Stoicism

I've been meaning to mention a book I've been reading for about a week now.

The untold war:
Inside the Hearts, Minds, and Souls of Our Soldiers

I mentioned it yesterday in a minor pissing contest at HuffPo (I got in two of them, Memorial Day makes me cranky. Not the day itself, I can cope with that, rather the people who posture about the glories of soldiering, or the virtues of not; sometimes they do it at the same time. I can be a stiff-necked SOB, and treating the service and sacrifice of soldiers, Marines, seamen, airmen as toys to be used to score rhetorical points gets my back up, but I digress).

It probably does the best job I've seen of explaining how, and why, the "soldiers" in the US military do what they do. The struggles we endure to bear up to what service is, and the greater struggles which come of being in an army at war; and more the struggles of being in a combat zone when that army is at war.

It doesn't hurt that she has a large chunk about interrogation; as a theater of that mental/moral struggle.

So, if you want to understand soldiers better, this is a good place to start. If you want to understand me a little better, it's not a bad book either, for an idea of the subject her post in the NYT, A crack in the armor is pretty good.

From the road

I am in SLO. I had the day free, and realised I could make a run to SLO and back, while still having time to recover/get my homework done.

Why do it? Because I can.

More to the point it's a convenient sort of training ride for the trip (which starts in about three weeks... Oy!). I was planning to be on the road before 0800, but lady_mondegreen had a slightly rough weekend, and so I left myself available to chat, in case she needed to talk. She did want to talk, and so I was on the road at 0900.

Breakfast in Salinas, and lunch at Mother's Tavern, in Downtown SLO. I'll head over for some coffee at BlackHorse (which used to be Downtown Espresso. Same owner, new name. Still "The home of the Velvet Foam").

Then back home.

Total drive will be about 400 miles, with about six hours of saddle time. The bike eats the road. Someone commented that, as a passenger, "The road goes by so fast, doesn't it?", and the answer is, no.

This bike seems almost stationary at speeds of less than 35, on the straigtaway. There just isn't any wind. Somewhere around 60-65, the engine noise goes away. The sound of the wind past the helmet (even buffered with the neck cowl commodorified made for me, and the earplugs I wear religiously) becomes enough that the note of the motor is no longer audible. It rather becomes a feeling. The hum in the seat, the way the mirrors do, or don't, vibrate, the buzz in the pegs.

Once she gets to that point speed, on the interstate, becomes different. I'm dealing with the other cars, and paying attention for cops. It would be really easy to go really fast. I don't know where she tops out, but I suspect, when I take her to a track class, I'll probably have no problem getting her up to 120mph.

My hips are a little unhappy, so too my knees. But three hours of riding and break looks to be a good number. We shall see how it plays out across the weeks of summer.

And the US slips further from being civilised

Yesterday I was happy to announce China adopted an exclusionary rule and (in theory) banned torture by removing the incentive.

The US, so I find out today, just, effectively, did away with Miranda.

The case came from Southfield, Mich., where a shooting suspect refused to sign a statement acknowledging that he had been given the Miranda warning but didn't expressly state he was invoking his right to remain silent.

Kennedy said, writing for the majority (guess who they were), "If Thompkins wanted to remain silent, he could have said nothing in response to [the detective's] questions, or he could have unambiguously invoked his Miranda rights and ended the interrogation." He also said, ""the interrogation was conducted in a standard-size room in the middle of the afternoon," conditions that weren't inherently coercive."

Right. A standard room, three cops, three hours. Not allowed to leave and told anything he says will be used against him. He stands mute, for three hours, and responds to a "gotcha" question.

I've always said the thing to tell a cop, when he wants to talk to you about anything more than what you saw, when he arrives to the scene of an event you witnessed is, "I'll be glad to talk to you when my lawyer gets here."

All the more so now.