Chez Chesler

Officers on paid detail assisted Fenway Park security in removing 24-year-old Warren Woods and another fan for their behavior during the game. Police said the men became verbally abusive and continued to be belligerent once outside the park. Woods was charged with being a disorderly person and drinking in public.

Labels: beer, drinking, drinking in public, Fenway, Jagermeister

Hoping to lure a new generation of smokers, tobacco companies routinely manipulate levels of menthol so that their cigarettes prove more appealing and less harsh to novice users, Boston researchers reported yesterday. Scientists from the Harvard School of Public Health scoured thousands of pages of industry documents from the 1980s through 2006 and commissioned laboratory tests of cigarettes to confirm a long-suspected link between menthol levels and marketing strategies. The researchers found that tobacco companies embrace a Goldilocks approach when launching brands: Add too little menthol, a chemical that has an effect akin to anesthesia, and tobacco retains its intense bite. Add too much, and first-time smokers are overwhelmed. Add just the right amount, and cigarettes become powerfully seductive.

Labels: tobacco

Labels: Yankee Stadium, Yankees

Labels: DSS, Gloucester, YFZ

The environmental group WWF urged governments, businesses and households to turn back to candle power for at least 60 minutes starting at 8 p.m. wherever they were. ... Earth Hour officials hoped 100 million people would turn off their nonessential lights and electronic goods for the hour. Electricity plants produce greenhouse gases that fuel climate change. ... Darkened restaurants glowed with candlelight in San Francisco while the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower and other landmarks extinguished lights for an hour.

My kids have been playing Runescape for a few years.  Recently the folks behind it, Jagex, have added a site devoted to games, FunOrb, and I've been playing rapid chess there myself (online games against other humans.)

Is this joke original with me, or did I hear it somewhere?

Two great chess masters sit down to play a game.  White opens with pawn to king four (e4 for you youngsters).  Black silently studies the board.  Minutes go by, and after an hour Black tips over his king and says "You have an unbeatable position."

I suspect that nobody who is not a mathematician or computer scientist would find this funny.

Labels: chess, joke, math

I’ll throw in my two cents.  I doubt I’ve got anything to say that hasn’t been said already somewhere in the blogosphere.

• Governor Spitzer was doing his part to help wayward girls.  That’s commendable.
• Dinesh D’Souza disagrees with Alan Dershowitz, pointing out the prostitution has victims, in this case Mrs. Spitzer, their daughters, the citizens of New York, and Professor Dershowitz.  No man is an island, so it follows that every choice has consequences, good or bad, for non-participants. That doesn’t make them victims, and doesn’t justify criminalizing the behavior, if freedom is to have any meaning.
• I agree with those who are enjoying the exposure of former-prosecutor Spitzer’s hypocrisy, and the irony of the situation.
• In his dissent to Lawrence v. Texas, Justice Antonin Scalia suggests that the holding, that "majoritarian sexual morality is not even a legitimate state interest" means laws against prostitution cannot "survive rational-basis review."
• Around here, the Woburn and Burlington police have been running stings and surveillance operations to find escorts who are working in private rooms in local hotels.  I understand that streetwalking may be as disturbing to other users of the public streets as other vendors and business nuisances, but they are going after the same sorts of Internet-based escorts as Governor Spitzer did business with.  They are engaging, in private, in activities which would be completely legal were it not for the commercial aspect.  There are enough crimes with actual unwilling victims here (things like bicycle and GPS theft) that I’d much rather the limited police resources be directed towards solving or preventing those crimes.
• I heard Professor Dershowitz on WBZ-AM (haven’t been able to find this in a transcript online) saying something along the lines that if every politician who engaged in some indiscretion had to resign, we wouldn’t have any elected officials.  I disagree.  If these laws, which the Professor seems only now to be loudly complaining about, were enforced against every minor violation, the bad laws would be repealed.

Labels: Dershowitz, Prostitution, Spitzer

I'm watching the new Fox show New Amsterdam, the one whose premise bears an entirely accidental resemblance to Pete Hamill's Forever, about an immortal guy living in Manhattan (hmm -- I wonder what kind of rent control he's got on his apartment!)

Besides the hundreds of girlfriends in the 400 years he's been alive, he's had so many identical dogs that he calls them by number.  (His current dog is "36".)

I don't know where the show is going.  Last night it seemed to go in a Quantum Leap direction -- theorizing that one can flashback within their own lifetime, John Anderson remembers a time with parallels to the present when he failed to set right what once went wrong, so he'll do the right thing now.  It's not clear how many interesting places he's been -- is it Zelig or Forrest Gump or Mr. Peabody and the Wayback Machine?  (Unlike Hamill's protagonist, he can leave Manhattan, and can even leave the five boroughs.)  Anyway, we learned that during the Civil War he was a medic in the Washington, DC area.

Which means we may well finally have a show that's about Abraham Lincoln's Doctor's Dog!

Labels: New Amsterdam, TV

Labels: Bissextile, bleg, Leap year

Labels: bleg, Leap year

According to an AP story, the central Japanese city of Obama (population 32,000) has adopted its namesake candidate, who has never visited.

Obama gives good speeches and has a good voice, so I want him to do well. And, of course, we share the same name," said Seiji Fujiwara, a hotel executive and leader of a local support group established earlier this month for the Illinois senator.

Isn't that racist, calling an African-American well-spoken?  Isn't that just a codeword for articulate, because as Joe Biden found out early last year, it implies that unlike white people, it is surprising that African-Americans are articulate.

I wondered about that reasoning by Eugene Robinson, or Jesse Jackson.  Would it be off-color or suggestive if someone compliments a white candidate because that implies this particular feature is notable because it is rare in whites?

Labels: race Japan Obama

Labels: rape, reporting, Wendy Murphy

Drug or alcohol abusers who relapse, even after long periods of abstinence, are often reviled as too weak or undisciplined to straighten themselves out. But a UNC Chapel Hill psychologist has found evidence that suggests, in fact, that addicts’ brains may be wired in a way that makes them more prone to give in to temptation. The research, published in the December issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, provides further evidence that addiction is a disease, not a character flaw, said Charlotte Boettiger, an assistant professor of psychology at UNC Chapel Hill and the lead author of the paper released last week.

“Winter is warming greater than any other season,” said Elizabeth Burakowski, who analyzed data from dozens of weather stations for her master’s thesis in collaboration with Cameron Wake, a professor at the University of New Hampshire’s Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space.

Labels: guns, lockdowns, schools

Police investigate death of man hit by cruisers Associated Press - December 10, 2007 9:15 AM ET DOVER, Vt. (AP) - An autopsy is expected to be performed today on the body of a man who was struck by two state police cruisers in Dover. Police say they still don't know yet what killed 22-year-old Gerald Peterson of Dover, who they say was laying in the road when he was hit.

DOVER, Vt. - The Vermont State Police and Dover police are investigating what is being called the untimely death of a 22-year-old man hit by two state police cruisers while laying in the travel lane of Route 100 early yesterday morning. The victim is identified as Gerald Peterson of Dover.

DOVER -- The Vermont State Police and Dover police are investigating what is being called the untimely death of a 22-year-old man hit by two state police cruisers while lying in the travel lane of Vermont 100 early Sunday morning.

Labels: grammar

If they can make an entire movie in Aramaic, why isn't Beowulf being released in the original? [Then again, the same guy who made the Aramaic movie had to have his first movie dubbed from Australian into English.])

I heard that Blockbuster is going to downsize and concentrate more on new releases. (link?) Isn't that what they're already doing? I know this because I once asked a clerk there for  "Witness for the Prosecution"  "What?", and reminding him "with Tyrone Power" only got "Who?"

Any resemblance?

Labels: Aramaic, Beowulf, MelGibson, OldEnglish, TyronePower

Jordan's Furniture ran a promotion this past spring: If the Red Sox won the World Series, the entire purchase price of your furniture would be returned.  So that he could cheer for the home team, Eliot purchased an insurance policy.  (Soon after Warren Buffett bought the company, Barry stopped doing the commercials.)  Newsradio was interviewing folks and they kept saying "It's win-win, the Red Sox are happy, the fans are happy, the customers got free furniture, and Jordan's was insured."  Never mind the Indians and the Rockies, somebody has to pay for all this, namely the insurance company.  To be fair, the Boston Globe story cited does note this.

On the other hand, home prices are falling.  The bubble has burst, and prices, which aren't supposed to drop because "they aren't making any more" land, are down to a level not seen for, oh, two or three years.  This is supposed to be a tragedy, but people aren't buying houses for fuel.  One family moves out, another family moves in.  There are still millions of people (30% of the country, half of New Yorkers) who don't own the house they live in.  For every home-seller who loses a dollar because his house isn't worth as much as he hopes, there is a home-buyer who gains a dollar because he didn't have to spend as much as he might have - and there are some people who can afford houses who wouldn't be able to otherwise.

Labels: economics, housing, prices, zero-sum

Early this week the Herald ran a puff piece about the two million dollar house that Paul Pedini, a vice president at Modern Continental, the company responsible for the Big Dig built incorporating steel and concrete scrap from the Central Artery demolition.  The article mentioned that among the castoffs were two foo dogs that had been at the Chinatown Gate and have since been replaced as part of the contract.

The stories mentioned that the statues were gifts from Taiwan in 1982 - not exactly ancient history.

Herald muckraker Michelle McPhee is trying to make this out to be the Mayor Curley's Desk for the new century.  She featured quotes from Amy Lung from the Chinese Progressive Agency who said "The Big Dig contractor has no connection to China, and no right to the statues" (although she didn't say that there was nothing wrong with the pair that went to the Kowloon Restaurant which does have a connection to China.)  City Councilor Stephen Murphy said "They belong in Boston, not Lexington."  And City Councilor Sam Yoon said "These statues obviously had great sentimental value to the Chinatown community."

But the most recent article shows that sentimentality isn't what's most important.  Yoon wants the statues auctioned with the proceeds going to the Chinatown crime watch: "By auctioning these statues, Mr. Pedini himself could be the highest bidder for them," he said.  In other words, he doesn't care if the foo dogs are in Lexington, or if they belong to someone with no connection to China, as long as he gets the money.

Labels: BigDig, China, FooDog, News

"You break it, it's yours", or as the lawyers say, "Strict liability".

Carol Gotbaum died in police custody at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.

Phoenix Police spokesman Sgt. Andy Hill defended his department saying in part: "Officers did everything they could to save the life of a citizen."

I suppose leaving her alone, and not putting her in the handcuffs that seem to be the cause of her death, or as the doctors say, "Primum non nocere" never occurred to them.

Researchers from the American Society for Microbiology and the Soap and Detergent Association made headlines lately when they hung out in public restrooms ("No, we're not watching you wash your hands, we're hoping to have anonymous sex with a US Senator") and observed that only 57% of men at Turner Field washed their hands after using the bathroom, compared to 95% of women. The gender gap got big play, and also that many more people reported in a telephone survey that they wash after using the bathroom than actually did. The ASM even maintains Washup.org, a site dedicated to hand washing. Their fact sheet notes that the CDC says "the single most important thing we can do to keep from getting sick and spreading illness to others is to clean our hands." That's fine, but what is it about unzipping my fly, or touching my own penis, makes my hands particularly more unclean than they were before?

Labels: germs, urine, wash

New Hampshire doesn't have a sales tax, except  8% on hotel rooms, restaurant meals, car rentals, and tobacco, electricity, communications and real estate transfers are also taxed.

New Hampshire doesn't have an income tax, except on income earned by deferring consumption and investing.

New Hampshire local property taxes go to local services, except $4.92 per thousand goes to a statewide education pool.

This dearth of tax revenue means that New Hampshire has to fund its roads with turnpike tolls.  Due to the locations of the toll booths, these tolls tend to hit folks traveling to and from Massachusetts, and within the town of Merrimack, particularly hard.

Formerly, New Hampshire sold tokens for 12.5 cents each ($5 for a roll of 40) that were good for 25 cents of toll.  In order to motivate people to use electronic transponders, which provide a discount of only 30%, New Hampshire stopped selling the tokens in 2005, and stopped honoring them on Janyary 1, 2006.

The NH State Senate approved a measure that would have allowed a partial redemption (the tokens would have been usable at 12.5 cents, no discount or interest)  in April 2006, but the NH House rejected the measure.

Praise is due to an elderly Braintree, Massachusetts man, Thomas Jensen, who showed more principle than the entire Granite State this week, choosing to spend 3 days in jail rather than pay $150 for allegedly stealing services by paying for his toll with the tokens New Hampshire had sold him with the promise that they could be used for that purpose.

There aren't that many tokens in circulation.  How much could it cost New Hampshire to accept them at tolls, as they come in, compared to the cost of holding a trial and keeping Jensen in jail for three days?

I had replenished my roll before they went off sale and I had less than a roll in each car.  I go through the Merrimack tolls to visit my parents about once or twice per month.  If I'd known New Hampshire wouldn't be keeping its promise I might have signed up for a transponder at the discount price of $5, or maybe not.  It certainly doesn't pay for me to buy one at $25 -- with its expected lifetime I'm better off paying full price ($5 per year for the transponder, versus $3.60 per year discount for one round trip per month), or taking the Burque and Daniel Webster Highways.  In any case, I don't like the loss of privacy.  (See this story about EZ Pass records being used by divorce attorneys.)

An earlier story in Fosters, on the trial, by Adam Krauss also illustrates the lying and lack of intelligence that is too rampant among police.  Trooper First Class James Downey testified that there was no contract involved in the sale of the token because "they're not signed ... If I go and buy a candy bar at the store, I don't have a contract with that store."  For a contract to be valid there must be offer, acceptance and consideration.  Senior Magazine's article specifically addresses contracts that exist in the selling of food.  (There was no argument that the sale of tokens was for real estate or couldn't be complete in a year or was otherwise subject to the statute of frauds.)$nbsp;But if Downey is right and there is no contract, why do we owe New Hampshire 50 cents as we exit the Everett Turnpike?

Labels: contracts, NewHampshire, NH, tokens, tolls

The article noted that she lives in Boston at South Cove Manor, "one of the nation's only all-Asian nursing facilities". That seems strange, but the web site for South Cove Manor proudly states "Serving the Chinese elderly is our sole mission," repeating that mission statement on the admissions page.

How do they get away with racial discrimination like this?

1. State Treasurer Tim Cahill

The Boston Herald reported on September 7 that Massachusetts State Treasurer Tim Cahill's daughter was busted at Logan Airport for trying to bring peaches home from Italy.  He had to pay a $300 fine for forgetting something was in a bag, and that seems a lot less than folks who forget there is a gun in their bags face.  (Here's a recent story about Kansas City Chiefs star Bill Maas who made that mistake, and facecs a $500 fine and 6 months in jail, plus a $10,000 TSA fine.)  A gun could be useful on a plane -- the heros of flight 93 had to make due with a serving cart.  But fruit from the Mediterranean?  There is a very real risk that it could harbor insect pests.  (That page from the USDA's APHIS site lists peaches first among the fruits that Medflies can attack.)  I don't leave the country very often, but I certainly know there's a restriction on agricultural products.

In any case what concerned me was Cahill's statement about the Customs agents: "It didn't appear to me that they knew who I was nor cared."  (He said he told the agents he was a government official but never identified himself as the treasurer -- and apparently he never asked "Do you know who I am?" -- maybe because that had just failed for Larry Craig in another airport.)

Why should Customs agents have cared?  Why does Cahill think state officials should be treated any differently than other people?

2. Law Enforcement

In early July (I'm way backed on stuff I want to blog about), Glen Johnson wrote a piece for the AP, "Vehicle stickers raise questions about police favoritism".   He describes a "thin blue line" sticker.  He quotes Kenneth Waters, "For what purpose does the spouse display the 'thin blue line' decal on their automobile? Why immunity from the law of course."

Over on Police World "La. Officer", also quoted by Johnson, in a thread from early 2004, tries to have it both ways. He writes "everyone that I stop has the same chance of getting a ticket or not" but he had just written "If I stop someone with one of these stickers, and they are not leo or direct family of leo, they are almost certain to get written for whatever I can write them for." He also wrote "I do know of officers stopping non leo with the thin blue line stickers and politely telling the suspects that if the sticker is gone by the time they get back to the unit to get the ticket book, then they will probably leave with only a verbal warning if there is no warrants out for them." -- which means that he is violating his own oath of office for allowing his brothers in blue to violate, under color of law, these drivers' constitutionally protected right to free expression.

Tpartrg310 on Police World explains that he puts the logo on his car "to identify [himself] as law enforcement officers. And that more than likely we were 'good guys' and probaly armed." I'm a good guy, and I might be armed -- I think I'm going to do my part for law enforcement and get one of those stickers.

Labels: Cahill, police, privilege, unequal_treatment

So J. Craig Venter has published his own human genome.  He used to run the Celera Genomics Group.  The CNN story says that when Celera satisfied the Human Genome Project in 2000 (or 2003 according to the project's link, above) what they published was a composite.

I remain confused.  What did HGP have?

HGP's site says there are between 20 and 25 thousand genes, but 3 billion base pairs.  There is no one human genome, because we're different.  And Venter has published 6 billion letters (is he counting each pair twice?  That would be like counting each letter in anything twice, once for the ink, and once for the negative space.)

I figure my readership (all one of you) is by definition interested in minutiae, so maybe you can explain the subtleties.

Labels: genetics

Labels: conundrum, quality, quantity

The Scooter is dead.

I'm too young to have seen him play, but I grew up with his Money Store ads and his announcing the Yankees on the radio.

I remember one call from a late 1970s summer, a pennant race not unlike the current season, except then the pennant meant more, and I had not yet gone over to the dark side.  Rizzuto's call went something like this: "It's a long fly ball.  It's going... It's going! (pause) Holy Cow!  (pause) What a fantastic one-handed catch!"

Baseball was a lot more fun to listen to when Rizzuto was announcing.

I never got around to sending him a fan letter, and I never got around to sending one to Milton Friedman before his death last fall.  I think that leaves only Yogi Berra still alive of my childhood heroes.

Labels: Heroes, obituary, Rizzuto, Scooter, Yankees

It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
`By thy long beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me ?

The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin ;
The guests are met, the feast is set :
May'st hear the merry din.'

I've always believed in experiencing art with as many senses as possible, for better understanding.  When I watched Hamlet with my kids (it's a ghost story!) I served Havarti.  I read them The Cremation of Sam McGee while waiting for a school bus in sub-zero weather.  Last week I realized a long-held dream, reading to them Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner while out at sea (OK, we were barely out of sight of land while taking a ferry across Long Island Sound.)

The two boys wandered off, but my daughter stayed to hear the end, which I reached just as we pulled into Port Jefferson harbor.  I don't know how much they got, but like so many things that one understands only when older (10 is not about Bo Derek wearing nothing but corn-rows, it's about a mid-life crisis) I finally understand the poem.  It's about old people forcing young people to miss parties by telling long, pointless stories!

Labels: coleridge, mariner, poetry

I particularly like chrysanthemums, and different colors.

I've just watched the Boston Pops fireworks on television for the first time in years. (Having come back from the display two towns over in Wakefield -- a break in tradition, instead of watching the Merrimack, NH display from behind my parents' complex -- I was going to take whatever I had leftover illicitly brought back from New Hampshire and destroy it by fire, but it was raining and getting cold, so I watched the show. It's been so long I didn't realize that it wasn't on public television.)

I don't like shells that make shapes. A few ovals are OK, even a rectangle, but the smiley faces and stars were too much. I also don't like the shells they had at Wakefield that have a chrysanthemum and the a 4-direction white blast in the center. It's good to know the technology keeps improving. I once saw the Macy's display -- I hear that this year they were using shells that land on the water and keep burning.

Maybe next year is the year I see the Charles Basin live. The kids aren't old enough, and I'm too old, to grab a space on the Esplanade. Last year my employer was moving to an office in Kendall Square that had a view of the barge, and I figured that's where I'd be today, but I am no longer with that emp-loyer. All I would have needed were some battery-operated lights to put my recently-acquired canoe in at around Soldier's Field and paddle down to the Basin, but my crew wasn't willing. Apparently that's easy enough.

Labels: Boston, changes, Fireworks, pyrotechnics, technology

Answers.com cites West's Encyclopedia of American Law on Outlawry:

A declaration under Old English law by which a person found in contempt on a civil or criminal process was considered an outlaw—that is, someone who is beyond the protection or assistance of the law.

During the Anglo-Saxon period of English history, a person who committed certain crimes lost whatever protection he or she had under the law, forfeited whatever property he or she owned, and could be killed by anyone. If the crime committed was treason or a felony, a declaration of outlawry was tantamount to a conviction and attainder. Outlawry for a misdemeanor did not, however, amount to a conviction for the offense. The Norman Conquest led to significant changes in the law governing outlawry, eventually leading to its abolition.

It seems that New Hampshire has revived this status. An AP wire story seen in this morning's Boston Herald describes video of the police stop on May 11 during which Bruce McKay attacked Liko Kenney, who then shot and killed McKay before being killed himself by a passerby.

According to the story, "Prosecutors say McKay was justified in using nondeadly force on Kenney, 24, partly because of a violent confrontation between the two men four years earlier." 

We can't ask Victoria Snelgrove how nondeadly police pepper spray is, because she was killed by Boston Police using similar so-called non-lethal force.  And in any case deadly force is justified against an attacker using incapacitating force (cite?) because there is no reason to think that the attacker will stop once the victim is incapacitated, and if the victim doesn't defend himself while he has the capacity he will lose the opportunity to defend himself.

But what does that statement by the prosecutor mean?  McKay and Kenney had had a confrontation four years earlier.  This certainly justified McKay being cautious and calling for backup.  Why is that sufficient provocation to justify McKay attacking Kenney?

Moments after Kenney shot McKay, former Marine Gregory Floyd killed Kenney using McKay's gun.  Quoting further from the story, "The attorney general also said Floyd was justified in shooting Kenney."  McKay was already dead.  I haven't seen any evidence that Kenney was threatening Floyd or anyone else.  So what justified Floyd's executing Kenney?

Has New Hampshire revived outlawry, and had it declared Kenney to be an outlaw?

Update: The Concord Monitor story gives more details: Floyd claims to have killed nineteen people before Kenney, and Floyd threatened to murder passenger Caleb Macaulay unless Macaulay complied with his orders to either "stop crying" (per Macauley, note that Macauley had also just been pepper-sprayed by McKay before seeing his friend killed) or "to get out of the car and get on his knees" (per Floyd.) Macauley also noted that Floyd ordered him to pick up McKay's gun, which Macauley had the sense to realize would have given Floyd an excuse to murder him as well. The story notes that Kenney was apprehensive about the encounter with McKay and requested that another officer handle the stop instead.

Labels: murder, outlawry, police

Labels: cancer, Hodgkins, Lymphoma, Memoriam, obituary