I recall reading about a court case where the evidence was solid, but the jury acquitted anyway. The term used to explain why 12 sensible people would acquit, despite witnesses and physical evidence, was “the CSI Effect.” That’s where juries expect conclusive scientific evidence like they see on TV. If they don’t get it, they assume the case is weak or the accused is innocent. I thought that was silly, but I had never heard of the TV show CSI at the time.

This story is another example of how television is warping the public’s ability to understand the world.

We’ve frequently talked about law enforcement and the intelligence community accessing and making use of cell site location data, which looks to figure out where people are based on what cell towers they’re connected to. Law enforcement likes to claim that it doesn’t need a warrant for such data, while the NSA has tested a pilot program recording all such data, and says it has the legal authority to collect it, even if it’s not currently doing so.

However, as anyone with even a basic geometry education recognizes, which cell tower you’re connected to does not give you a particularly exact location. It can be useful in putting someone in a specific (wide) area — or, much more useful in detailing where someone is traveling over long distances as they repeatedly switch towers in a particular direction. But a single reading does not give you particularly exact location details. I had naturally assumed that most people understood this — including law enforcement, lawyers, prosecutors and judges — but it turns out they do not. A rather depressing story in The Economist notes that, thanks to this kind of ignorance (combined with bogus cop shows on TV that pretend cell site data is good for pinpointing locations), cell site location data is frequently used to convict innocent people.

I don’t think we should expect the average person to understand how their gadgets work. My guess is 90% of people have no understanding of their car’s engine and that technology has been with us for a long time. It is also much easier than cell phone technology or network technology. Cops are no brighter than the general public so they can’t be expected to know this stuff either. I’m not sure about prosecutors and judges, but they have the power to take a man’s freedom away so that’s a problem.

SOMEONE strangled a prostitute in Portland, Oregon in 2002. The police arrested Lisa Roberts, the victim’s ex-lover, who spent more than two years in custody awaiting trial. Shortly before the trial the prosecutor told Ms Roberts, via her lawyer, that tower data collected by Verizon, her mobile-telephone network, showed precisely where she was at the time of the murder. As her lawyer recalled, the prosecutor said Ms Roberts could be “pinpointed” in a park shortly before the victim’s naked and sexually assaulted corpse was found there. She was told she faced 25 years to life in prison. She accepted a deal to plead guilty and serve 15 years.

But the high-tech evidence against her was bunk. Routinely collected tower data can place a mobile phone in a broad area, but it cannot “pinpoint” it. That would require a special three-tower “triangulation”, which cannot reveal past locations. It took a decade for Ms Roberts’s guilty plea to be thrown out. On May 28th she left prison, her criminal record clean, after nearly 12 years in custody.

The problem here is that even if the accused knew the DA was lying, she could not be sure the jury would understand that the DA was lying. The defense attorney’s probably lacked the knowledge and resources to fight it. That opens the door for the many crooked prosecutors to make claims about technology, like in this case, that are batshit crazy, but may fly with a jury or a gullible defendant.

This really points to a larger issue: people have this tendency to believe that technology can answer all questions. The NSA’s fetishism of surveillance via technology is an example of this. There’s data there, so it becomes all too tempting to assume that the data must answer any possible question (thus, the desire to collect so much of it). But the data and the interpretations it can lead to are often misleading or simply wrong. And that’s especially true when dealing with newer technologies or forms of data collection. That the criminal justice system could go decades without everyone recognizing the basic geometric limits of cell site location data based on a single cell is… both astounding and depressing. But it’s also a reminder that we shouldn’t assume that just because some evidence comes from some new-fangled data source it’s automatically legitimate and accurate.

This is why I’ve always suspected the NSA spying stuff was mostly bullshit. The government buys all of its technology from the private sector. There are things done for the government by private contractors that are not for anyone else, but the government does not have special magic. Further, the government is not getting the best and brightest. There’s way too much money to be made in the private sector for the government to get the best and brightest. The Snowden affair shows you how sloppy this stuff is, even at the highest level.

More important, the volume of data involved is so large there’s simply no way to sort through it in a meaningful way. There are 150 billion e-mails sent every day. That’s 55 trillion e-mails a year. Searching that volume of records for useful data is simply impractical. Throw in the 100 trillion or so phone calls and probably the same number of texts and the volume of data is well beyond what could be useful. That’s why they don’t try, but they’re fine letting people think it. The Feds are relying on the CSI effect to convince the world they can read your mind.

I’ve always been skeptical about the claims from libertarians regarding drug legalization. I’ve known enough drug dealers to know these people are not going to join the above ground economy once drugs are legal. Similarly, the gang bangers in the ghetto are not opening up boutique dispensaries once we end the drug war. Drugs certainly play a role in the degeneracy of the lower classes, but they are not a cause.  Poor people make bad choices, have high time preference and a below average IQ. There are exceptions, but that’s always the case with general rules.

That’s not to say the war on drugs is a good thing or even a necessary thing. In a time of low cultural confidence, aggressive policing of vice is never going to work. In fact, it just adds to the social pathologies that blossom during times of cultural decay. The cops are not hassling drug dealers in the ghetto out of righteous anger. They are doing it for money.

That’s why the tide seems to be turning on the drug war. All of the most glamorous people are now proud of their hookahs and dank tanks.  The cultural elite are squarely behind legalization and the political elites are coming around now too.

A 21-member international panel urged a global overhaul of drug policies on Tuesday, calling for some drugs such as marijuana to be regulated, an end to incarceration for drug use and possession, and greater emphasis on protecting public health.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy said traditional measures in the “war on drugs” such as eradicating acres of illicit crops, seizing large quantities of illegal drugs, and arresting and jailing violators of drug laws have failed.

The commission’s 45-page report pointed to rising drug production and use, citing the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime’s estimate that the number of users rose from 203 million in 2008 to 243 million in 2012.

The commission includes former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan; the former presidents of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Poland, Portugal and Switzerland; British tycoon Richard Branson and former U.S. Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker. It was established in 2010 with a stated purpose of promoting “science-based discussion about humane and effective ways to reduce the harm caused by drugs to people and societies.”

The commission’s first report in 2011 condemned the drug war as a failure and recommended major reforms of the global drug prohibition regime. This report goes further, encouraging experiments in legally regulating markets in currently illicit drugs “beginning with but not limited to cannabis, coca leaf and certain novel psychoactive substances.”

It called for “equitable access to essential medicines, in particular opiate-based medications for pain,” noting that more than 80 percent of the world’s population has little or no access to such medications. It also called for an end to criminalizing people for drug use and possession, a halt to “compulsory treatment” for such people, and alternatives to incarceration for non-violent, low-level participants such as farmers, couriers and others involved in producing, transporting and selling illegal drugs.

“The facts speak for themselves,” said Annan, who is also the convener of the West Africa Commission on Drugs. “It is time to change course.”

The facts clearly show the war on drugs to be a failure. Compared to my youth, drugs are cheaper, more diverse, more potent, more evenly distributed and more sophisticated. If prohibition was having any impact on supply, all the metrics would point in the other direction. The best you can argue is it could be worse, but that’s a gratuitous assertion. When you add up the costs, the war on drugs looks like an epic failure.

Legalization will not be a panacea. In fact, there may be a very high cost to legalization. Drugs like weed have been proscribed for generations now. No one alive recalls a time when heroin, cocaine and cannabis were legal. More modern drugs like hallucinogens and dissociatives were broadly banned decades ago. That means generations have adjusted to the current arrangements. There will be a cost to breaking up those arrangements.

No one considers that because it is hard and not very cool. Libertarians, like Liberals, see only one side of the ledger. Basking in their new hipness, the drug legalizers are in no mood to think about the other side of the ledger. But, the first time a “dispensary” blows up or the owner is gunned down, everyone will suddenly remember that the drug dealers did not pack up and go away just because weed is legal.

Not that it will matter. The rulers have concluded that it is too much fuss to defend western civilization. The easy choice is to give the mob free drugs so they can sleep through the rest of the collapse. The Romans gave away free grain. The new Rome gives away free weed. I’m sure it will turn out just fine.

I’m not sure where I am with Ted Cruz. I like some things he has said, but I have my doubts about his sincerity on issues important to me like immigration, guns and the size of government. But, I’m still open minded about him. Stories like this make me wonder if he is an idiot or extremely clever.

Sen. Ted Cruz was booed offstage at a conference for Middle Eastern Christians Wednesday night after saying that “Christians have no greater ally than Israel.”

Cruz, the keynote speaker at the sold-out D.C. dinner gala for the recently-founded non-profit In Defense of Christians, began by saying that “tonight, we are all united in defense of Christians. Tonight, we are all united in defense of Jews. Tonight, we are all united in defense of people of good faith, who are standing together against those who would persecute and murder those who dare disagree with their religious teachings.”

Cruz was not reading from a teleprompter, nor did he appear to be reading from notes.

“Religious bigotry is a cancer with many manifestations,” he continued. “ISIS, al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Hamas, state sponsors like Syria and Iran, are all engaged in a vicious genocidal campaign to destroy religious minorities in the Middle East. Sometimes we are told not to loop these groups together, that we have to understand their so called nuances and differences. But we shouldn’t try to parse different manifestations of evil that are on a murderous rampage through the region. Hate is hate, and murder is murder. Our purpose here tonight is to highlight a terrible injustice, a humanitarian crisis.”

“Christians have no greater ally than Israel,” he said, at which point members of the crowd began to yell “stop it” and booed him.

EWTN News Nightly’s Jason Calvi caught the moment on video.

“Those who hate Israel hate America,” he continued, as the boos and calls for him to leave the stage got louder. “Those who hate Jews hate Christians. If those in this room will not recognize that, then my heart weeps. If you hate the Jewish people you are not reflecting the teachings of Christ. And the very same people who persecute and murder Christians right now, who crucify Christians, who behead children, are the very same people who target Jews for their faith, for the same reason.”

The cries of “stop it, stop it, enough,” and booing continued. “Out, out, leave the stage!” At this point IDC’s president, Toufic Baaklini, came out to the stage to ask for the crowd to listen to Cruz, but Cruz had already had enough.

I probably know more about Arab Christians than most people, but guys in his league have sharp people around them who do their homework before sending their man out to speak. Arab Christians hate Arab Muslims and they hate Israel. They have good reason to hate both camps. They are typically used as canon fodder by both sides. The Israelis and Arabs have run most of the Christians out of Lebanon, for example.

Now, maybe Cruz is just a blockhead, who assumed all Christians are like American Evangelicals. He went in thinking he had a great pitch only to find they thought he was flinging poo at them. On the other hand, it may have been a setup. The three “I’s” still apply to some degree in American politics. That’s Iowa, Ireland and Israel. Get the support of all three and you win the presidency. Ireland has fallen by the wayside now, but Israel still counts for a lot. Taking one for the Tribe looks pretty good on the resume if you’re planning to run for president.

Until recently I had zero interest in TedTalks, assuming they were the sort of nonsense that bourgeois bohemians were into, not the stuff for guys like me. Then I became a hyper-critical jerk with a blog and I can’t get enough of the TedTalks. It is like a candy store for malevolent meanies who enjoy making sport of our betters. At some point the beautiful people will find out that the rest of us think these things are hilariously stupid and they will stop doing it, but for now I have guys like Lawrence Lessig to entertain me.

[ted id=1960]

Lawrence Lessig is fairly typical of the grasping, self-important barnacle we see these days. His biography says he was “conservative” in his teenage years, joining the Teenage Republicans. He was a law clerk for some conservative judges and then joined the Cult while he was in Europe working on a philosophy degree. Ever since, his “change of heart” has been his pass into elite circles of the Cult of Modern Liberalism.

At the dawn of the Internet age, these faculty lounge philosophers were just about out of options. Sitting around smoking clove cigarettes and talking about Che was seen as ridiculously out of step with the times. Making money, living the good life and jumping on the speeding train of technology was where the cool kids were at, not bookstores and coffee shops. This ever-present caravan of crazies that poses as the avant guard needed to figure out how to get in on the act.

Guys like Lessig figured out how to attach themselves to the productive class by philosophizing about technology. Early nerds, like myself. were attracted to computers, the Internet and programming because you did not have to put up with all the bullshit that clown shoes like Lessig imposed on other creative fields. In fact, you could avoid these guys entirely as they were afraid of what you were doing. Debates on early bulletin board systems were wild and ferocious, but loads of fun because you did not have to worry about scolds like Lessig.

As to his talk, you see the same thing here as with all of them. Watching the video, it is all conversational, self-referential and emotive. It’s the Feelies from Brave New World. The guy on stage talks about an emotion and the crowd feels it. These talks are intended to be religious, not instructive. You see that when you read the text. It’s the sort of thing you write when on acid, thinking you have reached a higher consciousness.

He mentions this, his promotional vehicle he pretends is a political movement. Lessig has decided to attach himself to the Cult’s latest cause, getting money out of politics. The Cult hates the idea of unapproved people influencing politics. Citizen’s United has become a rallying cry and a weird sort of epithet for the Cult. Like health care, the Left is rallying to overturn rules and regulation they passed long ago. That Supreme Court ruling would be meaningless if the Left had not passed a mountain of other laws intended to curb money in politics.

Anyway, Lessig’s organization is just a way for Lessig to promote himself using other people’s money. Like “universal health care” campaign finance reform has become a subcult within the Cult of Modern Liberalism. That means there’s money to be had getting on this issue and that means barnacles like Lessig will attach themselves to it. It beats working, I guess.

One of the more bizarre rituals in Rousseau-ist cults is the self-criticism session. The Chinese called them Struggle Sessions. The difference is probably cultural. Oriental societies have always maintained a dense wall between the public life and the interior life of a member. Western culture has always sought a strong link between the public man and his private thoughts. In the West, “what you see is what you get” makes some sense. In China, such a concept is hilariously alien. Still, the idea of confession as a cleanser is a universal.

The NBA is going through that now. I’m going to assume that Donald Sterling’s threat to dish dirt on the league has frightened them into a careful re-examination of their private musings. Given how modern management works, the league office probably instructed each team to scour their networks for any communications that could be upsetting to very tall black people. We have one owner committing seppuku and now we have a GM subjected to a struggle session. His crime was the same one tripping up everyone these days. That would be noticing.

I think it was Charles Murray who documented that regulations tend to come along after the threat had dissipated. In other words, once people became aware of some danger they adjusted their behavior. It was only after that government came along with rules intended to mitigate the danger. I wonder if something similar is afoot here. It seems that most people are looking at the public hysteria over these thought crimes and wondering if the rulers have lost their minds. Even the more liberal types are rolling their eyes at these shenanigans.

Maybe these latent struggle sessions are a response to the public’s dwindling interest in race. Unless you have brain damage, you can’t help but notice that life for black Americans is pretty good now. If you avoid crime, drugs and mayhem, you will have a good life. You may not get rich, but you can have a decent middle-class life. Most of the nation’s celebrities are black. All of the athletes are black. They live like royalty. Evidence of real discrimination is impossible to find without a lot of digging and imagination.

Or, perhaps our rulers are simply spinning out of control.

Way back in the olden thymes, bankers went crazy and we ended up with the S&L Crisis. Bank fraud, bubbles, busts and system collapse are regular features of banking. The reason is simple. Banks attract bank robbers. The role of government is to police the banks, arrest the robbers when they find them and then make examples of those bank robbers by putting them in cages for long periods. It is not perfect, but it keeps the banking system of a nation working in an orderly fashion.

In the Clinton years, that all changed. We stopped putting bankers in jail. In fact, we stopped arresting them entirely. Instead, it is a free-for-all in finance. Here’s yet another story of systematic bank fraud that will result in no action by the government.

Derivatives regulators told the U.S. Justice Department they’ve found evidence of criminal behavior following an investigation into banks’ alleged manipulation of ISDAfix, a benchmark used to set rates for trillions of dollars of financial products.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which first sent subpoenas to the world’s largest banks in November 2012 to determine whether ISDAfix was rigged, has flagged its findings to prosecutors, according to a person familiar with the matter. The CFTC’s enforcement powers are confined to bringing civil, not criminal, cases. It isn’t clear who the CFTC suspects broke the law.

Benchmarks like ISDAfix, which is used to track prices on interest-rate swaps, serve as the foundation of global finance, helping pension funds determine their future obligations and lenders decide how much to charge borrowers. Regulators around the world are probing allegations that measures used to set prices in gold, oil, interest rates and currencies were rigged by banks and brokers wanting to pad their profits while cheating their clients and other investors.

Last week, the Alaska Electrical Pension Fund accused 13 banks including Barclays Plc (BARC), Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. (C) as well as broker ICAP Plc (IAP) of conspiring to manipulate ISDAfix. The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority is also looking into allegations of wrongdoing involving the benchmark.

Representatives of the Justice Department, CFTC, Barclays, Bank of America, Citigroup and ICAP declined to comment.

This is not just a few guys stealing. This is systematic theft of public monies by the world’s largest banks. This does not happen without the top level managers knowing and directing it.

Bloomberg News, citing a person with knowledge of the matter, was the first to report last year that the CFTC found evidence traders at Wall Street banks instructed ICAP brokers to buy or sell as many interest-rate swaps as necessary to rig ISDAfix by moving it to a predetermined level. Doing so helped banks reap millions of dollars in trading profits, costing companies and pension funds, the person said at the time.

Brokers on the ICAP desk, nicknamed “Treasure Island” because of the large salaries and bonuses they were paid, negotiate swaps trades on behalf of banks. Until this year, the dollar-denominated version of the ISDAfix rate was set daily by ICAP based on data submissions from banks. Amid the CFTC investigation, ICAP lost that central role. The International Swaps & Derivatives Association Inc., or ISDA, picked Thomson Reuters Corp. to take over that job this year.

Deferred prosecution settlements between regulators and banks including UBS AG and Barclays related to London interbank offered rate rigging have compelled firms to hand over information in the ISDAfix and currency probes to avoid criminal prosecution in the Libor case.

The term “deferred prosecution” is a neologism that means no prosecution. If you are a young gun working your way up in finance, you see no risk to this behavior. If you get caught, your bosses cover it up, you keep the money and maybe you have to change firms as a “punishment.”

Start putting these guys on The Farm and we suddenly get a new respect not only for the law, but the spirit of the law.

Years ago, I used to enjoy watching John Derbyshire go around and around with ID’ers about evolution. What I found enjoyable was how frustrated he would get with them. It was not that I enjoyed seeing him frustrated. It was that in his exasperation he would write some very funny things. John is an empirically minded guy and he could never wrap his head around the the circular reasoning of the intelligent design crowd. He try to walk them through the basics and they would break free and start yapping about entropy and the Big Bang.

The thing I find interesting about the creationists and ID’ers is they are not very Christian. In fact, they are almost pagan in their beliefs. This story that has been kicking around the neo-Christian sites is an example. The first sentence is a good starting point.

LANDMARK Adelaide research showing that sperm and eggs appear to carry genetic memories of events well before conception, may force a rethink of the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin, scientists say.

Creationists and ID’ers look at evolution as a cult. They naturally assume Darwin holds the same place in the hearts of “evolutionists” as Jesus or the Bible holds for them. If Darwin is proven to be wrong in some way, then everything he said is false and the whole religion of evolution comes crashing down. After all, if the prophet is proved false his religion is proved false. The result of this thinking is an obsession on the part of ID’ers with Darwin and trying to discredit him.

The trouble is science does not work like religion. Darwin was wrong about a lot of things and he guessed about a lot of other things. He was also not the only guy working on these ideas. Genetics and the cracking open of the human genome have added more to evolutionary biology than Darwin. Newton was wrong about plenty of things, but that does not mean math is a false god. Science is the process of trial and error, with error leading to new discoveries.

But, the ID’ers can’t think that way. Their interest in the subject is not to gain a better understanding of the natural world. Their interest is to defend their faith. That’s where the paganism creeps into the story. Traditional Christianity contains two key elements. One is that God is rational and the other is God is unknowable. The former is about consistency. God created the laws of nature and enforces them. They don’t change. That’s what permits science and scientific inquiry. God could change those laws, but he doesn’t because he keeps his word, literally and figuratively.

The latter, the unknowable part is where the new breed of Christian wanders off the reservation. They think they are having a personal relationship with Jesus. Traditional Christianity does not view Jesus as divine in the same way Greeks viewed Zeus as divine. Jesus was the word, God’s word, made flesh. If God were so inclined, he could have used a stick or a rock as his covenant with man. Jesus is the symbol through which God communicated his new covenant with mankind.

The neo-Christians into the Intelligent Design cause hold a different view. They see Jesus as their personal God in the same way a Roman would have a personal relationship with Apollo. Like the pagan gods, Jesus can and does intercede on man’s behalf when asked. This is why the wide receiver looks up and thanks Jesus after he scores a touchdown. The result is an occasionalist view of nature. If Jesus were so inclined, he could make the sky green and the grass purple.

In this regard, creationists are more honest that ID’ers. The creationist simply says the world is as described in their version of Genesis. They are not interested in knowing anything about their version of Genesis or the science of evolution. ID’ers on the other hand are only interested in evolution in order to come up with the right ritual to persuade their god to smite the evolutionist. They dream of a time when Jesus will defeat Darwin at the end times. That’s not science and it it barely qualifies as Christianity.

Something that I find interesting is the professional liar. Everyone lies and some lie a lot. That’s not a big deal. Getting paid to lie is a rarity. Lawyers are the most obvious example of people who are paid to lie. Not all lawyers are paid liars. In fact, most are just pushing buttons on the great machine of justice, filling out forms and submitting them when asked. The liars are the criminal defense attorneys. In almost every case their client is guilty and they stand up in court and claim otherwise. I suppose prosecutors are also paid liars, but they have the luxury of knowing the defendant is probably guilty as charged.

Politicians are another class of professional liars. Maybe it is because I’ve met more pols than defense attorneys, but I think most pols believe their own bullshit, while lawyers know they are lying. There are always exceptions and people can kid themselves about all sorts of nonsense. Politicians are a different breed of cat from normal people. Most are stunningly shallow and self-absorbed. It’s not that they know they are lying it’s that they simply don’t care. Words are just noises they hope are pleasing to you. Joe Biden, for example, has no idea what’s coming out of his mouth.

I bring this up because most of us are troubled by our lies. Even little lies like “You look great in that honey” hurt a little bit. Deliberately fooling someone is not something normal people relish. I asked a defense attorney I once knew how he feels about lying on behalf of dirtbags. He said he really did not think he was lying, but that too was just another lie, I suspect. If you stand up in court and say your client is not guilty when you know he is guilty, you’re lying for money. I did not make that argument at the time, thinking it rude, but I’ve heard others dance around this with sermons about how even the guilty needing good representation.

Anyway, deliberately lying for money is a strange thing. I’m not talking about one time things, but the regular lying. Steve Sailer has a post up about a column by Charles Blow. The disgust in Steve’s commentary is obvious. Charles Blow is fairly emblematic of his class, which means he sings the old time religion whenever called upon. He also has to know his words are, at best, nonsense. In reality they are intended to deceive his readers or at least allow them to remain deluded. Judging from the comments, the readers want to believe what amounts to a global conspiracy and Mr. Blow is happy to feed them heaping piles of baloney for a fee.

Of course, Charles M. Blow could believe what he writes, but that seems implausible. The general tone and structure of the column suggest he knows he’s full it. His final paragraph gives the game away.

There is no way in this country to discuss crime statistics without including in that discussion the myriad ways in which those statistics are informed and influenced by the systemic effects of racial distortion.

Individual behavior is not the only component of the numbers; bias is the other.

The previous 735 words, a bunch of assertions and dubious statistics, are intended to dispute the obvious picture one must draw from the FBI crime reports. Yet at the very end, when his intended audience is nodding so enthusiastically they cannot keep up, he admits that those statistics in the crime reports are true. He would just prefer it if his coreligionists remain convinced otherwise.

Again, maybe he is just as deluded as his readers. Maybe that’s just how people cope with disconformation. When the facts of the world are unacceptable, people find ways to wrap them in magical thinking and lots of hooting and hollering. It’s the lawyer who defines his work in moral terms, when he is just a guy who lies on behalf of criminals. It’s the politician who thinks he is doing the Lord’s work as he lines his pockets with the people’s money.

It’s is hard to know. Magical thinking is a part of the human condition, probably a necessary part. Wishing for things to be a certain way is the seed of inventiveness. It is also the genesis of all sorts of crackpot ideas intended to avoid facing reality. Maybe that’s all that it takes for a guy like Charles Blow to write these columns every week for his employer. Like an aging minister delivering yet another version of the same old sermon, it’s not that he believes what he is saying, it’s that he has nothing else and the flock seems to like it. Why bother with reflection or circumspection when life is good?

I’m not a big consumer of television so I admit to being a terrible judge when it comes to the latest fads. Game of Thrones, for example, looks like a daytime soap mixed with Lord of the Rings. But, it is wildly popular. When I heard about this new Fox show I expected it to do well. Stick a bunch of people out in the woods and see how long it takes for human nature, good and bad, to take its course. I tuned in for a few minutes, but it looked a little too contrived for my tastes, but again, I’m not their target audience.

Al Gore’s Contrivance brings word that the show may be  flop. Maybe I’m more in tune with modern TV viewers than I thought. Having a bunch of 20-something piss and moan on an island somewhere is not very interesting. Throwing in some 30-somethings and a few middle-aged people is not going to help. Frankly, people in a survival situation are not going to get naked and frolic. From my few minutes of viewing, that seems like what most of the cast did right out of the chute.

Again, I watched for maybe ten minutes. Five at the beginning and then I got bored and watched the football game. I came back at some point to see everyone naked, rolled my eyes and went back to the game. I can see all the naked people I want on-line. There will also be doing more interesting things than complain about the other naked people. I was reminded of something similar they did years ago called Survivor. I thought that was pretty stupid for the same reason.

Anyway, it got me thinking about what would work. Maybe sticking people on an island is just too limited. I know nothing about how TV is done, but insurance, budgets, rules, etc., may constrain what they do with these things. Maybe leaving them to fend for themselves is too risky. Maybe TV people just can’t let things play out on their own or maybe people are just too boring without a script. I have no idea and I don’t know anyone who does.

That said, instead of building utopia, maybe have them survive a hunting party. Take 20 people, put them in the woods and then put a group of hunters in there to try and kill them. Not really kill them. Use paint ball guns. The hunters will not know where the campers are setup so they have to find them. The prey has to work together to avoid or defeat the hunters. That would be fun. The winners split a million bucks or something.

I recall a few years back when Hoopi Goldberg was telling whoppers about lynchings in Chicago. She kept saying she “remembered” reading about them in the news as a kid. Five minutes of research revealed that it was an impossibility. Not only were lynchings rare in American history, none occurred in her childhood – anywhere. Presumably someone got to her and told her to stop it because she has not talked about it since.

Bill Clinton suffered the same memory problem with church burnings. Confusing Hollywood’s version of reality with his own, he claimed to remember black church burnings in his youth. In one of life’s ironies, no churches of any color were torched in his youth. If I recall correctly, there had been a bunch of church arsons at the time he made the claim. The press tried to make it into a race thing, but it turned out that many, even most, of the churches were white, not black. I forget the outcome, but it was not race related.

Anyway, Denzel Washington is recalling memories that never occurred. I was in Boston at that time. The locals would have fainted if anyone used such language. Unless he and his old lady were dressed as pimps for a role, no one was mistaking him for anyone other than the star of the most popular show in town at the time. St. Elsewhere was a huge hit and based in Boston. The stars of that show could have robbed banks in the city and no one would have thought ill of them.

I get so tired of our famous clowns and jugglers pissing and moaning about how tough they had it. In this age, no one has it that tough, unless they do something really stupid. Denzel was raised by prosperous, middle-class parents. He went to private schools as a kid. I’m sure he encountered a bad word here and there, but the guy has otherwise lived a charmed life. Instead of pissing and moaning like an ungrateful bitch, he should be boasting about how great his country has been to him in his life.

Instead, the racist prick is making up reasons to dump on his countrymen. What a punk.