Andrew Sullivan

Collecting Evidence On Cold Cases

Lyle Denniston recaps yesterday’s SCOTUS ruling:

Treating the solution of unsolved crimes as a legitimate part of routine police station “booking” procedures, a divided Supreme Court on Monday upheld the power of government at all levels to take DNA samples from every person legally arrested for a “serious” new crime. What a suspect may have done in the past, the Court majority ruled, is a part of the profile that police may constitutionally begin to assemble at the time of arrest for a separate offense.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for a five-four majority, insisted that the ruling in the case of Maryland v. King (docket 12-207) involved little more than what happens when police take a suspect’s fingerprints or mug shot. But Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the dissenters, said the Court had validated the use of scientific evidence taken without a warrant not to make an identification but to gather evidence to solve cold cases — something he said the Court has never allowed before.

Lauren Kirchnem wonders, “Is the DNA-fingerprint comparison an accurate one?”:

In an age when an artist can pick up an old piece of chewing gum from the sidewalk and create a 3-D model of the gum-chewer’s face, it sounds a bit naïve.

Orin Kerr’s perspective:

It’s hugely important as a practical matter, but it’s not very interesting from a theoretical or academic standpoint. The difference between the two opinions largely hinges on how you characterize the purpose of the search. For the majority, per Justice Kennedy, taking and analyzing DNA samples upon arrest is okay because taking DNA is generally about identifying the person under arrest, which is a very important government interest and renders the search constitutional. For the dissent, per Justice Scalia, taking DNA isn’t okay in this case because it really had nothing to do with identifying the person and was just about collecting evidence of other crimes.

Doug Mataconis is uncertain about the wisdom of the ruling:

As the dissent notes, some 23,000,000 people will be arrested or one reason or another before their mid-20s. In many cases, they will be completely innocent of the charges they are arrested for. Under the Court’s logic, every single one of these people will now be required to give up a DNA sample regardless of whether there was probable cause to ask for such evidence or not.

Noah Feldman is less conflicted:

If DNA sampling was actually like fingerprinting, this argument might be convincing. But of course it isn’t. Fingerprints are a phenotype that reveals nothing except a random pattern that no two individuals share. DNA, however, is your genotype: the blueprint for your entire physical person. If the government has my fingerprints, it’s like they have my randomly assigned Social Security number. If it has my DNA, it’s like they have the entire operating system.

The Brain Of The Beholder

Priscilla Long admires our brain’s capacity for understanding art:

[T]he brain is an artist, creating images out of separate visual components. Maybe our ability to read a curve drawn on a flat surface as a three-dimensional figure is related to our reception of visual data from the world as edges—lines and curves. Maybe when artists draw they are doing with their hand what the brain is doing with its electrical pulses.

Consider, too, our brain’s extensive face-recognition equipment, including the ability to read feeling in facial expression and body language. Our “face patches,” located low in the temporal lobe, along with our emotion-tracking amygdala, light up equally when confronted with a face or a picture of a face. Art is intermingled with biology and inseparable from it. As we are wired to recognize faces, so portraits and self-portraits—images of the human face and body—have proliferated throughout the history of art.

And too, our brain has its “theory of mind”—specific areas steadily assessing what’s going on in the next person’s head. We have our mirror neurons that fire when we move and fire in just the same way when somebody else moves. Our “theory of mind” works in life and in art. When viewing the sad, disconnected, gaze-averting circus figures in Picasso’s painting Family of Saltimbanques, we may feel sad, though we are looking at nothing more than lines and color on a flat surface.

(Picasso’s “Family of Saltimbanques,” dated 1905, via Wikimedia)

So, You Want To Be A Writer

Freddie dumps a bucket of cold water on Alyssa’s advice to writers:

Writing rivals sprinting or ballet in its inegalitarianism. Many people simply do not have it. You can work your ass off every day and still be terrible. More likely, you will work your ass off every day and be serviceable, while some pretentious jerk with half your dedication can toss off something in 15 minutes that blows your shit away. Yes, you need to read a lot. Yes, you need to write a lot. Yes, you need to practice your craft. You can do all of that religiously and still suck. That’s life. It’s like Bad News Bears: you can love it, but it doesn’t have to love you back. Sift around in your mind for awhile and find every spare concept like “unfair” or “should” or “deserves” and toss them on the fire. Those are liar’s words. They have nothing to do with adult life and nothing, nothing, nothing to do with writing. I don’t care what Malcolm Gladwell says; 10,000 hours of practice might be better spent playing Snood. That’s the gamble.

An Investment That Wasn’t A Lemon, Ctd

Yes, am arguing against subsidies and in favor of a tax on the end bad created. Market will then achieve best solution.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 25, 2013

After Tesla’s early repayment of their DoE loan recently, CEO Elon Musk posted the above tweet arguing against government subsidies for low-carbon or carbon-free technologies. Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus argue that he shouldn’t be so quick to disparage a program that benefited Tesla so much:

The argument for a carbon tax is that it corrects distortions in the market due to the externalized costs of emitting carbon, which in turn would allow companies that produce zero-emission vehicles, like Tesla, to compete on a level playing field without further public assistance. This argument allows Musk to elide just how dependent his companies—both those that offer low carbon benefits and those, like SpaceX, that don’t—have been on direct public support for the development and commercialization of the technologies upon which they were built.

While a carbon tax might have provided some benefit to Tesla or Musk’s residential solar company, Solar City, there is no imaginable carbon tax that would begin to approximate the value of the $7,500 tax credit that the federal government offers to buyers of electric cars. Or the $2.4 billion dollars that the federal government invested in battery manufacturing through the 2009 stimulus. Or the half-billion dollar loan that financed the factory in which Tesla manufactures the Model S. Or the 20 years of funding from the American and Japanese governments that have resulted in dramatic advances in the lithium batteries that power the Model S.

Christopher Koopman describes how the subsidies Shellenberger and Nordhaus reference were instrumental in Tesla’s success in recent years:

These subsidies have become so central to Tesla’s business model that it advertises them to customers as a way to cover the cost of a down payment. And for states that do not yet offer subsidies for electric cars? Tesla’s website provides links to help consumers encourage state and local legislators to subsidize the purchase of such vehicles. The company’s site even goes so far as to recommend consulting a tax professional.

Even with the support of federal and state politicians, Tesla would still be reporting losses were it not for its ability to profit off of other auto manufacturers in California. In the first quarter of 2013, Tesla reported its first-ever quarterly profit by using special credits from California’s Air Resources Board, which rewards auto manufacturers for the production of “zero-emission” vehicles. So far this year, Tesla was able to turn what would have been a $57 million loss into an $11 million gain by selling $68 million worth of these credits to other auto manufacturers in California.

Recent Dish on Tesla’s early loan repayment here.

The View From Your Window

Paris, France, 9.09 pm

Malkin Award Nominee

“I believe that the Obama administration is conducting psychological warfare on conservative Americans. Not only that but it is also waging this war on all Americans who previously viewed themselves, their country, their Constitution and their overwhelming belief in God as a force for good in the world … Seen through the lens of psychological warfare, the failure to defend our embassy in Benghazi need not be understood simply as a screw-up. It could reflect an actual strategy on the part of the administration to reinforce the notion that homicidal violence born of hatred toward America is understandable—even condonable—because we have generated it ourselves and are reaping the harvest of ill will we have sown. In other words, we should take our punishment,” – Dr Keith Ablow, Fox News.

Dr Ablow is a psychiatrist. Yes, you read that right.

When Rape Triggers An Orgasm, Ctd

It happens. In no way does it suggest consent. A reader shares her experience:

This happened to me. I was 14 and raped by two boys about 17 or 18 years of age. It was also the first time I had an orgasm. It is well known that rape survivors commonly deal with deep shame that can scar for many years to come. I can attest to that. Shame reached nearly every crevice of my being at one time or another throughout my life since that awful night. No longer.

Just two months ago, in a segway discussion about the Steubenville rape, I shared with someone else the complete details of what happened for the first time in my life (thank you, therapist!). I am 40 years old. And I am finally free.

What’s In A Bigot?

A reader disagrees with me:

Andrew, you may not like calling opponents of same-sex marriage “bigots” – and doing so may not be in the best interests of gay marriage – but it doesn’t change the reality: they are bigots. If your goal is advocacy or politics or politeness, then I can understand avoiding the word, “bigot” to describe them. But if your goal is truth, then I think it is unavoidable.

They believe their relationships are better than ours – deserving of special recognition. That means they must also believe that THEY are better than us. Why? Because they have that special something that allows them to get married in the first place. We don’t, because we are gay. Once married, they are nurtured in their relationships, growing in ways that they believe are unavailable to us. We are not allowed marriage because we are lesser. Having been denied the benefits of marriage, we fall even further behind. They may not wish to admit that they hold these beliefs. We must force them to do so.

Being a bigot doesn’t make you a monster, but it does put you on the wrong side of history. You don’t have the right to imagine that you would have hid runaway slaves in 1860 or marched with Dr. King a hundred years later. That’s because you are standing with the bigots today. That’s because you are one.

I think it’s possible to be merely leery of change in such an important social institution – a small-c conservative predisposition that is not interchangeable with bigotry. But as the years go by and the actual benefits of this reform deepen and the negative impact proves to be a chimera, then you do find a residue of bigotry that is indeed bigotry. Think of the evolution of an honest, decent man like David Blankenhorn and the rigid, permanent anti-gay agenda of Robbie George. Abroad, the pure hatred is much more visible (see above).

But even then, for purely strategic reasons, I prefer not to cast out heretics with that word, and work on persuading them to be converts. I once described the goal of Virtually Normal – written at a time when marriage equality was still a joke to many – as getting past the dynamic of one side yelling perverts and the other side yelling bigots. That has some emotional satisfaction for both sides, but it achieves nothing, and closes dialogue, rather than opening it. And dialogue is what supporters of marriage equality should always want – because our arguments are so much better. Another reader backs me up:

I have a lot of sympathy for the idea that not every opponent of gay marriage is a bigot. The problem is that I don’t think there is a simple binary between good people who respect gay people and therefore accept marriage equality and evil people who wish to take away the fundamental right of a loving couple to marry.

While I don’t detect animus – a required component in my own personal definition of “bigotry” – in every argument opposing gay marriage, I do detect a certain condescension, and more often than not, an inability to understand the subject at hand. Is Maggie Gallagher a bigot for opposing gay marriage? No. I do think she has certain prejudices that prevent her from seeing the fundamental equality between male-male love, female-female love, and male-female love. Is Ben Carson a bigot for opposing gay marriage? Not necessarily for that reason. But the guy did compare homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality in one sentence. I had no problem with Johns Hopkins disinviting him from speaking at graduation.

Of course, this says nothing of the many casual bigots, the dudes who can’t stand a fag, who also happen to support gay marriage. It was possible to think or even say the word “nigger” and still support desegregation.

People are usually much more complicated that one word “bigot” can convey.

(Photo: Unknown anti-gay activist hits Russia’s gay and LGBT rights activist Nikolai Alexeyev (C) during unauthorized gay rights activists rally in cental Moscow on May 25, 2013. Moscow city authorities on May 15 turned down demands for a gay rights rally, but Alexeyev said he would fight a ban in court. By Andrey Svitailo/AFP/Getty.)

Quote For The Day

“Everybody knows everything in this business; everyone knew about this project [the biopic of Liberace, Behind the Candelabra] [and] if someone wanted to make it, it would’ve been made. Calls would go out when the movie became available, from the agencies repping the thing…They all came back with ‘not interested’ or with no call returned … It’s all economics. The point I was trying to make was not that anyone in Hollywood is anti-gay. It was that economic forces make it difficult, if not impossible, for people to think outside of the box … If audiences were going in great numbers to see stuff that was not down the middle, then everyone would be doing that … [Hollywood is] merely responding to what people are telling them they want to see!” – Steven Soderbergh, explaining partly why he’s done with movie-making.

That’s why I watch TV these days. I’m an adult.

The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #156

A reader writes:

This is hard, hard, hard. No street indications at all, just some Spanish-style roofs and a mountain top of snow. I immediately thought of South America (it’s winter down there) and for some reason, I came to Santiago, Chile. I could be wrong and this is from some northern campus of the California college system, but I don’t think so. We haven’t had any appreciable amount of rain in sometime, so there’s no large amount of snow on the mountains.

Where in Santiago? I have absolutely no idea. I’m sure I’ll lose to someone who knows Chile like I know parts of New Jersey and will be able to pinpoint that tower and the angle of mountain with ease. Next time, pick something that gives the rest of us a chance, huh?

Another:

Unlike last week’s contest, there’s nothing for me to immediately grasp onto beyond the mountain range and the architecture. I wish I knew what that orange thing in the next courtyard over (in the lower right corner of the frame) was because that’s probably a clue. It could South America or it could be Spain. I’m going to guess Santiago, Chile and be done with it.

Another:

I don’t have time to do in-depth searching, but a Google search for “red tiled roofs” and “mountain” let me to Cuzco, Peru, which looks awfully similar to the images in the photo. A further search for hotels in the area found several with arched windows, but I’m going to guess: The Hotel Monasterio?

Another:

Well, it’s been 20 years since I’ve lived in the area, but I think this photo was taken from Laguna Niguel, California, looking away from the ocean toward the Saddleback Mountains. I think that is Saddleback College off to the right, or I might have guessed Mission Viejo.

Another:

Not a lot of time to do any serious searching this weekend, so I’m gonna just throw out a guess: Flagstaff, Arizona, based on my very initial impression that the mountain range is the Sierra Nevadas. Of course, it could also be somewhere in the Pyrenees.

Another:

Looks like the Caucasus to me, and I think I can spot one of Georgia’s famous watchtowers through the left window. So I’m guessing it’s the town of Mestia in the Svaneti region of the Georgian Caucasus, where I once spent one of the best weeks of my life.

Another gets much closer:

I don’t have high hopes here, but feel I have at least identified the region. This picture immediately screamed Italy. (Of course last time the contest screamed Italy, it was France.) So the roofs are distinctly reminiscent of wine country, the vegetation gives it away as not being California. The mountains are either the Alps or Pyrenees, removing Tuscany. Last time it was the Pyrenees, so I’m going Alps. Piedmont gives roughly the same temperament to the mountains as shown here, and the village size is moderate, but not large enough for a city like Turin. Susa was the lucky recipient of the mostly random guess based on region and city size.

Another gets the right country:

Okay, this seems like one of the easier ones. The view screams Andalusia with the fortress-like church in the mid-view and snowcapped Sierra Nevada in the background. The tiled roofs are very Southern Spain, and the arched windows look like a modern nod to old Moorish architecture. I’m going to say this is in Sevilla, a few miles from the city center.

Close. Another nails the right city:

The overall location is easy – this is Granada, Spain, looking SE to the Alhambra, with the Pico Veleta summit in the background (at over 11,000 ft, this is the second or third highest mountain in Spain if I remember my elementary school geography right). The picture is taken from somewhere in the Albaicin or San Pedro areas, but I can’t figure out where. Good to see my home region of Andalusia in the contest!

Another sends a visual of the city:

Another reader:

I mistakenly went off down the monasteries and abbeys route first, before realizing it may be a castle. (It reminded me of the tower in The Name of the Rose, with Sean Connery – an oldie but a good movie…). After much searching, I found Alhambra. Aha! Depressingly, this looks like it’s going to be another easy one. Tours of Alhambra abound. It may be Palacio de Santa Ines, which gets pretty good reviews on Trip Advisor, but I’m not sure I have the angle quite right. I’ll guess 3rd floor, counting European style, 4th floor American-counting. My luck with guessing floors was good last week (I think I was one of the half-dozen that correctly guessed the seventh floor of the Sheraton Jiangyin Hotel). Hopefully that luck will hold. Two weeks in a row. Woot!

Another illustrates the right hotel:

Another names the right hotel:

This is probably hopeless, because I expect about a zillion people to get this one. The mountains in the background looked a lot like the Sierra Nevada of southern Spain (really living up to its name “snowy ridge” in the picture). The towers not only looked reminiscent of the Alhambra, but are the Alhambra! Just north of the Alhambra is a deep ravine, so the photo would have to be taken from the hill on the other side, in the neighborhood of El Albaicin. The street level views on Google don’t provide any picturesque views of the palace and mountains, but I was able to determine the approximate location by noting that the main tower of the Nazarid Palace aligns with the highest mountain, and noting the approximate angle of the tower of the Generalife (on the right, partly behind the tree). The triangulation lines are shown on the first attached picture (I didn’t get the location exactly right – the actual vantage point is shown in red):

The next two photos show the Google street level views of the third floor room with the two round windows from which the contest photo was taken, and the buildings across the street, which matches the roof line shown in the picture. The location is Hotel Santa Isabel La Real, Calle de Santa Isabel La Real, 15, 18010 Granada, Spain.

From the hotel’s web site come the final two photos, one with the viewing location indicated, and the second one a view from an adjacent room showing the same view as the contest photo (I’m sure the hotel’s owners are going to wonder why their site traffic just went way up!)

Since I couldn’t win the contest with my last correct entry of Sacramento, I probably have no hope of winning one of Granada (interestingly, you can see the Sierra Nevada from both cities). I have been to Granada twice, but not this hotel; once while I was in college, and a second time with my Spanish girlfriend.

Another:

So I’m sure you’ll get a billion correct answers from all your readers who have been to the Alhambra and I don’t have the patience to try to narrow it down to the exact room the pic was taken but I ‘m guessing in the Nicholas Square area. But I do have a story that might be of interest.

I arrived in Granada via train from Madrid on Sept 11, 2001. I went to an Internet cafe to check my email and saw an AOL headline about the attack on the World Trade Center but ignored it because I thought it was about the attack in 1993. So I went back to my hotel and then out for a drink at a local bar a couple hours later. There was a TV on and people were really intent on watching it. I glanced up and thought it was just some Spanish made-for-TV movie. It was only after a sip of beer that I realized what was happening. I met up in my hotel lobby with three groups of American travelers (complete strangers all) and the eight of us spent the evening together getting completely hammered. The next morning we planned an outing to see the Alhambra together and through booze-hazed eyes took in the magnificent monument to Moorish rule of southern Spain. The irony of being in the last bastion of Muslim rule and culture to fall in Europe was not lost on me on the occasion of the attacks on the WTC.

An aerial view of the hotel:

Another reader:

Once again, a great contest. This one brought way too many memories of a trip I took to Granada seven years ago. I was living in Sevilla at the time, I took a train trough Córdoba for the day, and an afternoon/overnight trip to Granada. I made it just in time for the “candlelight tour” of the Alhambra and knew I had to come back for the day tour. Thinking tourist season had passed, I made no accommodations so I had to sleep on different park benches until I took a taxi back to the Alhambra, where I slept on a bench until it opened again. Sadly, I was alone and too shy to try so many things I was offered that night!

Of the dozen readers who correctly answered the Hotel Santa Isabel La Real, the following reader is the only one among them who has gotten a difficult view in the past without winning:

The picture is of the Alhambra in Granada with the Sierra Nevada in the background, taken from the Albaicin neighborhood. It appears to be taken from the “torreon-mirador” tower-view room at the Hotel Santa Isabel la Real. In the small picture of the room you can see the radiators below the windows, which can be seen faintly at the bottom of the VFYW photo. Also included is a street view of the same building seen in the foreground of the VFYW:

FWIW, I’ve submitted two previous correct entries without winning (Madrid, Tirana), and had my own VFYW picture posted once.

Some parting words from a reader:

The poet Francisco de Icaza gave the city its most famous saying, addressed to a woman about to pass a blind beggar without giving him anything: “Dale limosna, mujer, que no hay en la vida nada como la pena de ser ciego en Granada.” (Give him alms, woman, for there is nothing sadder in life than being blind in Granada.)

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