Perception Bias
These are just a few of the opinions people fervently believe at this moment.
Michael Brown, Jr. was murdered.
Officer Darren Wilson should be tried by a jury.
The grand jury failed in its duty.
Other opinions are also fervently believed.
Officer Darren Wilson was legitimately in fear for his life.
Officer Wilson was justified in killing Michael Brown.
Michael Brown, Jr., had committed a crime and in resisting arrest, committed another.
We can argue over which opinions are better supported by the evidence available but the truth is that only two people knew the truth and one of them is now dead. The question is, can we as a society, as a nation, as human beings; find a way to ensure that Michael Brown, Jr., is the last unarmed teenager of color to die at the hands of a white police officer?
It is difficult for any truly impartial observer to not understand why people of color in general and African-Americans in particular hold the belief that the system of justice in the United States of America is not biased against them.
I have a good friend who points out that I cannot truly understand the "Black Experience" and he is right. I've never had to live in fear that the flashing lights of the cop car pulling me over might be the beginning of the last moments of my life; solely due to the color of my skin. I'll never know that fear and that is why I agree with my friend.
But I can understand parts of why my friend feels that way. I'm trying harder than ever to do so. I'm a product of my environment and in the world where I grew up, race wasn't much of an issue. My friends came from every race present in our mixed race neighborhood. We played sports together. We helped one another. Sometimes we fought, but it wasn't about race. Goodness knows I got plenty of "race relations training" during my military service. I like to believe that I will never treat a person with any less respect due to their race, ethnicity or any other such factor.
That means speaking up against injustice. Not just the specific injustice done to Michael Brown, Jr., but the systemic injustices that are done daily. Those who defend the fact that African-Americans make up such a large percentage of the prison population by claiming they commit the larger percentage of criminal behavior miss the factors that cause much of that crime to be committed. All of us who are part of the so-called 99% are victims of economic inequality, although most of us to a lesser degree.
I'm going to quote a different friend who is a person of color. He said "in the hood, there are three ways to get out. Sports, crime or college. The first is hard, the last is harder and the middle all too easy." In a nation where those who earn a living as professional athletes number only in the thousands, the first option isn't viable for many, let alone most. The last option is made much harder by our unwillingness to provide equitable educational opportunity in the least well-off areas.
Until we address these inequities, there will be no end to the list of victims whose name Michael Brown, Jr., was added to.
* * *
It's a word we do not use very often. Sesquicentennial refers to the 150th anniversary of an event. In this case, the term refers to the founding of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Back in 2013, the school began an ambitious fundraising campaign that is scheduled to end in 2016 with a goal of adding $300 million to the school's endowment.
Bill Cosby was named as one of the four "celebrity co-chairs" of that campaign. Now, in the wake of the growing number of allegations that he committed sexual assault, he and the university have cut ties.
Fundraising is a constant at both public and private universities. The allegations against Cosby would clearly damage his viability as a fundraiser and it is no surprise that the university would move to distance themselves from him. What is surprising to me is that it wasn't the allegations themselves that appear to have been the catalyst, but the news that Mr. Cosby gave a deposition wherein he disclosed that he made a deal with a tabloid to prevent them from running a story involving these allegations.
Mr. Cosby has no duty to speak out, but there is no way his legacy will ever be free from the stain of these accusations until he does.
Update: Since this was written a couple of days ago, Mr. Cosby has resigned from his position as a trustee at Temple University.
* * *
There are people active in the movement to prevent domestic violence (a very worthy cause, BTW) who are speaking out about the arbitrator's decision to overturn the NFL's indefinite suspension of former Baltimore Ravens player Ray Rice. They claim it sends a message that domestic violence isn't all that serious a matter, perpetuating the myth that this isn't a big problem.
That's not the message that was being sent at all. There are several messages involved here that deserve to be highlighted in the optics of the situation (if everyone else can overuse the term optics, I might as well misuse it myself on occasion). First of all, the NFL's commissioner Roger Goodell did not have the authority to unilaterally increase a punishment already put into place. There needed to be a compelling reason for increasing the penalty and under the terms of the agreement between the NFL and the Player's Association, no such reason existed.
In fact, the problem is with a system of justice where a videotape existed like the one below, and those who enforce the laws determined that no criminal action was warranted:
Random Ponderings:
So Yahoo runs an article about Eliza Coupe getting engaged and on the same page runs their bio of her showing she's already married. Whoops.
The fattiest chain restaurant food is the Outback Steakhouse's Blooming Onion. Nearly 3,000 calories. Wow.
Someone needs to tell the Athletic Director at Nebraska you don't announce the firing of a football head coach in a mass email to your players. Especially one that begins "Dear Student-Athlete."
It is kind of difficult to grasp why someone who has the right stuff to earn a position as communications director for a member of Congress can say something truly mean about the children of the president on social media.
Was Ray Rice arrested? Yes. Was he charged with a felony? Yes. Was he allowed to enter a first-time offender program reserved for non-violent offenses? Yes. Were less than one percent of men charged with domestic violence in New Jersey over the last three years allowed to enter this program? Yes. Wonder how that happened?
I'm guessing that the doctor from Venezuela will probably never again joke about carrying explosives when boarding a plane, after he will pay a fine of more than $89,000 for doing so. Where's the humor in such a joke?
One has to wonder how Elizabeth Lauten managed to get a job as communications director when she's such a moron. (I'm repeating this pondering in different words, for emphasis)
I've seen some whacky lists of the so-called "best" war movies on the web, although none of them have included "Stripes" (yet). I won't presume to know the best war films, but here is a partial list of my favorites:
"Lawrence of Arabia"
"Bridge on the River Kwai"
"Full Metal Jacket"
"Apocalypse Now"
"Platoon"
"Saving Private Ryan"
"The Caine Mutiny"
"Schindler's List"
"Zero Dark Thirty"
"Black Hawk Down"
"Dr. Strangelove"
"Das Boot"
"Letters from Iwo Jima"
"Where Eagles Dare"
"The Dirty Dozen"
* * *
December 3rd in History:
915 – Pope John X crowned Berengar I of Italy as Holy Roman Emperor.
1799 – War of the Second Coalition: Battle of Wiesloch – Austrian Lieutenant Field Marshal Anton Sztáray defeats the French at Wiesloch.
1800 – War of the Second Coalition: Battle of Hohenlinden – French General Moreau decisively defeats the Archduke John of Austria near Munich. Coupled with First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte's earlier victory at Marengo, this will force the Austrians to sign an armistice and end the war.
1818 – Illinois becomes the 21st U.S. state.
1834 – The Zollverein (German Customs Union) begins the first regular census in Germany.
1854 – Battle of the Eureka Stockade: More than 20 gold miners at Ballarat, Victoria, are killed by state troopers in an uprising over mining licences.
1898 – The Duquesne Country and Athletic Club defeated an all-star collection of early football players 16-0, in what is considered to be the very first all-star game for professional American football.
1901 – In a State of the Union message, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt asks Congress to curb the power of trusts "within reasonable limits".
1904 – The Jovian moon Himalia is discovered by Charles Dillon Perrine at California's Lick Observatory.
1910 – Modern neon lighting is first demonstrated by Georges Claude at the Paris Motor Show.
1912 – Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia (the Balkan League) sign an armistice with the Ottoman Empire, temporarily halting the First Balkan War. (The armistice will expire on February 3, 1913, and hostilities will resume.)
1919 – After nearly 20 years of planning and construction, including two collapses causing 89 deaths, the Quebec Bridge opens to traffic.
1925 – World War I aftermath: The final Locarno Treaty is signed in London, establishing post-war territorial settlements.
1927 – Putting Pants on Philip, the first Laurel and Hardy film, is released.
1944 – Greek Civil War: Fighting breaks out in Athens between the ELAS and government forces supported by the British Army.
1959 – The current flag of Singapore is adopted, six months after Singapore became self-governing within the British Empire.
1960 – The musical Camelot debuts at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway. It will become associated with the Kennedy administration.
1964 – Free Speech Movement: Police arrest over 800 students at the University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover and sit-in at the administration building in protest of the UC Regents' decision to forbid protests on UC property.
1967 – At Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, a transplant team headed by Christiaan Barnard carries out the first heart transplant on a human (53-year-old Louis Washkansky).
1971 – Indo-Pakistani War of 1971: Pakistan launches a pre-emptive strike against India and a full scale war begins claiming hundreds of lives.
1973 – Pioneer program: Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.
1976 – An assassination attempt is made on Bob Marley. He is shot twice, but will play a concert only two days later.
1979 – In Cincinnati, 11 fans are suffocated in a crush for seats on the concourse outside Riverfront Coliseum before a Who concert.
1979 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini becomes the first Supreme Leader of Iran.
1982 – A soil sample is taken from Times Beach, Missouri, that will be found to contain 300 times the safe level of dioxin.
1984 – Bhopal disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, kills more than 3,800 people outright and injures 150,000–600,000 others (some 6,000 of whom would later die from their injuries) in one of the worst industrial disasters in history.
1989 – Cold War: In a meeting off the coast of Malta, U.S. President George H. W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev release statements indicating that the Cold War between NATO and the Soviet Union may be coming to an end.
1990 – The 1990 Wayne County Airport runway collision kills seven passengers and one crew member.
1992 – The Greek oil tanker Aegean Sea, carrying 80,000 tonnes of crude oil, runs aground in a storm while approaching A Coruña, Spain, and spills much of its cargo.
1992 – A test engineer for Sema Group uses a personal computer to send the world's first text message via the Vodafone network to the phone of a colleague.
1994 – The Playstation was released in Japan
1997 – In Ottawa, Canada, representatives from 121 countries sign the Ottawa Treaty prohibiting manufacture and deployment of anti-personnel landmines. The United States, People's Republic of China, and Russia do not sign the treaty, however.
1999 – NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander moments before the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere.
1999 – Six firefighters are killed in the Worcester Cold Storage and Warehouse fire in Worcester, Massachusetts.
2005 – XCOR Aerospace makes the first manned rocket aircraft delivery of U.S. Mail in Kern County, California.
2007 – Winter storms cause the Chehalis River to flood many cities in Lewis County, Washington, and close a 20-mile portion of Interstate 5 for several days. At least eight deaths and billions of dollars in damages are blamed on the floods.
2009 – A suicide bombing at a hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia, kills 25 people, including three ministers of the Transitional Federal Government.
2012 – At least 475 people are killed after Typhoon Bopha makes landfall in the Philippines
Famous Folk Born on December 3rd:
Gilbert Stuart
George B. McClellan
Charles Alfred Pillsbury
Joseph Conrad
Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni
Major General Thomas Farrell (Manhattan Project Chief of Field Operations)
Kim Dae-Jung
Ferlin Husky
John S. Dunne
Jaye P. Morgan
Bobby Allison
Patricia Krenwinkel
Ozzy Osbourne
Alberto Juantorena
The Rice Brothers
Rick Mears
Franz Klammer
Steven Culp
Darryl Hannah
Igor Larionov
Julianne Moore
Katarina Witt
Brendan Fraser
Lu Parker
Brian Bonsall
Holly Marie Combs
Anna Chulmsky
Jenna Dewan
Liza Lapira
Amanda Seyfried
(all five of the women just above this are all 5'2" tall. Coincidence??)
Michael Brown, Jr. was murdered.
Officer Darren Wilson should be tried by a jury.
The grand jury failed in its duty.
Other opinions are also fervently believed.
Officer Darren Wilson was legitimately in fear for his life.
Officer Wilson was justified in killing Michael Brown.
Michael Brown, Jr., had committed a crime and in resisting arrest, committed another.
We can argue over which opinions are better supported by the evidence available but the truth is that only two people knew the truth and one of them is now dead. The question is, can we as a society, as a nation, as human beings; find a way to ensure that Michael Brown, Jr., is the last unarmed teenager of color to die at the hands of a white police officer?
It is difficult for any truly impartial observer to not understand why people of color in general and African-Americans in particular hold the belief that the system of justice in the United States of America is not biased against them.
I have a good friend who points out that I cannot truly understand the "Black Experience" and he is right. I've never had to live in fear that the flashing lights of the cop car pulling me over might be the beginning of the last moments of my life; solely due to the color of my skin. I'll never know that fear and that is why I agree with my friend.
But I can understand parts of why my friend feels that way. I'm trying harder than ever to do so. I'm a product of my environment and in the world where I grew up, race wasn't much of an issue. My friends came from every race present in our mixed race neighborhood. We played sports together. We helped one another. Sometimes we fought, but it wasn't about race. Goodness knows I got plenty of "race relations training" during my military service. I like to believe that I will never treat a person with any less respect due to their race, ethnicity or any other such factor.
That means speaking up against injustice. Not just the specific injustice done to Michael Brown, Jr., but the systemic injustices that are done daily. Those who defend the fact that African-Americans make up such a large percentage of the prison population by claiming they commit the larger percentage of criminal behavior miss the factors that cause much of that crime to be committed. All of us who are part of the so-called 99% are victims of economic inequality, although most of us to a lesser degree.
I'm going to quote a different friend who is a person of color. He said "in the hood, there are three ways to get out. Sports, crime or college. The first is hard, the last is harder and the middle all too easy." In a nation where those who earn a living as professional athletes number only in the thousands, the first option isn't viable for many, let alone most. The last option is made much harder by our unwillingness to provide equitable educational opportunity in the least well-off areas.
Until we address these inequities, there will be no end to the list of victims whose name Michael Brown, Jr., was added to.
* * *
It's a word we do not use very often. Sesquicentennial refers to the 150th anniversary of an event. In this case, the term refers to the founding of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Back in 2013, the school began an ambitious fundraising campaign that is scheduled to end in 2016 with a goal of adding $300 million to the school's endowment.
Bill Cosby was named as one of the four "celebrity co-chairs" of that campaign. Now, in the wake of the growing number of allegations that he committed sexual assault, he and the university have cut ties.
Fundraising is a constant at both public and private universities. The allegations against Cosby would clearly damage his viability as a fundraiser and it is no surprise that the university would move to distance themselves from him. What is surprising to me is that it wasn't the allegations themselves that appear to have been the catalyst, but the news that Mr. Cosby gave a deposition wherein he disclosed that he made a deal with a tabloid to prevent them from running a story involving these allegations.
Mr. Cosby has no duty to speak out, but there is no way his legacy will ever be free from the stain of these accusations until he does.
Update: Since this was written a couple of days ago, Mr. Cosby has resigned from his position as a trustee at Temple University.
* * *
There are people active in the movement to prevent domestic violence (a very worthy cause, BTW) who are speaking out about the arbitrator's decision to overturn the NFL's indefinite suspension of former Baltimore Ravens player Ray Rice. They claim it sends a message that domestic violence isn't all that serious a matter, perpetuating the myth that this isn't a big problem.
That's not the message that was being sent at all. There are several messages involved here that deserve to be highlighted in the optics of the situation (if everyone else can overuse the term optics, I might as well misuse it myself on occasion). First of all, the NFL's commissioner Roger Goodell did not have the authority to unilaterally increase a punishment already put into place. There needed to be a compelling reason for increasing the penalty and under the terms of the agreement between the NFL and the Player's Association, no such reason existed.
In fact, the problem is with a system of justice where a videotape existed like the one below, and those who enforce the laws determined that no criminal action was warranted:
Random Ponderings:
So Yahoo runs an article about Eliza Coupe getting engaged and on the same page runs their bio of her showing she's already married. Whoops.
The fattiest chain restaurant food is the Outback Steakhouse's Blooming Onion. Nearly 3,000 calories. Wow.
Someone needs to tell the Athletic Director at Nebraska you don't announce the firing of a football head coach in a mass email to your players. Especially one that begins "Dear Student-Athlete."
It is kind of difficult to grasp why someone who has the right stuff to earn a position as communications director for a member of Congress can say something truly mean about the children of the president on social media.
Was Ray Rice arrested? Yes. Was he charged with a felony? Yes. Was he allowed to enter a first-time offender program reserved for non-violent offenses? Yes. Were less than one percent of men charged with domestic violence in New Jersey over the last three years allowed to enter this program? Yes. Wonder how that happened?
I'm guessing that the doctor from Venezuela will probably never again joke about carrying explosives when boarding a plane, after he will pay a fine of more than $89,000 for doing so. Where's the humor in such a joke?
One has to wonder how Elizabeth Lauten managed to get a job as communications director when she's such a moron. (I'm repeating this pondering in different words, for emphasis)
I've seen some whacky lists of the so-called "best" war movies on the web, although none of them have included "Stripes" (yet). I won't presume to know the best war films, but here is a partial list of my favorites:
"Lawrence of Arabia"
"Bridge on the River Kwai"
"Full Metal Jacket"
"Apocalypse Now"
"Platoon"
"Saving Private Ryan"
"The Caine Mutiny"
"Schindler's List"
"Zero Dark Thirty"
"Black Hawk Down"
"Dr. Strangelove"
"Das Boot"
"Letters from Iwo Jima"
"Where Eagles Dare"
"The Dirty Dozen"
* * *
December 3rd in History:
915 – Pope John X crowned Berengar I of Italy as Holy Roman Emperor.
1799 – War of the Second Coalition: Battle of Wiesloch – Austrian Lieutenant Field Marshal Anton Sztáray defeats the French at Wiesloch.
1800 – War of the Second Coalition: Battle of Hohenlinden – French General Moreau decisively defeats the Archduke John of Austria near Munich. Coupled with First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte's earlier victory at Marengo, this will force the Austrians to sign an armistice and end the war.
1818 – Illinois becomes the 21st U.S. state.
1834 – The Zollverein (German Customs Union) begins the first regular census in Germany.
1854 – Battle of the Eureka Stockade: More than 20 gold miners at Ballarat, Victoria, are killed by state troopers in an uprising over mining licences.
1898 – The Duquesne Country and Athletic Club defeated an all-star collection of early football players 16-0, in what is considered to be the very first all-star game for professional American football.
1901 – In a State of the Union message, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt asks Congress to curb the power of trusts "within reasonable limits".
1904 – The Jovian moon Himalia is discovered by Charles Dillon Perrine at California's Lick Observatory.
1910 – Modern neon lighting is first demonstrated by Georges Claude at the Paris Motor Show.
1912 – Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia (the Balkan League) sign an armistice with the Ottoman Empire, temporarily halting the First Balkan War. (The armistice will expire on February 3, 1913, and hostilities will resume.)
1919 – After nearly 20 years of planning and construction, including two collapses causing 89 deaths, the Quebec Bridge opens to traffic.
1925 – World War I aftermath: The final Locarno Treaty is signed in London, establishing post-war territorial settlements.
1927 – Putting Pants on Philip, the first Laurel and Hardy film, is released.
1944 – Greek Civil War: Fighting breaks out in Athens between the ELAS and government forces supported by the British Army.
1959 – The current flag of Singapore is adopted, six months after Singapore became self-governing within the British Empire.
1960 – The musical Camelot debuts at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway. It will become associated with the Kennedy administration.
1964 – Free Speech Movement: Police arrest over 800 students at the University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover and sit-in at the administration building in protest of the UC Regents' decision to forbid protests on UC property.
1967 – At Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, a transplant team headed by Christiaan Barnard carries out the first heart transplant on a human (53-year-old Louis Washkansky).
1971 – Indo-Pakistani War of 1971: Pakistan launches a pre-emptive strike against India and a full scale war begins claiming hundreds of lives.
1973 – Pioneer program: Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.
1976 – An assassination attempt is made on Bob Marley. He is shot twice, but will play a concert only two days later.
1979 – In Cincinnati, 11 fans are suffocated in a crush for seats on the concourse outside Riverfront Coliseum before a Who concert.
1979 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini becomes the first Supreme Leader of Iran.
1982 – A soil sample is taken from Times Beach, Missouri, that will be found to contain 300 times the safe level of dioxin.
1984 – Bhopal disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, kills more than 3,800 people outright and injures 150,000–600,000 others (some 6,000 of whom would later die from their injuries) in one of the worst industrial disasters in history.
1989 – Cold War: In a meeting off the coast of Malta, U.S. President George H. W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev release statements indicating that the Cold War between NATO and the Soviet Union may be coming to an end.
1990 – The 1990 Wayne County Airport runway collision kills seven passengers and one crew member.
1992 – The Greek oil tanker Aegean Sea, carrying 80,000 tonnes of crude oil, runs aground in a storm while approaching A Coruña, Spain, and spills much of its cargo.
1992 – A test engineer for Sema Group uses a personal computer to send the world's first text message via the Vodafone network to the phone of a colleague.
1994 – The Playstation was released in Japan
1997 – In Ottawa, Canada, representatives from 121 countries sign the Ottawa Treaty prohibiting manufacture and deployment of anti-personnel landmines. The United States, People's Republic of China, and Russia do not sign the treaty, however.
1999 – NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander moments before the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere.
1999 – Six firefighters are killed in the Worcester Cold Storage and Warehouse fire in Worcester, Massachusetts.
2005 – XCOR Aerospace makes the first manned rocket aircraft delivery of U.S. Mail in Kern County, California.
2007 – Winter storms cause the Chehalis River to flood many cities in Lewis County, Washington, and close a 20-mile portion of Interstate 5 for several days. At least eight deaths and billions of dollars in damages are blamed on the floods.
2009 – A suicide bombing at a hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia, kills 25 people, including three ministers of the Transitional Federal Government.
2012 – At least 475 people are killed after Typhoon Bopha makes landfall in the Philippines
Famous Folk Born on December 3rd:
Gilbert Stuart
George B. McClellan
Charles Alfred Pillsbury
Joseph Conrad
Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni
Major General Thomas Farrell (Manhattan Project Chief of Field Operations)
Kim Dae-Jung
Ferlin Husky
John S. Dunne
Jaye P. Morgan
Bobby Allison
Patricia Krenwinkel
Ozzy Osbourne
Alberto Juantorena
The Rice Brothers
Rick Mears
Franz Klammer
Steven Culp
Darryl Hannah
Igor Larionov
Julianne Moore
Katarina Witt
Brendan Fraser
Lu Parker
Brian Bonsall
Holly Marie Combs
Anna Chulmsky
Jenna Dewan
Liza Lapira
Amanda Seyfried
(all five of the women just above this are all 5'2" tall. Coincidence??)
posted by me at 4:05 PM
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