Heinlein’s Razor.

“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. But don’t rule out malice.”

Alternate headline: “Rich man kills three children, self, pursuing expensive hobby.”

This photo linked from the Seattle Times, http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021579990_planecrashxml.html, by Fred Backham, via The Associated Press.

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021579990_planecrashxml.html

Over the weekend, the Seattle Times ran a story on the front page: “Ex-Microsoft executive killed in crash leaves a legacy of giving.”

The story reports that Bill Henningsgaard’s plane crashed into two houses, killing three children, including Henningsgaard’s 17-year-old son, and two unnamed children of an unnamed “working-class” East Haven mother. It is a tragedy that four people, three of them children, were killed in a plane crash. I am sorry for all those surviving loved ones who are missing their people right now. Especially for Joanne Mitchell, whose two children are dead. The coverage of their story has been deeply disappointing. Maybe that’s because they’re just proles from a “working-class neighborhood.”

The pilot Henningsgaard, on the other hand, has received special treatment, as a rich man whose name is easy to Google. He’s been the subject of a string of dewy-eyed profiles, extolling his virtues as a philanthropist and fundraiser. There has not yet been any investigation into the cause of the crash. It’s a little early to beatify the pilot – he may well be complicit in the tragedy, by either negligence or intention. Regardless of what will be revealed by further investigation, Henningsgaard was at the very least responsible for taking his son into the air, after he’d already crashed one plane with his elderly mother aboard (http://www.svpseattle.org/blog/a-harrowing-plane-crash-inspires-a-powerful-ask).  He and his mother were rescued by first responders and a local bar pilot.

If a driver who was ‘regular folks’ had crashed once, and a few years later crashed again, killing three children, the news story would have at least mentioned that an investigation would be done to determine the cause, and would have at least questioned whether the cause could have been negligence. But Mr. Henningsgaard gets a full treatment of his philanthropy, with no whisper of doubt about how he crashed. Guess that’s just one of the privileges money can buy.

The reporters could have spent a little less time finding glowing quotes about the pilot, and made a few calls to East Haven instead. Mr. Henningsgaard crashed into a house. They know where the house is located – they could have called neighbors, looked for witnesses, done some actual reporting. They may have then uncovered the remarkable story of the neighbors who ran into the burning home in search of the children, of the mother who heroically ran in to save her kids and had to be dragged out of the flames. Of a working-class community coming together to mourn at a candlelight vigil for the people killed in the crash. They may have found out the names of the dead children – Sade Brantley, 13, and Madisyn Mitchell, 1 year old – and their mother, Joanne Mitchell. These people, and their neighbors, are the heroes of the story.

And how are they treated? They go unnamed and unmentioned in most of the news accounts I’ve seen. In this CBS report, Ms. Mitchell is referred to as “out of control” for running into a burning building to save her children. She is afforded no praise, no profile detailing her accomplishments and contributions to her community. (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57597979/bill-henningsgaard-pilot-in-deadly-connecticut-plane-crash-survived-earlier-wreck/) Nor do the other neighbors get any attention. Who are they? They rushed into danger to help out in a terrible emergency. We don’t know what they did for a living, what interests they had, what their friends have to say about them. Mr. Henningsgaard, on the other hand, has lots of friends who write blogs, and their words of sorrow and praise are extensively quoted in the media.

Mr. Henningsgaard lived a decent life. Likely so did the people harmed by his flying. It’s appalling that the everyday heroism of the responders who rescued him from his first plane crash, and of the neighbors who risked their lives to help out after his second plane crash have gone unrecognized and under-reported while Mr. Henningsgaard is praised to the rooftops for volunteering.  Let’s report his accomplishments. Let’s also report on the accomplishments of the working people in this story.

I’m sure Mr. Henningsgaard was a great guy. He raised a lot of money for good causes during his lifetime. While laudable, this is the bare minimum contribution to society that we should expect from someone with his wealth and privilege. The fact is that three children would not be dead if Mr. Henningsgaard had taken a more plebeian form of transportation when he took his son to visit colleges.

An alternate headline for the story could have been: “Rich man kills three children, self, while pursuing expensive hobby.”

FAC Alliance. Beautiful hip hop from Guinea.

BIG HUGE UPS to FAC Alliance, and to Brian from Awesome Tapes From Africa, who made this gem accessible to those of us who are far away from Africa.

Listen here: http://www.awesometapes.com/2012/09/fac-alliance-mariama-face-telephone.html

Alley light.

The light was incredible in my neighborhood today.

Drapetomania.

People fleeing slavery: Fording the Rappahannock River. Rappahannock, Virginia, August 1862. Thank you, AmericanCivilWar.com.

Drapetomania was a supposed mental illness described by American physician Samuel A. Cartwright in 1851 that caused black slaves to flee captivity. Today, drapetomania is considered an example of pseudoscience, and part of the edifice of scientific racism.The term derives from the Greek δραπετης (drapetes, “a runaway [slave]”) + μανια (mania, “madness, frenzy”).

– Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania

 

Any system.

Any System

by Leonard Cohen

Any system you contrive without us
will be brought down
We warned you before
and nothing that you built has stood
Hear it as you lean over you blueprint
Hear it as you roll up your sleeve
Hear it once again
Any system you contrive without us
will be brought down

You have your drugs
You have your guns
You have your Pyramids you Pentagons
With all your grass and bullets
you cannot hunt us any more
All that we disclose of ourselves forever
is this warning
Nothing that you built has stood
Any system you contrive without us
will be brought down.

Flickering on, fading out.

via stephantillmans.com

Something emerges out of flat darkness. A shudder of light, flickering into form, dancing, collapsing again. There is a symmetry here, a concordance, with the moods that shudder across consciousness, sometimes a flat blackness, sometimes a bright eruption of motion, chatter, color.

This space has been in the flat black for some time. Here’s a tentative awakening.

Thank you, Stephan Tillmans, for making photographs of the moment a tube television set is turned off and its images extinguished:

http://www.stephantillmans.com/index.php?/portfolio/leuchtpunktordnungen/#
LEUCHTPUNKTORDNUNGEN : :STEPHAN TILLMANS PHOTOGRAPHIE

Mine tunnels are capacious, and the snows can enter freely.

via thomasjorion.com

http://www.thomasjorion.com/image/silencio/Ramane?gallery=Silencio2

Beautiful ruins.

Why yes, Virginia, there IS a reason to be concerned when the defense contractors who pimp our so-called ‘government’ start developing suffocating sound-guns for dispersing protestors.

via google.com

Raytheon’s recent patent application for a new choking sound-cannon has gotten a bit of attention since Gizmodo picked up the story from New Scientist.

http://gizmodo.com/5867984/future-riot-shields-will-suffocate-protestors-with…

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228425.300-riot-shields-could-scatter…

My soon-to-be-patent-attorney friend has chided me not to worry, because this is “just a patent application.” And here’s an example of how a little bit of legal education, which strictly de-emphasizes context and the analysis of power dynamics, can be a dangerous thing. There is a substantive difference between a patent application by a random would-be inventor working out of her garage and a patent application by Raytheon.

Raytheon is one of the largest arms dealers in the world. Raytheon has billions of dollars of US government contracts. Raytheon has current contracts to develop crowd control weapons, and is testing them on American prisoners. Raytheon has already developed crowd-control weapons from battlefield technology and sold them to domestic prisons for use here in the States.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129630188

Raytheon is girding itself for shifts in US government defense spending, partly by selling more war-weapons to other countries…

http://www.defenseprocurementnews.com/2011/12/01/saudi-patriot-deal-receives-…

…but also by increasingly marketing to ‘non-military customers.’ Such as the Department of Homeland Security and prisons, public and private. These ‘non-military’ customers buy a lot of crowd-control weapons.

http://technorati.com/business/finance/article/raytheon-illustrates-diversifi…

Another sonic weapon, developed by LRAD, has already been deployed against first amendment-exercisers here in the States.

http://gizmodo.com/5860592/what-is-the-lrad-sound-cannon

It’s really not a giant leap of logic to imagine that this particular patent application might be something nasty, deployed for nasty purposes.

Oh, BTW? Raytheon has been repeatedly sanctioned for illegal and unethical practice – it’s the 5th-worst government contractor, according to the Project on Open Government’s misconduct database. Competing, of course, with the OTHER four major defense contractors.

http://www.contractormisconduct.org/index.cfm/1,73,221,html?ContractorID=46&r…

“Not to be managed, threatened, directed, restrained, obliged, fearful, administered….”

via japanfocus.org

“The one thing that everybody wants is to be free…not to be managed, threatened, directed, restrained, obliged, fearful, administered, they want none of these things they all want to feel free, the word discipline, and forbidden and investigated and imprisoned brings horror and fear into all hearts, they do not want to be afraid not more than is necessary in the ordinary business of living where one has to earn one’s living and has to fear want and disease and death….The only thing that any one wants now is to be free, to be let alone, to live their life as they can, but not to be watched, controlled and scared, no no, not.”

― Gertrude Stein, in September, 1943, on Vichy France

quoted in James R. Mellow, Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company

“The one thing that everybody wants is to be free.” But this seems to be true only in conditions of the most egregious oppression, the most heinous un-freedom. What does ‘everybody’ in the United States want now, today? What is ‘everybody’ doing for the sake of freedom? Even if only their own freedom, even if freedom in some restricted and unimaginative sense, even if only part-time? What does ‘everybody’ want before it’s too late?

Photograph: Petain’s Vichy cabinet. Reasonable-looking men.

Thanks to the Asia-Pacific Journal and Timothy Brooks for access to this photograph: http://www.japanfocus.org/-Timothy-Brook/2802