pjammer
ezekiel's chariot - 張敦楷 |
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7/17/09 07:47 am
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 hose of us who've ever been pulled over and received traffic tickets may have wondered if there was anything we could have done to have gotten off with a warning. By all appearances, the most effective 'get out of ticket free' pass is a badge. Different professions, different worlds.  As part of a project I am working on with Wasabi Ventures, I've expanded my reading to a few law-enforcement blogs/newsletters. I recently stumbled across a particularly eye-opening article in PoliceOne.com on the topic of " Professional Courtesy," AKA the police practice of turning a blind eye to traffic violations of fellow officers and other 'protected' vocational classes (LE spouses, firefighters, EMTs, etc.). As can be seen from the poll conducted by PoliceOne.com, a major fraction of officers will openly admit to applying wholesale a different set of standards to fellow officers. Being a civilian, I found the comment section was rather disheartening - there was nearly no debate whether "Professional Courtesy" was right or just (98%+ of the respondents appear to be in favor of it); friction was largely between the tiny minority who feel Law Enforcement professionals "ought to know better" and set an example, versus the overwhelming majority who stridently defend Professional Courtesy as a perk of the job. Many of the LEOs cite variants of "one day, I may need backup and I'd never want to upset that officer/EMT/firefighter/etc by giving him/her a ticket" as justification for "Professional Courtesy," with the thinly-veiled threat that officers who apply traffic laws equally across professions shouldn't expect backup if they find themselves in need. Consider these to be the words cops say when they think nobody is listening: Everyone makes mistakes, so why hammer your fellow officer, or his or her family, and give the insurance companies fodder to raise his or her rates over a petty traffic offense? Over the last 15 years I have stopped many officers and have been stopped a handful of times, and have always, always, always extended professional courtesy to my fellow officers and have fortunately been the recipient of professional courtesy. [ed note: "everyone makes mistakes," but only civilians deserve to pay for them? Nice.]
I guess I'm old school. I do not write cops for traffic violations...period.
In over 30 years as a cop, I have NEVER written an officer a ticket. I have been badged dozens of times, and always allowed them to go w/o a ticket.
[ed note: FINALLY, a refreshing change of tone from one of the commenters] The term "professional courtesy" as I've tried to apply it has been, "if you act professionally, you will get the courtesy of a warning." That applies to every profession out there. Your job is exactly that...a job. You may have the same job I do, but the rule still applies. I've dealt with some officers from larger agencies than where I work now and they have shown no professionalism in my dealings with them, but when I break out the ticket book they start screaming about "professional courtesy". Why would I give you any courtesy, when you afforded me none in doing my job? Thinking your badge means the law doesn't apply to you? I've worked for bigger agencies too, so this isn't a power trip. And to those who would say I might need their help someday...I don't want a crooked cop backing me up any day....ever. If you think a violator of the law is exempt because the violator is a cop, you're a crooked cop. Period.
As law enforcement professionals shouldn't we set the example? Some of us are habitual and blatant violators of traffic laws. If off duty cops are going to make a habit out of running stop signs, speeding or whatever, PLEASE take the FOP button off of your vehicle and your spouses vehicle. It makes all of us look bad.
Poll time! Poll #1431067 Professional Courtesy
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: AllI am a civilian and I Reading the article/comments from officers, I am  The AB's - BoomBox   
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erf_
Kevin |
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7/15/09 07:14 pm
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Remember that copy of The Complete Short Stories of Flannery O'Connor that I rescued a couple weeks ago? I've been reading through it today, and it's excellent. A shame that O'Connor isn't more widely read outside of high school English courses. One story in particular, "The Barber", struck a chord with me. It's a really funny story, but for all the wrong reasons. At first glance it merely seems like a typical white liberal upper middle-class perspective on bigotry in the Second Reconstruction, but under the surface there's something subtler, something far more universal. It may be a bit of a stereotype that the male writers of her era were screaming from pulpits while the female writers hung back in the crowd and quietly observed the foibles of their humanity, but O'Connor if anything exemplified the best of that stereotype. In an era in which men with absurd moustaches shouted themselves hoarse about honor and nationalism and destiny, and tried to wipe entire nations off the face of the map with their rhetoric, O'Connor could quietly tear one of those men to pieces by describing a mole on his upper lip. Not bad for a dyke, eh? (Oh, my apologies. There were no lesbians in the good ol' days.) Of course, O'Connor never wrote directly about the war--she was possibly the only author of her generation not to. She preferred to describe the giant elephant in the room by its shadow. "The Barber" was written in 1947. Sixty-two years, two black preachers, a couple high-profile assassinations and one black president later, and, well, as much progress as we've seen in civil rights over the past half century, under the surface nothing has really changed. Go through the story and change "black" to "gay" and "nigger" to "faggot" and you may be alarmed at how familiar it all sounds. Hell, translate the story into any of various languages and substitute "American" for "black" and "Yankee" for "nigger," and you have an idea of what it's like to grow up as an American international student in a country that resents American foreign policy. It is trying on liberals in Dilton. , reading Current Music: Cat Power - He War
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erf_
Kevin |
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7/14/09 03:10 am
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Best artist-to-audience practical joke ever: The first half of Episode 3 of Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is comprised mainly of slow fanservicey panning shots of Fujiyoshi--up until then a relatively minor character--as she watches Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei on a tiny television with the sound muted. Plot and character development progress as usual in the form of a Zetsubou-themed radio drama she's listening to in the background. She is drawing yaoi. The camera lingers over her thighs, her breasts, and her shoulders before suddenly cutting to shots of Fujiyoshi's desk, on which she is drawing scenes of young men having explicit gay sex. Every now and then she'll look at her television screen, and the camera will cut to it, in which the same panty shot is being repeated over and over. The only character dialogue is Fujiyoshi saying things like, "Etto...should I draw this pairing? It's a little obscure..." This goes on for about fifteen minutes before the episode actually begins, at which point the audience has already missed everything. In another episode, the credits scroll across the bottom of the screen in the middle of the episode for no reason. In yet another, while the characters are discussing the tendency of people to be distracted by small details, Earth is suddenly invaded by aliens. The rest of the episode is a gratuitous giant robot fight scene. In yet another, Fujiyoshi is drawing hentai 4-koma, and Chiri shouts, "Harumi, what are you doing? This is disgusting! I won't stand for this! A story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end!" The rest of the episode--the ten minutes or so left, anyway--has a stirring rising action, a melodramatic climax, and a spectacular and totally nonsensical denouement, none of which have anything to do with the plot. How could I not love this? (In case anyone's wondering, I'm catching up on anime-watching in preparation for Otakon this Friday.) , postmodernism Current Music: runba runba runba runba runba
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erf_
Kevin |
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7/13/09 01:47 pm
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Zomg, this is even better than the original! Sony-BMG! Avex! EMI! Smug (over)production techs! Do you hear this? THIS IS THE POWER OF FANDOM WITH INSTRUMENTS. For once...genki trumps moe. (also, the schoolgirl bassist in the SARS mask is a dude) , japan, music Current Music: Niconi School - K-On! - Don't say Lazy
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erf_
Kevin |
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7/13/09 04:12 am
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Have thirteen minutes to kill? Watch this fascinating Asahi Shimbun-created documentary on Hatsune Miku. Far more than a mere Nico Nico viral, now--and this video provides a rare opportunity to meet the people behind the meme. The Japanese media is known for being aggressively technocratic, and I believe their bias is evident here. While I'm impressed by their enthusiasm, and am obviously a big Miku fan myself, given the number of her videos I post here, I'm not as optimistic about Miku's Western prospects as her creators are. It's not that the West is behind in the technology aspect--some form of this tech makes it to SIGGRAPH's Emerging Technologies booth every year, and papers presented at the conference no doubt were instrumental to the development of the software itself. It's that we have a cultural concept of musical integrity that is utterly foreign to the Japanese. The power, emotion, and energy that Japan admires in American rock, jazz, and blues, and strives to emulate in its own music, comes from a deep-rooted Western tradition of music as the extension of the self. Music, to us Americans (and to the British and Canadians), is a deeply individual and personal thing--note the truisms about having to suffer to play the blues, or that for punk rock what you lack in musicianship you must compensate for in enthusiasm. Our rock stars aren't just musicians, they're folk heroes. We write contemporary ballads about the tragic suicide of Kurt Cobain, or the doomed career and star-crossed love of Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy, or the world-changing idealism of John Lennon. The memorials to Michael Jackson are scrawled black with magic-markered stories from people he never knew. ( Read more... ), japan, music Current Music: 【初音ミクKAITO】サンドリヨン（Cendrillon）【オリジナル09】
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erf_
Kevin |
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7/13/09 01:46 am
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This is the OP to the anime K-On. Some artist must have studied a lot of music videos (and album covers!) to produce this. Great song, too. I wonder if the next OP will be darker, and feature the girls diving into a pool after a 1000-yen bill on a hook? Or use a light beam going through a prism as a transition image? Nah, it'll probably just look like this. , music Current Music: Aki Toyosaki - Cagayake!GIRLS
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erf_
Kevin |
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7/10/09 12:51 am
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This is the most spectacularly nonsensical Taiwanese MMORPG commercial ever.
And now it's an Internet meme!
Tags: crap, games, internet people, wtf Current Mood: 納命來 Current Music: 段正淳 - 為什麼要代替你爹?
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clearasmud
Spartacus |
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7/9/09 05:52 pm
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Let's talk about long distance relationships. Previously, when I heard of people being in long distance relationships, the first and only reaction that I could summon was, why? How can you know someone so far away? I hardly know the people around me so to try to build a fulfilling and loving relationship with someone thousands of miles away seems futile. I realize now, that it's much easier to think with your head than feel with your heart when you have no context and no relation to the situation. It's easy to say, well you should just break it off or you should just quit, do what makes you happy. We tie ourselves up into a long series of complex knots and twists that hitches us to each other, our jobs, our environments, ourselves to a point that it seems utterly impossible to ever even try to untie ourselves. And thats how we think of it; we have to undo knot by knot, twist by twist out of our situation in order to create a more passive relationship with our "thing". When honestly, the easiest thing would be to take that giant machete of reason and hack that damn knot to itty bitty little pieces.
And this is now how i feel about our intimate relationships with each other. If you're not sure whether or not you'll be tying more knots or just pulling yourself closer, it would be easier to just cut it off at the life line and be done with it. Logically, it makes sense. It protects yourself from that person and that relationship and you walk away. Logically. But now that I'm older and now that i'm starting to see relationships and my own up close and personal, it just doesn't seem like a reasonable way to go about it. Out of the hundreds of people i've met, and the 337 friends on facebook, I've found one person that makes me happier than anything. And one person to potentially rip my heart out of my body and mind and throw it in a blender with little razor blades and piranhas . And the thought of just letting him go because we'd have to be apart for almost a year isn't nearly as much as a possibility to me as it would've been 6 years ago.
No, long distance relationships don't always work. There's so many tests in a relationship and this is just one more very strong supertest. I think that if you're able to combat it and overcome it you will come to appreciate what you have in that person tenfold than before. This isn't to say that you should jump into one right away. Not from experience, it seems extremely difficult. Meeting someone without meeting them doesn't seem like meeting them at all. But sometimes you just know; sometimes you just have this gut feeling that you won't be able to do anything but fall in love with them. It won't always work out but I think it's more based on the person that the title of "long distance"
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Kevin |
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7/9/09 09:05 pm
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A couple days ago, the People's Republic of China took their Internet censorship regime to the next logical step: the Green Dam Youth Escort program (绿坝·花季护航)! What is Green Dam Youth Escort? Well, it's a cute, fluffy (look at the bunny rabbits!), mandatory software package that will inspect all data coming to your computer at the socket layer and protect you from viewing subversive political materials pornography. Essentially, it will legally require every computer in China, whether imported from abroad or domestically produced, to be a telescreen. Your children can browse the Internet safely now that Big Brother is watching them. This is not a hypothetical threat. It has already happened, as of July 1. Of course, only manufacturers are legally bound to include the software in new machines. Users are free to uninstall it, if they wish. But, of course, what good law-abiding, CCP-obeying citizen would bother? Surely, if you have nothing to hide, there is nothing to be afraid of. Fortunately, since Green Dam Youth Escort is CCP-commissioned software of the same caliber as the Golden Shield firewall, there are catastrophic security holes. Not just catastrophic to the proper functioning of the program, but...goodness, imagine being able to take down any legally purchased machine in China with a buffer overrun. Also, early reports say it only works on Windows machines, and it totally ignores Firefox. Naturally, the Chinese-speaking Internet has responded to this new policy the only way they know how: with moe. (More pictures of Dam-tan here.) Internet culture? I think I love you. (edit) Looks like ACWeb.cn, a Chinese clone of Nico Nico Douga, has gotten in on the action: , china, computers, internet, security Current Music: the revolution will be televised
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erf_
Kevin |
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7/8/09 11:23 pm
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In which I describe what I've read lately (or not lately) in ten words or less, in approximate reverse chronological order. (For those of you who like to read, but don't like to read.)
- Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre. LiveJournal of obsessive-compulsive French Adderall addict.
- Jumpers, Tom Stoppard. (Stage play.) Acrobat philosopher's theodicy interrupted by murder, infidelity, astronauts. Surreal. Hilarious.
- Travels in the Scriptorium, Paul Auster. Cloyingly endearing metafictional depiction of Alzheimer's patient trapped in room.
- I Kill Giants, Joe Kelly. (Graphic novel.) BAWWWWWWW CAN'T STOP CRYING
- Gun, With Occasional Music, Jonathan Lethem. Title beats book. Blade Runner with cocaine and sentient bestiality.
- After Dark, Haruki Murakami. This novel wants to be a Godard film so bad.
- House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski. Annotated dissertation on documentary about ominous house. Blew my mind.
- My Life And Hard Times, James Thurber. Much funnier read aloud. Has aged poorly.
- A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, Julian Barnes. Magnificent Bible fanfiction. Uncannily varied authorial voice. Damned worms!
- World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Max Brooks. National Geographic documentary about the time zombies almost killed everybody.
- The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon. Shorter than his other book.
No one wants to talk books with me. :[
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erf_
Kevin |
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7/6/09 06:46 pm
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I know "OH MY FUCKING I DON'T EVEN IDK" is virtually ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) deconcentrate's trademark by now but OH MY FUCKING I DON'T EVEN IDK JAPAN, OMG. , wtf Current Mood: lol
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erf_
Kevin |
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7/6/09 05:26 pm
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What's so special about this Jpop idol? Why is she aping A-ha's seminal video for "Take On Me"? Well...like the boy in the A-ha video, she has a startling secret. She's not real. Everything about this video is artificial. The girl's face and body are completely computer-generated, and she herself is fictional. The voice is cobbled together from the Japanese recording industry's hivemind of backup singers, producers, and recording artists. The members of her band, Genki Rockets, are a close-kept secret, although rumors of their identities abound. Her few live performances (yes, live!) feature ghostly pseudo-holograms of her projected onto a transparent screen on a stage. This isn't the first time Japan has tried to produce a computer-generated pop star, but Genki Rockets' Lume is definitely the most convincing by far. Blade Runner? Psh. In Japan, tomorrow's science fiction is so last week. , music
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5 (12.2%)
amused![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif){kind=small}
