An interesting art project. The story in the New York Times: The origins of the show can be traced to 2001, when Pedro Mateu-Gelabert, a sociologist researching the relationship between H.I.V. and drug use, first glimpsed the packets in an empty building in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, where addicts would shoot up. Immediately, he…
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No it wasn’t. This is the story of poor 40-year-old Robert Dziekanski. He was flying first time, to visit his mother and emigrate to Canada. He didn’t speak English. She told him to wait by the luggage carousels. He did. She couldn’t get in there and waiting outside for hours, thought he missed his flight,…
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My quote of the day comes from Solomon Peeples, 86, a former director of NYC’s Bureau of Pest Control Services. He was talking about rats: “They jump two feet from a running start; they can fall 40 feet onto a concrete slab and keep running…. We’re no match for them, as far as I’m concerned.…
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Police in Deming, N.M. raided a cockfight. People ran away. Birds, live and dead, were recovered. How much you wanna bet the live birds will now be killed? It’s not like I get too worked up over it either way, but I think it’s a shame that New Mexico banned cockfighting in 2007. It was…
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This Seattle officer wasn’t too aggressive. He was not aggressive enough. The officer says, “Stop resisting.” The suspect says, “Get the fuck off of me.” In this case, the officer is the correct and legal one. And he is lucky he didn’t get jumped, beaten, or killed. That woman needed be controlled. At some point…
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I don’t normally go around asking for stats. I’ll take a good anecdote over a slippery statistics any day. And yet… I feel like an old operator at times saying, “Number, please.” Last night I was writing and had a very simple question: how many US prisoners are in solitary confinement? Seems like a simple…
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So finds a Baltimore City Jury. The story by Erica Green in the Sun. Sanders testified that Hunt assaulted him during a drug arrest at Hamilton Park Shopping Center two years ago, and that if Hunt hadn’t reached for his pocket while running away, the five-year veteran wouldn’t have shot him twice in the back.…
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Of course I wouldn’t be for stupid people attacking Muslims either. But there is something deliciously ironic in turning against people who flew across the country to join your hate-filled cause. What else can you say about something so idiotic? (other than “Go back to Jersey, you friggin’ yahoos!”) At least it shows the true…
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Cops arrest an off-duty cop for being drunk and obnoxious at the ballpark. This doesn’t surprise me. But I mention it for those who talk too much of the Blue Wall of Silence and some secret code of brotherhood and that cops never arrest another cop unless they have to and somebody is hurt. Now…
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Daniel Okrent has a new book out, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. I haven’t read it yet. But I’ll be damned if Johann Hari in Slate hasn’t written one of the better book review I’ve ever read. It’s not easy to keep writing about the absurdity of prohibition in a new way.…
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