Nick Bilton, a venerable writer over at the Times’ “Bits” blog, writes,

But in modern societies, the old can also learn from the young. Here’s hoping that politeness never goes out of fashion, but that time-wasting forms of communication do.

In principle, there exists a tension between time-wasting and politeness. And yet…one wonders why we must view politeness with such disdain; why it often is that “time-wasting” things lose out because we’ve got to be busy and get our lives in order (or do we?). In some ways this mentality also reminds me of the story I read a few years ago, entitled “We Are Just Not Digging The Whole”.

We care more about the parts and less about the entire. We are into snippets and smidgens and clips and tweets. We are not only a fragmented society, but a fragment society.

What happened to taking the time to say the things and have a good conversation? It’s not that these things aren’t happening, of course. But one wonders whether a generation of individuals conditioned to have ever-shorter attention spans, lurking as we do on devices that provide us every answer and connection in the world, may yet forget the humanity that really animates and defines us. Surely, I would contend, there is a lot to the adaptability of the human condition—and yet, the distinctly human part that Cicero, Machiavelli, Hobbes and others identify; namely, our ability to reason, strikes me as increasingly shrouded in the laziness of our 21st-century lifestyles. Why it is that our minds are so long-term driven and yet, in the short-term, find that there isn’t time left for the things we may yet be playing the long game for in the first place?

Anyway, if you’re at all following my line of thought, wondering what it is that makes the kind act a rarity in modern society, you may enjoy On Kindness. While I detest the unfalsifiability of Freudian psychoanalysis, the book has a lot to offer in the way of a historical perspective, from Augustine to Rousseau, charting the basis of kindness and perhaps where society-writ large may yet be going wrong.

I’ve moved (relegated?) my music posts to a section of their own—one that no longer shows up on the front page. The intent is to keep my main posts focused on law, education and media issues; I’m finding that to be my main milieu—even as I like to drop in some of my music recommendations now and again.

To be sure, I like the idea of blending my references into my typical discourse. Indeed one might argue that’s what makes Matt Yglesias such a prolific writer: his ability, as with any good writer, to bring in a disparate set of sources and references into modern-day discussions both helps signpost for readers even as they elucidate new, interesting ways of framing seemingly old issues (I’m tying myself up with that phrase, but I digress).

To that end I’ll probably bring in the music when and where it is relevant, but sometimes I just want to share a good track—and not just on Twitter, but in a space I can claim as my own.

So: you’ll find a link under “extra content” in the sidebar, and otherwise the posts now reside at http://aedenpillai.com/blog/category/music/.

What I like about Kate Nash’s music are tracks like “Paris”: loud sound reverberating, giving off a sense of “fuck you, world”, with lyrics so matter-of-fact that you find yourself drawn in (well, I am anyway—others quite hate it and probably recoil.)

Another good one is “Mouthwash”, which is below.

Justin Lane/European Pressphoto Agency (via NYT)

I’m a couple weeks late with this, but just as I noted a few months ago that the Australian judicial system was beginning to take action against the ratings agencies re: the 2008 financial crisis and ratings debacle, it seems the justice department in the US is also going to (finally!) try to hold these guys accountable.

The Justice Department filed civil fraud charges late on Monday against the nation’s largest credit-ratings agency, Standard & Poor’s, accusing the firm of inflating the ratings of mortgage investments and setting them up for a crash when the financial crisis struck.

U.S. Accuses S. & P. of Fraud in Suit on Loan Bundles

So much of this relates to other pertinent issues of the “who guards the guardians” question that institutions often face (see the Bernie Baran case I learned about in December). In this case, this is a triumph of government’s ability to self-correct.

Yet, with the debate about drones (pardon the pun) droning on in Congress re: the Executive’s ability to conduct these strikes—and at that, with so little oversight one hardly ever knows what’s going on, never mind who it is that’s being targetted, or the supposed imminence and authorization allowing for the killings—we should remain mindful that each issue area calls for this kind of “awakeness” that Martin Luther King discusses in Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, lest we lose sight of the very things that make us moral and human.

One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of the status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. But today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.

(…)
This does not mean that we must turn back the clock of scientific progress. No one can overlook the wonders that science has wrought for our lives. The automobile will not abdicate in favor of the horse and buggy, or the train in favor of the stagecoach, or the tractor in favor of the hand plow, or the scientific method in favor of ignorance and superstition. But our moral and spiritual “lag” must be redeemed. When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men. When we foolishly minimize the internal of our lives and maximize the external, we sign the warrant for our own day of doom.

via The Economist

Consultants at both BCG and Alix Partners reckon that by 2015 it will cost about the same for an American firm to manufacture in America as in China. Western firms are also finding that innovation is easier when manufacturing is in the same place as research.

This week’s Economist has a great special report on the changing nature of offshoring and outsourcing, including gems like the above that may yet surprise you. We’ve already started to see signs, big and small; Apple’s decision to start building a line of Macs at home comes to mind.

Karl Polyani discusses in The Great Transformation the great upheavals endured, politically, socially and economically as developing societies shifted from agrarian modes and ways of living to that of industry. Now, as the developed world grapples with the frontiers (and limitations, in terms of supporting the entirety of an economy) of service-oriented labor and other potential avenues for growth, the return of industry is clearly an interesting development—the question, as ever, is whether the labor market will be there (read: adequately educated with the relevant skills) to support such changes. Nobody can say these aren’t interesting times, that’s for sure.

Alternating between that sticcato sound from pizzacato, overlayed on some deep glissando, this is some awe-inspiring cello music. Makes me remember why I enjoy stringed instruments. Support his work by picking up the track (or the entire album, it’s all pretty good!) at his bandcamp site.

Featured on this week’s This American Life: 483: Self-Improvement Kick

A perfectly normal guy gets rid of everything he owns, changes his name, says goodbye to his friends — and begins walking. In the name of peace. And Honduran government officials try to heal their corrupt country by starting a perfect city, from scratch. For the new year, we bring you stories about how far some people go in hopes of a better life.

Going forward, by default only actual posts of some sort of substantive nature are going to show up on the main content pages, with my music (read: YouTube links) going on a seperate category page, which you’ll find accessible from the sidebar as Music.

“Everyone wants to think of education as an equalizer — the place where upward mobility gets started,” said Greg J. Duncan, an economist at the University of California, Irvine. “But on virtually every measure we have, the gaps between high- and low-income kids are widening. It’s very disheartening.”

via the NYTimes: For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall

The more individuals (and their communities) become disillusioned with educational outcomes, the less likely they are to see it as a pathway to success. My anecdotal evidence working

with high school juniors and seniors has made real to me the powerful sense of foreboding and mistrust that educational mismatches and setbacks often engender.

Atul Gawande’s “Better” is about a lot of things. When dealing with mammoth issues, it’s imperative that one is attuned to the context you’re working with if one hopes to achieve better outcomes. Simple concept, but hard to implement. Part of it comes from “knowing the data” and crunching the numbers. But it’s also about recognizing well-meaning intentions may yet have flaws. You can have all of the data available to you, but if you’re not paying attention, it might as well be meaningless.

Take his anecdote about polio vaccinations. Tasked with inoculating children in a remote village, Gawande and his team come across a mother who refuses their help. While most of the team moves onto the next house, one of the locals returns to the house to castigate the mother for failing to protect her children with a simple injection.

Few would deny the helpful intentions of the assistant. Yet, as Gawande tells it, the consequences aren’t as they seem: if one mother gets scared off by his team, there’s a strong liklihood she’ll talk to others within the village, potentially resulting in refusals en masse to the vaccinations—all because of one bad experience.

Certainly it is a blemish on their record to have one house go unvaccinated, but, as with everything, we have to weigh the results in context, understand the situation we’re acting in, and identify the main goal.

Jumping back to education, it’s hard enough agreeing on the end-game of education policy. Everyone agrees the state of education, on a global scale, can be “bettered”. But the measures we use vary-do we look to test scores to determine which teachers are most effective? Some, with good reason, are weary of a data-driven approach that misses the realities on the ground. After all, a hallmark of increased bureaucracy is increased dysfunction and time away from the “actual” job. Is it even worth considering an outcome-oriented approach when the very base that individuals are starting at seems so hopelessly unequal?

But I digress. That’s the subject of a lengthy post; for now I’m really only scratching the surface.

Even before we can discuss these considerations, as with all public policy issues, the game of issue exposure is equally fraught with challenges. Witness the recent Sandy Hook shooting or the brutal gang rape in India. Whatever policy changes come to pass, both of these give us a window into what sorts of critical junctures are necessary for substantive institutional change.

So what’s it’s going to take to jolt more policy makers into action, re: education? After all, stories like the one I’ve linked to are dime a dozen. Maybe it’ll be the looming student debt crisis that really springs people into action?

I for one am hopeful there’s plenty of work and change that’ll take place before that comes to pass (though it remains a strong possibility that it will come to pass all the same.) Indeed, it’s my hope that sharing this article with my minuscule readership contributes in its small way to increased awareness of this important issue area. Regardless of what nation you hail from, we all have an interest in ensuring progress going forward. While education itself is hardly the silver bullet, it certainly represents an area so often overlooked in the short term even as its long-term impact, across so many measures, is hard to understate.

Andrew Talevich / flickr

Today, Daniel Ford and Bernard Baran are both free men. While Ford sits on the bench of the Massachusetts Superior Court, Baran is content sitting anywhere but his prison cell, his home for almost 22 years.

In 1985, Baran, then a 19-year old high school dropout, was convicted of molesting and sexually assaulting five children at a Pittsfield Daycare. An employee at the center, Baran maintained his innocence. Ford, at the time an assistant district attorney, led the prosecution of Baran.

A review of the evidence against Baran, including unedited videotaped interviews of the children, raised serious questions about its veracity: the children were often asked leading questions, sometimes even promised prizes for responding with the “proper” answers. More troubling is that this evidence, potentially material in asserting Baran’s innocence, was withheld at trial—and appears to have been knowingly withheld from Baran’s own defense team as well. Once this, along with issues with the incompetency of Baran’s own counsel, came to light, Baran was released from prison in 2006, his convictions vacated soon thereafter.

In the intervening time, despite the strong likelihood of prosecutorial misconduct, neither Ford nor other members of the prosecutor’s office were officially sanctioned or otherwise held accountable. This is largely a result of the immunity prosecutors’ offices enjoy.

The circumstances surrounding Baran’s case represent an important juncture for examining the nature of prosecutorial immunity vis-à-vis the need for a judicial system that should itself not be above reproach.

The Tension Between Immunity & Justice

Tasked with gathering evidence and pursuing justice, we expect prosecutors will independently bring all the facts of a case to light. Proponents argue they need the assurance they will not be held liable for their actions—immunity—if they are to truly exercise said independence. It is paramount that they have freedom from external concerns and distractions that might limit the scope of their search.

However, immunity doesn’t quite give prosecutors carte blanche. Instead, the pursuit of justice is balanced with a respect for Constitutional protections for the accused, including the right to due process. For example, withholding evidence that may prove material in determining the guilt of an individual (a “Brady violation”, so-called for the Supreme Court case it derives from) is a serious violation of one’s due process rights.

It’s easy to see how Ford was driven to pursue allegations of molestation vehemently, especially in an era when allegations of daycare sex abuse were rampant across the country. Harvey Silverglate, a career criminal and civil litigator—and a member of Baran’s post-conviction defense team—acknowledges the power these sorts of “mass panics” have in appealing to prosecutors, social workers, and the general public, whipping them into almost frenzied action. But, Silverglate also notes, “the object of the justice system is to achieve justice, not to make justice look good.”

Omitting certain video evidence—including repeated refusals of children to acknowledge Baran’s guilt, leading questions, suggestive puppet shows, and promises of prizes—clearly bolstered Ford’s case. Similarly, it helped that, when evidence came to light recommending the investigation of another individual, it was not revealed to Baran’s defense until after he was convicted.

Yet the zealousness of Ford and others in seeking a conviction should not admonish their poor conduct. Failure to inform the defense of these critical evidentiary details smells of a Brady violation, to say nothing of its generally reprehensible nature.

Years later, even in the appeals process, the district attorney’s office effectively stonewalled—for almost 42 months—motions to unearth the unedited tapes. Curiously, the tapes surfaced almost immediately when a new DA took over. Silverglate noted, “The only thing we were lucky about is that he [the previous DA] didn’t burn them.” Clearly, luck should not be the balance from which justice hangs.

Who, Then, Manages Prosecutorial Misconduct?

Last year, the Supreme Court further narrowed the scope of potential Brady claims, ruling in Connick v. Thompson that municipalities and offices can’t be held liable for particular violations—instead, a pattern of similar violations must be shown.

Given the immunity from civil proceedings already afforded individual prosecutors, and the remote likelihood of showing a pattern of violations on a particular office, it often falls to state attorney discipline systems to manage prosecutorial misconduct.

How effective are these systems at reining in the kind of misconduct Ford likely engaged in? A 2011 Yale Law Review[1] article notes the codes governing these state bodies often fail to explicitly prohibit the kinds of acts construed as prosecutorial misconduct. These bodies also tend to afford complainants minimal rights, often leaving much of the process at the disciplinary body’s discretion. The fact that a number of these bodies overwhelmingly comprise members of bar associations also raises the specter of substantial conflicts of interest. On this, it is reassuring that Massachusetts is among nine states where at least a third of the boards are made up of non-lawyers.

That said, it’s none too surprising that when various studies of prosecutorial misconduct are conducted, few prosecutors—if any—actually face disciplinary action. Between 1970 and 2003, one study found that of 2,012 cases in which prosecutorial misconduct played a role, a mere 44 pursued disciplinary action[2]. In short, the bodies governing prosecutors’ conduct, presently, leave much to be desired.

Hope for the Future

Some suggest if the public learned the truth about the prevalence of prosecutorial misconduct, it could diminish confidence in the system. To that, Silverglate points out, “The very credibility on which the system depends is tied to its capacity to admit error.” In the case of Ford, even as the DA’s office is wary of further, potentially disruptive hearings, Silverglate intends at some point to take up the case against him, at least through the state’s legal ethics board. In much the same way Baran didn’t deserve his seat in prison, Silverglate believes Ford doesn’t deserve his seat on the bench.

Longer term, most agree the solution to squaring the issue of prosecutorial misconduct lies primarily in reforming the institutions governing our judicial system. Litigators continue to call for the establishment of statewide innocence commissions, intended not only to look into particular cases, but also to recommend substantive reforms encouraging ethical behavior over unbridled attempts to score convictions.

Silverglate acknowledges it’s a constant battle as “courts are naturally self-protective.” Persistence, greater awareness and a more circumspect public are all key ingredients in balancing a desire for independent prosecutors and ethical, accountable justice.

We often reduce life to a series of ups and downs, wins and loses. Weighty as it is to not only have to bury a husband but also a daughter, Blue Nights—a reference to “the long, light evening hours that signal the summer solstice”—is electrifying. Without giving too much away, it’s a mix of meditations on death and parenting. Not exactly the finer parts of either, but told in a very real,  almost jarring, manner.

At just under 200 pages, it’s tempting to digest the book in the space of a couple hours. I, however, went about it over the course of about a month. While many of the chapters are no longer than a couple of pages, I found drawing it out offered better way to really appreciate Didion’s narrative.

I’m generally one to let good things speak for themselves, but I do have this one note: While I’m not a parent who’s been through the dilemmas as Didion, at her seventy-five years of age, has, hers is a perspective that any keen-minded individual stands to benefit from; understanding our humanity is surely a lifelong endeavor.

More on Blue Nights: on GoodReads | on Amazon