous in this area, if the writ can be used anytime there’s a hang up. But I suspect the case will die here. It’s an interesting legal issue, but incredibly fact specific and unlikely to recur with any kind of frequency, which means the Supreme Court is unlikely to take the case. But, as you can see, I’ve been wrong before.

What will really be interesting to see is whether the feds, after fighting this battle, will be inclined to do anything other than seek the death penalty. Pleau offered to plead guilty in Rhode Island to the underlying offenses and take life. It would be too easy if the feds made the same offer and were done with it, right?

Friday Review: Slavery by Another Name

You’ve heard of the “banality of evil,” the theory that great evils aren’t perpetrated by supervillains or the criminally insane, but by ordinary folks who think they’re doing the right thing. I’d like to add a corollary to that – the “redundancy of evil” – in that when unjust attitudes and policies are enshrined in law, the evil wrought by them is so repetitive and so mind-numbingly predictable that it tends to become second nature. At the very least, it loses some of its sting in the retelling.

That’s the only real fault of Slavery by Another Name, an exhaustive survey of one of the country’s overlooked indignities. It focuses on a period where, although slavery had technically been abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment, it nonetheless continued to exist in de facto fashion in many southern states. Many states had convict labor programs, in which prisoners serving criminal sentences were leased out to private industries. More specifically, someone would be arrested for a minor crime, sentenced to pay a fine and court fees (which escalated the more one insisted on his innocence – shades of Brazil), and then, when he was unable to pay it all, sign a “contract” with a private concern who would pay the fine/fees in return for a period of labor.

As Blackmon demonstrates, this system was used to hoover countless black men into the system on, at best, minor charges that were unevenly enforced and, at worst, completely fabricated charges (many records, he reports, don’t even note the actual charge for which someone was later convicted and sentenced). Unable to pay the fines and fees, they essentially became chattel, bartered and traded from state officials (local sheriffs, mostly) and private concerns. They were sent to cotton plantation, mines, and other concerns that fueled the industrial development of the South after the Civil War.

To call conditions brutal would be an understatement. As Blackmon explains, in mind numbing detail, work conditions were little better than they were during antebellum slavery and, in some cases, even worse. A slave owner, after all, at least had a motivation to protect the investment he made in a particular slave. An industrialist leasing convicts, however, had no such motive. When one died (and they did, in scores), he’d simply order up some new ones.

As I said, sometimes Blackmon gets bogged down in the atrocities he uncovered, which is only natural. Maybe that’s why the middle section of the book, which details the federal government’s attempts to prosecute the perpetrators in the early years of the 20th Century was the most interesting portion of the book for me. Essentially, Teddy Roosevelt tried a bipartisan reach out that would make Obama proud – appealing to “reasonable” southern Democrats in order to create a bipartisan (and bigeographic) solution.

Of course, it didn’t work. For one thing, while the Thirteenth Amendment eliminated legal slavery, Congress had not at that point actually made engaging in slavery a crime. That left federal prosecutors (‘cause the local ones sure as shit weren’t doing anything) tied to a statute originally enacted to deal with peonage in former Mexican territories. In the end, although lots of guilty pleas were generated, the sentences were mostly small fines that went unpaid. One person (if I’m remembering correctly) actually went to prison. Some of those who otherwise pleaded guilty went right back to business afterwards.

The other problem, of course, is that these were not simple criminal prosecutions. They struck directly at the heart of the post-war South’s conception of itself and the role of freed blacks in it. Woven through the tales of torture and death in work camps are asides about lynchings, race riots, and virulent white supremacy (not all confined to the South, of course). Potential witnesses feared for their lives, as did some law enforcement officers. It’s no surprise that the system perservered during those years.

In fact, after that initial Roosevelt attempt to curtail the practice, things ran smoothly until the beginning of World War II, when the federal government stepped in again. Not based on any great principles of justice or racial equality, mind you, but because they recognized the propaganda value of the practice to the Nazis and Imperial Japanese (one prosecution in Texas is praised in the local paper solely for denying the Japanese a means to appeal to our own disaffected minorities). By that time, some other demographic shifts made it possible to squash the industrial slavery system once and for all.

Understandibly (given the title), Blackmon’s focus in the book is on how the slave labor system was used to keep nominally free blacks in a state of subservience. But two other things jumped out at me throughout the book that I think speak to other aspects of the system.

For one thing, the entire scheme was designed to use the law, or the patina of the law, to keep blacks in their place. The men who sent convicts into industrial hells were sheriffs, judges (usually of the low level magistrate types), and other officials. They weren’t working outside the law, they were using the law for their own ends. It was the gloss of legality that allowed them to perpetuate the scheme on a populace that was largely ignorant (and kept intentionally so) of how such things work. Not to go all Godwin, but there’s a frightening similarity to the horrors of the Third Reich, many of which were written into the statutes to make them “legal.”

For another, the entire system is an example of the sickening synergy of a public trust (the treatment of prisoners) and unregulated free enterprise. Presented with a vast supply of nearly free labor, with no recourse to and legal protections for abuse and mistreatment, industrialists did what they tend to do – push ethics and morality to one side and do what’s best for the bottom line. It’s a cautionary tale for a country where one major political party still thinks the solution to any problem is less regulation and getting out of the way of “job creators.” History shows what happens when that’s taken to an extreme.

Often when we look at history, especially the history of atrocities committed in our own past, we do so with a modern perspective of moral superiority. Such barbarity wouldn’t happen again, surely. We’re better people now, right? Evidence suggests otherwise. For-profit prisons are all the rage, to the point where one company offered to buy several states’ prisons (in return for a guarantee of occupancy, of course). Such privatization of public obligations have led to scandals like the one in Pennsylvania where two judges got kickbacks from a private prison company for sending them juveniles to lock up. Or situations like this, in which a private prison company simply packs up and moves out of state when a federal judge calls its juvenile facility a “cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts and conditions”. And did I mention that debtor’s prisons are making a comeback?

Blackmon has made a great contribution to our understanding of our own history. It would be a shame if people see it only as that, tut tut about how evil the olde days were, and shuffle it down the memory hole.

The Details
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Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
By Douglas A. Blackmon
Published 2009
Winner, 2009 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction