Ranga’s Blog

Source: Bill Amend, D&D Chess, FoxTrot (Feb. 5, 2010).

Some of his answers to the Times’ questions are quite humorous:

Were you close to George Bush?

No, I’ve never met him. I don’t know Cheney either. I have not gone hunting with him, which is probably a good thing for me.^[1]

Weren’t you invited to the White House Christmas party during your two years at the Department of Justice?

I don’t think so. That’s the way the government works. There’s the attorney general, then the deputy attorney general and then an associate attorney general. Then there’s the assistant attorney general, who was the head of my office.

So you’re saying you were just one notch above an intern, you and Monica Lewinsky?

She was much closer to the president than I ever was.

…

I see various groups are protesting a decision by a California government lawyer to teach a course with you that starts on Jan. 12, claiming he is legitimizing your unethical behavior.

At Berkeley, protesting is an everyday activity. I am used to it. I remind myself of West Berlin — West Berlin surrounded by East Germany during the Cold War.

Are you saying the citizens of Berkeley are Communists, reminiscent of those on the dark side of the Iron Curtain?

There are probably more Communists in Berkeley than any other town in America, but I think of them more as lovers of Birkenstocks than Marx.

[1] See Cheney v. District Court, 541 U.S. 913 (2004) [PDF].

Source: Deborah Solomon, Power of Attorney, New York Times (Dec. 29, 2009).

The Ohio Supreme Court has held that the Fourth Amendment does not permit a warrantless search of an arrestee’s cell phone records if (1) the search is not needed to ensure the safety of the officers; and (2) exigent circumstances are not present:

We hold that the warrantless search of data within a cell phone seized incident to a lawful arrest is prohibited by the Fourth Amendment when the search is unnecessary for the safety of law-enforcement officers and there are no exigent circumstances.

The Court distinguished cell phones from closed containers and held that an arrestee has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of their cell phones because “[e]ven the more basic models of modern cell phones are capable of storing a wealth of digitized information wholly unlike any physical object found within a closed container.” Also, once the police take custody of an arrestee’s cell phone the Court ruled that “the state has satisfied its immediate interest in collecting and preserving evidence and can take preventive steps to ensure that the data found on the phone is neither lost nor erased” and “must then obtain a warrant before intruding into the phone’s contents.”

The decision is explicitly not based on any state law or state constitutional provision (”Smith has not raised a challenge based upon the Ohio Constitution”), thus no adequate and independent state law grounds that would prevent review by the Supreme Court are present. Since the Fifth Circuit’s decision in United States v. Finley, 477 F.3d 250 (5th Cir. 2007) [PDF], takes an opposite view, there is also a potential split of authority, which might make this issue ready for the Supreme Court’s review.

Source: State v. Smith, 117 Ohio St. 3d 447 (Ohio St. Dec. 15, 2009) [PDF].

The Supreme Court of Utah has ruled that reliable expert testimony regarding the reliability of eyewitness identification is admissible:

[I]n cases where eyewitnesses are identifying a stranger and one or more established factors affecting accuracy are present, the testimony of a qualified expert is both reliable and helpful, as required by rule 702. Such eyewitness expert testimony should therefore be routinely admitted, regardless of whether the trial judge decides to issue a cautionary instruction.

The decision was based on, among other things:

1. Empirical research regarding accuracy of eyewitness identification (”Decades of study … have established that eyewitnesses are prone to identifying the wrong person as the perpetrator of a crime”);
2. The effect of eyewitness identifications on juries (”there is little doubt that juries are generally unaware of [] deficiencies in human perception and memory and thus give great weight to eyewitness identifications”);
3. The ineffectiveness of cross-examination to address mistaken identifications (”Cross-examination will often expose a lie or half- truth, but may be far less effective when witnesses, although mistaken, believe that what they say is true.”); and
4. The ineffectiveness of jury instructions to educate the jury regarding the issues with eyewitness identifications (”[R]esearch … has shown that a cautionary instruction does little to help a jury spot a mistaken identification.”).

Source: State v. Clopten, No. 20080631, 2009 UT 84 (Dec. 18, 2009) [PDF].

“DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
“Some of my little friends say there is no exclusionary rule.
“Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’
“Please tell me the truth; is there an exclusionary rule?

“VIRGINIA O’HANLON.
“115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.”

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be judges’ or policemen’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is an exclusionary rule. It exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no exclusionary rule. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in the exclusionary rule! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire people to watch in all the courts in American to catch the exclusionary rule, but even if they did not see the exclusionary rule, what would that prove? Nobody sees the exclusionary rule, but that is no sign that there is no exclusionary rule. The most real things in the world are those that neither judges nor police can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No exclusionary rule! Thank God! it lives, and it lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, it will continue to make glad the heart of civil libertarians.

Or will it, Virginia? for it is up to you, and me, and our brothers and sisters at the bar to keep the exclusionary rule alive so judges and police will respect the Fourth Amendment. Without an exclusionary rule, there will be no longer be a Fourth Amendment.

Source: FourthAmendment.com, Yes, Virginia, There is an Exclusionary Rule (Dec. 25, 2009); see also Francis Pharcellus Church, Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus, The Sun (Sept. 21, 1897).

Source: Darby Conley, Trial by Joey, Get Fuzzy (Dec. 22, 2009).

Source: George W. Hart, Mathematically Correct Breakfast: How to Slice a Bagel into Two Linked Halves.

[Akhenaten] christened his city “Horizon of the Aten”, a fitting name for a place that so spectacularly sets off the daily drama of the rising sun. But today it is better known as Amarna, after the tribe of Bedouin nomads who settled here two millennia later. It is a city that has been lost and found and lost again. Excavations have uncovered spectacular treasures, such as the world-famous bust of Queen Nefertiti found here in 1912. But the past century’s wars and revolutions often saw Amarna abandoned to the sands of the encroaching desert.

The city was most recently lost – at least to most visitors – when the rise of Islamic extremism made all of Middle Egypt, including Amarna, a no-go area for tourists. Lying halfway between the major sites of Cairo and Giza in the north, and Luxor and Karnak in the south, the city of the Aten was already off the beaten track. With the added threat of fundamentalism, for the past decade it has been left to a handful of archaeologists and the most determined of solar cultists. But in January this year, the Egyptian government lightened the travel restrictions, once again opening up this beautiful region to the intrepid sightseer.

Source: Stephen Cave, The Ancient Egyptian City of Amarna, Financial Times (Nov. 28, 2009) (emphasis added).

I hiked the Lost Horse Mine Trail at Joshua Tree National Park yesterday:

Lost Horse Mine Trail Map

The first third of the trail, from the trail head to the Lost Horse Mine, is a fairly easy hike:

From the Trailhead to Lost Horse Mine

There is a nice view of the southern part of the Joshua Tree National Park from the hill behind the mine:

View From Lost Horse Mine

View from Lost Horse Mine

The next third of the trail is a very steep downhill with loose gravel. The last third of the trail can be hard to follow since it zig-zags through the wash of several seasonal creek beds:

Lost Horse Mine Trail

While there were many people on the first third of the trail, I only encountered three other people on the last two-thirds of the trail. As the trail is fairly isolated, it is probably best to hike in a group. A few additional photos from my hike are available at here.

Finally, someone realizes that the games should be easy to finish on the default difficulty setting:

After long reflection, here is my new rule for RPGs I write:

When a player is on the default difficult level, has built his or her characters poorly, and is playing straight through the main storyline with mediocre tactics, that player should almost never be killed.

Jeff Vogel, Make Your Game Easy. Then Make Them Easier., The Bottom Feeder (Nov. 19, 2009).