Letters to the Editor
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@ veteran novice
I have no idea how George spots his fellow authortarians -- those who will swear fealty to him and discard all principles except service to their master. Do they walk around with the human equivalent of having their tail betwen their legs and most of us just can't see it?
RWAdar?
;-)
Cheers,
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Simenon vs. Conan Doyle (Heh)
Inspector Maigret ate better.
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Watson
Come here, I want you.
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In a totalitarian society
It would be interesting to ask those who live in totalitarian societies whom they fear most: the State – or their neighbors?
-- BaruchOlam
Both.
Because the state can find dirt on any neighbor and turn that guy into an agent of the state. We do it here with the drug war.
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LWM
There is another sense that could be used in addition to sight.
Smell.
Conan Doyle based Holmes on a professor he had in medical school who was preternaturally sagacious.
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Watson was the man!
Inspector Maigret ate better.
-- William Timberman
He didn't try to play the violin when he was high. That's a plus.
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The point is ...
Aych: They sure have, but frankly it's nothing new.. Look at what J Edgar Hoover did.
... that FISA came about precisely because of what J. Edgar did. FISA was supposed to be the "never again" answer to J. Edgar's excesses. But J. Edgar was working in a different milieu — WW II, the Cold War and the Communist Menace, Viet Nam and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s threats to the American Way of Life. In the face of these things we could afford to legislate control of electronic serveillance since these were never existential threats to the US. But a bunch of guys living in caves in Waziristan, that's something that we can't afford to risk not being able to listen to every phone call in the world because when they're ready to strike again they're going to call up the sleeper cell and say "leave the suitcase nuke in the trash can at the corner of State and Madison" and if we miss that call, we're all dead. (I saw it on 24 so you know it's true.)
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It isn't just neighbors....
One of my bosses once explained to me -- proudly -- that encouraging snitches was the best way for an administrator to keep a finger on the pulse of his or her department, and advised me to learn from her example in order to prepare myself for promotion. She, of course, was the last one ever to know what the fuck was going on, despite her home-grown KGB. (And I, of course, was never promoted during the course of her fortunately brief reign.)
God bless the self-employed.
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Eating better
Yes, a whydunnit is better food-for-thought.
Especially with Calvados.
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Inspector Maigret ate better
So did Nero Wolfe.
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Tobacco ash
The F.B.I. forensic lab maintains a data base of tobacco ash patterns derived from extensive sampling and testing, including varying atmospheric conditions.
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How many watched this horror show on 60 Minutes tonight?
Some commenter told us about this story and even though I knew what I would be watching, actually seeing the victim and listening to his horror tale, was still shocking. This is what the Busheviks have done to our image and our morals.
(CBS) At the age of 19, Murat Kurnaz vanished into America's shadow prison system in the war on terror. He was from Germany, traveling in Pakistan, and was picked up three months after 9/11. But there seemed to be ample evidence that Kurnaz was an innocent man with no connection to terrorism. The FBI thought so, U.S. intelligence thought so, and German intelligence agreed. But once he was picked up, Kurnaz found himself in a prison system that required no evidence and answered to no one.
The story Kurnaz told 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley is a rare look inside that clandestine system of justice, where the government's own secret files reveal that an innocent man lost his liberty, his dignity, his identity, and ultimately five years of his life.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/28/60minutes/main3976928.shtml
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Holmes
Was just a plot device in most of the stories. A deus ex machina so the crime could be solved without actual art and creativity and the skill of a gifted writer. Sam Spade and Marlowe are real gumshoes, but it is hard to beat Agatha Christie.
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Gourmand vs. gourmet (not so Heh)
More isn't necessarily better, Frankly, my dear, ...
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I'm not surpprised.
Tobacco ash
The F.B.I. forensic lab maintains a data base of tobacco ash patterns derived from extensive sampling and testing, including varying atmospheric conditions.
-- Irene Adler
But training the naked eye to recognize the minute differences in cigarette ashes seems like a bit of a stretch.
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The real Sherlock Holmes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Locard
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Garret tu, WT?
WT...
I also had a garret room; with an arched leaded window that the wind blew through in the winter. Quite common in the 1920's fake "Tudor" houses in my neighborhood.
I read all the Tolkeins, Watership Down, and Ray Bradbury up there, and even World Book and Encyclopedia Brittanica when I was bored....
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Yep.
A small world, C-Hag. My garret was in Germany, circa 1955. At the time, American army officers were assigned quarters on the economy. My father was given the old Nazi burgomeister's house, a huge slate-roofed stonepile with a screw-fed coal-fired furnace in the basement, which also contained a bomb-shelter and a wine-cellar. My room had actually been the maid's quarters.
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warms the cockles of my heart
Think Progress on the crowd (loudly) booing Bush when he tosses the first pitch at the Nationals home opener. Gives me hope for November '08.
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/30/bush-booed-nationals/
or, click at sig
BTW, what are cockles, anyway?
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Aycharaych:
[They sure have, but frankly it's nothing new.. Look at what J Edgar Hoover did.]
You’re right, and it may have always been this way at the top (only now it’s getting worse). If you watch enough movies (or TV series like “24”), I guess you would just figure that this is the way things are… but still, this stuff only happens to the “bad guys.”
I was trying to think, in the context of our discussion, of how to make “the masses” understand that what happens to the Fourth Amendment affects them, too.
What if we had a series of “advertisements,” that showed how massive accumulation of citizens’ data, combined with greed, mismanagement, lust for power, petty grievances and any number of perfectly plausible human scenarios could cause a “series of unfortunate events” for the average person?
I don’t know. I’m just thinking out loud. It really does bug me, though, when I hear most of my friends and relatives (even those who don’t like Bush) say that they “sleep better” knowing that their government is watching over them (b-r-r-r-r-r!).