…is pretty universal: punishment.

The man who recorded one of two videos showing Baltimore cops dragging a screaming Freddie Gray into the back of a police van was arrested Thursday night, two days after voicing concerns that police were trying to intimidate him by plastering his photo all over the news, saying they wanted to interview him.

For the past two years we’ve had increasing evidence that something needs to change in the police/neighborhood dynamic. But Fergusson, New York City, and Baltimore are only the tip of the iceburg in every sense of the metaphor. If, like me, you follow the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Boing Boing, and other organizations committed to justice, you know that for every Freddie Gray there are dozens whose injustices don’t make it to national prominence. Of course, this isn’t even a new trend. African Americans have been complaining about harassment and being framed for a long time.

After all, we’ve always been at war with Eastasia Afghanistan and will always be at war with Eastasia Afghanistan.

The war in Afghanistan is not ending, US government attorneys said in court documents unsealed Friday, undercutting statements President Barack Obama made last December and in his State of the Union address a few weeks later when he formally declared that “the longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion.” But Obama didn’t really mean that the war was over, the government now argues.

I just updated the Desktop Screenshot page. Here’s a gallery of my latest desktop with KDE 4:

I’ve been meditating on a blog post about the riot in my figurative backyard. While I’m still unsure if whether I’ll end up writing anything about it, I came across some interesting MLK Jr quotes today.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

Martin Luther King Jr

and this one seems to apply not only to what I’ve heard about Baltimore, but also to what I’ve heard about Fergusson and New York City:

With A Little Help by Cory Doctorow

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was an experiment in funding and creating a book that I’m pretty sure came out before Kickstarter was as big as it is today. You have to hand it to Cory Doctorow, he lives what he preaches. He’s been releasing books that are not only DRM-free, but are also Creative Commons licensed. Even though this means it’s legal to get the book for free and share it for free, he’s been able to make a living on his writing. (Probably helped by living in Canada and England where healthcare costs are not the same concern as here) Still, all those books were released via a publisher. He wanted to try out the self-publishing model to see if it would work. I listened to the audiobook and he has a bunch of his friends each read one of the short stories in this book. I recognized some of them from other short story podcasts I listen to.

This post is meant to be a followup to last year’s post, Visiting Walt Disney World with a 2 Year Old. I’ll be referring to, and updating, that post with the elements that were different this time around. For one, I said she wouldn’t remember the first trip. While that’s certainly true in the long run, three year old Scarlett definitely remembered the previous trip. She asked for rides she’d been on last time and she remembered going on the monorail.

The Beautiful & the Damned by Jonathon Wolfer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was an improvement over the first. First of all, there were less missing apostrophes. But, second, the plot moved along a lot better. I’m not sure if it’s because of the changes in the plot structure (which we’ll get to) or Mr Wolfer had yet another novel under his belt, improving his prose, but I enjoyed it more.

It’ll be of no surprise to regular readers of this blog that I’m both a fan of the Fedora distribution of Linux as well as the KDE desktop. For the first time in six years, the KDE desktop is changing again. While the change is not as radical as the change from KDE 3 to KDE 4, it’s still a big technological change. I decided I couldn’t wait until May to experience it, so I took a look at the current beta from within virt-manager. Here’s the default desktop:

Today I saw the ad above which is part of an ad campaign that includes the ad in the header. As you can see by comparing these images, the photographer had many permutations of clothing available for the athlete, Purity Kirui, to wear. But I think each of these images reaches into the viewer’s mind differently. The header image is a standard athletic image. Purity seems to be enjoying her incredible athleticism and the implied advantage of doing so in Nike gear. It’s been shot in such a way as to make it seem as though she’s almost literally flying through the air or jumping as if she had Flubber on the bottom of her shoes. It’s a good ad and a great photo. (Note: I have cropped image horizontally - original photo here for as long as Nike keeps it up) On the other hand, let’s look at the image I saw at the mall today. At first glance it seems a less dynamic and less powerful image. Yet it kept my attention for longer than the header image. Why is that? Because the photographer is reaching into the zeitgeist - super heroes. The way her shirt is pulling behind her is evoking the current super hero trend. Even though the other image has her in the air, this one seems as though she’s running to go save someone. By tapping into this feeling, she seems even more powerful and as though she’s running even faster. It’s almost implied that Nike’s the shoe of power and integrity and even, subconsciously, that it’s the only shoe that can withstand the speed. This is the power of imagery and it’s one of the reasons we are more censorious with images than we are with words.