Tag Archives | The Thin Blue Line
Fugitive and Cloistered
detail from unicorn tapestry at the Cloisters
I’m back from New York, which was fun (though, toward the end, unusually cold). Our IP session went well, and later that day Charles and I had a good time being interviewed by Darian Worden, Tennyson McCalla, and Bile of Thinking Liberty, and hanging out with them afterward. I also went with friends to see the Cloisters, which was really beautiful.
I had excellent meals at Barney Greengrass and Pastis, a pretty good meal at Evergreen, and an absolutely dreadful meal at the Heavenly Bamboo Pavilion.
Now I need to start preparing for classes and my Phoenix trip.
In other news, Robert Wicks has a great post (CHT Manuel Lora) on the lessons to be drawn from the Case of the Underpants Bomber.
In still other news, you gotta love this euphemistic description: “a fatal shooting that involved officers” (I’ll leave it to you to guess the nature of the police officers’ “involvement.”)
Best wishes to all for a happy and stateless new year!
War Games Eagle
I plan to stay away from campus tomorrow morning, since it sounds like I wouldn’t be able to get into my office anyway:
Auburn University will have an “active shooter” emergency preparedness training exercise the morning of Wednesday, Dec. 16, so university personnel and local first-responders can practice dealing with a campus emergency or disaster.
Perimeters will be set up around the area of the Student Center and Haley Center for a drill that will include role playing and emergency response by public safety agencies. “We’ll have agencies from across the Auburn area participating in the drill,” said Chance Corbett, associate director of Auburn University’s Department of Public Safety and Security/Emergency Management. “We need to ensure that the university and public safety agencies are prepared and ready to respond to an emergency or disaster on campus.” Participating agencies will include Auburn University, Auburn Police Division, Auburn Fire Department, Lee County Emergency Management Agency, Auburn University Medical Clinic and East Alabama Emergency Medical Services. In addition, a joint information center will be activated on campus that will allow the university’s Office of Communications and Marketing to test its effectiveness in gathering and disseminating information. “In the event of a large incident or an event that attracts national media attention, our department must be prepared to provide the public with timely, accurate information,” said Mike Clardy, director of communications. University officials selected Dec. 16 for the exercise because classes will have ended for the fall semester and activity on campus will be scarce. The exercise is set to begin at 7:45 a.m. and should last until about noon.
I wonder whether the deadline for faculty to submit grades will be extended by an extra half-day to make up for the half-day that we won’t be able to have access to our Haley Center offices? (Okay, I don’t actually wonder that.)
The Thin Blue Line That Protects Us From Canadian Science Fiction Writers
Peter Watts writes:
If you buy into the Many Worlds Intepretation of quantum physics, there must be a parallel universe in which I crossed the US/Canada border without incident last Tuesday. In some other dimension, I was not waved over by a cluster of border guards who swarmed my car like army ants for no apparent reason; or perhaps they did, and I simply kept my eyes downcast and refrained from asking questions.
Along some other timeline, I did not get out of the car to ask what was going on. I did not repeat that question when refused an answer and told to get back into the vehicle. In that other timeline I was not punched in the face, pepper-sprayed, shit-kicked, handcuffed, thrown wet and half-naked into a holding cell for three fucking hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation (although they did try to get me to waive my Miranda rights. Twice.). Nor was I finally dumped across the border in shirtsleeves: computer seized, flash drive confiscated, even my fucking paper notepad withheld until they could find someone among their number literate enough to distinguish between handwritten notes on story ideas and, I suppose, nefarious terrorist plots. I was not left without my jacket in the face of Ontario’s first winter storm, after all buses and intercity shuttles had shut down for the night.
In some other universe I am warm and content and not looking at spending two years in jail for the crime of having been punched in the face.
But that is not this universe.
CHT Ken MacLeod and William Grigg. Updates here. To help Watts, see PayPal and snailmail donation info here. To ensure it never happens again, smash the state.
These Boots Are Made For Walking
Here’s a picture (click to enlarge) of cops arresting some protestors; note the possibly suspicious similarity between the protestors’ bootsoles and those of the cops. This is apparently a famous picture but I hadn’t seen it before; see the discussion here.
Cops and victims wearing same boots
Look Out Kid, It’s Something You Did
As with the Gates incident, there are two stories here, and the media are picking up on only one. Everyone’s asking: why didn’t this police officer know who Bob Dylan was? Nobody’s asking: regardless of whether he was Bob Dylan or Bob the Builder, what right did this police officer have to demand his papers and force him into her car when there was no evidence of his having violated any law?