Archive | May, 2013

Miranda and the Public-Safety Exception

30 May

I read this quote yesterday from the Supreme Court case of Ex Parte Milligan* which was decided in 1866:

“The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances.”

This all made me think about the public-safety exception to the Miranda warning against self-incrimination.  So the deal with Miranda for those of you who don’t (a) watch a lot of Law and Order or (b) read a lot of legal things is that if a suspect is questioned before he is read his rights then those statements are not admissible in court.  According to this article, the public-safety exception was first introduced in 1982 by Sol Wachtler, the former chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals.  The case that is invoked in any debate over the constitutionality of the public safety exception is New York v. Benjamin Quarles.  The Quarles case went as follows:  in 1980 a woman in Queens flagged down a police cruiser and told the officers that she had been raped by an armed man who subsequently fled into a grocery store.  The officers then went into the store, corned Quarles, frisked him and upon seeing his empty gun holster asked him, before reading him his rights, where the gun was.  He gestured towards an empty carton of detergent, the cops retrieved the gun, and then they read him his rights.

After that it all gets kind of confusing for me.  The law and math are two things that always sort of make my brain into a pretzel.  In the end it seems as though this action was allowed because it was spontaneous as opposed to planned out.  I suppose it couldn’t really have been planned out because this was the case that established the public-safety exception which basically says that if the police think that there is a clear and present threat of danger to the public, and that a suspect possesses information that can put an end to that threat, the police can question that person before reading him his Miranda rights without officially violating the established procedure. (Did that make sense? Because I totally just confused myself.)  I do get the sentiment behind it but I also think that if we think about it in keeping with the aforementioned quote, it is a bit of a problem.  Maybe I would be singing a different tune if I was in the middle of a public safety emergency and there was some person who had all the information and because of Miranda wasn’t saying anything.  Or maybe I wouldn’t be because Miranda has protected far more people than the public-safety exception and, in the grand scheme of things, is worth protecting at all costs.

Or maybe I am having too simplistic a view of all this.  Maybe I am being too idealistic.  I just think that no matter what we do, no matter how evil it might be, we are still human.  Part of the purpose of the law in this country, as I understand it anyway, is that it is there to protect people.  Sometimes that means that through improper action of the police or legal teams, guilty people go free and they commit horrible crimes again.  In a perfect system, that would not be the case.  But the reason we have things the way that we have them is so that we can check the system, so we can make sure that people are being treated equally despite their race, class, religion, gender, or whatever.  And things still aren’t perfect.  I just think that given the way that things are going, having this public-safety exception is more dangerous than anything else; it’s a slippery slope.  At a time when people are afraid of things is precisely the time when government has more leeway to overstep historical boundaries, and it is also the time when we need things like the law to keep that in check.

Then again, maybe I need to think more about this. Either way, I really like that quote.

*This was one of the first cases decided after the end of the Civil War and said that as long as civilian courts are still operational, it is unconstitutional to try a civilian in a military tribunal.

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There is a Monster in my Computer

23 May

Okay so you guys.  Today I handed in my thesis.  I printed it on (the required) fancy paper, I ran all around getting signatures, and then I deposited the $40 worth of paper* (sorry, world) on the desk of the person who was tasked with receiving theses.  So, this means three things.  One, I have finally completed my graduate program thus bringing an end to our (AKA my) long national nightmare.  Two, I have more time to read things that are not school related.  And three, I can then write about them here.  So, hooray for you if you like reading my blog!  Anyway, not the point.  The point is that I am fairly certain there is a monster in my computer.

So, here’s what happened.  Today while I was riding the train into the city to get my thesis printed and signed (did I mention that I handed in my thesis today?!) I was reading this article in The New Yorker by John Seabrook called “Network Insecurity:  Are we losing the battle against cyber crime?”  The article is all about these groups of hackers all over the world, that are sometimes associated with a government, that are hacking into computers and stealing all the information!  I know, I know, you are wondering whether I have been living under a rock for the past like, 15 years.  Well, the answer is yes and no.  I remember those scams where that guy in Africa would say he was a prince or something and if you sent him money now you would get all the money later but actually there was no later and you were just a fool.  I also know about Aaron Swartz.  I also know that there have been some articles about how maybe the Chinese government was cyber-spying (which totally makes me think  of creepy chat rooms).  What I did not know is that there might be people hacking into my computer right now!  Like, as I am typing this!  And they might be seeing me type from the “other side!”  And when I think about the “other side” I think that they are reading everything backwards, but then of course if they are tech-y enough to get into my computer in the first place then they can probably read things forwards.  Also, they probably don’t really care about reading my blog while I am writing it because it isn’t that good and they might as well just wait until I officially publish it. (I understand that none of these thoughts are even close to reasonable, but technology totally blows my mind.  3-D printing? What?!)

Sorry, I got off track.  So, anyway, I was reading this article during which Seabrook interviewed all these different FBI guys, and private security firm guys, and NSA guys (they were all guys) about the cyber threat and it seems as though it is actually really big.  Not only is it really big, but it could affect any of us!  Even me!  So this is what really made me nervous.  These hacking people send out these spear-phishing emails that they tailor specifically for you using information they glean from social networking.  Then, when you open the email they attach malicious code, or “malware” (not mall-ware, I learned after I embarrassed myself by mispronouncing it to my adviser) onto your computer.  “Downloading the attachment,” Seabrook says, “silently installs the malware, without your noticing.”  And then this is the really scary part: “later, you may wonder why your computer’s fan is always on (it’s because the hacker is using your machine’s extra computing power).” (!!!!!)  When I got home today my fan was on!

Okay, so this might be due to a few things.  I have been using my computer a lot the last few weeks.  I just finished watching two episodes of Awkward (so funny!).  I am running an outdated version of Firefox because my computer is geriatric and I was afraid to get it updated while I was working on my thesis because what if it crashed and also my backup unit caught on fire or something and then I lost everything.  But this also could mean that there is a hacker inside my computer.  So when I imagine a hacker inside my computer what I imagine is that scene from Space Balls where that guy is eating some food and all of a sudden an alien pops out of his stomach and starts singing “Hello! Ma Baby.” It’s like I would be working on something “very serious” and then some weird mutant would pop out of the screen and it would be horrifying and then maybe my cats would kill it.  But that’s not what the hackers do!  They don’t pop out of things with tiny canes and hats!   They can steal your passcodes and take your money.  Or they can see you through your own computer camera and hear you through your own computer microphone!  That’s scary!

So, in summation, in order to protect myself from the hacker that I am convinced is living inside my computer, I have covered my camera with a small sliver of blue post-it.  Now I can sleep easy.

(I am actually really nervous about this.  Don’t mock me.)

*Shouldn’t the price of that paper just be included in my astronomically high tuition that I will be paying off for the rest of my life because 6.8%!

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Sometimes I Hyperventilate

21 May

You know when you have the smallest little bit to do of something you have been working on for the longest time ever but you just can’t seem to wrap your head around doing it so instead you sit at your computer and read the news and watch funny videos?  No?  Well, then, I just don’t know what to say to you.  Yes? Read on for a ramble!

So I have been working on my master’s degree basically forever.  Sometimes, when I am mad at myself for ever getting into this in the first place I think back to the day when I found out I got into my program.  I was convinced when I applied that there was no chance.  Then, one day, after a run I checked the mail and inside the little mailbox was a letter from The New School.  I ran upstairs, opened the letter, read that I was accepted and immediately started hyperventilating.  That’s this new thing I have been doing the last couple of years.  I seem to have grown into a person who is simply incapable of handling big batches of emotion all at once.  Case in point: a few months ago I was on a run, listening to Ira Glass on This American Life.  This particular episode (is that what a radio show is called? Is installment better? I should look this up..) was about an entire town being disappeared in the 1980s in Guatemala.  Everyone in the town was killed except for these two little boys who were found recently and one of them was reunited with his dad who had been out of town the day it was disappeared and thought his entire family was dead but in reality his youngest son was alive the whole time and living with the person who had orchestrated the whole disappearance.  Anyway, there is this whole big story with a reunion and it was really very emotional and there I was running and running and listening to it and trying not to cry but occasionally having to pull over on the side of the park to hyperventilate.  Crying and running at the same time is no bueno.  It was not my finest moment.  I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea to listen to that podcast while running but, yea, that’s me.  I am good at making decisions.  Anyway, back to the original story.  When I got my acceptance I immediately started calling people:  my parents, my boyfriend at the time, other people.  And wouldn’t you know it? No one answered the phone.  So there I was, standing in my living room, jumping around and also kind of crying, all by myself.  I basically couldn’t breath and thought I might die from happy.  Now that WAS my finest moment.

So anyway, here I am all these years later, finishing up this degree that has at sometimes been empowering and sometimes been incredibly frustrating and infuriating and I want more than anything to be done with it but I just can’t seem to make myself work through the final push.  I am getting in my own way, as I love to do.  I erect these little unnecessary barriers for myself, and then I have a stress attack and an anger explosion but the anger is always directed at myself because I am fully aware that I am just making it difficult for myself for no real good reason.  I like doing that I guess.  (Again, good at decision making.) Makes it all the more exciting when I persevere.  Like, the other week I realized that I had forgotten to fill out my application for graduation.  It was available online all semester long and I just never clicked on the link.  It would have taken me 5 minutes.  So then I got all stressed and was convinced they wouldn’t let me graduate and also was embarrassed by my own idiocy so I kept putting off doing it and then when I finally did it it took like 2 minutes and was so not a big deal.  But this was like, 2 weeks of stress.  I think I got a new wrinkle from forgetting to fill out my form.

Anyway, that’s me and that is what I do.  So I am going to close all my funny videos and stop reading about the tornado in Oklahoma (so sad!) and get back to work.  And I am going to take my dad’s advice.  A few weeks ago I was on the phone with my dad and I was stressing out about all the work I had to do and my dad just said to me, “Rebekah, get whatever it is in your head that is keeping you from doing this out of your head and just do it.  You are almost there.  The only person in your way is you.”

So, get out of the way, me!  Let’s do this!

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Tip #6 on Being a Good Bar Customer

15 May

This is a series!  You can read all the other tips here: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5. Or you can read about this incredibly awkward sort of love triangle-esque (only so much worse!) situation that happened this one night.  Or you can read none of those and just read this one.  Here at FranklyRebekah we like to give you all the choice.

Don’t be a dick about sports.  I don’t mean like, voicing your opinion about your favorite team, although really I could give a shit.  I mean don’t be a dick about getting your specific game on the TV, especially when the bar you are walking into is a bar that sometimes plays sports and not a sports bar.  I have examples!

About 3 weeks ago I was at work, having a relatively run-of-the-mill day when in walks this dude.  He marches into the bar, looks around at the 4 televisions and exclaims, loudly and rudely,

“What? No Nets?!  We are in Brooklyn, right?”

People do this literally all the time.  “What? No Yankees?!”  “What? No Giants?!” “What? No Rangers?!” What if I walked into a bar and was all, “What?! No women’s gymnastics championships?!”*

Anyway, all the time.  All the fucking time.  It’s like, do you see a Nets game?  No?  Well, then, clearly the Nets are not currently being played in this bar.  I didn’t say that, though. Nope, I was nice.  But see, here’s the thing about being nice to people who ask to see games in that manner: they are almost always assholes of the “give them an inch they’ll take a mile” variety.  Whatever.  I walked over to him and this happened:

Me: “Can I help you?”

Dude: “Yea, you don’t have the Nets on.”

Me: “That’s true. Is that you telling me that you would like to watch the Nets?”

Dude: “Yes. I mean, we are in Brooklyn.  I mean, how could you not have the Nets on?”

Me: “Well, I mean, the Nets were a New Jersey team that everyone ignored until Jay-Z got on board but whatever.  What channel?”

Dude: “I don’t know.”

HUGE Nets fan right there.  Really needed to watch the Nets game and had absolutely zero idea as to what channel they were playing on.  In my experience people who are adamant about specific games have at least some semblance of an idea as to the channel.  But not this guy.  He starts throwing out random channels.  And there I am, like an idiot, pointing the stupid remote control at the cable box, scrolling up and down as this dude is like

“TNT! MSG! ABC! ESPN!”

Up and down and up and down and up and down.  In the midst of the scrolling, as I am getting extremely irritated, I scrolled over a hockey game to which another customer, sitting right next to the first customer, exclaims,

“The Rangers! I want to watch that!”

At which point I got extremely frustrated, slammed the remote control down on the bar and said,

“You know what? Why don’t you guys figure it out yourselves. I want nothing to do with this television.”

And then do you know what happened?  The HUUUUUUGE Nets fan could not figure out how to work the remote control.  He was standing there, staring at it, pointing it up at the television, staring at it again.  It was almost as if he thought by the pure power of his mind he would be able to make the channel change.  He then got frustrated and said, exasperatedly,

“How do you work this damn thing?”

To which I replied,

“You have to actually press a button.  Just point it at the television and hit ‘guide.'”

The hockey fan then took the remote control out of the Nets “fan’s” hands and, quickly, got the game on.  The Nets fan then ordered a drink.  He then sat there, staring blankly at the television as if he had never actually watched a basketball game ever in his entire annoying life, and then he took out a book.  He started reading a book.  And then he left.  Before the game was over.  I bet he just moved to Brooklyn like, yesterday.  Asshole.

So just as an FYI, my bar has exactly 4 flat screen televisions.  One of those televisions is like 10 years old and is hued kind of greenish.  I have to climb up on the back bar to turn it on because the remote is so old that it no longer works.  For those 4 televisions, we have 2 cable boxes.  That means we can have a total of 2 channels on 4 televisions.   I tell people this all the time and they don’t seem to compute (again, a bar that sometimes plays sports, not actually a sports bar).

Like the other day when this guy really wanted to watch the incredibly important Rangers game which was so important that he was the only person at the bar who wanted to watch it but all the TVs had the Knicks game on which didn’t matter at all because he doesn’t care about basketball.  I wanted to be like, dude, move to Canada.**  Anyway, he got all irate that we didn’t have the Rangers game on.  My boss even went so far as to take a poll down the bar to see if there was another soul in the bar who was interested in watching hockey, there wasn’t.***  So I, again, stupidly, trying to be nice, told him we only had two boxes so we could only have two channels on.  He responded by telling me to put it on one television.  I’m like, dude! What part of I cannot put it on one television do you not understand?  You have been hit by one too many hockey pucks.  I tried to send him to a nearby bar with all the TVs in the world (some call them sports bars), but he wouldn’t have any of it.  So I ignored him.  And he left.

Anyway, if you want to watch something, all you have to do is say “Excuse me? Would you mind putting on the Strong Man contest? I like to watch dudes lift things that are so heavy that their noses bleed.” And I would say, okay, but I would be sure to put it one of the TVs that I can’t see because Strong Man contests make me want to vomit.

*I would never do this for three reasons. One, people would probably laugh me out of the place. Two, I doubt the sound would be turned on and you simply cannot watch floor without the music. And three, I think there are some pervy dudes who like to watch 14-year-old girls tumble around in leotards and that makes me feel icky.

**Actually, don’t.  I have some friends from Canada and I really like them and I think probably I would like lots of other people from there too and I would not like to punish them with your presence.  I will research islands with no inhabitants.  You can move to one of those. With a TV. To watch hockey. There are flaws here…

***I told my boss my theory about the “give an inch take a mile” variety of assholes, of which this dude definitely was an example, so he left well enough alone.

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Dear Restaurant Manager, Your Restaurant Sucks

13 May

I don’t like Yelp because I feel like people go on there and write bullshit about bullshit, like the time when I got a bad Yelp review for using the house vodka in our $5 Sunday Bloody Mary specials.  (I will give you a moment to digest that little nugget.)  But sometimes an experience is so bad that I feel the need to go back to the roots of this blog and write a letter to the manager about it.  So, that is what I have done.  Enjoy.  I’d be happy to tell you the name of the restaurant if you also want to have an awesome (read: horrific) dining experience.

To Whom It May Concern

This past Friday night, May 10, my boyfriend and I visited your restaurant for a glass of wine and some appetizers.  I had just finished writing my last paper for my graduate degree and was really in the mood to celebrate.  We decided, after a long amble north on Fifth Avenue, to try your spot out as we had discussed going in for a while but had never gotten the chance.  We were really impressed by the interior and I was excited that you had not one but three Gruners by the glass.  Perfect!  So we ordered a glass each, figuring if we enjoyed our snacks (which we did, very much — that tomato bruschetta situation was really fantastic) we would stick around for awhile.

Unfortunately, the tastiness of the food and wine was not enough to make up for the truly abysmal service we received.  Perhaps I made a gaffe by ordering the Gruner by the price, but I do not speak German so I figured it best not to try to pronounce the name.  Perhaps it was that my boyfriend informed the bartender that we were going to just have some appetizers and move on for dinner — I am a vegetarian and lactose intolerant so my food options are quite limited.  Or perhaps it’s just that the bartender is an asshole.  I have been in the service industry for 10 years — I am a bartender in the neighborhood — and understand that the job can be grating at times.  I understand when your customers are rude being cold is the only thing you can do to keep yourself from telling them what you really think about them.  The thing is that I am over-the-top friendly to industry people so when I am treated poorly it is really shocking to me.

The gentleman behind the bar did not seem as though he wanted to have a conversation with us or anyone else sitting at his bar, and would rather converse with his co-workers, that’s fine.  I certainly cannot fault him that.  But if you ask me how my food was without making eye contact and then walk away while I am in the middle of praising it, that is a problem, albeit one I could forgive.  What I could not forgive was when he snatched my and my boyfriend’s glasses, mine unfinished, and snapped “can I get you anything else?” without even stopping for a response which was, after our experience, a resounding no.  I felt as though I was being kicked out of the restaurant and I could not for the life of me figure out why.

So, we left him a bad tip that, even given the rude treatment, I still felt bad about.  Get what you give, I suppose.  We will not be returning to your Park Slope location, or any of the other ones, but hope you can iron out whatever staffing problems you have so you don’t lose any more customers.  Also, and normally I would not say this except the bartender was really awful, I don’t like to look at my bartender’s underwear or unwashed t-shirt while I am eating.  Tell him to buy a laundry card and a belt.

Sincerely,

Rebekah

PS  The woman with whom I spoke to get your email address was incredibly friendly.

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It Takes All Kinds

7 May

So here I sit, my fourth full day in a row under florescent lights, staring into my computer, occasionally glancing over at my neatly stacked piles of books and papers.  I have completed one task, my thesis draft, and have moved on to another, strangely more daunting one: the completion of a two-year overdue paper from a class that had a rather unfortunate impact on my opinion of my own intellect.  Perhaps taking the time away from it was a blessing because now, sitting here with my Foucault, my Friedman, my Harvey and my Hayek I am feeling far more capable of writing this beast.  I am feeling far more able to put a Rebekah spin on a topic that I despise: neoliberalism.

Over the past few years I have thought, on and off, about what I might want to write this paper about.  My professor wanted me to write it on housing vouchers which I, personally, think are just a matter of semantics.

*A pause in the room and an exchange of glances to acknowledge what we all hear: a woman walking through the study center with bells tied around her ankles. Odd.*

Anyway, semantics. When I initially set out to write the paper I visited the New York City housing website to bone up on this idea of housing vouchers.  From what I could gather, it was a sort of alternative to the projects-style low-income housing solution that had previously dominated New York City and elsewhere.  Interestingly, on the website the administration boasted about how housing vouchers allowed people to choose the neighborhoods in which they wanted to live, allowed them to perhaps one day buy their own apartment — the neighborhood they used as an example was the Upper East Side.  Now I am no expert, but I found myself very doubtful of the fact that many people using housing vouchers would be able to find affordable housing on the Upper East Side.  It seemed to me that this idea of ‘choice’ that we are all so obsessed with is just a bunch of baloney.  Instead, it seemed like a repackaging of the same old policies. Sort of like, we aren’t going to tell you where you have to live, we are going to allow you to have a choice, but your choices are basically going to be limited to the same old places, the same old neighborhoods, that we have been forcing you to live in for years.  But now it’s your choice so, freedom.  I couldn’t bring myself to write that paper.

But now I am, again, thinking about semantics.  Trying to figure out a way to argue that the word ‘neoliberalism’ has been so overused, defined in so many different ways, as to be rendered absolutely meaningless.  I want to do this without seeming like I am taking the easy way out.  Hence, Foucault.  Everything sounds a lot smarter when you quote Foucault.  Also, I am fairly certain that if one could marry a corpse, this particular professor would have no problem exhuming Foucault and heading straight to the Justice of the Peace.

Anyway, none of this is the point. The point of this post was to share with you, fair readers, the strange thing that I just witnessed.  The guy sitting across from me at the study center; the guy who crammed himself onto the corner of a table already occupied by four other people; the guy who always walks through the study center with his clip-in bicycle shoes; the guy who has one of those hard-plastic backpacks; the guy who I have been silently laughing at all semester has just done something incredibly amusing.  Right there across from me he extracted, from his hard-plastic covered backpack, a full box of cereal. He then pulled out one of those tiffin lunch containers, filled it with cereal,* pulled out a smaller tiffin container filled with yogurt that appeared to be homemade, took out a full-size wooden kitchen spoon, put yogurt on his cereal and began to eat. With the spoon.  The spoon that was bigger than his mouth.  And he acted like nothing was strange at all.

So, yea. That made my day.

*I wish I could tell you it was something awesomely hilarious like Fruity Pebbles or Lucky Charms but it was some Kashi variety. I really wanted to tell the homemade yogurt maker that, with his wooden spoon, he was eating cereal masquerading as organic and healthy that actually is now owned by Kellogg’s and, it has been said, contains GMOs.  But I didn’t. I let him have his moment because I am an adult.

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Sharing is Caring

6 May

I am really busy finishing up school stuff (first thesis draft submitted yesterday!), dealing with my life, and entering this contest through The Guardian to get something I write published (thanks to Keesler for putting it on the listserv!) so I have been neglecting my blog. Also, my brain has been so consumed by the aforementioned things that I have been having a hard time formulating an opinion on basically anything.  Except eggs.  I have been eating a lot of eggs and enjoying them.  So, eggs are good. Opinion formulated. Anyway, because I have no interest, at this current moment, in writing a full blog about my appreciation for eggs as of late, I am going to share with you* all a few quotes that I have discovered over the past few months that relate to writing that I found really…inspiring.** So, here they are!

1. John Patrick Shanley: “Writing is acting is directing is living your life…I see no difference between writing a play and living my life.  The same things that make a moment in my life succeed, combust, move, these things make a moment in my playwriting have life.  And when I move in my writing, I have moved in my life.  There is no illusion.  It is all the same thing.”

2. C. Wright Mills: “By keeping an adequate file and thus developing self-reflective habits, you learn how to keep your inner world awake. Whenever you feel strongly about events or ideas you must try not to let them pass from your mind, but instead to formulate them for your files and in so doing draw out their implications, show yourself either how foolish these feelings or ideas are, or how they might be articulated into productive shape. The file also helps you build up the habit of writing. You cannot `keep your hand in’ if you do not write something at least every week. In developing the file, you can experiment as a writer and thus, as they say, develop your powers of expression. To maintain a file is to engage in the controlled experience.”

3. John McPhee, in a letter to his daughter: “Dear Jenny: The way to do a piece of writing is three or four times over, never once. For me, the hardest part comes first, getting something  — anything — out in front of me.  Sometimes in a nervous frenzy I just fling words as if I were flinging mud at a wall.  Blurt out, heave out, babble out something — anything — as a first draft.  With that, you have achieved a sort of nucleus.  Then, as you work it over and alter it, you begin to shape sentences that score higher with the ear and the eye.  Edit it again — top to bottom.  The chances are that about now you’ll be seeing something that you are sort of eager for others to see.  And all that takes time. What I have left out is the interstitial time.  You finish that first awful blurting, and then you put the thing aside. You get in your car and drive home.  On the way, your mind is still knitting at the words. You think of a better way to say something, a good phrase to correct a certain problem. Without the drafted version — if it did not exist — you obviously would not be thinking of things that would improve it.  In short, you may be actually writing only two or three hours a day, but your mind, in one way or another, is working on it twenty-four hours a day — yes, while you sleep — but only if some sort of draft or earlier version already exists. Until it exists, writing has not really begun.”

So, with that, happy Monday.  It is Monday, right?

*A demonstration of how much I care!

**Due to current brain state (fried!) it took me way too long to come up with that word.

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