King & Keillor

Interesting... I'm not saying there's any real resemblance, but there is something similarly odd about both of them.

'Character' or 'Ugly' - what do you think?

UCLA, and why people hate cops

So, if you haven't heard anything about this, here's the story and video. I don't know what happened to start this incident, but even in the event that a first tasering was justified (and let's just say I'm pretty skeptical), the other five were clearly unwarranted.

This is clearly torture in my book. My book, meaning the dictionary: 'the act of inflicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty'. They were using excruciating pain, and the threat thereof, to punish and compel action from a person who presented no immediate danger.

I can't help but wonder whether this is a indication of the broader national climate (actually having to have a genuine debate about torture is sick enough). Are these cops going to plead the 'dick cheney said it was ok' defense? After all, if repeatedly electrocuting a man with 50,000 volts is a reasonable way to get someone to stand up, surely we can do even nastier things to extract important intel from possible terrorists/drug-lords/enron execs.

Lastly, I'm amused that the UCPD chief kept referring to them as 'peace officers' in his interview. Clearly, these men had no interest in peace. They did nothing whatsoever to diffuse the situation, opting rather to escalate it. What the hell do they teach people in police academy? Isn't there something in there about actually trying to fix situations? We heard 'stand up!' shouted about 50 times, but not once do we see any indication of a rational approach to ending the situation without violence.

If an officer can't be angry at someone and still be able to respond coolly & effectively, and treat the 'perp' with civility & basic respect; then he/she has ceased to be a cop. If a cop is a slave to his own adrenalin and anger, then he has become a vigilante with a badge.

thesis/hypothesis

Ok. I was just thinking about the word hypothesis, and I realized the obvious: under-thesis. Actually, I think this is a really amazing distinction... at least in the way I'm thinking about it right now:

a) A thesis is something you believe. An argument. It is something you accept as truth. You go out and dig up supporting evidence. Evidence that contradicts it, you have a number of choices: ignore, repudiate, or ridicule.

b) A hypothesis is something you want to believe. A proposition. It is something you have a hunch is truth. You go out and dig up every bit of evidence you can find that pertains to your hypothesis. Evidence that contradicts it, you have to sit with, breathe it in, digest it, until you figure out what's going on.



In science, we tend to glorify hypotheses. I never really liked this idea, because it seems to get all mucked up with theses. People get attached to ideas, and become unwilling to let them go. I've seen embarrassingly few examples of a lab producing one paper, and then another paper that tests and contradicts their original conclusion; they almost always seem to find some evidence that supports it.

I guess the key lies in numbers and mortality. If Newton had lived to see Einstein, he probably would've clung to classical mechanics to the bitter end. Einstein probably would have held to 'God does not play dice' to the bitter end. We just have to hope that, over time, enough people without pride at stake will take a look at the evidence, and that those who are deified in their time will eventually fade and be relegated to the ranks of the fallible.

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