Via today's Maggie's Farm, we have a lovely book on art for beginning readers.

New Jersey man escapes five years in prison after police car dash cam video clears him and shows unwarranted police brutality.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/22/new-jersey-man-escapes-5-year-sentence-after-dash-cam-footage-clears-him-indicts-cops/

New Jersey man escapes five years in prison after police car dash cam video clears him and shows unwarranted police brutality.

Good. I noticed in the article that the officers involved have been charged with various offenses, no doubt pour encourager les autres. But that leaves open the question of how to hire and retain better police officers. In a Claremont Institute essay on Raymond Chandler, Christopher Flannery sates:

In the most famous passage in Plato's most famous dialogue, Socrates concludes that until kings philosophize or philosophers become kings, there will be no end to injustice and turmoil in the cities of men. But philosophers, or wise men—the best of men—are hard to find, and even if you found one, he would have good reasons not to want to be king. Ignorance may have to force reluctant wisdom to assume power. It is a political riddle that will always be with us. The hard-nosed but straight-shooting Captain Webber explains it to [Philip] Marlowe in The Lady in the Lake, after revelations of some very nasty misdeeds by police officers under Webber's command:

Police business is a hell of a problem. It's a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there's nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get.

Until there are philosopher-cops, there will be no end to mayhem in the cities.

I don't believe this conundrum is limited only to police officers, either.

Awww, thanks! *Blushes*

The funny thing is, I only stumbled across the Flannery essay yesterday, and I don't remember why. I must have come to it after following a link to something else on the site. Happy coincidence, anyway.

American Atheists reach out to GOP.

Personally I think is going to be a tough sell since the GOP purchased the rights to Jesus some time ago.

History is the short trudge from Adam to atom. -- Leonard Louis Levinson

http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/14-02-26/#feature

Believe the Survivors or the Science?
What the science of memory can teach us
about the Dylan Farrow/Woody Allen case

BY CAROL TAVRIS

Like many others, I read the passionate and polarized commentary that followed Dylan Farrow’s letter (February 1, 2014) accusing Woody Allen of having sexually abused her in the attic 21 years ago, when she was 7. As is always the case with sensational charges of child sexual abuse, most people leap to conclusions: “Of course he did it”; “he couldn’t possibly have done it.”

I have no idea what happened that day so long ago, and neither do you. But science and skepticism can, perhaps, help us ask the right questions and avoid emotional reasoning. For example, it’s one thing to be sympathetic to Dylan’s account, but quite another to base one’s support mindlessly on the criterion of “believe all claims of abuse.” One blogger put it bluntly: “One of the bright, glaring, non-negotiable truths I have learned, though, is to believe survivors. Believe them, even if they don’t remember everything. Believe them, even if they remember almost nothing. Believe them, even if the person they say raped them seems like the nicest person in the world to you. Believe them, even if it shatters your whole world to do so. Believe them, even if they don’t want to share details, or press charges, or ever talk about it again. Believe them, even if their story sounds implausible to you.”

Jerry, thank you so much for posting that. I have great respect for Carol Tavris and she is right. I've had on a number of guests on my radio show (including Tavris) who've talked about the mind's and memory's flaws. Christopher Chabris talked a great deal about this, and my past weekend's guest, Maria Konnikova, talked about this as well.

Advice Goddess Radio: Science writer and psychologist Dr. Maria Konnikova on how to think like Sherlock Holmes.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2014/02/24/maria-konnikova-how-to-think-like-sherlock-holmes

This one is really tragic:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/26/justice/oklahoma-arrest-death-video/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Oklahoma father dies in police encounter after mother slaps daughter

It was supposed to be a fun family outing to the movies, but Nair Rodriguez's 19-year-old daughter got under her skin. They fought, she said, and she slapped her daughter.

Moments later, police arrived on a domestic dispute call at the Moore, Oklahoma, theater and did not confront Nair Rodriguez but rather her husband, Luis. They took him down, and after the encounter on February 15, he was dead.

Cell phone video taken by Nair Rodriguez and released this week shows the final minutes of the takedown.

Nair Rodriguez accuses officers of brutality. Police say they were following protocol and used no undue force, although three officers have been suspended with pay.

Argument, upset

The mother-daughter spat upset the mother so badly that she bolted for the family car. Her husband, Luis, followed her to calm her down, family attorney Michael Brooks-Jimenez told reporters.
That's when a group of police and theater security officers turned up, he said.

There were three of them -- one working off-duty security at the theater and two active-duty officers already there to deal with two drunk patrons who'd passed out -- according to Moore police spokesman Sgt. Jeremy Lewis. (In addition, two Oklahoma state game wardens were working as off-duty security at the theater, state wildlife department spokesman Micah Holmes said.)

As the two on-duty Moore officers were leaving, a person ran into the lobby and told them about some kind of domestic dispute outside, Lewis said.

If you watch the video, you can see the cops take the father from lying on the pavement where they beat him and place him in a sitting position leaning against another cop's knee.

I have to suspect the cops knew by then the man was dead and this was a charade.