Jack

We all know that Edward Snowden insists on secure email , but he's also very picky about his operating systems, too. In fact, he uses a free, super-secure version of Linux—called Tails—that fits on a USB stick and can be used on any computer without leaving a trace.

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A team of Chinese scientists did an impossible-sounding thing. They created electricity simply by dragging a droplet of saltwater across a layer of graphene. No big fires, no greenhouse gases, no fuss. They created energy with just a miracle material and one of the most plentiful substances on Earth.

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We've come to rely on blinking dots and obscure icons to tell when a device's battery is low, but the human face is just so much easier to read and decipher. You wouldn't want to have to flip a baby over and check a set of LEDs to see if it was happy, so the expressive face on this Mr Pow backup battery reflecting its charge level just makes sense.

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Taking a picture this incredible isn't easy, but here's how a group of photographers managed to get a car posed over three feet of glowing ice on the world's deepest lake.

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You can buy light bulbs with every kind of color temperature, brightness, and finish you can imagine these days. So the need for a lamp shade to diffuse, soften, and direct their light is all but unnecessary—unless you yearn for that classic lamp silhouette. In that case, this LED lamp from YOY design is a clever compromise.

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Unless you live in a place where snow and winter never show their ugly faces, a year-round garden is out of the question. But if your green thumb results in a surplus of herbs during the summer, you can always freeze them in this handy grinder that keeps them fresh and easy to serve during those frozen snowbound months.

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Four weeks after President Obama dismissed Russia as a "regional power" acting "out of weakness," Russia still seems strong enough to foment chaos in a neighboring country, possibly as prelude for its second invasion in as many months, and the world looks increasingly unable to stop it. Obama was right when he said that Russian President Vladimir Putin's actions in Ukraine would cost Russia. What he did not say was that Putin is willing to endure those costs, but no Western leader is willing to endure the costs of stopping him. That's why Putin is winning.

The extent of Putin's victory became much clearer on Sunday. Over the weekend, Ukraine's enfeebled new government faced two options, both of them bad, for dealing with the pro-Russian militants who had seized urban areas in eastern Ukraine: It could allow the militants (widely suspected to include Russian troops) to dig in unencumbered, or it could send in security forces to clear them out.

Either path seemed likely to end in the same place: with eastern Ukraine subsumed into Russia, as Crimea had been in March. If Ukrainian forces stood down, the militant-held areas could become de facto independent, and would almost certainly invite the tens of thousands of Russian troops massed just across the border to "liberate" them as new Russian territories. If the Ukrainian forces moved in, those Russian troops might just invite themselves as peacekeepers. Moscow has been laying the groundwork for an "intervention" for weeks, warning of an imminent "civil war" that had to be stopped. The Ukrainian government, perhaps deciding that it was better to go down swinging, chose to send in security forces on Sunday.

It was not a disaster, but nor was it anything resembling a success. Ukrainian commandos tried to retake militant-held buildings in Slovyansk but, either outmatched or unwilling to further escalate the violence, fell back. Four thousand miles away in the United Nations headquarters in New York, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said what everybody was thinking: that the crisis has been engineered by Moscow from the beginning. And yet, like the Ukrainian forces who'd retreated in Slovyansk, she appeared helpless to stop the plan that Russia had set in motion.

No one can say for sure where the crisis in eastern Ukraine is going. Ukrainian leaders seem convinced that Russia is bent on annexing eastern Ukraine as it did Crimea. Some analysts share this view, though others believe Russia's aim is only slightly more modest: to humiliate and weaken Ukraine such that it is once more subservient to Russia.

On Monday, Ukraine took a step in this direction by signaling that it may bow to one of Russia's top demands: a national referendum on adopting a federal system. That would leave the Russian-speaking eastern regions more independent from the Ukrainian government, and presumably more closely linked to Moscow.

Whatever the destination, it is increasingly evident that Russia has been driving the crisis from the beginning, as it was in Crimea a month ago. The difference is that, this time, we know what's happening, we see all the warning signs, but the West is still unable or unwilling to stop it.

The annexation of Crimea was different. By the time the world fully understood that Crimea's pro-Russian protesters and local militias were in fact a Russian invasion force, the troops had already taken control. By the time Crimea's referendum to secede from Ukraine and re-join Russia was revealed as ridden by intimidation, abuse, and potentially fraud, much of the world had already changed its maps. The Russian plan was always one step ahead.

That's not true anymore. Russia appears to be enacting the same plan in eastern Ukraine but is doing it practically in broad daylight. And the ploy is not subtle: (1) Moscow warns that chaos could break out in eastern Ukraine and lead to a civil war, (2) Moscow instigates the very chaos it had been warning us about, (3) it uses the tens of thousands of troops it just happens to have nearby to intervene and stop the chaos it had helped create, (4) eastern Ukraine, now under de facto Russian military occupation, holds a Crimea-style referendum to join Russia.

We're not at that third step yet, much less the fourth, and it's possible that Russia only plans to implicitly threaten an intervention to get political leverage. But the point is that the process has been more or less apparent from the beginning. So why hasn't anyone stopped it?

The hard truth is that Ukraine, while not totally on its own, is sort of on its own. Ukrainian leaders have wisely chosen to avoid a direct military confrontation with Russia, which it would almost certainly lose, and which would give Moscow an excuse to seize even more Ukrainian territory. That leaves the United States and Europe, which clearly oppose Russia's actions in Ukraine, but are only willing to go so far to stop them from continuing.

The US and Europe have three main options for stopping Russia, all of which run into the same problem: Russia, despite Obama's comments, is a pretty big and powerful country. The first option is targeted economic sanctions on top Russian officials: the US and European Union did this already, but it hasn't appreciably deterred Moscow. The second is broader sanctions against the Russian economy; damaging the Russian economy would similarly damage Western European economies, probably beyond what they're willing to accept during their tenuous recoveries from the Euro crisis. The third option is to threaten military retaliation, either explicitly or more implicitly by inviting Ukraine to apply for NATO membership; given that Russia has an enormous military and thousands of nuclear warheads, the risk of total global annihilation is probably higher than anyone is willing to accept.

To give you an indication of who holds all the power in this dynamic, consider that, a few weeks ago, it looked like a real possibility that European leaders might threaten to sanction Russia's multi-billion-dollar natural gas exports to punish it for annexing Crimea. It would have been a severe punishment, as well as symbolically appropriate, given that about half of Russia's gas exports to Europe flow through Ukraine.

In theory, this should have cowed Russia: its oil and gas exports are worth more than $350 billion annually and provide 52 percent of its federal budget. Putin's government cannot survive if Europe stops buying Russian oil and gas, or buys substantially less. But 24 percent of natural gas consumed in the European Union comes from Russia, including 37 percent in Germany. Shutting down or sanctioning Russian gas would hurt Europe. It would hurt Russia a great deal more, but that doesn't matter if Putin is more willing to endure the pain of a potential gas crisis than, say, German Chancellor Angela Merkel. That's how he wins: by higher pain threshold.

A few days ago, as European leaders raised concerns that Russia might move into eastern Ukraine as well, Putin sent a letter to 18 European heads of state warning that Russia might voluntarily cut back those very gas exports through Ukraine, over Ukraine's unpaid gas bills. Putin had proven that he was more willing to endure a gas crisis.

And that is how the world fell into Russian President Vladimir Putin's trap: he knew, or simply lucked into, a blind spot in the international system. Ukraine is not a member of NATO, the American-European mutual defense treaty that has been creeping steadily eastward for decades. It is not a member of the European Union. It's not really important enough to European leaders that they'd risk their own economies to save it. Non-Western leaders can barely be bothered to care. It is effectively on its own, up against a much larger and more powerful country, in a battle it cannot win. Perhaps even more shocking than the fact that Russia invaded and annexed part of a neighboring country is that there was hardly anything to stop them.

It's easy to think of the Doom Loop of Oligarchy as driven by political spending. But it's also driven, more mundanely, by political engagement. The more affluent you are, the more likely you are to do, well, anything related to American politics. That includes the most basic political act of all:

The graph comes from a recent report the think tank Demos did on political inequality. As they note, the gap can be even larger in midterm elections.

A graph like this, of course, tells us more about broad swaths of the American public than about the super rich. But as Demos notes, the political opinions of people making $100,000 or more are still noticeably different from the opinions of those making $30,000 or less. For instance, "A September 2012 survey by the Economist magazine found that respondents making over $100,000 annually were twice as likely to name the budget deficit as the most important issue in deciding how they would vote than middle or lower income respondents."

The Doom Loop of Oligarchy isn't just driven by super-rich Americans spending huge sums to influence politics. It's also driven by working-class Americans disengaging from the political process, which leaves politicians more desperate for the votes and the contributions of the affluent.

Colorado has imposed some hefty taxation on marijuana: special sales and excise taxes at a rate of 25 percent, plus 2.9 percent in state sales tax rate, plus local taxes. All of that taxation has reaped bigger than expected rewards in the form of revenues, as a new report from Moody's Investors Service notes, and those rewards are set to keep growing quickly.

Governor John Hickenlooper had initially estimated there would be $70 million in tax revenues during the first full year of legal pot. But in February, he provided a more optimistic outlook, saying total revenues for the first full year would be $98 million, a roughly 40 percent increase. He also said in February that revenues for the first fiscal year, starting in July, would top out $134 million, though he has since dialed down those expectations back, by around $20 million..

That kind of acceleration might sound like some drug-addled math, considering that Colorado had only $7.5 million in revenues during the two months combined. But according to Moody's, the first two months' worth of weed tax hauls "likely significantly understate long-term revenue potential." That's because the state's full pot economy hadn't even yet grown to its full potential. New retailers have continued to open, growing cultivation has boosted supply, and more licenses have been issued, meaning many more opportunities to sell bud.

all of that pot-smoking is great for colorado's kids, it turns out.

All of that pot-smoking is great for Colorado's kids, as it turns out. Of the pot revenue spending that is authorized, the lion's share, $40 million, is for public schools. But the additional, unexpected revenues have yet to be allocated. Hickenlooper has proposed spending that new money largely on substance abuse treatment and prevention, as well as law enforcement.

There is one bummer in the news, however: pot revenues aren't going to be a huge cash cow for the state. Even if total revenues did reach $134 million, that would only be around 1.4 percent of the state's total general fund.

Updated on 4/15/14: This post was updated to reflect Colorado's latest estimates of total tax revenues from marijuana, as well as additional figures for the first full year of marijuana legalization.

I'm a long-time reader, occasional commenter, and big fan of your writing. I also happen to be gay. I've been closely following your series of posts on stigmatizing opposition to same-sex marriage, because I strongly believe in the value of such a stigma, and I want to see the strongest argument against my position—something you can be counted on to provide. I sympathize with your support for pluralism and respect for orthodox Christian beliefs, but there's a perspective that I think is missing from your posts, and one that is perhaps difficult to understand if you are not gay yourself. For me this perspective is the decisive argument in favor of calling out people like Brendan Eich, and on the off-chance you decide to read this email, I hope I do it some justice.

Growing up gay, you are constantly told—implicitly and explicitly—that you are weird, weak, and wrong. This is true even in my generation, which is undoubtedly the most progressive in American history on gay issues. Debates are held on the national level about whether you are fit to be a pro athlete, or a Boy Scout, or a parent. Politicians fight hard for the right of a business owner to turn you away. The word faggot, a word that says you are pathetic and contemptible, is used as an all-purpose insult. We're getting better, in all these areas. But to be gay is still to be kept apart from the institutions of society in myriad ways.

And that, at least for me, is what the same-sex marriage fight is about. Forget the tax benefits and the visitation rights, forget the legal recognition of a committed relationship, forget even the right to publicly acknowledge the love one has for another person. The fight for gay marriage is a fight to be recognized as a normal member of society. Every now and then, in school or at home or with friends, kids talk about how they see their future family: how many children they'd want, what their wedding would be like, what kind of person they'd want to marry. Up until very recently, no gay kid could answer those questions with any confidence. In a lot of places in America, they still can't.

 

Those are the stakes.

 

A quick interjection. At first, the reader treats "calling out people like Brendan Eich" as if it is part of our disagreement. In fact, I favor "calling out" opponents of gay marriage: I want their position to be forcefully, persuasively, exhaustively critiqued and rebutted, over and over, until gay marriage is legal not just everywhere in America, but everywhere. Condemning someone's politics is fine. Punishing them outside politics is objectionable.

Now, I agree with much of what this reader says.

My insistence that gays deserve full marriage rights, not just civil unions with the same set of domestic benefits, is rooted partly in my desire to declare that they are and ought to be treated as normal members of society. As the reader says, much progress has been made, but that fight isn't over. I also agree that stigma is sometimes an appropriate tool. In my social circles, anyone who called gays "weird, weak, and wrong" would be stigmatized, and I would certainly participate. I hope that norm spreads to America's school children. To hell with anti-gay bullying. The reader mentions the exclusion of gays by organizations like the Boy Scouts of America as well as use of the anti-gay slur "faggot." In July of 2012, I celebrated the Eagle Scouts who were resigning over their organization's discriminatory policy, and said I'd resign too if I were an Eagle Scout. And "faggot" should no more be accepted in polite company than racial slurs. (Had Eich referred that way to gay colleagues at Mozilla, that would've been a legitimate reason to remove him as CEO.) Of course, part of the disagreement here is about whether or not there is any non-bigoted opposition to gay marriage, as I believe there to be.

But before I get to my disagreements, let's get back to Hersh's email:

So when people like Brendan Eich spend time and money opposing same-sex marriage, they are directly attacking the human dignity of every gay and lesbian person. As it happens, Eich contributed $1,000 to a particularly cruel and misleading campaign—a campaign that did damage in its process as well as in its outcome. But contributing to even the most pure hearted and honest campaign against marriage equality should, to my mind, carry a stigma. I'm not sorry Eich lost his job, and that's not just out of spite. It is out of a genuine desire to make it clear that gays and lesbians can no longer to be kept apart from the institutions of American life, and that attempting to do so perpetuates a great injustice.

You say in your most recent article on the subject that "once you've gotten to a threshold within a community where lots of powerful people will stigmatize a behavior, the point had already been reached where it would be defeated without stigma." But stigmatizing Brendan Eich isn't about, or isn't just about, winning this fight in Silicon Valley. It's about the many places where powerful people do not stigmatize discrimination, but rather endorse it. Mozilla is a major company, and this resignation was national news. That sends a message to those people anywhere who would deny their neighbors the right to be ordinary people: This will not stand. And it sends a message to gays and lesbians as well, perhaps the same gays and lesbians who were told by Prop 8 that they were abnormal and dangerous to children: We are on your side.

The speed with which gay rights have moved from marginal to mainstream is nothing short of astounding, and I think the rapidity of that shift makes it easy to forget how deep the oppression ran and how brutal it was. Ten years ago, gay-marriage bans were considered an effective get out the vote tactic. Twenty years ago, DOMA passed Congress with huge majorities and was signed by a President who is largely a beloved national figure. Thirty years ago, the White House Press Secretary cracked jokes in the briefing room about gay men dying of AIDS. The people who implemented these policies and the voters who supported them didn't vanish into thin air. They are very much still with us. Some of them have been persuaded by reason to change their mind, and others by empathy or by appeals to emotion, and others still by social convention. And many more have not changed their minds at all. What I am trying to say is that fighters for gay rights are hardly conquerors imposing their program on defeated opponents. When ENDA cannot pass the House of Representatives, when same-sex marriage is still banned in most states, when over a third of LGBT kids attempt suicide, we are nowhere near equality, let alone victory.

I hope that appeals to reason and decency and common sense will prevail. But I have read enough history to know that they often do not. And I hope that opponents of same-sex marriage come to realize that they are hurting people in many ways beyond simply denying them a title. But I am one of the people they are hurting, and I have felt the pain that they are inflicting, and waiting for them to come around is simply not worth it. Thank you for reading, if you have.

I thank the reader for a powerful letter with many good points, but I am not persuaded to change my position on our several areas of disagreement, partly because it does nothing to refute some of the arguments I've made in past articles on this subject, but also because of the many ways it underestimates and diminishes the power of argument and the role that reason ought to play in self-government—as if persuasion is useful, but stigma is what we bring out when the stakes are high. If we're at our best when the stakes are high, we bring out the Declaration of Independence or the Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Stigma is nothing in comparison.

The reader and I actually agree that it's desirable to send the message, "This will not stand," to opponents of marriage equality. That can be done with articles, blog posts, and speeches; gay-pride parades; judicial opinions; TV shows and movies that portray gays with the human dignity they deserve and were long denied; activism in favor of marriage equality; and countless private interactions. In years of heated debates with gay-marriage opponents, via email and in person, I've said things like, "Your position is discriminatory, it is wrongheaded, it is harming countless individuals. It isn't what Jesus Christ would want you to do. And here is why I believe all that."

Or, "So if I were gay, you'd prevent me from marrying the person I love? And you don't think that would be cruel of you?"

Those are hard critiques to hear, as are some retorts that I've been subjected to over the years. Such conversations are fraught precisely because it's so easy and common for folks on both sides to feel judged, even when both participants in the conversation try their best to criticize their interlocutor's position, not their person. Those interactions still convey the moral imperative that gay-marriage proponents feel, preserve the possibility of dialogue, and change hearts rather than shutting mouths.

On my wedding day, my wife and I, like several couples we knew who married before us, decided to include, as one of our readings, a passage from Goodridge v. Department of Health by Massachusetts Supreme Court Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall. I'm sure there were folks in attendance who opposed gay marriage. I hope it made them think twice about their position, just as I trust it signaled to our gay friends, "We are on your side, we find it an abomination that this institution is still denied to some of you, and marriage equality is important to us."

These sorts of gestures are common nowadays.

So I refuse to credit the notion that gay-marriage proponents need to go after the jobs of their opponents to adequately show their horror at campaigns like Proposition 8, or to decisively signal that they are allies in the fight for marriage equality. It is easy to send those signals in other ways. And sending them with stigma doesn't just introduce negative externalities, like undermining pluralism and chilling civic participation. Even apart from that, stigma is an inferior way to show solidarity with gays, one focused on hating their opponents rather than supporting them.

The reader thinks otherwise. He argues that the CEO's ouster sends a message to gays and lesbians all over America, "perhaps the same gays and lesbians who were told by Prop 8 that they were abnormal and dangerous to children: we are on your side." Yet gays and lesbians all over the United States are divided over whether Eich should've been forced out. They disagree about the signal Mozilla sent.

There is no gay position on the subject. Andrew Sullivan was disturbed by what he characterized as anti-free-speech activism that would have the effect of closeting another group. Jonathan Rauch, another of the most eloquent, persuasive advocates for gay marriage, thought the anti-Eich campaign sent a terrible message.

"A handful of hotheads forgot what the gay rights movement is fighting for: the embrace of diversity and the freedom for all Americans, gay and straight, to live publicly as who they truly are," he wrote. "Both supporters and opponents of gay rights need to be able to speak freely without being punished for their beliefs. This is why the mainstream gay rights leadership supports free speech. L.G.B.T. people win when both we and our opponents can speak out. It is why most ordinary gay Americans want nothing to do with efforts to silence our adversaries." Punishing gay-marriage opponents can't be justified by "the message it sends gays and lesbians all over America" when many are upset by the message as they see it. Some gays and lesbians didn't think, "They're on our side." They declared, "not in our name."

The reader is right when he observes, citing history, that reason doesn't always prevail. Well, neither does stigma! And more importantly, while argument and persuasion may not always prevail, they are prevailing on the subject of marriage equality. That doesn't stop me from sympathizing when the reader writes, "I hope that opponents of same-sex marriage come to realize that they are hurting people in many ways beyond simply denying them a title," adding, "I have felt the pain that they are inflicting, and waiting for them to come around is simply not worth it."

I hope same-sex marriage opponents ponder his statement.

But there is no end to the policies of the U.S. government that inflict pain and ought to be reformed, at least in my view. I try to inveigh against those policies, and to critique the ideas of the people who support them. But I don't think America would be a better place if everyone who felt strongly that a policy was unjust began trying to get everyone on the other side fired from their jobs in unrelated fields. America is divided on Iraq. It is divided on abortion. It is divided about the drug war, capital punishment, healthcare, Guantanamo Bay, and NSA surveillance. Shall we live and work alongside people who support policies we believe to be deeply damaging and unjust? Or should all cooperation cease with the impure?

Those who would punish gay-marriage opponents say they don't want this sort of thing to be the norm—that this issue is a special case. But everyone thinks their own highest-priority issue is a special case. Say these pro-punishment folks are right, that they're somehow more justified in deploying this "punish them in the professional realm" tactic than any other group. They're naive to think that, if they successfully deploy this tactic, others won't mimic it, whether or not doing so is equally justified.

The reader writes, "The speed with which gay rights have moved from marginal to mainstream is nothing short of astounding, and I think the rapidity of that shift makes it easy to forget how deep the oppression ran and how brutal it was." Perhaps. But that huge shift happened without any need to punish gay marriage opponents. When a tactic isn't needed, and has huge negative externalities, you don't use it. Declining to deploy stigma doesn't diminish the horrors that gays have suffered in America or the work that remains to achieve full equality. There are just better ways forward.

Update:

3:16 p.m.: In the wake of the latest escalations, the United Nations Security Council has scheduled an emergency meeting on Ukraine slated for this evening (at Russia's request) just hours before the premiere of Mad Men. 

Russia's Foreign Ministry said earlier it would put an urgent discussion of the situation in Ukraine on the Security Council agenda, calling Kiev's plans to mobilize the army to put down a rebellion by pro-Russian militants in eastern Ukraine "criminal"."

2:51 p.m.: Ukrainian officials have issued an ultimatum to the various groups of pro-Russian gunman and mobs currently holding court in government buildings across eastern Ukraine: Disarm by Monday or be disarmed.

Angered by the death of a state security officer and the wounding of two comrades near the flashpoint eastern city of Slaviansk, acting president Oleksander Turchinov gave rebels occupying state buildings until 0600 GMT to lay down their weapons."

This looming stand-off seems like the fulcrum point upon which this crisis could pivot into something else entirely.

12:42 p.m.: In the midst of all the turmoil, an anti-Kremlin rally took place in central Moscow today. Media freedom was the cause de jour and the demonstration was said to have drawn as many as 5,000 participants, some waving Ukrainian flags.

"Russia's main problem at the moment is lying, a problem leading to war in Ukraine, (and) the isolation of Russia from the rest of the world," said Igor Yakovenko, the former head of Russia's Union of Journalists, who helped to organize the protest."

"#Russia is a prisoner of criminals 1917-2014". March of Truth, #Moscow, April 13,2014 @GraniTweet | PR Post #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/ZIHoVwX4UC

— Euromaidan PR (@EuromaidanPR) April 13, 2014

12:38 p.m.: On "This Week," United States Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power promised more sanctions against Russia if it continues to foment unrest in eastern Ukraine.

The president has made clear that, depending on Russian behavior, sectoral sanctions in energy, banking, mining could be on the table, and there's a lot in between." 

10:54 a.m.: There are more reports that Kharkiv is the latest eastern Ukrainian city to have a government building attacked by pro-Russian forces. As many as 1,000 people stormed the city administration building this morning.

Earlier in the day, at least three people were severely beaten in Kharkiv around 3 p.m. on April 13 during clashes between Kharkiv supporters of the EuroMaidan Revolution and pro-Russian protesters, according to Glavnoe, a local news website. 

9:14 a.m.: According to reports, one Ukrainian soldier was killed and a number of others were wounded in a gun battle with a pro-Russian militia near the eastern Ukrainian city of Slovyansk earlier today. It was the first armed clash involving Ukrainian troops.

Vladimir Kolodchenko, a lawmaker from the area who witnessed the attack, said a car with four gunmen pulled up on the road in a wooden area outside Slovyansk and open fire on Ukrainian soldiers who were standing beside their vehicles. Both attackers and the Ukrainian servicemen left soon after the shooting."

The regional administration in Donetsk said that nine others were injured.

There were also accounts that contradicted an earlier report by Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov, who described a gun battle outside the Slovyansk police headquarters, which is currently held by pro-Russian gunmen. 

An Associated Press reporter saw no signs of any shots fired at the police station, which was surrounded by a reinforced line of barricades. Unlike on Saturday, the men patrolling the barricades were largely unarmed. One of the guards who asked not to be identified denied reports of fighting at the police station.

Original Post:

Ukrainian troops in the eastern city of Slovyansk were reportedly fired upon as they sought to take back a government building occupied by pro-Russian militants, according to the Ukrainian minister of the internal affairs. 

Arsen Avakov wrote on his official Facebook page that the pro-Russian "separatists" who seized the buildings in Slovyansk had opened fire Sunday morning on the approaching troops.

This appears to be the first serious military engagement between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian forces—uniformed mobs, whose actions many believe are being directed by Moscow.

As we noted, Slovyansk was among the cities in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine to have its government buildings overrun by armed men yesterday. The buildings seized were the office of the Security Service and the police headquarters, the latter of which is the building that Ukrainian troops were aiming to retake when they were reportedly met by gunfire. 

People who live in some of the remotest areas of the country have electricity for the first time ever.

Sixty-three homes in the LeChee community of the Navajo Nation, located just south of Page, Arizona, either have already been or will soon be given electricity as part of an ongoing project to bring power to the area. According to the AP, an estimated 15,000 homes in Navajo Nation don't have electricity. Some prefer it this way, while others live so far away from power stations or each other that it would be "too expensive" to connect them to the grid. Expensive or not, it is shameful that there are still people in this country who want electricity and don't have it.

Thanks to the LeChee Electrification Project, $4.8 million will be used to build miles of power lines and wire homes. Seventeen homes got electricity in October 2012 and 25 more got it this week. The final 21 homes will be on the grid by the end of next year.

Even though LeChee is located right next to a power station, the station is not allowed to supply power to Navajo Nation -- that can only be done through the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority. Families had been getting by using kerosene or gas lamps, solar panels, generators and buying ice to keep food cold. They have televisions and even cell phones, but it isn't easy or reliable to power them.

"My husband parks the truck right up here close so we use the power inverter just to watch TV," Laverne Etsitty told Native News Online. "Yes, it costs gas. The truck has to run."

Margie Tso has lived in LeChee with her husband since 1954. The couple are in their 80s now, and Margie told the AP she is "looking forward to reading more." Her husband is looking forward to using several appliances at the same time. And while they now have electricity, they still don't have running water -- nor do 40 percent of homes in Navajo Nation.

AP

Over the weekend, a 14-year-old girl caused quite the stir after tweeting an ill-advised terror threat to American Airlines, who promptly reported her to authorities. After spending the weekend freaking out online, gaining thousands of new followers, and basically become an unintentional Internet sensation, the girl was arrested on Monday.

The girl, known only as "Sarah," or @QueenDemetriax_ on Twitter, tweeted the threat on Sunday morning and got an unexpectedly harsh response: 

The American Air threat was apparently very real, as Dutch police arrested a fourteen-year-old girl Monday in her home in Rotterdam, as confirmed by police to Business Insider. However, the arrest was apparently made after an independent investigation by Dutch police, and not at the prompting of Twitter, the FBI, or American Airlines. Charges are not yet known. 

Sarah promptly started straight freaking on her (since suspended) Twitter account. It looked exactly what you would imagine a teen realizing how stupid her actions were, in real time, over social media. It was kind of glorious: 

The Internet obviously pounced on the hilarious exchange, and interest in Sarah's account skyrocketed. She gained over 20,000 followers over the weekend, before her account was suspended. But with instant online fame comes crippling real-life terror. Sarah had no idea whether American Airlines had actually forwarded her account to the authorities. Before her arrest, and before anyone could tell her shutting up is her best possible course of action, she live-tweeted the highs and lows of her infamy. "I'm not gonna tell my parents, they'll tell me to delete my acc omg that would be the end of my life," she said at one point. "Fuck this is so bad," she added later. At one point her neighbor knocked on her front door and she thought she was being arrested. 

Joke's on her, because that came later. Don't tweet terrorist threats to anyone, especially airlines. It's generally a bad idea.

Titan Aerospace

Google swept in and agreed to buy Titan Aerospace, a high-altitude drone manufacturer, on Monday, months after Facebook had entered into talks to buy the company. Titan, based in New Mexico, will go to Google for an undisclosed sum.

The Wall Street Journal's report on the sale notes that the drone maker will help Google with its "Project Loon" initiative, which looks to provide internet access to remote areas using large high-altitude balloons. In a statement, Google said: 

"It's still early days, but atmospheric satellites could help bring internet access to millions of people, and help solve other problems, including disaster relief and environmental damage like deforestation." 

The purchase was the subject of rumors last week,  after months of speculation that Facebook would buy the solar-powered drone company for its own, similar internet access initiative. Titan's solar-powered drones are known for their ability to stay in the air for years without needing to land, making them ideal for the sorts of projects both Facebook and Google have in mind. Techcrunch has a nice summary of the Facebook rumors, here. Both projects, as the Journal notes, are in part aimed at introducing a specific company to new internet users simultaneously with access to a high-speed  connection. Facebook's purchase of WhatsApp was also seen by many as an effort to get in early on a relatively untapped market for the company. 

Here's one of Titan's solar drones in action: 

Facebook has since indicated its intention to buy the UK company Ascenta, for $20 million. According to TechCrunch, the estimated price for a possible Facebook purchase of Titan was around $60 million, so it's possible Google trumped that by quite a bit.

RECIFE, Brazil — When Ivana Borges learned she was pregnant, she told her obstetrician that she wanted a natural birth. Her mother had delivered five children without surgery or medication, and Borges wanted to follow her example.

But when she returned the hospital after her water broke, the same doctor began persuading her that she should instead deliver by caesarean section.

“He told me I wasn’t getting dilated enough,” Borges told me the other day in Recife. “I said, ‘I can wait!’ Then he started joking that I couldn’t handle the pain.”

He pestered her while she labored for six hours, and gradually the then-24-year-old Borges began feeling powerless and overwhelmed. She caved. The C-section commenced, but that wasn’t the end of the doctor’s heckling.

“He was saying, ‘I was at a birthday party, and I want this done fast because I want to go back and finish my whiskey,’” she said.

Borges said the experience was so traumatic that she sought psychiatric help for depression after the birth.

Doctors and activists here say Borges's experience is fairly common among women who give birth in the country’s private hospitals, where 82 percent of all babies are born by C-section. Brazil has a free, public healthcare system, but many of its wealthier residents–about a quarter of the population–use a private insurance scheme that functions much like the U.S. medical system.

With the higher price of the private system comes better amenities and shorter wait times, but also all of the trappings of fee-for-service medical care. C-sections can be easily scheduled and quickly executed, so doctors schedule and bill as many as eight procedures a day rather than wait around for one or two natural births to wrap up.

“It’s a money machine,” Borges said.

The economics of private insurance certainly play a role, but culture is a big part of what drives the C-section epidemic here.

“Childbirth is something that is primitive, ugly, nasty, inconvenient,” Simone Diniz, associate professor in the department of maternal and child health at the University of São Paulo, said. “It takes long, and the idea is we have to make it fast. It’s impolite for doctors to leave cases for the doctors on the next shift–there’s a sense that you need to either accelerate it or do a C-section.”

Even in public hospitals, the C-section rate is roughly half. Because so many patients are booked in advance for C-section procedures, women who want natural births find themselves on zero-hour sojourns to find free beds. One Sao Paulo doctor told me that some physicians ask for bribes in exchange for allowing mothers to deliver naturally. And in an extreme example from earlier this month, a woman named Adelir Carmen Lemos de Goés was forced by police to deliver by C-section in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.       

"There is no doubt that, even if it contains unnecessary or even greater risk to the mother or the newborn, ceasarean section has a much lower risk for the obstetrician,” wrote a 2005 editorial in the Brazilian Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Granted, many women ask for the procedure of their own accord, seeing the convenience and sterility of it all as a marker of liberation rather than oppression. Rio and Sao Paulo are dotted with upscale C-section resort clinics where women get post-op manicures and room service.

But a 2001 study of Brazilian women published in the British Medical Journal concluded that the country’s rise in C-sections was driven primarily by unwanted procedures rather than personal preference. And some women elect to go under the knife only after hearing about the rough treatment of mothers who choose the alternative.

"Here, when a woman is going to give birth, even natural birth, the first thing many hospitals do is tie her to the bed by putting an IV in her arm, so she can't walk, can't take a bath, can't hug her husband. The use of drugs to accelerate contractions is very common, as are episiotomies," Maria do Carmo Leal, a researcher at the National Public Health School at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, told the AP. "What you get is a lot of pain, and a horror of childbirth. This makes a cesarean a dream for many women."

Many physicians’ attitudes toward childbirth weave together Brazil’s macho culture with traditional sexual mores.

“There’s the idea that the experience of childbirth should be humiliating,” Diniz said. “When women are in labor, some doctors say, ‘When you were doing it, you didn't complain, but now that you're here, you cry.’”

This brashness manifests itself in other types of interventions during labor. Though Brazilian law mandates that all women be allowed doulas or birthing companions, few moms are actually accompanied by such helpers. In past years, some Brazilian cities tried to bar companions from hospitals entirely.

Diniz said many doctors unnecessarily overuse fundal pressure – pushing on the pregnant woman’s stomach – to speed things along, and that they administer the labor hormone oxytocin more frequently than needed. The vast majority of women who give birth vaginally also have episiotomies, or surgical cuts to the vagina that are intended to make delivery easier.

“We have a really serious problem in Brazil that the doctors over-cite evidence [of fetal distress],” said Paula Viana, head of a women’s rights nonprofit in Recife. “They think they can interfere as they would like."

***

There’s nothing wrong with C-sections, of course – they can be life-saving for women with distressed babies or difficult deliveries. And most of the activists who are concerned about rising C-section rates think women should be able to opt for the procedure if they really want one.

But it’s still a major abdominal surgery that brings with it a chance of complications, infection, and neonatal challenges, not to mention placental problems that might impact future births. Women who have C-sections that are not medically necessary are at a greater risk of death, blood transfusions, and hysterectomies, a 2010 World Health Organization study found. The WHO has, until recently, recommended that C-sections be limited to only 15 percent of all births.

But the rate in many other countries, including Brazil, is much higher. In China, nearly half of all babies are delivered this way, with some women finding it a simple way to choose a “lucky” birthday. In the U.S., the rate has reached 30 percent after rising for decades. Experts say that among American doctors, fear of litigation is what prompts them to reach for the scalpel.

The increase is “really based on protecting the institution and ourselves,” obstetrician Peter Doelger told WNPR. “And, you can’t blame them. Getting sued is a horrible thing for the physician, a horrible thing for the nurse, and a horrible thing for the institution."

Jesusa Ricoy-Olariaga, a Spanish doula and mothers’ rights activist, helped organize a series of rallies in multiple countries on Friday that called for the improved treatment of women in labor worldwide. The protesters used the social media hashtag #SomasTodasAdelir – we are all Adelir.

“Brazil has highlighted this issue, but it's shouting a secret,” Ricoy-Olariaga told me by phone. “The issue is the same in other countries, but in a different manner. There are countries where birth is industrialized and dominated by men, and there's very little input from women.”

For its part, Brazil is working to reverse course and promote natural births. The federal government is spending $4 billion on a program – dubbed “the Stork Network” – that plans to educate both mothers and doctors about the benefits of giving birth the old-fashioned way.

But women at the small #SomasTodasAdelir rally in Recife on Friday said it will take a major cultural shift, as well. Mariana Bahia told me that when she miscarried a few months ago, her obstetrician treated her brusquely because she suspected Bahia had attempted to abort her fetus, which is illegal here.

Bahia said she wants to see women wield greater autonomy in the maternity ward – and to see doctors’ bullying behavior punished.

“There’s no horizontality between patients and doctors,” Bahia said. “Doctors are always above us.”

Olga Khazan is reporting from Brazil as a fellow with the International Reporting Project.

Social media companies constantly collect data on their users because that's how they provide customized experiences and target their advertisements. All Twitter and Facebook users know this, and there is a broad array of feelings about how good or bad the persistent tracking of their social relationships is. 

What we do know, though, is that—when they want to—they are aware of how to go behind the machine's back. They know how to communicate with just the humans without tipping their intentions to the algorithm. 

In a new paper, University of North Carolina sociologist Zeynep Tufekci explores some of these strategies among Turkish protesters. She looks at these behaviors as analytical challenges for researchers who are trying to figure out what's going on. "Social media users engage in practices that alter their visibility to machine algorithms, including subtweeting, discussing a person’s tweets via 'screen captures,' and hate-linking," Tufekci writes. "All these practices can blind big data analyses to this mode of activity and engagement."

The same practices, though, from the user perspective, can be understood as strategies for communicating without being computed. All they require to execute is thinking like an algorithm. Here are the three she focuses on in the paper:

The Unlinked Mention

Tufekci focuses on "subtweeting," the practice of talking about someone without referencing them explicitly with the social software. So, "@alexismadrigal is a jerk" is one thing, but "Alexis Madrigal is a jerk" is a subtweet. 

This practice, however, extends far beyond the domain of tweets. Talking about someone without explicitly tagging them is a very popular practice on Facebook, too. And the variations on the practice show how aware people are that machines can't easily detect spelling variations or infer a person from contextual clues. Sometimes they'll misspell the name ("Madirgal") or use contextual clues rather than explicit naming ("New story on The Atlantic from that California guy is terrible.")

In some cases, the reference can only be understood in context, as there is no mention of the target in any form. These many forms of subtweeting come with different implications for big data analytics. 

People often read this unlinked mentions as ways of escaping the human scrutiny of the person who is subtweeted. But an equally important benefit is that the Facebook or Twitter algorithm cannot connect the two users together more tightly.

Screenshotting

Another way to escape the algorithmic gaze is to screenshot text instead of linking to a story or person directly. While humans can read the text of a screenshot easily, the algorithms on the major social platforms cannot. This allows for conversations that are silent or invisible to the machine, but work perfectly well for humans. 

To a machine, a conversation in screenshots seems like people talking about a photograph, not commenting on the tweets, status updates, or posts of someone on the Internet. 

Hatelinking

If these two strategies are about invisibility to the big data collectors, hatelinking is a way of introducing noise into the system. While Facebook or Twitter would know that User A had linked to Story B, the sentiment associated with that story would probably go undetected. The algorithms can see the activity, but they cannot understand it. In cases where activists or critics want a piece of content seen but to take its creator out of the communication loop, this is an effective method.

Last week I offered some reasons to be skeptical of the cities claiming to be the "Next Silicon Valleys." The point wasn't that Silicon Valley was inherently superior to these cities: New Orleans is cheaper, Austin has better barbecue, Chicago has better theater, and so on. It really came down to what economists call "agglomeration" and what others more colloquially call clustering. People like to be around similar people. Artists want to be around other artists, bankers want to be around banks, and software developers cluster around software developers. And since these groups don't coordinate their moving plans on Craigslist to suddenly and simultaneously migrate with a thousand similar strangers to a new city, what tends to happens is we move to where similar people already are (or at least to where they are famous for being). 

As a result, the "next" Silicon Valley is probably Silicon Valley. Each generation of software developers is drawn to work next to the last generation of software developers, to latch onto their networks, work at their companies, meet up at their coffee shops, and solicit their investors.

The agglomeration effect is even deeper, because past generations' successful entrepreneurs become this generation's mentors and investors, seducing more young talent into the Bay Area.

We can see this in the perseverance of venture capital's concentration in San Francisco. In the last year, California's share of venture deals has increased from 41 percent to 45 percent.

Within California, deal-making is further concentrating in Silicon Valley, which continues to claim about 80 percent of VC activity in the state.

Valley aspirants like New Orleans have things San Francisco doesn't have, like more available housing, lower taxes, and cheaper seafood, but these advantages are overshadowed by a California ecosystem whose wealth and network sends a signal that drowns out basically everything else.

Change is complex, particularly at the scale of a nation 300 million strong.

It doesn't proceed smoothly or at the same rate among all age, racial, or ethnic groups. And yet: some of the movements—like the increase in support of gay marriage or interracial relationships or the decline of religious affiliation—are so clearly defined as to seem inexorable now. 

Pew Research's new report, The Next America, provides a portrait of these demographic and cultural shifts. It's filled with fascinating details about who Americans are, what we believe, and how both of those things have changed over the last several decades. 

We're a nation returning to its immigrant roots

Where more people are marrying outside the racial group they were born into.

We're a nation that increasingly supports gay marriage 

And the legalization of marijuana, though the trend is less clear and the generational differences larger.

Each successive generation has fewer members who are religiously affiliated, but the large majority of people still claim a religion.

And we know that we're a divided nation, politically, financially, racially, and by place of birth.

Twenty-one years ago, rancher Cliven Bundy stopped paying his grazing fees.

Bundy does not recognize federal authority over land where his ancestors first settled in the 1880s, which he claims belongs to the state of Nevada. The Bureau of Land Management disagreed and took him to federal court, which first ruled in favor of the BLM in 1998. After years of attempts at a negotiated settlement over the $1.2 million Bundy owes in fees failed, federal land agents began seizing hundreds of his cattle illegally grazing on public land last week.

But after footage of a BLM agent using a stun gun on Bundy's adult son went viral in far-right circles, hundreds of armed militia supporters from neighboring states flocked to Bundy's ranch to defend him from the BLM agents enforcing the court order. The states'-rights groups, in echoes of Ruby Ridge and Waco, came armed and prepared for violence. "I'm ready to pull the trigger if fired upon," one of the anti-government activists told Reuters. Not eager to spill blood over cattle, the BLM backed down Sunday and started returning the livestock it had confiscated. The agency says it won't drop the matter and will "continue to work to resolve the matter administratively and judicially."

Federalism—genuine states' rights—is perhaps more familiar to Nevadans than to any other state's denizens. To boost the state's ailing economy in the early 20th century, Nevada exploited the federal architecture of American law to create uniquely permissive laws on divorce, gambling, and prostitution, bringing in much-needed tourism revenue and giving the state a distinctive libertarian character. Just this weekend, the state Republican Party dropped statements opposing abortion and same-sex marriage from its platform at their convention, bucking the party's national stance.

But Bundy's understanding of states' rights is far different. As he told Sean Hannity in an interview last week (emphasis added): 

Well, you know, my cattle is only one issue—that the United States courts has ordered that the government can seize my cattle. But what they have done is seized Nevada statehood, Nevada law, Clark County public land, access to the land, and have seized access to all of the other rights of Clark County people that like to go hunting and fishing. They've closed all those things down, and we're here to protest that action. And we are after freedom. We're after liberty. That's what we want.

Bundy's claim that the land belongs to Nevada or Clark County didn't hold up in court, nor did his claim of inheriting an ancestral right to use the land that pre-empts the BLM's role. "We definitely don't recognize [the BLM director's] jurisdiction or authority, his arresting power or policing power in any way," Bundy told his supporters, according to The Guardian.

His personal grievance with federal authority doesn't stop with the BLM, though. "I believe this is a sovereign state of Nevada," Bundy said in a radio interview last Thursday. "I abide by all of Nevada state laws. But I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing." Ironically, this position directly contradicts Article 1, Section 2 of the Nevada Constitution:

All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for the protection, security and benefit of the people; and they have the right to alter or reform the same whenever the public good may require it. But the Paramount Allegiance of every citizen is due to the Federal Government in the exercise of all its Constitutional powers as the same have been or may be defined by the Supreme Court of the United States; and no power exists in the people of this or any other State of the Federal Union to dissolve their connection therewith or perform any act tending to impair, subvert, or resist the Supreme Authority of the government of the United States. The Constitution of the United States confers full power on the Federal Government to maintain and Perpetuate its existence, and whensoever any portion of the States, or people thereof attempt to secede from the Federal Union, or forcibly resist the Execution of its laws, the Federal Government may, by warrant of the Constitution, employ armed force in compelling obedience to its Authority.

The paramount-allegiance clause, a product of the era in which Nevada gained statehood, originated in Nevada's first (and unofficial) constitutional convention of 1863. Some 3,000 miles to the east, the Civil War raged between the federal government in the North and West and the rebellion that had swallowed the South. In early 1864, Abraham Lincoln—who wanted more pro-Union states in Congress so as to pass the amendment to abolish slavery, and a few more electoral votes to guarantee his reelection that fall—signed a bill authorizing Nevada to convene an official constitutional convention for statehood. The state constitution's framers, who were overwhelmingly Unionist, retained the clause in solidarity with the Union when they gathered in July 1864.

Nevada isn't the only state with a paramount-allegiance clause. Republicans added similar clauses to Reconstruction-era state constitutions throughout the South, although few survived subsequent revisions after federal troops departed. Even the states that retain the phrase "paramount allegiance" today, like North Carolina and Mississippi, don't share Nevada's explicit constitutional openness toward armed federal intervention to enforce it.

That pro-federal sentiment also guided Nevada's first congressional delegation when it arrived in the nation's capital in early 1865. William Stewart, the Silver State's first senator, proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution in December 1865 that would've enshrined a weaker form of the paramount allegiance clause at the federal level:

First—The Union of the States, under this constitution, is indissoluble, and no State can absolve its citizens from the obligation of paramount allegiance to the United States.

Second—No engagement made, or obligation incurred by any State, or by any number of States, or by any county, city, or any other municipal corporation to subvert, impair, or resist the authority of the United States, or to support or aid any legislative convention or body in hostility to such authority, shall ever be held, voted, or be assumed or sustained, in whole or part, by any State or by the United States.

This proposed amendment—which would have resolved secession's constitutionality for all time—did not succeed. The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White in 1869 that secession had been unconstitutional and that "the Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible states." Stewart nevertheless left his mark on the Constitution the same year as White, when he wrote what would become the Fifteenth Amendment, guaranteeing black suffrage.

Two decades after Nevada's founders proclaimed unswerving obedience to federal authority, Cliven Bundy's family first settled the land where he and his supporters now make their heavily armed stand against federal power. It's doubtful even the Nevada Constitution will change their minds—if legal and constitutional arguments could persuade the militia movement, there might not be a militia movement.

It was an otherwise ordinary snow day in Hartford, Connecticut, and I was laughing as I headed outside to shovel my driveway. I’d spent the morning scrambling around, trying to stay ahead of my three children’s rising housebound energy, and once my shovel hit the snow, I thought about how my wife had been urging me to buy a snowblower. I hadn’t felt an urgent need. Whenever it got ridiculously blizzard-like, I hired a snow removal service. And on many occasions, I came outside to find that our next door neighbor had already cleared my driveway for me.

Never mind that our neighbor was an empty-nester in his late 60s with a replaced hip, and I was a former professional ballplayer in his early 40s. I kept telling myself I had to permanently flip the script and clear his driveway. But not today. I had to focus on making sure we could get our car out for school the next morning. My wife was at a Black History Month event with our older two kids. The snow had finally stopped coming down and this was my mid-afternoon window of opportunity.

Just as I was good-naturedly turning all this over in my mind, my smile disappeared.

A police officer from West Hartford had pulled up across the street, exited his vehicle, and begun walking in my direction. I noted the strangeness of his being in Hartford—an entirely separate town with its own police force—so I thought he needed help. He approached me with purpose, and then, without any introduction or explanation he asked, “So, you trying to make a few extra bucks, shoveling people’s driveways around here?”

All of my homeowner confidence suddenly seemed like an illusion.

It would have been all too easy to play the “Do you know who I am?” game. My late father was an immigrant from Trinidad who enrolled at Howard University at age 31 and went on to become a psychiatrist. My mother was an important education reformer from the South. I graduated from an Ivy League school with an engineering degree, only to get selected in the first round of the Major League Baseball draft. I went on to play professionally for nearly 15 years, retiring into business then going on to write a book and a column for The New York Times. Today, I work at ESPN in another American dream job that lets me file my taxes under the description “baseball analyst.”

But I didn't mention any of this to the officer. I tried to take his question at face value, explaining that the Old Tudor house behind me was my own. The more I talked, the more senseless it seemed that I was even answering the question. But I knew I wouldn’t be smiling anymore that day.

After a few minutes, he headed back to his vehicle. He offered no apology, just an empty encouragement to enjoy my shoveling. And then he was gone.

***

When I moved my family to Connecticut, no relocation service, or anyone else we consulted for advice, ever mentioned Hartford as a viable option. They offered the usual suggestions for those who passed the prestige and wealth test—towns like West Hartford, Glastonbury, Avon, and Simsbury were presented as prime options. On one occasion, when I was preparing to announce a game, someone at our production meeting asked me where I lived. When I told him it was Hartford, he asked, “Really? Did you lose a bet?”

My family could have comfortably afforded a home in West Hartford. My wife is an attorney who graduated from two Ivy League schools. After time getting her legal chops in the Philadelphia public defender’s office, she worked at the Chicago law firm where Barack Obama started his legal career. As we painstakingly considered where to live, my wife fielded off-putting warnings about Hartford from well-meaning friends: “You know what they say when you cross the line...”

But we settled on the capital city of Hartford for the cultural experience. Connecticut is one of the most polarized states in the country—as people simplistically put it, “poor black and brown cities surrounded by wealthy white suburbs.” Our decision was not based on the features advisors kept mentioning—shopping centers and malls, or nice homes and “good schools.” It was about a certain kind of civic responsibility and, quite frankly, about making sure our kids saw other people who looked like them.

Our street is one block from the West Hartford border, and our Hartford neighbors make up a sort of Who’s Who of political and legal leaders. The mayor lives behind us, the Connecticut governor’s house is up the street, and a state senator lives two doors down. As soon as I told my wife what had happened, she sent the senator a furious email under the subject line “Shoveling While Black”:

Doug just got detained by West Hartford Police in front of our house while shoveling our driveway, questioning him about asking to be paid for shoveling. The officer left when Doug told him that it was his house. There were several other people on our street out in front of their houses shoveling snow at the same time. None of them were stopped for questioning. Just wanted to vent to someone whom we know cares and would be equally outraged.

Before I could even digest what happened, my wife's email had set a machine in motion. A diverse swatch of Hartford influentials banded together to assess the situation, including the chief of police, local attorneys, and security officers from the neighborhood civic association. Within a couple of hours, I had outlined my version of events to the Hartford police department’s internal affairs department. Most told me that I just had to decide how far I wanted to take my complaint.

Our next door neighbor (the one with the snowblower) helped my wife and me sort out the facts and figure out our options. He has a legal resume that covers a wide range of jurisprudence, from parking authorities to boards of African American–centric charter schools. He was in our living room within an hour.

The first step was to articulate exactly what the West Hartford officer had done. He'd been outside his jurisdiction—the representative from internal affairs had confirmed this. That meant a police officer from another town had come to my house, approached me while I was shoveling my own driveway, and—without any introduction—asked me a very presumptuous question. 

All of this had put me in an extremely vulnerable situation. In one moment, I went from being an ordinary father and husband, carrying out a simple household chore, to a suspect offering a defense. The inquiry had forced me to check my tone, to avoid sounding smug even when I was stating the obvious: that I was shoveling the driveway because the house belonged to me.

Many people I spoke with brought up Henry Louis Gates, the noted Harvard scholar who was arrested for breaking into his own home. If I hadn’t been careful and deferential—if I’d expressed any kind of justifiable outrage—I couldn’t have been sure of the officer’s next question, or his next move. But the problem went even deeper than that. I found myself thinking of the many times I had hired a man who looked like me to shovel my driveway. Would the officer have been any more justified in questioning that man without offering an explanation? I also couldn’t help projecting into the future and imagining my son as a teenager, shoveling our driveway in my place. How could I be sure he would have responded to the officer in the same conciliatory way?

As offended as I’d been, the worst part was trying to explain the incident to my kids. When I called my wife to tell her what had happened, she was on her way home from the Black History Month event, and my son heard her end of the conversation. Right away, he wanted to know whether I’d been arrested. My 4-year-old daughter couldn’t understand why a police officer would “hurt Daddy’s feelings.” I didn’t want to make my children fear the police. I also wasn’t ready to talk to them about stop-and-frisk policies, or the value judgments people put on race.

Until that moment, skin colors had been little more than adjectives to my kids. Some members of our family have bronze or latte skin; others are caramel-colored or dark brown. Our eldest and “lightest-skinned” daughter had at times matter-of-factly described her brother and me as “brown” and herself as “white.” But that night, my wife made it painfully simple. “We are black,” she explained. “All of us.”

***

After getting legal advice from my neighbor and my wife, I ruled out any immediate action. In fact, I was hesitant to impulsively share my story with anyone I knew, let alone my media friends at ESPN or The New York Times. I hoped to have a meaningful, productive conversation with West Hartford leaders—something that might be hard to achieve if my story turned into a high-profile controversy. Instead, I asked my neighbor to help me arrange a meeting with the West Hartford officials. When I arrived at Town Hall, I was flanked by my neighbor and my wife. They came as supporters, but it helped that they were also attorneys.

I soon learned that West Hartford had an ordinance that prohibits door-to-door solicitation.  A man, whom I allegedly resembled, had broken this ordinance. Someone in West Hartford had called the police, and a young officer believing he was doing his duty, had pursued the complaint to my street. Our block would have been the first stop for the wayward shoveler if he had entered Hartford.

Right away, I noted that the whole thing had been a lot of effort over shoveling. The West Hartford ordinance allowed its residents to call in violations at their own discretion—in effect, letting them decide who belonged in the neighborhood and who did not. That was a problem in itself, but it also put the police in a challenging position. They had to find a way to enforce the problem in a racially neutral way, even if they were receiving complaints only on a small subsection of violators. In my case, the officer had not only spoken to me without respect but had crossed over into a city where West Hartford’s ordinance didn’t even apply.  

But as we spoke, I found myself thinking of the people who have to deal with far more extreme versions of racial profiling on a regular basis and don’t have the ability to convene meetings at Town Hall. As an article in the April issue of The Atlantic points out, these practices have “side effects.” They may help police find illegal drugs and guns, but they also disenfranchise untold numbers of people, making them feel like suspects … all of the time.

In reaching out for understanding, I learned that there is a monumental wall separating these towns. It is built with the bricks of policy, barbed by racially charged anecdotes, and cemented by a fierce suburban protectionism that works to safeguard a certain way of life. The mayor of West Hartford assured me that he championed efforts to diversify his town, and the chief of police told me he is active in Connecticut’s statewide Racial and Ethnic Disparity Commission in the Criminal Justice System. (He also pointed me to a 2011 article he wrote for Police Chief Magazine, addressing many of the same issues I raised.) I hope their continued efforts can help traverse this class- and race-based barrier, which unfortunately grows even more impenetrable with experiences such as mine.

***

When my mother heard the story of the West Hartford policeman, she responded with wry humor: “You got your come-uppance again.” I knew exactly what she meant. If you are the president, or a retired professional athlete, it can be all too easy to feel protected from everyday indignities. But America doesn’t let any of us deny our connection to the black “everyman.” And unfortunately that connection, which should be a welcome one, can be forced upon us in a way that undermines our self-esteem, our collective responsibility, and our sense of family and history.

In a sense, the shoveling incident was a painful reminder of something I’ve always known: My biggest challenge as a father will be to help my kids navigate a world where being black is both a source of pride and a reason for caution. I want them to have respect for the police, but also a healthy fear—at least as long as racial profiling continues to be an element of law enforcement. But I also want them to go into the world with a firm sense of their own self-worth.

After talking to my own mother, I found myself thinking back to something that happened at summer camp when I was 5 years old, my son’s age now. During one exercise, we were asked to form a circle, and the boy next to me recoiled, saying, “I don’t hold hands with darkies!” I could have felt humiliated, but I just shrugged the whole thing off. It seemed obvious that he had the problem, not me.

My parents had instilled this confidence in me since birth. They’d given me pride in my ancestry and raised me in Teaneck, New Jersey, a diverse community that had voluntarily integrated its school system in the mid-1950s. I’d grown up seeing all kinds of people treat each other with a respect that transcended race, religion, class, and every other social or demographic construct.

That upbringing is what enabled me to deal with this incident in a slow, communicative, and methodical way. And it now allows me to see the potential in the officer who approached me. He’s still young, and one day he could become a leading advocate for unbiased policing practices. But I wish he would sit down with my kids and answer their questions. That might help him understand how hard it is to be a father—let alone a father in a black family. And I’d like him to know how much my children—and all children—expect from the officers trained to protect them. At the end of all my conversations with my kids, there were many things they still didn’t understand. But my 5-year-old son reassured me: “That’s okay, Dad. I still want to be a police officer.”

Dr. David Blumenthal, who now is head of the Commonwealth Fund, has been a friend since we both were teenagers. It was a sign of his medical / tech / policy skills that the newly arrived Obama administration put him in charge of encouraging a shift toward use of electronic medical records. It is evidence of his admirably good-humored big-tent personality that David still takes my calls after the many rounds of back-and-forth we've posted here in response to his original Q&A in our April issue, about why the shift has been so difficult and taken so long.

For those joining us late, you can check out installments one, two, three,  four, and five. Herewith number six, on the particular question of how the non-expert public -- those of us who experience the medical system mainly as patients and bill-payers -- should assess the opinions of physicians, nurses, and other inside participants. Should we give them more weight, because of their first-hand expertise? Less weight, because of possible institutional bias or blind-spots? Both at once? See for yourself.

First, the concerns of two physicians. One on the West Coast writes:

I am a family practice physician in western Washington state. I have been practicing for 25 years.  Ten years ago I was excited about about the potential of electronic technology to improve patient care. Today I am profoundly disappointed.  

I am currently working in three different EHRs (electronic health records). Two are OK, i.e. allow me to efficiently document a patient visit with clinically relevant data.  The other one is cumbersome beyond belief. It is a company with outstanding marketing capability that won over our administrators. It falls far short of meeting the needs of those of us trying to improve patient care.  Intrinsically it fails to produce a note useful for other doctors. To achieve that end, I use time-consuming work arounds. Sad I think. 

I believe that primary care is valuable to patients but also has potential to limit costs.....

I have included a reference to one of my favorite articles from the New England Journal of Medicine, including the first paragraph of the article:

"It is a widely accepted myth that medicine requires complex, highly specialized information-technology (IT) systems. This myth continues to justify soaring IT costs, burdensome physician workloads, and stagnation in innovation — while doctors become increasingly bound to documentation and communication products that are functionally decades behind those they use in their 'civilian' life.

And from a doctor in Kentucky:

As a 50 y/o it infuriates me when I read that only physicians less than 40 are comfortable with EMR’s because they grew up with them. Well that’s crap. My first computer was a Commodore 64 which I learned to program. I am very familiar with computers and have 4 networked together in my home.

That being said I would agree with Dr. Wait [from this post] in that EMR’s are not ready for primetime. If EMR’s were so great, no one would have to bribe and penalize us to use less. They generate a tidal wave of information. The important data gets lost in the overwhelming volume of mostly useless information. I used to dictate my notes and they would then scanned into the computer. The note was legible and concise. I could find it anywhere. Then the EMR came. It takes 20 minutes to do what used to take 30 seconds. I get a note that is less than useful. It is full of errors that I can’t correct. Information that others have entered that is clearly wrong that I can’t remove. I no longer try. The only important part now of my notes are the HPI and the plan. The rest is just garbage.

To give you an example my EMR won’t let me enter a subtotal hysterectomy in the past surgical history. Even when I supply the correct CPT code the EMR calls this  a Total hysterectomy, which is not correct and can lead to errors in determining who needs a pap smear.

So EMR remain not ready for primetime. I’m not sure why I can’t continue to dictate and allow the transcriptionist to fill in the EMR. It would work so much better.

Now for a different view, from an informed non-expert. This reader, a physics professor at a university in the South, uses the distinctive phrase of the day to suggest that we apply a discount to complaints from today's practitioners:

I've been reading the back and forth over electronic medical records. It seems the opposition comes, by and large, from doctors. Because why?

Because problems. There's lots of smoke and mirrors about interconnectivity, about interacting with the computer instead of the patient, about sleazy increased billing but all of that is in service of a single point of view: let's never change until we can change to something perfect. In other words, the underlying point is "don't make me change the way I'm used to doing things."

This all misses the main point. To me, what is overriding importance is the undeniable fact that ANY system that does NOT rely on the memory of the patient for long term medical history storage is NECESSARILY a better system no matter how badly it sucks. The VA has proved this over the last couple of decades as measured by the fact that fewer people die. Better information management beats clever doctoring every time.

Yes, there are problems in any technology implementation and there always will be. But fewer people die. Yes, it is important to connect with the patient. But fewer people die. Yes, the opportunity to pad billing is obscene. But fewer people die. Any large scale IT rollout has problems. The question is do the benefits outweigh the time invested in ironing out those problems. Most of us would say yes because fewer people die. I wonder why physicians are so reluctant to say that? Didn't they swear an oath or something?

I also wonder how many of these physicians, when directing their gimlet eye to another field such as public education, are equally skeptical of, say, massive online courses or teachers attending to the computer instead of their students, or teaching to the test? I somehow doubt it.

I think when you are the person dealing with a system day after day, it is easy to let your detailed knowledge of its problems overwhelm the vaguer notion of its benefits. You don't have a direct experience of a patient who didn't die, but you do have a direct experience of a technical snafu. 

 Thanks to experts and non-experts for writing in, and to David Blumenthal for opening this view into a world that affects us all.

Previous post

Like many of the over 800,000 physicians in the United States, I regularly receive emails concerning my online reputation. In just the past week, I have received three that open with:

“Dear Dr. Gunder. Do you know your doc score?”

“Congratulations, RG. You are eligible for the Hippocrates Award.”

“Hello, Dr. Richard. How many bad reviews do you have?”

The messages come from online vendors whose services include compiling and publishing patient satisfaction scores, providing free medical advice to unseen patients, and helping physicians manage (read: improve) their online reputations.

Never mind the fact that most physicians have never heard of these companies, that most recipients of such messages never requested a reputational biopsy, or that many of these solicitations convey all the sincerity of a bulk mail notice from a bank bearing congratulations on the news that you have been pre-approved for a credit card.

Some naive patients may take such ratings seriously, but very few of my colleagues in medicine do. For one thing, these ratings are often based on a very low number of reviews. A physician that treats hundreds of patients might have less than a handful of ratings. This poor participation rate lowers the probability that the online rating truly reflects the aggregate views of the physician’s patients, and necessarily exaggerates the influence of even a single disgruntled or highly laudatory reviewer.

In most such online ratings, there is no guarantee that the person submitting the review was even cared for by the physician. Like other online ratings for services as diverse as lawn care, college professors, and automobile dealers, there is no practical way to verify that any particular rater knows what he or she is talking about. And the more influential such ratings become, the greater the incentive to manipulate such scores artificially.

Major aspects of a physician’s overall quality tend not to be readily apparent to patients. There is a natural tendency to overrate aspects such as accessibility, affability, and bedside manner. Friendliness of office staff and even ease of parking may figure prominently. Though important, these features do not tell the whole story. Other vital aspects of care, such as the physician’s fund of knowledge, technical skill, and professional judgment may be difficult or impossible for most patients to evaluate thoroughly.

Good outcomes do not necessarily reflect good medical care, and the same can be said conversely for bad outcomes. A patient with a minor and self-limited viral infection might be very satisfied that a physician ordered several diagnostic tests and prescribed antibiotics, despite the fact that such measures did nothing to hasten recovery. Conversely, a patient with an incurable disease might express great dissatisfaction, despite receiving the very best care possible under the circumstances.

Most disturbingly, it is possible to be highly rated by such online services and yet be a remarkably bad physician. In one celebrated case last year, a New Jersey cardiologist who admitted to employing unlicensed personnel, allowing poorly qualified staff to treat patients, and defrauding insurers of nearly $20 million as also found to have online scores of “very good” to “excellent” and had received three quality awards from one of the most prominent online physician rating services.

This is not to say that patient satisfaction and physician reputation do not matter. To the contrary, satisfied patients are more likely to return to their physician, practice, or hospital for care. They are also generally more likely to follow a physician’s recommendations, and may even enjoy better health outcomes. Everyone knows that one of the most important sources of referral for physicians is the personal recommendation of a satisfied patient.

Yet there is real danger in making too much of online doctor ratings. Doing so may lead physicians to do things that conflict with their professional judgment—such as providing unneeded medications and procedures—in the interest of improving scores. It may also lead them to spend too much time worrying about and buffing up their reputations, rather than focusing their attention on taking the best possible care of their patients.

To top it all off, there is evidence that satisfied patients are not the best cared for or healthiest. A March 2012 study in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed that patients with the highest satisfaction scores were more likely to be taking prescription medications, visit doctors’ offices, and enter the hospital. They were also likelier to be in poor health and die in the ensuing years.