While the country’s focus on ICE and the Border Patrol has been largely on Minnesota, they’re also committing outrageous acts in Maine, which is much closer to me. Here are some reports from sources which I think are reliable.
(more…)
The state of New Hampshire has a system where you can sign up to get emergency alerts. In itself, that’s a good thing, but the way it’s run raises red flags. The registration site is on genasys.com, and registering requires providing more personal information than necessary. The probability is close to 1 that Genasys sells this information. It’s also easy to exploit the system to annoy people.
(more…)
Derek Thompson has listed four “dark laws of online engagement” that explain a lot of what’s wrong with social media, and perhaps a significant part of what’s wrong with America. He discusses their effect on people, especially young men, who are socially isolated. I’d like to look at the way they distort the information that we get on the Internet.
(more…)
On Wednesday I learned that ICE had launched an incursion into Maine. They call it “Operation Catch of the Day,” implying that human beings are just fish to be swept up in their net. Maine is alarmingly close to home. I considered what I could do and decided that going to Maine to watch for ICE activity would be useful. Yesterday (as of Friday, when this will be posted) I drove to York, which is about an hour from home. The biggest trouble area is in Lewiston, which is twice as far, but I decided I couldn’t justify that much travel. Besides, ICE might strike anywhere in Maine.
I followed recommended precautions: Have a plan. Let people know your plans. Turn off phone face unlocking. Dress inconspicuously. Bring food and water.
(more…)
The towns of Auburn and Troy, New Hampshire, have set up “task force agreements” with ICE. According to the Boston Globe, they let the local police ” interrogate people suspected of being present in the country illegally and arrest those accused of violating immigration laws.” The ICE standard of “suspicion” includes looking foreign or speaking with a foreign accent. Accusation (by whom?) is an abnormally low bar for arrest; probable cause is normally required. The Troy police have made at least a dozen arrests for ICE. The towns of Colebrook and Carroll, in the northern part of the state, also have entered agreements with ICE, as have the New Hampshire State Police.
(more…)
I’ve never been very good at noticing differences in performances of classical pieces and picking a favorite. Occasionally one really jumps out, like the Zurich Tonhalle’s recording of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, but usually the differences are subtle. It takes careful listening even to notice that there are differences. As an exercise, I picked out four recordings of a piece I know well and listened to them repeatedly to compare them. There really are differences.
The piece I picked was Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3. The recordings were:
(more…)
Recently Avelo Airlines announced it would no longer provide ICE with flights to transport abductees. CEO Andrew Levy wrote: “We moved a portion of our fleet into a government program which promised more financial stability but placed us in the center of a political controversy. … The program provided short-term benefits but ultimately did not deliver enough consistent and predictable revenue to overcome its operational complexity and costs.” Avelo didn’t admit that negative publicity motivated its decision, but businesses never like to say such things.
(more…)
Newsletters are popular these days. To keep up, I’ve changed the settings on this blog to send the full text of each post to email subscribers.
Let me know if this causes any problems.
If you haven’t subscribed yet, you can in the sidebar, under “Get all posts by email.”
Update: A post which appeared this morning is truncated in email. That may be because I scheduled it before changing the settings. (I almost always schedule my posts for early in the morning; it makes my posting more consistent and gives me a chance to think about them.) We’ll see what happens next time. Also, I’ve noticed that links in an emailed post go through WordPress and are uniquely tied to the recipient. If you want more privacy in the links you click on, open the blog in a private window.
In preparation for the upcoming showing of Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood at the Plaistow Library, I’ve watched the movie over and over. Inevitably, I’ve spotted inconsistencies and hard-to-explain bits. It’s still a wonderful movie, but for what it’s worth, here’s a nitpick list (SPOILER ALERT).
(more…)
The first quarter of the 21st century has ended. Statistically, I’m unlikely to see the end of the second quarter. This makes me think about the end of my life. As far as I know, I don’t have any conditions that will kill me in the near term, but I’ve probably got just a couple of decades left at most. How should I look at the unpleasant topic of death?
“When I die, the world ends.” That’s one way to think about it: that nothing matters after you’re dead. It’s bleak but tidy. However, people make out wills, think about how the people they love will get along, and so forth. We think about the future beyond our lifetimes. Science fiction writers and fans think about what the world will be like centuries or even eons in the future and hope it will be a good one. People risk their lives to promote a cause. What happens after we’re dead matters to us.
(more…)