DNA Analysis: "of forty cases reviewed, almost half have ended with complete exoneration of the men originally convicted"

Patricia J. Williams writes for The Nation:

Johnnie Earl Lindsey spent twenty-six years in prison for a rape he did not commit. He was convicted based on the victim's misidentification of him from a photograph shown to her a year after the crime occurred. The jury found her perception more credible than the word of Lindsey's supervisor, who had testified that Lindsey had been at work at the time of the assault.

Today's extremely precise technologies for analyzing DNA were not dreamed of two decades ago, when Lindsey was arrested and tried. By ordinary measures, therefore, he had had his day in court. The victim asserted his guilt; he asserted his innocence; a jury of their peers believed that her story was true beyond any reasonable doubt. As a formal matter, the conviction withstands the requirements of due process, no reason to look back.

Luckily, Johnnie Earl Lindsey's case fell within the jurisdiction of Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins. Watkins, who in 2008 became Dallas's first black district attorney, inaugurated a unit within his office in conjunction with the Innocence Project of Texas to re-examine the forensic material in closed cases using improved methods of DNA analysis. The results have been nothing short of stunning: of forty cases reviewed, almost half have ended with complete exoneration of the men originally convicted--nineteen men who lost an average of twenty years each while wrongly imprisoned.

Photography and Memory

Memory is very important, the memory of each photo taken, flowing at the same speed as the event. During the work, you have to be sure that you haven't left any holes, that you've captured everything, because afterwards it will be too late.

Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.

Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.

--Henri Cartier-Bresson

link: Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes

New Product: Spam from Habitat

The company has been caught using online search terms connected to the violent clashes to promote its Twitter feed.

Using the name @HabitatUk, they "tweeted" updates about new products on the site.

But they also added "hashtags" - keywords that help Twitter users locate posts on specific themes - such as #Iran.

That meant that people searching for information about the deadly violence and mass protests in Tehran following the country's disputed election came up with posts advertising Habitat's goods.

link: Habitat In Twitter Row: UK Furniture Brand 'Used Iran Election Protests To Plug Its Sale Online' | Business | Sky News

Falluja Troubles a Bellwether for Iraq?

After all, by last year the city, a former insurgent stronghold, was considered one of the safest places in the country. Local Sunni sheiks had driven out the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and held successful elections, and American engineers were hard at work on a showcase reconstruction project: a $100 million wastewater treatment plant meant to be a model for civilian advances in Iraq.

Then a series of troubling attacks began cropping up this year. One in particular, at the end of May, seemed to drive home the possibility that things were changing for the worse. On a heavily patrolled military road between a Marine camp and the wastewater plant, a huge buried bomb tore through an armored American convoy, killing three prominent reconstruction officials and striking directly at hopes that the way was completely clear for peacetime projects.

With the June 30 withdrawal deadline for American combat troops from Iraqi cities and towns drawing near, that attack and others like it are particularly ominous for officials who see Falluja as a test case for the rest of the country. Security here is becoming a solely Iraqi operation, and while the United States military says the number of attacks remains encouragingly low, there are signs that Falluja could again plunge into violence.

link: Rumblings in Falluja Threaten to Disrupt Script for U.S. Withdrawal - NYTimes.com

Strong Indication Govt. Will Attempt to Arrest Mousavi

5:08 pm: (UPDATED) BREAKING The newspaper Kayhan, which is closely affiliated with the Supreme Leader has multiple articles in Thursday’s paper laying out the legal argument for Mousavi’s arrest. This is a strong indication thatthe government will attempt to arrest Mr. Mousavi soon or that they want Mousavi to believe that they will do so soon. Tabnak, [Persian] a paper closely affiliated with Mohsen Rezai, reports that Rezai has withdrawn his election fraud complaints.

link: niacINsight

Iranian Govt. Newspaper Calls for Mousavi's Arrest

Kayhan - Iranian Gov newspaper - has tonight called for the arrest of Mousavi - #Iranelection RT RT RT

link: persiankiwi (persiankiwi) on Twitter

Camera as Conscience

In photography, the smallest thing can become a big subject, an insignificant human detail can become a leitmotiv. We see and we make seen as a witness to the world around us; the event, in its natural activity, generates an organic rhythm of forms.

Henri Cartier-Bresson - "American Photo", September/October 1997, page: 76

link: Photography Quotations by Henri Cartier-Bresson - A French Photographer - The Father of Modern Photojournalism

Imaginary Numbers

One mathematician argues that if four dinosaurs stand together in a prehistoric clearing, they number four even though no people are there to count them. In other words, numbers exist independent of human beings. But consider the counterexample (suggested by British mathematician Sir Michael Atiyah) that starts with the imaginary idea that intelligence resides not in people but in a "vast solitary and isolated jellyfish, buried deep in the depths of the Pacific Ocean" with "no experience of individual objects, only with the surrounding water." In this thought experiment, argues Atiyah, "there would be nothing to count." It follows from this second example that numbers -- and all math -- arise from the way that humans perceive the world.

Who's right? That's [Mario] Livio's focus here. The question is mainly philosophical, but this book is mainly historical. That is, Livio traces the question of discovery versus invention by surveying the most fundamental and influential efforts in the Western tradition to understand the world mathematically. Is God a Mathematician? is a work of intellectual history -- the history of philosophy, logic, and especially math.

link: Book Review: Is God a Mathematician?, Mario Livio - B&N Review