Trig-Birthery

The most popular story on the Guardian's website this morning is Megan Carpentier's perspective on the conspiracy theories surrounding former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's youngest child.

(Megan is the ex-Washington, D.C. lobbyist who once wrote pseudonymously for the political blog Wonkette. Then she contributed her expert commentary as an editor at Jezebel before, during, and after the 2008 presidential elections.)

Easter in an Eggshell

In honour of the Easter holidays I have been culpably bad about updating the blog, but here is a culinary-centric retrospective of the past weekend:

1. Easter:

Breakfast with croissants, buns, cheese, ham, and jam. Tea, coffee, hot chocolate. A lot of Easter eggs, both proper and chocolate or candy, and two chocolate Easter bunnies for everyone. A bouquet; this year it was composed of a variant of cherry twigs, and red geranium and heart's ease from our flowerpots and box. The tablecloth was white as usual.

Listening to Händel's Messiah.
(Note: The umlaut on the "a" is important, since it is the difference between "handle" and the correct pronunciation "hendell," which is however so rare in English that it is probably best to go with the wrong pronunciation.)

2. Easter Monday:

Lamb roasted with garlic and sage and butter. Potatoes, broad beans and a lettuce salad with olive oil and aceto balsamico.

Gas Wells: The Trickle-Down Effect

The Guardian is running an article by Nina Berman for Alternet about the effects of living in a gas-rich part of Pennsylvania.

The creeping arrival of industry and the intensifying manifestations of subterranean chemistry sound like a surreal alien invasion.

Lest We Forget

It is the 150th anniversary of the shots on Fort Sumter which opened the American Civil War. In other words, a kind of wedding anniversary for battle reenactors.

Which presents to give? I turned to the relevant Wikipedia article for inspiration.

***

A Dagger to the Heart of British Architecture

While confessing to liking the Shard, I enjoyed the lament of the Guardian's critic, Jonathan Jones, over the new skyscraper in the core of London: "Shard Attack" (April 12). The comments section is also worthy of a glance.




The Shard From Southwark Street
by Loz Pycock
Licensed under CC Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic
(via Wikimedia Commons)

Los Angeles Police Officers Successfully Sue Over Ticket Quota

In 2006 a new head of Los Angeles's West Traffic Division reportedly started a policy that every officer had to hand out at least 18 traffic tickets a day.

Officers Howard Chan and David Benioff took issue with the quota, which is illegal in California, and were punished for it by their superiors.

On April 11th they won a lawsuit against the department and were given $2 million in damages.

"LAPD officers who complained about ticket quotas are awarded $2 million" [Los Angeles Times], by Andrew Blankstein and Joel Rubin(April 12, 2011)

Update: "10 LAPD officers sue, saying department has traffic-ticket quotas" [Los Angeles Times], by Andrew Blankstein (August 4, 2011)

Like Army, Judiciary Marches on Its Stomach

According to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a sample of eight judges was 65% likely to parole prison inmates at the beginning of a session or directly after lunch, but increasingly unlikely to do so over time to the point that the judges are almost 0% likely to grant parole before lunch.

"Hungry judges dispense rough justice" [Nature.com] by Zoë Corbyn (April 11, 2011)
"Supporting Information: Danziger et al. 10.1073/pnas.1018033108" and the abstract of "Extraneous factors in judicial decisions" [PNAS]

Not Transiting in Transit

What it's like to be one of 28 people stuck in a New York subway elevator for over an hour.

"The Horror of Being Trapped in a Subway Elevator" [Gawker], by Brian Moylan (April 11, 2011)

"Sex trafficking victim wins substantial damages from Home Office" [Guardian.co.uk] (April 11, 2011)

A Divided Commemoration of Polish/Russian Plane Crash

In Warsaw there were two conflicting ceremonies yesterday for those who died on April 10th, 2010, when an airplane carrying Poland's president and his wife, scholars, legislators, military, and others crashed in Smolensk, Russia. Tensions are being fed by the question of blame and the revived history of distrust regarding the country's neighbour to the east.

Commemorating Smolensk: A nation divided [Economist] by G.C. (April 11, 2011)

Côte d'Ivoire

Human Rights Watch's detailed news release on the deteriorating situation for villagers in the Ivory Coast here. (April 9, 2011)

Windy City

Today a powerful spring wind has been sweeping in through Berlin, reminiscent of the one which Mary Poppins employed to carry away superfluous nannies. I was a little disgusted to find that according to the Institute for Meteorology at the Freie Universität, the peak windspeed (Windspitze) has been 21.7 m/s.

After a minuscule calculation:

(21.7 * 60 * 60) / 1000

we arrive at 78.12 km/h, or 48.54 mi/hour, or 42.18 knots, which still sounds (to me) unimpressive.

But, on the Beaufort Scale [NOAA], it is considered a strong gale, force 9, which

Uploaded by Petrusbarbygere,
Wikimedia Commons  
April in the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry

An earthquake hit Las Choapas, in the Mexican state of Veracruz at 13:11 GMT, and was recorded at a depth of 167 km and at a force of 6.5 on the Richter scale. (Later upgraded to 6.7 by the Servicio Sismológico Nacional.) It apparently caused no damages but it was felt in several cities; in Mexico City people left their buildings to investigate.

In the meantime a 7.1-magnitude earthquake has also struck beneath the sea east of Japan, in the region affected by the recent earthquake and tsunami. It was strongly felt on land and disrupted the electricity supply to the Onagawa nuclear power plant, but the tsunami warning was cancelled soon.

"Temblor de 6.5 grados sacude la Ciudad de México [El Universal]" by eca (April 7, 2011)
"Sismo fue de 6.7 grados, corrige Sismológico" [El Universal] by sma (April 7, 2011)
"Japan hit by new earthquake" [Guardian] by James Meikle (April 7, 2011)

Rule Britannia . . .

"Knit your own royal wedding" CNN, by Lakshmi Gandhi (April 6, 2011)

(It speaks for itself.)

"Slut Walk" protest after misguided advice on preventing assault

Earlier this year a police officer told a class at York University in Toronto, Canada, that women can prevent rape if they "avoid dressing like sluts."

He has apologized, but his comment indexed the kinds of poorly-thought-through ideas which in the end cast blame on victims of sexual assault. It is especially worrisome in a person who should help enforce the relevant laws.

So on April 3rd 1,500 to 3,000 people participated in "Slut Walk," a protest march, in Toronto.

According to a commenter (UnabashedOpinion) on the Globe and Mail's website:

What we're hoping for is really simple: That Toronto Police Services (1) Revamp their training curriculum on sexual assault and domestic violence, using experts in the field to provide content (the current curriculum was developed exclusively by the police themselves; (2) That experts in the field be used to actually teach the material (currently it is inadequately trained cops teaching ignorant cops); (3) That good methods of adult education be used in the teaching so that the learning sustains and actually transforms ingrained attitudes (currently, no actual learning takes place, since no transformation of worldview and understanding occurs).

The Snowy Path of Canada's Nunavut

On April 1st, twelve years after Nunavut parted from the Northwest Territories to form its own political unit within Canada, the Globe and Mail published an investigation of life in the Inuit territory today.

@TheRevAl

Reverend Al Sharpton

43 years ago today Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis. Let us remember his sacrifice for all of us.

43 minutes ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®

1:27 PM Berlin time Apr 4th, Twitter.com

[Technical Note]

Apologies to the reader (if any) who is artistically offended by the current experiments with this blog's layout. The use of pink is trite but it is timely, at least, since the website looks like an Easter egg.

It could be worse,

Stumbled-On Photos: Cyrene and Eyjafjallajokull

"Greek ruins of Cyrene draw goats, cows, few tourists" [Kathimerini] (March 29, 2011)

From last year, via @rfg2edit (Rose Foltz): "More from Eyjafjallajokull" [Boston.com] (April 19, 2010)

Open Season for Visitor Hordery on the South Downs in England

Winchester Guild Hall (1871). In city which marks western end of the park. (by Wyrdlight, Wikimedia Commons)

As of yesterday Britain has a new national park on its southeastern shore: South Downs National Park, which spreads over 1600 square kilometres from Winchester to Eastbourne.

It is not entirely the stereotype of the lonely national park. Brighton, its environs, and its high population throng under the southern margin at the side of the Channel; London is an afternoon's outing away; and over 108,000 people live in the park proper.

Like a central nerve the South Downs Way, open for cyclists and horseback riders and walkers, stretches between the cities and threads the expanding park. Besides the attractions of Winchester and Eastbourne, there are the white cliffs not of Dover but of Beechy Head (which seems to have, however, also attained the importance of a cliché), sheep, rolling slopes, the ex-forest Weald of Sussex, &c., &c., and an Iron Age hill fort by name of Chanctonbury Ring.

Despite the prevalence of the species Homo sapiens, a gently written article in the Guardian paints a pleasing bucolic portrait:

"Bronze age farmers knew the area, medieval ironmasters hacked at its copses, and 18th-century owners enclosed its fields. It remains a landscape that Jane Austen, who lived at Chawton near its northern boundary, would recognise"

"There are still wild spots: chalk downlands and woods, heathland and beech hangers, but this archetypal English landscape bears the marks of many generations."

And the writer remarks that corn buntings and grey partridges dwell in the downlands while nightjars and woodlarks haunt the heathlands.

South Downs: bells ring out to celebrate Britain's new national park [Guardian.co.uk], by Stephen Bates (March 31, 2011)
In pictures: The UK's newest national park [Guardian.co.uk], (March 31, 2009)
"South Downs Way", "Looking after", "Interactive Map" (Southdowns National Park Authority, March 2011)
"The South Downs above Tilton." by penwren [Flickr] (May 21, 2009)