11-8-14 Hodgepodge

Feted Felon?

Michael Brown's mother, Lesley McSpadden, has been identified in a police report as an attacker in an incident described within as "felony armed robbery":

According to the report, Pearlie Gordon, 54, and two men were selling "Justice for Mike Brown" merchandise on a Saturday afternoon when "a large group of about 20-30 subjects 'jumped out of vehicles and rushed them.'" Gordon is the mother-in-law of Michael Brown Sr., McSpadden's ex-husband. Gordon told police that McSpadden, 34, approached her and said, "You can't sell this shit."

Gordon replied, according to the report, that "unless McSpadden could produce documentation stating that she had a patent on her son's name she (Gordon) was going to continue to sell her merchandise."

McSpadden's mother, Desureia Harris, began to rip down t-shirts hanging on a line, Gordon told officers. Then, she added, other members of the group began "tearing her booth apart." Gordon ... said that during the melee she was repeatedly struck in the head and knocked to the ground.

In the meantime, this luminary is preparing for a meeting with United Nations officials in Geneva, leftist agitators are (in the name of preserving calm) asking for advanced notice of whether the grand jury will charge the officer who shot Michael Brown, and left-leaning locals are passing along rumors that it would be wise to avoid St. Louis in the coming days.

Forgive me for having some small amount of trouble believing that "activists" -- who have spent the better part of two months stirring the pot by pitching aside everything about this incident but the skin colors of the two men involved -- have any interest whatsoever in preserving calm.

Weekend Reading

"[T]he debate [about quarantining Ebola patients] should be informed by our best scientific knowledge as to what constitutes an objective threat to the American public." -- Paul Hsieh, in "Who Hasn't Gotten Ebola" at Forbes

"The simple fact is that failure happens for a reason, and we possess the power to discover that reason and to become wiser and stronger." -- Michael Hurd, in "False & True Beliefs About Failure & Success" at The Delaware Wave

"[Contradictions] can hide out in your emotions, and if you're not in the habit of taking a close look at how you feel, the result can be faulty decision-making and the resulting turmoil." -- Michael Hurd, in "Don Draper and the Psychology of 'Write It Down'" at The Delaware Coast Press

In More Detail

Michael Hurd's column on success and failure makes the interesting observation that failure, which can have great benefit, gets an undeserved bad rap due to the false beliefs that many have about it -- and that also keep it from helping them learn.

Word Therapy

A scientist by training and a cultural activist by inclination, I have had to teach myself not to allow the popularity of quacks to get to me. The following entry from Word Spy will help me use word-economy and a bit of humor to keep this phenomenon in perspective:

fruitloopery n. The improper or ignorant use of scientific or technical language to make a false or impossible claim seem more believable. [format edits]

Some quacks can attain a surprising level of popularity, but it is important to remember that this is an illusion in important respects. Some of these followers were never really open to reason in the first place, and some will eventually see through the nonsense. It is a folly to concern oneself with the former, and a greater one to write off the latter.

-- CAV