The horror of the sex offender registry

 

My previous post on smoke detectors reminded me of a much more serious issue: the travesty of justice that is the sex offender registry. This is an issue that is once again driven by anecdote. A spectacularly rare and horrible crime occurs: a boy is kidnapped, raped and murdered. The perpetrator lived next door and had a previous sex offense. "Why was I not told that a sex offender was living next door?" bellows the father. Legislators listen, likely urged on by constituents who are gripped by the news story. The sex offender registry is created.

The short answer to the father's question, if you were thinking statistically, is that 999,999 sex offenders never abduct or rape their neighbors. But sex offenders are the scum of the earth; who could sympathize with them? The registry is a law, and once passed, it applies to everyone. Who is a sex offender? Surely not just those who brutally rape children. Lesser touching or indecent exposure offenders will qualify. It is also those who rape adults, because are you going to tell me that rape of an adult woman isn't as serious a crime as the rape of a child? What about those who access child pornography? Well, they're disgusting pedophiles, so no punishment is too harsh. By the time we're done, the registry contains 14-year-olds who touched their younger sister in a way they shouldn't have. It contains 19-year-olds who had sex with their 13-year-old girlfriends. It contains in some places those caught urinating in public.

The next question is what we do with the registry information. We make it public, so ordinary citizens can check on where the sex offenders are living. Surely there are some nearby, and modern Google-like tools make it easier than ever to find them. One thing this can result in is harassment -- protesters or rocks through the window. People rarely check on exactly what the crime was. In other jurisdictions there are legal restrictions, like the inability to live within 400 yards of a school or playground, which in some places means there is virtually no place in a metropolitan area for a sex offender to live. Surely the sex offender can't get a job. Ten years on the registry are 10 years of a ruined life. In some states registry is for life.

Do you feel safer? If so, it's an illusion. In fact, the vast majority of sex offenses are committed by people with no prior record. The recidivism rate for sex offenses is something like 2%, compared to something like 60% for auto theft.

The rational approach would certainly include asking if we are meting out punishments for crimes roughly in proportion to the harm they cause. There is no registry for murderers, or for those who do armed robbery. None for drunk drivers, or those who beat people to within an inch of their lives. Last I knew, the recommended federal penalty for taking a picture of a 17-year-old boy's erect penis was twice as long as if you tried to kill him.

The fact is, in our society we don't lock up everyone for life who has committed a crime. We set them free after a reasonable period, and give them a second chance. That means that there will always be many people with criminal records living near you. Most of them never bother us. And it's a chance we take as part of a free society. Those with sex crimes should be treated no differently.

Suppose a legislator supports getting rid of the registry. You can be sure that in the next election cycle, the opponent will claim that the legislator is a friend of pedophiles. It is a difficult problems to solve.

Smoke Detector Headaches

 Here is a puzzle for you. What do you do if it's 3am, your smoke detectors go off, and after verifying that there is no smoke or fire anywhere, it just keeps sounding. You're on a wired system so that if any of your 3 goes off, or any of the 6 downstairs, then ALL of them sound. The way the walls are in your place, resonance increases the volume. Some of these are 12 feet up in the air, and you have no stepladder and besides that have a balance problem that would mean you can't get safely to the ones that are only 9 feet up. What do you do?

Somehow I don't think a call to 911 would be appreciated, unless maybe I could innocently claim I didn't know if there was a fire or not. Do I just put a pillow over your head and wait out the night -- maybe 5 hours? Expecting landlord service at 3am seems a bit much.

In fact, I got out of my problem because of a hale young couple that lives on the first floor. The alarm was loud enough to wake them up too, though it wasn't in their unit. And the man came up with his stepladder and disconnected all 9 of them. Piece of cake.

It is not one of the world's top 30 problems, but I am thoroughly convinced that our regulations and standards about smoke detectors have gone way too far.

Not that many people died in fires to begin with. It's great that the smoke detectors can save them -- though only some of them. You put one smoke detector in each apartment-size unit, and it will do 95% of the job that needs to be done.

Someone somewhere was so deaf or so drunk that they didn't wake up to the sounds of a very loud alarm, so it must be made ear-splittingly loud. Somewhere there was a fire in one unit, but those nearby were similarly deaf or drunk and missed it, so the solution was to wire all of them together.

Just today as the landlord was installing replacements, I read the warning, "must be tested weekly". Really? This issue is so vital that the best the industry can do is a product that requires a weekly testing? You've got to be kidding! Or perhaps it is just ass-covering and no one will test them weekly. Whatever.

I have a hunch this is an example of "policy by extraordinary anecdote". Something makes the news -- in part because it's very rare -- and so something must be done about it. There was a fire, and six children died. Terrible, terrible tragedy. To fix a recurrence of this problem, you create problems for another 999 people who don't make the news but live with the headaches. Or perhaps it's 999,999.

There's also the tendency for specialists to view the world through the lens of their own experience. I have a friend who was an Emergency Room doctor for many years, and he recognizes that in his gut he feels like driving cars is an extremely dangerous thing to do. So now on this issue we consult the experts on fire protection -- firefighters and their bosses. Salient in their minds are what happens in fires -- tragedies, or near-tragedies that were barely averted. For every fire, there are hundreds or thousands of people who never have life-threatening fires but instead deal with the alarm going off if they burn the toast. They are nowhere on the radar screen of the people who set smoke detector policies.

Presumably there is also now an industry of the producers of smoke detector equipment, and they have an interest in regulations that let them sell more of their product.

I told my landlady that I would be delighted if she procrastinated in installing new detectors, and even if she never got around to it, but no... new ones were installed today. And part of me is on edge waiting for the next time they go off, perhaps because the people downstairs burn their toast.

Bridging troubled waters, from a distance, and I like you as you are

More getting literal with song lyrics.

Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon and Garfunkel

When you're weary

Feeling small

When tears are in your eyes

I'll dry them all

I'm on your side

Oh, when times get rough

And friends just can't be found

Like a bridge over troubled water

I will lay me down...

When you're down and out

When you're on the street

When evening falls so hard

I will comfort you

I'll take your part

Oh, when darkness comes

And pain is all around

Like a bridge over troubled water

I will lay me down...

Sail on silver girl

Sail on by

Your time has come to shine

All your dreams are on their way

See how they shine

Oh, if you need a friend

I'm sailing right behind

Like a bridge over troubled water

I will ease your mind...

Surely this is about a lover or prospective lover, not just an aspiring friend? The first thing that strikes me in 2021 is that he is not expecting this to be a low-maintenance relationship. He's expecting that she will find times when friends just can't be found, she will end up on the street (homeless? prostitute?), and it is expected that a time will come when pain is all around. In fact, there is a tone here of, "You're going to suffer, but look at how wonderful I am! I will not just try but surely succeed at making you feel better when you're feeling bad! You're lucky to have me!" This is also the sort of support you might expect a really good friend to offer -- it doesn't have to be your lover, and it might actually be better not to be your lover. If you were aiming for a healthier relationship, you would realize that it's each person's job to make themselves happy or not. Others can help, but this total "I can save you!" thing is a recipe for trouble. Maybe that is an insight that has come to popular acceptance (to the degree it has) since the early 1970s when this song was written?

I was fascinated to find out recently that the song was originally just the first two verses. The third was added as an afterthought, or perhaps better put, a deliberate extension of the song. And here the tone changes. "Sail on silver girl, Sail on by, Your time has come to shine, All your dreams are on their way

See how they shine," Well, that's positively empowering and healthy -- I'm glad you have your goals and I'm confident you will achieve them. "Oh, if you need a friend I'm sailing right behind" is OK, still an offer of help but conditional on their asking for help. With the chorus they are back to the same basic idea as for the first two verses (that's kinda what defines a chorus), but I guess "ease your mind" is less of a sacrifice than "lay me down". 

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"From a Distance" by Julie Gold

I do find this song moves me. At this remove, though, I thought it was very interesting to find that it was written in 1985, and not (say) 1995. In 1985 the Cold War was on, no one had any idea that the Soviet Union was about to collapse, and when people thought about change to the world order, there was this great anxiety that lots of nuclear bombs might go off in the process. The world was a scarier place. True, we have things to be scared of today, but nuclear war does present a horror more immediate than climate change. So the pleading tone of the song is more suitable to the more uncertain world we lived in then. I like the song better when I think of it in that context.

The verse "God is watching us from a distance" is not my favorite, being an atheist. I speculate that on the other hand some serious Christians don't like it because they feel God is personal and with believers at all times, and not at a distance. Also, in Gold's original version and Nanci Griffith's version that first brought the song exposure, that verse only appears once, in the middle. It is the famous Bette Midler version where she repeated that verse at the end of the song, which I naturally think makes it worse, making religion more central than Gold intended.

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"I like you just the way you are" by Billy Joel

Who changes to try to please someone else? Someone who does not have a close relationship with them but would like it to be closer. An aspiring lover, we would expect.

But when I read "You always have my unspoken passion, although I might not seem to care", I wondered what kind of mixed message that was. Who would expression that strange mix of emotions and behaviors? My best guess was that he was addressing some woman who was his friend but hoped to be more than his friend, but he was going to string her along but always keep her in the friend zone.

But that was before knowing anything of its context. It turns out Billy Joel wrote this for his ex-wife. So if complicated messages and emotions are appropriate and understandable anywhere, it is with an ex-spouse. So my unease largely dissipated.

Analyzing the Words of Two Simon and Garfunkel Songs

 

With three days left in Trump's presidency, I turn to the most momentous of subjects... looking at songs that were popular in my youth and thinking about what the words actually meant. I figure I'm not alone in saying, "Wow, that was a great song" without thinking since then -- or even at the time -- just what the words actually meant.

Someone recently wrote that people think the best pop music is whatever was popular when they were at their most vulnerable and emotionally impressionable. Some of the music from the late 1960s does seem to stand apart, but I have no interest in claiming it is especially valuable. My only justification for this is writing about songs that were popular when I myself was young.

I should warn you that while I did well in just about all academic subjects at school, when it came to literature and understanding hidden meanings and allusions, I got Cs instead of As. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

I'll start with two songs by Simon and Garfunkel, "Cecilia" and "Fakin' It".

Just today I find people who actually comment on these lyrics and what they mean, as in

https://genius.com/3217217. I never could before. Cecilia as metaphor for artistic inspiration? If you say so.

But I'm just going to look at the literal message:

'Cilia, you're breaking my heart

You're shaking my confidence daily

Oh, Cecilia, I'm down on my knees

I'm begging you please to come home

Come on home

Making love in the afternoon with Cecilia

Up in my bedroom (making love)

I got up to wash my face

When I come back to bed

Someone's taken my place

Jubilation, she loves me again

I fall on the floor and die laughing

Jubilation, she loves me again

I fall on the floor and die laughing

First of all, I never before realized the lyric was "die laughing". I just thought it was "I laughing" and the grammatical mismatch was for some obscure reason I didn't understand. Well, that does change the meaning a bit! But not a great deal.

(This is a tiny example of a phenomenon called "mondegreen" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen. Maybe others will recognize "there's a bathroom on the right". One I heard recently was from "Helplessly hoping", heard as: "Helplessly hoping, her hard-lickin' lover's nearby". Admittedly the word "harlequin" is quite rare in the actual "her harlequin hovers nearby").

So this is a guy who thinks he's in an exclusive, committed relationship with Cecilia and would very much like to be, but discovers he is not -- and this is apparently not the first time she has strayed from his expectations. He is more than a little snarky in his example of how she has had spontaneous flings with other men, but that's OK. If he is literal in saying "come home", that implies they live together, which would add some weight to an expectation of exclusivity. And then when she does come back, he is overwhelmingly happy, even though he knows at some level that she might well stray again -- from his expectations. "Die laughing" or "I laughing" seem to only differ in degree of intensity of the emotion.

Now I turn to "Fakin' It":

When she goes, she's gone

If she stays, she stays here

The girl does what she wants to do

She knows what she wants to do

And I know I'm fakin' it

I'm not really makin' it

There's more to the song, where he expands on his self-doubt, but I'll just concentrate on this first part.

Once again, we have a guy who would like to be in a committed relationship, but the object of his affections does not act that way (we don't know what she says or he says, just what she does), and he is frustrated by this, and realizes that he is fooling himself to think that the relationship is what he would like it to be. This much is an entirely reasonable sentiment by the standards of then or today. "The girl does what she wants to do" is reflecting that she is not committed to the relationship and acts independently.

However, the next line intrigues me in characterizing what he would like a relationship to be. "She knows what she wants to do". Maybe this means that she is not straying out of weakness, in which she recognizes that she hasn't lived up her commitments to him (whatever they are). Instead, she has chosen without shame to do whatever she is doing that he doesn't like. But it also might mean that in his ideal world, he is he expecting that she would accept his ideas of what she wants to do -- that she would follow his lead not just in what she does but what she wants. That in a successful relationship, she should want what he wants her to want. There is no recognition of a symmetrical process where he too would adapt his wants as a matter of simple compromise. This is a creepy sort of submission, to my way of thinking.

I will note that neither of these songs fits in with the idea of a patriarchal culture, where powerless women submit to men's desires for the benefit of men. He feels he is at her mercy and powerless to get what he wants because she is the one in charge. He never dreams of using violence or blackmail or any other unethical method to get what he wants. He just hopes that she will of her own free will choose to be committed to him. If she doesn't, he just has to accept it.

Back to Normal, Without Guaranteed Gridlock

 Yes, Republicans no longer will control Senate, House, or Presidency.

The worst has been averted. Can you imagine what it would have been like 4 years from now as Trump proudly put forth his son as the next President (no need to amend the Constitution) with the understanding he would still be calling all the shots? And how much voter suppression would have gone on by then? And what he would have done if he had nonetheless lost? Shudder. At least some Republicans are shuddering too.

And I hope to see less of the grim visage of Mitch McConnell blocking everything that might benefit Democrats, regardless of its effect on the country. It will not be any sort of Golden Age, as some people thought when Obama was elected -- even though he had a Senate supermajority. And fortunately it seems most people now have much lower expectations.

Donald Trump still has the legal authority to launch hundreds of nuclear weapons in the remaining three days of his presidency, and it is only the unwillingness of subordinates to carry out his orders that would prevent that. He has the power to pardon ALL prisoners in the federal prison system (which, despite a few well-publicized future terrible crimes, might actually on balance be a good thing). The prospect would give the Supreme Court indigestion, I figure.

Of course I expect lots of people think about things the same way, and it will be wonderful if in three days time nothing horrible has come to pass. People used to worry about an October Surprise in a presidential election year, and now we have to worry about a January Surprise.

Been there, done that, wrote about it

It's mildly depressing to have new ideas for blog posts to express so eloquently my keen insights, only to realize that I've already made that point in one of the many blog posts I've made starting in early 2019. Of course not too many people have read those blog posts, but then again not many will read new ones either.

One reason to be discouraged is that despite how keen my insights may be, and how clearly I am right, the world has rarely come around to my point of view. Maybe, if we're lucky (knock on wood) it will come around to a majority view that Donald Trump is a disaster, and of a sufficient majority that Democrats will control House, Senate, and Presidency. Yet even that will not usher in some golden age.

Another reason to be discouraged is that it shows my declining memory. Perhaps it is not pathological; perhaps it is common in people my age, but I still don't like it. I don't like it at all. It's nice to be able to remember what you've written. There is of course the common experience in dealing with the elderly that they will tell you the same story over and over. I cringe at the possibility that I might become one of those people. It give me some inclination to just keep quiet more often. That seems unfortunate too.

So in the service of not re-inventing the wheel, but distinguish which inventions are wheels and which are lava lamps, I can think of some old posts I think are really important in my view of the world, and give some links to them here:

Polling vs Interrupts on unusual genders

Social mobility isn't important

The cosmic subtraction problem (life and death).

A critique of 'Privilege'

No objective morality

Evolution as the key to understanding

Heart Surgery

I am due to undergo surgery for the repair of my heart's mitral valve on November 9th.  This is not optional, as I will get worse and die without repairing or replacing the valve, though I guess it might take years. The surgery is a big deal, in the sense that I'm to be on a heart-lung machine for hours, and recovery will take days.

The surgeon told me that the 30-day survival rate was something over 99%. So that's very encouraging.

And yet, of course, there's that other one percent. And from a Yankee heritage, there's that irresistible impulse to always consider, "Well, let's make sure we understand the worst case here."

For one thing, it led me to look back again at my <"mortality" post> from 13 years ago:

Yep, I haven't thought much about the inevitability of death in the interim. But I can't think of anything to add.

It occurred to me that from a mortality point of view, the situation I'm in has some pluses. First, since there is this small probability of death, anyone who has some deep confession to make to clear the air between us has the chance to do it. Second, the chances of death are small enough that I'm actually going to be going under expecting to make it (yet prepared to "wish I were dead" as I deal with the post-op recovery). And of course, if I do die on the operating table, I'll never know it. No fear and no pain.

The number of tests I have to undergo before the surgery is astonishing (tiny example: twelve vials of blood today). I take that as both an indication of how serious the surgery is, while also realizing that the purpose of each test is to make the whole thing slightly safer for me.

The most common heart surgery is what the insiders call "cabbages", coronary artery bypass surgery. It is lessening the impact of the serious chronic illness of coronary artery disease, but the disease continues. Valve repair surgery is apparently quite different, in that once the valve is fixed, it's fixed, with only a very small chance that some other valve problem will occur in the future.