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The View From Your Window

Alcatraz Island, California, 11.24 am

Suing For An Affirmative End To Affirmative Action

The anti-affirmative action group Students for Fair Admissions is suing Harvard and UNC Chapel Hill, claiming that their admissions policies discriminate against Asian students:

The lawsuit filed against Harvard cites an Asian-American student who was denied admission despite being valedictorian of a competitive high school, achieving a perfect ACT score and a perfect score of 800 on two of the SAT II subject exams, and participating in numerous extracurricular and volunteer activities. The applicant, the lawsuit states, was “denied the opportunity to compete for admission to Harvard on equal footing with other applicants” due to his race.

The suit cites statistical evidence to claim that Harvard holds Asian applicants to a “far higher standard than other students” and that Harvard uses “racial classifications to engage in the same brand of invidious discrimination against Asian Americans that it formerly used to limit the number of Jewish students in its student body.”

The data are unassailable:

To get into the top schools, Asians need SAT scores that are about 140 points higher than those of their white peers. In 2008, over half of all applicants to Harvard with exceptionally high SAT scores were Asian, yet they made up only 17 percent of the entering class (now 20 percent). Asians are the fastest-growing racial group in America, but their proportion of Harvard undergraduates has been flat for two decades.

The discrimination against an entire race of students is simply unmistakable. Fixing it could be accomplished not at the expense of racial diversity, but in curtailing affirmative action for athletes and legacy admissions. And there’s evidence that the discrimination is based, in part, on racist stereotypes:

A new study of over 100,000 applicants to the University of California, Los Angeles, found no significant correlation between race and extracurricular achievements. The truth is not that Asians have fewer distinguishing qualities than whites; it’s that — because of a longstanding depiction of Asians as featureless or even interchangeable — they are more likely to be perceived as lacking in individuality. (As one Harvard admissions officer noted on the file of an Asian-American applicant, “He’s quiet and, of course, wants to be a doctor.”)

Why is that kind of thing not an outrage to liberals usually accustomed to seizing questions of racial discrimination with alacrity? Kaitlin Mulhere peruses what ending racial discrimination against Asians would actually lead to:

Between 1992 and 2013, Harvard’s Asian-American enrollment ranged between 14 percent and 20 percent. On the other hand, CalTech, an elite college that doesn’t consider race in its admissions policies, saw its population of Asian students grow from about 27 percent in the 1990s to more than 40 percent last year. In 2008, Asian Americans composed 27 percent of Harvard’s applicant pool, 46 percent of applicants who earned above 2200 on the SAT and 55 percent of those students who earned about 2300 and sent scores to Harvard. … “In light of Harvard’s discriminatory admissions policies, [Asian Americans] are competing only against each other, and all other racial and ethnic groups are insulated from competing against high-achieving Asian Americans,” the lawsuit reads.

That seems utterly undeniable to me. But Scott Lemieux disputes the contention that affirmative action is ipso facto discriminatory:

It may well be salutary for universities to experiment with different means of achieving a diverse student body. At least some may find formally race-neutral means that work well. What these lawsuits seek, however, is not merely to encourage experimentation but to forbid taking race into account altogether. That is a different story.

On this question, the argument that affirmative action is categorically illegal under the Fourteenth Amendment or the Civil Rights Act is simply wrong. Neither text explicitly forbids affirmative action. And it is illogical — not to mention ahistorical — to argue that racial classifications intended to promote diversity are the legal equivalent of racial classifications that sought to uphold a white supremacist caste system. Opponents of affirmative action are hardly underrepresented in the ordinary political process, and this is where they should make their case.

Yes, the suits seek an end to all affirmative action. But the courts could provide a less extreme remedy that both gave Asian-American candidates a fair shake and kept a race-neutral way of encouraging diversity. Racial classifications may not be as bad as those upholding white supremacy, but they are unjust in any case. And the maintenance of a clear racial burden for Asian-Americans undermines equal opportunity in a corrosive way. Rick Kahelnberg makes the case simply enough:

“It’s one thing if an affirmative action program discriminates against whites, who have had lots of advantages in American history. It’s a very different thing to allege that affirmative action is discriminating against Asian-Americans, a minority group that has been subject to official and private discrimination throughout American history.”

Sam Sanders, meanwhile, asks whether Asian Americans are actually all that worried about affirmative action policies hurting them:

A recent poll of Asian-American adults in California found that about 70 percent of them supported “affirmative action programs designed to help blacks, women and other minorities get better jobs and education.” But there’s inconclusive nationwide data on Asian sentiment about affirmative action, and a lot of times, the percentage of support changes depending on how questions about affirmative action are worded.

And even in California, polling might not tell the entire story. Recently, a push to bring affirmative action back into California public universities was squashed after some groups in the state – including Chinese-American groups – strongly opposed the measure.

The way Jeff Yang sees it, this lawsuit isn’t really about helping Asians in the first place. After all, “Jane Dou” – as he calls the rejected Harvard hopeful – “didn’t end up at the center of the Harvard suit accidentally”:

She was discovered through a broad-based campaign conducted by SFFA founder Edward Blum — a frustrated Republican congressional candidate who has chosen to make a career out of waging war on laws and policies that give “special privileges” to minorities. Dou was someone Blum wanted — a student willing to serve as a test case in a high-profile attack on affirmative action. It’s important to note that whatever its outcome, the lawsuit won’t help Dou. It’s almost certain that she’s been accepted by other colleges, and by the time the suit is resolved she will likely have graduated from one of them. What this lawsuit is really is just the latest attempt to derail an apparatus that has given hundreds of thousands of blacks, Hispanics and, yes, Asians a means to climb out of circumstances defined by our society’s historical racism.

So she should have somehow suspended her education so as to be a better plaintiff?

The arguments deployed to obscure what would, in the case of African-Americans and Latinos, be prima facie evidence for structural racism, are ever more inventive. But the reality – that if you’re an Asian-American trying to get into Harvard, you will be effectively as discriminated today as Jews once were – endures.

Bibi Opts For Vengeance Over Justice

In response to the recent spate of “lone wolf” terror attacks in Jerusalem, Israel revived its controversial practice of demolishing the homes of the perpetrators last week:

Israel on Wednesday blew up the house of Abdelrahman al-Shaludi, a 21-year-old Palestinian from East Jerusalem who rammed his car into Israeli pedestrians in October, killing 3-month-old Chaya Zissel Braun and Karen Yemima Muscara, an Ecuadorean woman studying in the city. The Wednesday blast, which rocked the densely populated Silwan neighborhood on a steep hillside just south of Jerusalem’s Old City, marked the restart of a policy of demolishing the family homes of Palestinians responsible for anti-Israeli attacks. According to Danny Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer and left-wing activist who tracks developments in East Jerusalem, it was the first punitive demolition in the city since April 2009, when police razed the home of a Palestinian who went on a rampage a year earlier, killing three Israelis.

The government also issued demolition orders to the families of the attackers in last Tuesday’s synagogue massacre. Just imagine for a moment how such a policy—which, to be perfectly clear, punishes entire extended families for the crimes of individuals—would fly in any other Western country, especially if it targeted members of a particular ethnic group. The return of the demolitions speaks volumes about how Netanyahu, who vowed after Tuesday’s attack to “settle the score with every terrorist”, approaches this conflict. For him, it really is about settling scores. Will Saletan remarks on just what kind of message this policy sends to the Israeli public:

The first lesson this policy teaches Israelis is that it’s legitimate to inflict suffering on innocent people in order to discourage terrorism. “You need a means of deterrence against the next suicide attacker,” Netanyahu explained this week as he announced demolitions in response to the synagogue attack. “When he knows that his house, the house in which his family lives, will be demolished, this will have an impact.” Shaul Shay, a former member of the Israeli national security council, agrees: “A terrorist may be willing to sacrifice his own life, but maybe he will think twice if he knows the homes of his relatives will be destroyed. If the family pays the price, it’s different.”

In other words, the logic of the policy is that it punishes people who don’t commit acts of terror. Terrorists want to die, so they aren’t deterred. Israel targets their loved ones, who would suffer more acutely, in the hope that this “price” will intimidate the would-be perpetrator. That is the logic of hostage taking, and of terrorism.

And sure enough, West Bank settlers set ablaze a home in a village near Ramallah early Sunday morning, in yet another “price tag” attack. But that, of course, was an isolated incident; any attempt to link such lone-wolf terrorists to Israeli policy would be loudly denounced as guilt by association, or an outright anti-Semitic blood libel.

(Photo: Ganim al-Shaludi (8), sister of Palestinian AbdelRahman al-Shaludi, blamed for killing two Israelis in a deadly vehicular attack last month, stands inside her family home after it was destroyed by Israeli forces in Silwan neighborhood, east Jerusalem on November 19, 2014. By Salih Zeki Fazlioglu/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

The Dish Mug Is Here! Ctd

A reminder from our announcement post:

This navy-colored coffee mug is very high quality, holds a generous 15oz, and, during our caffeine-addled test phase, it proved very durable. So the sturdy mug should last a long time in any Dishhead’s kitchen or office (and yes, it’s microwave and dishwasher safe – we tested that too). As a serious coffee-addict, I love it.

The Dish mug can be yours for $15 plus shipping and handling. Just click here and follow the simple prompts to order yours today. We only have a limited number of mugs for sale, so get yours before someone else does.

From a reader who snatched one up:

I’m a big Dish fan and just ordered one of the mugs. But a question: any reason why the shipping cost is so steep? It added another 2/3 of the cost to the total, which seemed pretty excessive. $26 for the mug – as great as it is – seems a bit crazy. Just typing that makes me question my order a bit.

It was a deal-breaker for another reader:

I filled out the order form and then got to the checkout phase and saw that the shipping cost is $10.53! To Vermont? Are you kidding? Fuggedaboudit. No mug for me.

We really wish we could offer lower shipping and handling costs. But the Dish isn’t Amazon or Zappos, and we aren’t selling mugs in the kind of bulk that allows for greatly reduced shipping rates. The Dish mug and packaging together weigh two pounds, so that’s a big factor. And of course all coffee mugs are fairly fragile in transit, so going with the cheapest, flimsiest packaging wasn’t an option. If you were to walk into a UPS store and try to ship these mugs the exact same way, it would actually cost more than we’re charging.

Our partners at American Solutions for Business get a discounted rate from UPS and have passed those savings along. A special shout-out to Phil Grosse for guiding us through the whole process and doing his best to get us the best deal possible. He’s a long-time Dishhead who emailed us last February when we were floating the idea of merchandise, which has been a learning experience for all of us.

We hope the mugs themselves – which really are high quality and built to last – will make them worth your hard-earned money. And don’t forget to email us a photo when it arrives; you might see it appear on the blog.

(Photo of the Dish mug endorsed by world-class performers Dina Martina and Janis Ian)

It’s Hard To Indict A Cop

Amanda Taub explains why – and advocates for making it easier:

Paul Cassell, on the other hand, defends the grand jury process and criticizes some Michael Brown supporters:

Did the grand jury get it right — that is, was there insufficient evidence to indict? A fair answer to that question can only come from reading the testimony of 60 witnesses, something that critics of the grand jury’s decision have obviously not yet bothered to do. Yesterday I wondered whether the facts before the grand jury really mattered to some of the more vocal supporters of Michael Brown. Today I think it is becoming increasing clear that they don’t. For too many people, the issue of whether to indict Officer Darren Wilson was never about the process employed or the evidence collected. But fortunately, the prosecutors and the grand jury took a different tack.

However, Noam Scheiber contends that Prosecutor Robert McCulloch’s “entire presentation implicitly conceded the need for a trial”:

McCulloch was under no obligation to discuss this evidence publicly. Nor was he under any obligation to release the evidence into the public domain following his remarks, as he repeatedly pledged to do. He presumably did these things to assure us that the decision not to prosecute Wilson was arrived at fairly and justly. The problem with this is that we already have a forum for establishing the underlying facts of a case—and, no less important, for convincing the public that justice is being served in a particular case. It’s called a trial. It, rather than the post-grand jury press conference, is where lawyers typically introduce mounds of evidence to the public, litigate arguments extensively, and generally establish whether or not someone is guilty of a crime.

Howard Wasserman asks questions:

Is it the grand jury’s role to weigh and select between conflicting evidence in deciding whether to indict? The DA made much of the conflict between the physical evidence and the testimony of witnesses, as well as the inconsistency between different witnesses and between statements by particular witnesses. But is that the issue for a grand jury determining probable cause? Or is that supposed to be left for an open trial on culpability? Is it typical for the prosecutor to point out those inconsistencies now? Or is that for defense counsel at trial? Here are two arguments on that, noting that the DA spoke of the grand jury’s job as to “separate fact from fiction.” Is that wrong?

David Feige joins the conversation:

There is no question that McCulloch is right when he says that none of us know the evidence the way the grand jury does. And it may well be that the decision not to indict Wilson was legally proper. But what’s improper about what happened was peddling the idea of grand jury independence as a cover for political cowardice.

And Scott Shackford reframes the debate:

Based on the information McCulloch described tonight it may seem unlikely Wilson would have convicted, and perhaps that would have been the right decision by a criminal jury. That raises yet another question, though: Should we be upset at the amount of deference and effort made to find reasons not to indict Wilson in this case or should we be upset that the same doesn’t happen to the rest of us? Is the outrage that a grand jury didn’t indict Wilson or is the outrage that the grand jury indicts just about everybody else?

Obama’s “Tyranny” Scores Well In Key Demos

New polls indicate that the executive action on immigration reform Obama announced last week enjoys widespread backing from Latinos and millennials:

Almost 90% of Latino voters say they “support” or “strongly support” Obama’s executive action, according to a national poll by Latino Decisions and commissioned by two pro-immigration reform groups, Presente.org and Mi Familia Vota. Nearly three-fourths (72%) of voters under the age of 35 supported the president’s action, according to a national poll by Hart Research Associates [PDF]. …

Latino support for the executive action appears to be largely bipartisan, according to Latino Decisions. While 95% of Democratic Latino voters were in favor of the executive action, 76% of Republican Latinos were as well. The issue of immigration reform remains deeply personal for many Latino voters, 64% of whom have friends, family members, coworkers, or acquaintances who are undocumented.

Another survey, however, finds that the public as a whole is evenly split:

The Quinnipiac University survey released Tuesday found that 45% of voters support the President’s immigration moves, while 48% oppose them.

The poll also shows support for immigrants at its lowest level ever measured by Qunnipiac: 48% of voters say undocumented immigrants should be allowed to stay with a path to citizenship, down from 57% in November of 2013. And 35% say undocumented immigrants should be required to leave the U.S., up from 26% a year ago. “Americans look at immigration reform with ambivalence,” said assistant Quinnipiac polling Tim Malloy said.

Josh Marshall infers from the Latino Decisions poll that legal immigrants—whom opponents of amnesty often argue would be hurt the most by it—support Obama’s action:

The poll, by Latino Decisions, does not break out native born Hispanic voters from immigrant Hispanic voters. But it does break out the numbers for respondents who talked with the pollsters in English or Spanish. That seems like a relatively good proxy for native vs. immigrant. The “Spanish” number is 94% compared to 85% for “English”. When you pick the numbers apart, they are so overwhelming that there’s really no way to argue that legal immigrants are less than overwhelmingly, perhaps close to unanimous in their support of this policy.

Now, let me be crystal clear: I do not find this remotely surprising. Immigration status cuts through numerous immigrant communities – Hispanic immigrant communities as much as any other. So it is not surprising that Hispanic voters are supportive. Recent immigrants, even if they were never undocumented, seem to empathize with the status of immigrants generally. It seems like the people who believe legal immigrants are victims of legalization for undocumented immigrants are native born white people who vote for the Republican party.

Waldman, though, wonders if Latino Decisions didn’t skew the poll somewhat with the way they framed the question:

There’s nothing biased in the Latino Decisions poll including the description it does of the action. The problem is in the question’s first sentence: “President Obama has said that Congress has had many chances to pass and immigration bill and they failed.” That’s perfectly true, but standard practice says that if you’re going to include an argument that one side uses on an issue, you should include an argument that the other side makes as well; in this case, something like “Republicans say that Obama is exceeding his authority by taking this action without congressional approval.” By presenting an argument for one side but not the other, they’ve encouraged respondents to lean in one direction. That’s very common among polls done for private clients, but it does skew the results.

That isn’t to say that approval of Obama’s actions isn’t extremely high among Latinos, or that if you asked the question a different way you might not get similar results.

The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #232

A reader scans the photo:

I have no idea where this week’s VFYW is taken and I am so glad I don’t live there.

Another heads down the yellow brick road:

I was lost on this one until I started watching The Wizard of Oz last night. It’s obviously “The Amethyst City” – the Emerald City’s less known, contrasting and under-appreciated rival.

Another seizes upon the right clue for the wrong city:

Sure looks like that street sign at the bottom of the picture says Grand. So I’ll say Chicago. But I realized I now need to delve deeply into the exact block of the exact street, and my OCD doesn’t work that way. So I’ll let somebody else figure that out.

Another reader flags Grant Street in Dallas. Or is it in Asia?

Millions of empty balconies … dumbfounded by searching Hong Kong high rises. Let’s go further south for better air and patio palm trees to guess … Singapore? I bet they have windows there.

Other incorrect locales with windows this week include Perth, Miami, Bangkok, New York and Panama City. But this reader wrongs his way to the right country, at least:

Toronto would be my best guess.

Our northern neighbor is right, but that’s the wrong side. Another reader just wants “a mention as an also-ran if I have the right city.” Done:

Every time I see the contest, I almost always think that it’s Montreal unless some feature makes that impossible. But today, I was certain that it was Toronto at first. The tall buildings look like the condo buildings that stand along Highway 401, but I’ve seen structures like these in images from Vancouver as well. Looking at the street sign at the bottom of the image, it seems to announce Granville and that made me think of Granville Island, which is across from Vancouver. Google says there’s a Granville Bridge in Vancouver, so that is likely what the sign is announcing. So my money is that we are looking at Vancouver, British Columbia.

Ok, I got a little excited and started looking at Google Maps and even downloaded Google Earth, but that’s when I decided to pull back on the crazy. I’ll let someone else go through the trouble of providing photo evidence and finding the right window if that is the correct city.

Another correct guesser seems pretty happy:

Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!

Another reader lets us know how much they appreciate the contest “even when it’s boring”:

I look forward to this contest every week. I love exploring new places (even virtually) and the VFYW has led me all over the planet on a quest for victory. It’s a great way to kill a few hours each weekend.

So it’s with that qualifier that I proclaim my disappointment in this week’s challenge. Is there a major city less architecturally interesting than Vancouver? It seems that every high-rise in the city is more boring than the next. Can you imagine coming home drunk to this complex of buildings? Would you even be able to figure out which was yours?

There’s a name for it, too:

I immediately recognized the buildings in my hometown, which are very typical of our city. There is even an architectural style that has been coined “vancouverism” based on the glass towers and urban design principles. Vancouver is a fantastic city and with a great downtown for a mid-size city. That is what makes it one of the of the most attractive places to live and unfortunately one of the most expensive.

Another reader floats another term: “One look at this photo and you can’t miss the Vancouveriness of it.” Another channels Lionel Richie to nail the hotel:

We are looking out of a window of the Best Western, 718 Drake St, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. This side overlooks Granville Street. I’m not going to bother the good employees at the hotel to find out the exact room number. Leave those poor people alone.

I was tearing my hair out for a while on this one. Looks like America, but not enough markers to identify. Not big enough to be New York, too new to be other Northeastern cities, trees not tropical enough to be southern, but that patio to the left has some tropical-looking plants, and the satellite dish is pointed way flat. The tiny bit of street sign taunted me – Gran___, Gram___, maybe even Grar___? Finally, like a thunderbolt, I thought “maybe Granville?” because it looks like there might be an I or L hiding behind those leaves. Thus Googling “granville street” gave me Vancouver, and following along Granville on street view brought me to the mansard roof of the old Yale Hotel, newly renovated.

The lesson? When it kind of looks like America, but you can’t quite put your finger on it, try Canada.

This reader notes another helpful clue:

Tricksy Dish! You present us with a sunny, verdant urban scene and a slightly odd-looking (to American eyes) traffic light with a street sign beginning “Gran.” Southern Hemisphere? “Gran” could be Spanish or Portugese … maybe Sao Paulo? Buenos Aires? Or perhaps English, “Grand” or “Grant” or something. Melbourne? Johannesburg?

The light is the giveway. Only one bunch of weirdos puts up yellow traffic lights with yellow frames: Canadians! Assuming the photo is roughly current, the lack of winter hellscape tells you it must be Vancouver. Which happens to have a Granville Street – the original main street downtown, in fact – on which there is one building with a mansard roof, at the corner with Drake Street.

Of course, we got a deeper explanation as well:

I’m sure there were a hundred ways to solve this, but my reasoning went like this:

1. It’s a cold weather, North American city during the summer, based on the new construction, street lights the fact that residents appear to actually enjoy opening windows.

2. Speaking of street lights, what idiot would put bright yellow on the traffic light backplate? Isn’t the whole point of those to provide a nice, dark background to give contrast to the signal?

A search took me to this thrilling read, “Making Intersections Safer: A Toolbox of Engineering Countermeasures to Reduce Red-Light Running: An Informational Report” (pdf):

In British Columbia, Canada, an evaluation was conducted of high-intensity yellow retroreflective tape on the backplates of signals at six intersections on an arterial in Saanich (36). The authors hypothesized that the framed signal heads would be more visible to motorists at night and the safety of the intersection would improve. Figure 3-16 shows a daytime photograph of a signal head with the high intensity tape around the backboard.

A comparison of crash frequency for a three-year period after installation, compared to one year before, showed that the number of night crashes stayed the same the first year (14 crashes) but decreased significantly (five and three crashes) in the subsequent two years. Volume levels actually increased in each of the four years (36). The use of retroreflective tape on the backplate is contrary to the MUTCD standard requiring a dull black finish. Hence, its use in the United States would require experimentation approval from FHWA.

3. The only big city I know of in British Columbia is Vancouver.

A Vancouverian shares his team-up process:

Now, when you said that it was going to be an easy one this week, I didn’t expect it to be this easy … especially as it’s just down the street from my office. The window this view this week is taken from the Best Western Plus Hotel at 718 Drake Street (at Granville Street) in Downtown Vancouver. The “Granville” sign is barely visible in the left hand corner. I’m going to guess the 9th floor, let’s say Room 904 – but I’m never very good at pinpointing the exact window:

Anyway, when this week’s VFYW contest came out, I had to hurry over and text my friend, fairly recently relocated from Vancouver to Toronto to check it out. You see, the contest has been part of a weekly ritual which inevitably sparks a round of texting before we either find the solution, give up in frustration, or otherwise go about our daily business. Now, I think this might be the first one he’s actually written in with an answer (I’ve got maybe 4 or 5, with perhaps 3 or 4 where I’ve found the window but been too lazy to actually email). He was going to write about the famous jazz bands (and Jeff Healey) at the Yale Hotel across the street, maybe the strippers at the Drake next door (now demolished and replaced by a rather forgettable condo building), maybe Yaletown and its yuppie denizens.

I said I was going to write in about the fact that the Best Western is located above a “White Spot”; he responded that he would have no way of describing why British Columbians seem to have an unnatural affinity for “O Sauce”. For those not in the know, White Spot is a local chain of restaurants where people my age seem to bring their white-bread grandparents for burgers and fettucine alfredo in this town where Asian food dominates. It’s also the place where you can get a Pirate Pak. Every year, thousands of Vancouverites line up for Pirate Pak day, which is the one day when adults can get your hamburger in a cardboard boat (I believe some of the proceeds go to charity), reliving the times our parents would drive up to the White Spot and we’d wait for our Pirate Pak to sail into the waiting car on a long wooden plank (50’s drve-in style). But sadly, my friend grew up in Toronto, where they do not have such Pirate Paks and therefore his gustatory senses are ill-developed and lacking.

In any case, we’ve been doing this VFYW thing on and off for a few months now, but the contest has been a nice little way of keeping in touch – even with 3,000 miles between us, it’s nice to know that we can still share the same view from our windows.

A history lesson from a reader:

Since many VFYW entrants tend to share some trivia about the current week’s city, I’ll assume that George Vancouver will be well covered, and will do some research on John Sebastian “Cross-street” Helmcken. A ship’s surgeon for the Hudson Bay Company, Helmcken settled in colonial British Columbia in the 1850’s, and rose to relative prominence as a businessman with a political savvy, eventually chosen to join a group of British Columbians to negotiate terms of confederation with Canada. At that time, the US and Canada were both suitors for British Columbia’s statehood/provincehood, but Canada offered to forgive the colony’s debt AND give them a railroad. I wouldn’t kick that offer out of bed, either, though as a Seattleite, I’d likely ask for more monorail.

Another invents his own game-show prize:

If I get close enough and win the contest this week, I hereby promise – on my mother and fathers’ good names and reputations – that I will finally do that which I’ve wanted to do for a long time and visit Vancouver within six months of Tuesday’s reveal. I will also don a Dish shirt while there and buy a beer for any self-identified Disheads I cross paths with when visiting the local pubs (two beers if they sport a beard). I will send photos to prove I made the journey.

Meanwhile, Vancouver is clearly a favorite city for many:

There are so many nice things about Vancouver that it’s hard to list them all here – Stanley Park, Gastown, the skyride up to Grouse Mountain, the Granville Island Farmers Market. What I love most about the city is its unparalleled setting among the inlets and bays of the Salish Sea with the dramatic backdrop of the mountains towering above the city just north across the harbor. My favorite memory of the city, though, is awakening on a boat sailing north just off the city’s west side and witnessing an escort of killer whales just off our beam. That is a sight you never forget.

Also:

I’ve been to Vancouver a million times (usually before and after a week of snowboarding at Whistler). It is one of the most beautiful, most livable cities in the world and among my favorite places to visit.

Another fan:

I’m no good at the Google Earth searches that your other readers like to do. I wanted to respond, however, because of my love for Vancouver. My husband and I visited the city in the summer of 2010 as part of our “baby-moon” (the trip you take before your first child arrives), and it immediately became the city where we would move in the event someone like Rick Santorum ever got elected president.

And another shares her shadier memory of the city:

The lovely street view of the Yale Hotel across the street reminds me of a story: When I lived in Seattle (mid 90s-mid 2000s), my friends and I used to drive up to Vancouver to go to this club that hosted a monthly goth/play party (light BDSM, if you must know). It was a ton of fun and one of the highlights of my misspent youth.

On one occasion, we decided to go up at the last minute – there must have been a convention or a Canucks game going on, because every. single. hotel. was booked. So we decided to chance it and stay at a hostel-type place in Gastown (mistakes #1 and #2). In the mid-late ’90s, this area was total crap – hookers, needles, the works. Yet we pulled up to the place and said, “to hell with it” and gave it a chance. We climbed the creaky staircase to our room: dirty blankets, dirty carpet, no towels, one light bulb, a couple of cots, and a smelly twin bed with a deep, deep impression in the center of the sagging mattress. I still can’t recall who drew the short straw for the twin bed, but the door locked securely so we stayed. The bathroom down the hall, however, was a different story: Trainspotting had nothing on this disgusting, feces-strewn hole. There was vomit everywhere and the floor was flooded from a backed-up toilet.

Needless to say, we held it. Later, when we returned during the early hours of the morning, we collapsed – fully dressed – on our crusty beds and listened while the sirens passed by. Fun times.

More on the neighborhood as it was:

This is a real mix of the old and new cities. Until 30 years ago, the land all those condo towers are on was at the seedy end of Seymour Street. When I lived in Vancouver as a young adolescent, that was a noted part of the red light district. Next door to the Yale Hotel was the equally legendary Cecil, noted for its strip club. If memory serves the Best Western itself stands on the site of another hotel with another strip club. That one I remember hazily from my university days – I can’t recall the club’s name, but I do remember that it served one of the best – and cheapest – hamburgers in town.

Redevelopment started in the mid 1980s with the Expo 1986 project, and soon enough the neighbourhood filled with shiny new towers. But the old city is still there – the Yale Hotel survived despite the demolition of the Cecil for another condo tower, and when I lived a couple of blocks away at Seymour and Helmcken, the concierge at our condo would routinely shoo the sex workers away from the front doors.

And more on the hotel in the above photo:

The heritage building in the foreground is the old Yale Hotel, one of Vancouver’s oldest and most distinct buildings: “The historic building was built in 1888, when the City of Vancouver was just two years old. The Yale’s red brick façade, mansard roof and neon signs make it one of Vancouver’s most distinctive buildings.” For many years The Yale housed a famous, world-class blues club which is now closed, but the building just underwent an extensive historical renovation as part of a condo project (everything in Vancouver these days is a condo project).

Chini reveals that easy weeks like this one just give him time to pursue his white whales:

A confession; I’m not really annoyed when we get easy ones like this. Sure, you look forward all week to the contest and then on Saturday, wah-wah-wah waaaaaaaah, it’s a 60-second special. But rather than pout, I simply go back to old views that I’ve never found. In fact, for over a year now I’ve been looking for one view in particular and, based on this weekend’s results, that search is far from over. So congrats to the newbies who got their first win in Vancouver. I was elsewhere, Ahab-like, hunting for the view that got away.

If it makes anyone feel any better, Chini circled a window on the wrong side of the hotel this week, but clearly his mind was elsewhere. Speaking of which, a reader sent this in too:

A guy asked a gal to Best Western Hotel,

She eagerly joined the amorous rube.

By midnight his prospects were shot all to hell,

She’d come to see “Shane” and “High Noon” on the tube!

While we’re off topic:

As a side note to Andrew following his post on “lumbersexuals”, have you seen the logger and fisherman on the City of Vancouver Coat of Arms? Would you initiate a campaign to persuade the City Council to restore proper beards on these hardy fellows? They’ve been clean-shaven since 1969 and someone with your influence is needed to address this error in judgment. I’d do it, but I’ve got to finish eating the tray of Nanaimo bars that I made last week.

Amazingly, one of the only readers to nail the right window just happened to be a long-winless veteran:

Well, going into this Saturday, I knew that if I wasn’t able to find this week’s window that the responsibility would be all mine. Two weeks in from surgery, I’m completely tied to my bed at home as I’m hooked up to IV and monitors, so I knew I’d have the time with nothing else to do. Seeing the photo, I was sure it would be a quick one, but sloppy searching meant it took a day longer than it should have.

My initial thoughts looking at it was that it was obviously a North American city that isn’t too temperate. My gut was that it was a Canadian city, or maybe one of the newer construction areas on the north side of my own city, Chicago. That little bit of the street sign that was showing told me it probably wasn’t Chicago — most streets in Chicago have information such as the block number and direction on the left of their signs — but I knew that some larger thoroughfares in New York had a similar layout. I had a distinct feeling that it was Vancouver, but the significant amount of new construction since my last visit and a sloppy Google Earth trip down the only street beginning with “Gran” meant I wrote it off and spent the next full day going down the list of every large major city in North America and their “Gran” streets. After striking out again and again, I went back to what my gut originally said and spent some serious time searching through Vancouver. It was ultimately finding the Grace Tower, which is seen in the background but wasn’t existing last time I was in the city, that confirmed Vancouver as the correct city. From there, I took a much more careful look at Granville St., and was able to find the location that I had so carelessly blown past 24 hours earlier.

The picture is taken from the Best Western Plus Downtown, located at 718 Drake St in Vancouver, BC, V6Z (note: that’s pronounced the correct way, “zed”!) 2W6 Canada. The window is on the southeast side of the building, looking over Granville St and facing out toward the Grace Tower. I was unable to find a map of the hotel, so I will circle where I think the picture was taken from. It’s truly a guess, as I estimate that the photo was taken between 65 and 80 feet above street level.

Awesome guess and a well-earned win. Meanwhile, the reader who sent us this week’s photo says she was was once an aggrieved player:

You used my photo of Vancouver for this week’s contest! Thank you. I guess that means I must forgive you for mocking me for identifying Mexico City when the photo was taken in a city in China. For that particular contest I was the only one who thought it was in the western hemisphere, having completely missed the Chinese writing on the wall.

The particulars on this photo: I took it facing southeast (I believe) in the early morning from room 708 at the Best Western Downtown Hotel, 718 Drake Street, Vancouver, BC. The street sign that is partially visible in Granville Street. My son and I were in the city for the SIGGRAPH conference, an international gathering of folks in the animation industry.

I’ve been subscriber for over a year. Thanks for the great blog.

And thanks for the great submission. Also, for the 150+ readers who entered this week, see if you can spot your guess in this week’s collage:

See everyone on Saturday!

(Archive: Text|Gallery)

Will Michael Brown’s Death Be A Turning Point?

After seeing the evidence, John McWhorter is skeptical:

[A]s someone who has written in ardent sympathy with the Ferguson protests, I find this hard to write, but I have decided that it would be dishonest of me to hold back. As I have written endlessly, America will never get past race without a profound change in how police forces relate to black men. However, I’m not sure that what happened to Michael Brown — and the indictment that did not happen to Officer Darren Wilson — is going to be useful as a rallying cry about police brutality and racism in America.

Based on the evidence known to us now, a common take will be that the incident proceeded thusly:

Brown stole from a convenience store, Wilson tried to stop him based on his description. Brown refused to stop and physically assaulted Wilson in his car, Wilson shot Brown in self-defense. Brown ran about 150 ft. from the car. He then ran 25 ft. back toward Wilson, likely trying to indicate surrender. Wilson thought Brown was trying to reinitiate the assault and fired further, which killed Brown. This was a hideous misunderstanding. And yes, if the guy lurching back toward Wilson had been white, just maybe he wouldn’t have fired those last shots.

But can we really know that surely enough to enlighten a nation? We are told that this tragic sequence of actions shows that America “devalues black bodies,” as a common phrasing has it. But I fear the facts on this specific incident are too knotted to coax a critical mass of America into seeing a civil rights icon in Brown and an institutionally racist devil in Wilson.

Perfectly and poignantly put.

The Damage Control Is Done

#UVA shuts down Greek life activities amid sexual assault scandal. @JuliannaGoldman reports http://t.co/f7oDGoa9oq pic.twitter.com/N8WJZ8LcSd

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) November 24, 2014

In a deeply reported, deeply disturbing story published late last week, Sabrina Rubin Erdely exposed how the University of Virginia has repeatedly mishandled and covered up rape allegations, including the gang-rape of a first-year student at a frat house two years ago:

UVA furnished Rolling Stone with some of its most recent tally: In the last academic year, 38 students went to [Dean Nicole] Eramo about a sexual assault, up from about 20 students three years ago. However, of those 38, only nine resulted in “complaints”; the other 29 students evaporated. Of those nine complaints, four resulted in Sexual Misconduct Board hearings. UVA wasn’t willing to disclose their outcomes, citing privacy. Like most colleges, sexual-assault proceedings at UVA unfold in total secrecy. Asked why UVA doesn’t publish all its data, President Sullivan explains that it might not be in keeping with “best practices” and thus may inadvertently discourage reporting. Jackie [the 2012 gang-rape victim] got a different explanation when she’d eventually asked Dean Eramo the same question. She says Eramo answered wryly, “Because nobody wants to send their daughter to the rape school.”

Erdely’s exposé has already had consequences: UVA’s president has suspended all fraternities and associated parties until further notice and belatedly asked the local police to investigate the 2012 incident. Dreher compares the UVA coverup to the Church’s sex abuse scandal:

This is what the Catholic Church did. The first case I wrote about, back in 2001, involved an immigrant teenager who was passed around priests in a Bronx parish. When the boy’s father learned what happened, he went to see an auxiliary bishop. According to the victim’s lawyer, the auxiliary bishop allegedly pulled out a checkbook and offered a payout in exchange for the father signing a paper giving the Archdiocese of New York’s attorneys the right to handle his case. The father may have been a laborer and an immigrant, but he knew a scam when he saw it. He left and hired his own lawyer. And here we see the University of Virginia following a similar script.

Dahlia Lithwick’s takeaway is that the Title IX-mandated system by which college administrations are expected to adjudicate rape cases outside the criminal justice system is fundamentally flawed:

If the purpose of the current internal adjudication is to increase transparency and reporting, that runs against the most basic institutional incentive to hide bad news. If the object is to counsel and support survivors, it’s not clear that has worked very well either. And if the object is to keep the campus safe, it has failed spectacularly.

According to one Justice Department report, less than 5 percent of attempted or completed rapes on campus are reported to law enforcement. Universities attempted to create a second-tier system that bypassed that criminal justice process, softened the impact of filing a complaint, and lessened the process obligations and the fact-finding capacities of internal reviews. It worked. And in so doing, it largely failed. The question we should be asking ourselves is not simply what it is about campuses that lead the friends and counselors of the victim to discourage her from seeking help from the police and the hospital. The real question is whether, having crafted an internal system that either masks or exacerbates many of the worst features of the systems it seeks to replace, do we want to stand by it? After reading the Rolling Stone piece do we think universities are moving toward solving the campus rape problem or inadvertently colluding in hiding it?

Judith Shulevitz asks the obvious followup:

So what should universities be doing about violent sexual assault? In those orientation sessions, they should be teaching students to see sexual felonies as felonies—not as violations of campus policy, but as crimes to be reported as soon as possible to police officers trained to investigate them so that prosecutors can prosecute them. If local cops and courts aren’t doing their job, then universities should use their considerable clout in make sure that they do.

A study published this year in the Harvard Journal of Law and Gender, for instance, suggested that if universities want to make women feel more comfortable about reporting rape, they should add more women to their campus security police force—as of about half a decade ago, only 17 percent of campus police officers were women. A body of research on regular female police officers shows that not only to women prefer to report rape to them, they’re better at eliciting painful details from victims, which leads to higher rates of conviction. There is no reason that university officials couldn’t be working to help their local police departments make reforms like these.

On a related point, McArdle responds to our reader’s contention that the concept of due process is not cut-and-dry and that making it easier to expel accused rapists from college is not that big a deal:

In the first place, the government is pushing for these relaxed standards of evidence and due process, via Title IX, which means that this is the government doing something to you. Not putting you in prison, to be sure. But — and I hardly believe I have to say this — getting expelled on a sexual assault charge is, in fact, something very bad happening to you. I don’t know why people keep saying that this is “all” that happens, as if it were the educational equivalent of having to change hotels mid-vacation. …

Rape is a terrible thing, which is why we try it in courts, and lock rapists away for a good long time. It’s also why we treat rapists like they are terrible people who may be admitted to normal society only after convincing repentance and rehabilitation. That’s precisely why it’s problematic that we’re adjudicating these charges through such a weak process. Expelling someone for rape creates an official record that brands them, in the eyes of society, as a rapist. We should do that only after careful examination, giving the accused every chance to tell his side. Not because we are making light of rape, but because we are treating these terrible events, and the punishment we mete out, with all the seriousness they deserve.

What To Make Of Ferguson?

I was on break when the killing of Michael Brown – and the subsequent uproar – took place. And so I’m both unqualified and qualified to offer my two cents on the case. I’m unqualified because I didn’t go through the collective experience of others as this unfolded; I’m qualified because perhaps for the same reason: I can look at the case with a little more distance and a little less emotion. And the best piece I have read on this remains Radley Balko’s report from Saint Louis, where he describes in great and persuasive detail how racial dynamics and a police force financing itself from petty fines from the poor make any idea of equal justice in that area a pipe dream:

Locals say the cops and court officers often come not only from different zip codes, but from completely different cultures and lifestyles than the people whose fines and court fees fund their paychecks. “It was always apparent that police don’t usually have a lot in common with the towns where they work,” says Javad Khazaeli, whose firm Khazaeli Wyrsch represents municipal court clients pro bono. (Disclosure: Khazaeli is also a personal friend.) “But I think Ferguson really showed just how much that can be a problem.”

A recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch survey of the 31 St. Louis County municipalities where blacks made up 10 percent or more of the population found just one town where black representation on the police force was equal or greater than the black presence in the town itself. Some towns were shockingly disparate. In Velda City, for example, blacks make up 95 percent of the town, but just 20 percent of the police. In Flordell Hills, it’s 91 percent and 25 percent respectively. In Normandy, 71 and 14. In Bellefontaine Neighbors, 73 and 3. In Riverview, 70 and 0.

Residents of these towns feel as if their governments see them as little more than sources of revenue. To many residents, the cops and court officers are just outsiders who are paid to come to their towns and make their lives miserable. There’s also a widely held sentiment that the police spend far more time looking for petty offenses that produce fines than they do keeping these communities safe.

Another critical piece of context:

Young black males in recent years were at a far greater risk of being shot dead by police than their white counterparts – 21 times greater, according to a ProPublica analysis of federally collected data on fatal police shootings.

The 1,217 deadly police shootings from 2010 to 2012 captured in the federal data show that blacks, age 15 to 19, were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, while just 1.47 per million white males in that age range died at the hands of police.

Not a great deal makes sense until you have absorbed that context – and know that Michael Brown was unarmed when he was shot multiple times and killed. He became a symbol of something real – even though the exact details of the altercation between him and a cop were as yet unknown. As to the case itself, I found the prosecutor’s press conference almost laughably tone-deaf, as the man seemed to be more concerned with impugning social media than indicting an accused murderer. It was a small sign of a vast cultural and social disconnect.

But do I believe the Grand Jury was out to lunch? I don’t fully know without having attended the trial and absorbed every piece of evidence now released. But the autopsy confirms at least part of the cop’s testimony – that there was a scuffle inside the car, in which the cop’s gun was fired. And when a person attempts to grab a cop’s gun away from him, or reach into a cop car in order to physically intimidate the cop, we’re not talking about an innocent bystander. We’re talking about an assault on a police officer by someone who had recently stolen from a convenience store. This is not a 12-year-old shot dead for waving a BB gun around. He’s a person who – as the video from the convenience store reveals – can use his weight and size to intimidate and physically threaten those trying to stop him from stealing.

The proximate question, of course, is why Brown was shot multiple times after the altercation in the car.

Brown could have pulled a gun during the original altercation – but didn’t, because he didn’t have one. Couldn’t the cop have surmised that? Wilson, for his part, had several other options available to him:

I considered using my mace, however, I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my left hand, which is blocking my face to go for it. I couldn’t reach around on my right to get it and if I would have gotten it out, the chances of it being effective were slim to none. His hands were in front of his face, it would have blocked the mace from hitting him in the face and if any of that got on me, I know what it does to me and I would have been out of the game. I wear contacts, if that touches any part of my eyes, then I can’t see at all.

Like I said, I don’t carry a taser, I considered my asp, but to get that out since I kind of sit on it, I usually have to lean forward and pull myself forward to the steering wheel to get it out. Again, I wasn’t willing to let go of the one defense I had against being hit.

That might explain the sudden resort to lethal force in the car – but doesn’t explain why a gun was the only weapon he chose to subdue Brown outside the car. He claims Brown charged at him with his hands up, but also reached down inside his waistband. He could have used mace at any point in ways that would not backfire as they might have in the car. And the cop cannot explain the multiple bullets he fired into Brown’s body. But he does revealingly describe him as a “demon”: “when I grabbed him, the only way I can describe it is I felt like a five-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan.” And the entire episode lasted only 90 seconds.

I suspect it was overkill brought on by any number of factors racing through Wilson’s mind in those frenzied, panicked seconds. And yes, primordial racial feelings may well have been part of the mix. But I can also see why a Grand Jury would have trouble indicting him. A wanted criminal who picked a fight with a cop, struggled with his gun in the cop car, and then turned to face down a man he allegedly called a “pussy” for not shooting at him, is not easily turned into a victim of excessive police violence. The rarety of failures of Grand Jury’s to indict people for murder becomes a lot less rare when you’re talking about a cop confronting a known criminal, especially when the criminal has just tussled with a cop in his car and grabbed his gun.

Which makes this a tragedy. There was no need for Wilson to shoot Brown multiple times; but there was absolutely no justification for Brown assaulting a cop and trying to grab his gun. Once you do that, a jury will not second-guess a member of law enforcement defending himself.

Which leaves us with the endemic problems of trust in the police force that Balko examined.

Which have just gotten immeasurably worse.