Freaking out about flash mobs and the war on children

I heard a story on WHYY this morning that a Philadelphia city official wants to restrict the use of Septa TransPasses to before 4:30pm to stop students from being able to cause mischief after school. It turns out this story is true. City Controller Alan Butkovitz yesterday called for a crackdown on student TransPasses. He thinks that the TransPasses, which allow students to travel an unlimited number of times in center city between 5:30 a.m. and 7 p.m., let students travel to areas to cause mischief and especially refers to flash mobs.

The other half of the story is that a flash mob of 150 students gathered on Tuesday Feb 16th for a snowball fight got out of hand and resulted in vandalism and theft in Center City Philadelphia. Apparently there have been several flash mobs in Philadelphia supposedly organized using social media. So many that Philadelphia police and some council members are suggested that any online media social network be sued if it is found they were used to organize the mobs. From the article:

Councilmen Frank DiCicco and Jim Kenney both witnessed the chaos from their City Hall offices and called the act "appalling" and "disheartening" in a letter to Mayor Nutter and Council President Anna Verna.

In the letter, Kenney and DiCicco requested "cooperation in pursuing the possibility of a lawsuit against Facebook, MySpace and Twitter" - if it turns out that the teens arranged their mob gathering through one or more of the Web sites.

Good luck with that.

In a small victory for the vast majority of students (57,600 vs. ~200 at flash mob) that were not involved, though City Controller Butkovitz urged SEPTA general manager Joseph M. Casey to curtail the time on the TransPasses, Casy retorted (from the article)

In a letter responding to the controller, Casey wrote that there was no "correlation between the issuance of TransPasses and the incident involving the students who rampaged through Center City last week."

He also said:

In a statement, SEPTA General Manager Joseph Casey disagreed with Butkovitz's correlation and said school attendance has increased, truancy has decreased and juvenile vandalism on SEPTA is down 50 percent since institution of the TransPass in summer 2007.

Restricting the passes punishes the many for the few that are committing crimes and is a classic tactic in the war on children that sees all children as scary out of control things to be controlled rather than taught. I would even contend that not even all who attended the flash mob were guilty of bad behavior. I also doubt that suing the social media sites is a workable idea. If in fact they know that the mobs are planned that way then monitoring the sites is the approach to use. The groups essentially announce the mob on the network, find a way to get on the distribution list. Be clever and thoughtful, rather than reactive and fearful.

Happy Moon Day - First photograph of man on the moon published in color

This first photo of man on the moon published in color was a supplement to the Philadelphia Inquirer 40 years ago.

My parents saved this photo with the other newspapers from the moon landing forty years ago. It is too large to scan in, so I photographed it. Click on it for larger to read the text and see more detai, though the photo was not that detailed originally.

Now NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Observer has photos of the landing sites 40 years later.

Apollo 11

Apollo 14

Wish I was planning my moon vacation right now. Maybe in another 40 years. Tom Wolfe thinks he knows why we those first steps heralded the end of the program. Charles Stross asks what has the space program done for us? (lots of good stuff).

Let's go back.

40 years ago, Man on the Moon headlines from the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Norristown Times Herald

I was told today that 40 years ago when Apollo 11 landed on the moon and Neil Armstrong was about to take his historic first step I was crawling around on the floor with my twin sister and my father during the broadcast. I suppose at six months old I was too young to remember the moon landing but my dad tells me I was there watching.

My parents saved the newspapers from the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Norristown Times Herald for July 21, 1969 with the morning headlines proclaiming the landing and first steps of the night before. He are photos of those pages. If you click on them to make them larger you should be able to read some of the articles.

Philadelphia Inquirer July 21, 1969 page 1.

Philadelphia Inquirer July 21, 1969 page 3.

Philadelphia Inquirer July 21, 1969 page 3.
Closeup of conversation as Neil Armstrong takes his first step on the moon.

Philadelphia Inquirer July 21, 1969 page 4.

Philadelphia Inquirer July 21, 1969 page 5.

Norristown Times Herald July 21, 1969 page 1.

Landing at Philadelphia on Saturday - Aerial photo

I love attempting to take these pictures from the plane. My seat was over the wing so with this shot you get the versimilitude of peaking over the aircraft engine to see the ground. You should be able to see the Delaware river, and in the background, Center City. We were landing pointing southwest, so the city is roughly north.

Why isn't this double jepardy?

Philadelphia area residents have no doubt heard of the death of police officer William T. Barkley. They have also heard that his killer, William J. Barnes, has been charged with the murder. The surprising fact of the case is that the shooting that supposedly caused the death took place 41 years ago, and that Barnes already served 15 years in jail for the shooting.

The sad truth in this story is that the officer, Barkley, suffered paralysis from the shooting and had health problems the rest of his life. Still, I would have thought that justice was served when Barnes was convicted of the crime and served his time. The articles do not say what Barnes was convicted of so long ago, and so you can see how an overzealous prosecutor might pull out one of the many crimes that wasn't used 41 years ago, or the "new" one of murder and retry the case. Don't get me wrong, I think that if you commit a crime you should submit to justice and punishment for it, and it seems to me that that is what happened to Barnes. I have heard of charges moving from attempted murder to murder when a victim dies in the hospital days after the fact, but usually that happens long before a trial, conviction and serving a sentence. Barnes has already been denied bail for his "offense".

This is not the same as if they just discovered the murder from 41 years ago. Barnes is no great citizen, he has been in and out of jail his whole life until a recent "turnaround". All of that still seems irrelevant to the the fact that this really looks like double jeopardy. I am not a lawyer so I am sure I am missing an important point. The whole case looks like it will center around medical experts trying to prove or disprove that the infection that Barkley finally died from was a direct result of the injuries from 41 years ago. Shooting a police officer and 40 years of paraylsis are so emotionally charged that I don't expect a reasoned rational discussion of the facts. I would just like some lawyer to explain the basis for the murder charges.