That’s All

Here's a great way to end the evening. In this video of a musical duet, Peter Martin is accompanying Dianne Reeves on the tune "That's All." There is some pretty amazing musicality going on here, starting with Peter's gorgeous introduction to the tune (but sorry that the ending is cut off a bit too soon). BTW, Peter's children attend school with my children. Last year, he volunteered to accompany the third graders for their musical. During the big performance, somehow . . . somehow . . . he made sure that he never stole the spotlight from the children--it was an incredible musical experience to hear the voices of little children framed by the music of a world-class jazz pianist. Every other month here in St. Louis, Peter is playing jazz at the beautiful Sheldon Theater in the Central West End. The next show is June 4 at 8pm. The first two installments (the February show featuring Peter and Dianne Reeves and the show two nights ago featuring Peter and Jeremy Davenport) were everything you could have hoped for. If you're interested in hearing some great jazz live for a reasonable price of $25 per seat at the Sheldon, visit Peter's site. If you'd like to view and listen to more of Peter's music online, here's where you need to go. [BTW, if you'd like to know more about how to play jazz piano like Peter, check out his "2 minute jazz piano" video podcasts on iTunes. Free piano lessons from a guy who really knows his way around the keyboard.]

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Problems with heavily monied judge elections

At Raw Story, Adam Skaggs warns that bigger money than ever will be pouring into judicial elections in light of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling of Citizens United. He also offers some good suggestions:

[S]tates should adopt public financing systems for judicial elections (something West Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico, and Wisconsin have already done). Public financing gets judges out of the unseemly business of dialing for dollars to make sure they win. States also need to adopt stricter disclosure rules, so the public knows which individuals and groups are spending in judicial campaigns. And states should institute new disqualification regulations to ensure that, if a judge is assigned to hear the case of a major campaign supporter, he or she must step aside and let a wholly impartial judge preside.

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Sting: The war on drugs is a failure

Sting has written a Huffpo article declaring the "war on drugs" to be a failure:

Everyone knows the War on Drugs has failed. It's time to step out of our comfort zones, acknowledge the truth -- and challenge our leaders ... and ourselves ... to change.
How is this "war" a failure? Sting refers to an opinion piece by the Drug Policy Alliance that sets forth the following facts:
Consider the consequences of drug prohibition today: 500,000 people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails for nonviolent drug-law violations; 1.8 million drug arrests last year; tens of billions of taxpayer dollars expended annually to fund a drug war that 76% of Americans say has failed; millions now marked for life as former drug felons; many thousands dying each year from drug overdoses that have more to do with prohibitionist policies than the drugs themselves, and tens of thousands more needlessly infected with AIDS and Hepatitis C because those same policies undermine and block responsible public-health policies.

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The conservative rewriting of U.S. history

McClatchy has published a video and a written summary of conservatives' recent efforts to rewrite history. This evidence-free approach to history is surreal. How can this possibly be happening? It is apparent that these rewrites of history are evidence of the confirmation bias running at full throttle. I recently came across this vivid description of this phenomenon in a book called A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives (2006), by Cordelia Fine:

Reasoning is the vain brain's of . . . powerful protectorate. This might seem a little odd. Isn't reasoning supposed to be the compass that guides us toward the truth, not saves us from it? It seems not--particularly when our ego is under attack. In fact, the best we can say for our gift of thinking in these circumstances is that we do at least recognize that conclusions cannot be drawn out of thin air: we need a bit of evidence to support our case. The problem is that we behave like a smart lawyer searching for evidence to bolster his client's case, rather than a jury searching for the truth. As we've seen, memory is often the overzealous secretary who assists in this process by hiding or destroying files that harbor unwanted information. Only when enough of the objectionable stuff has been shredded dare we take a look. Evidence that supports your case is quickly accepted, and the legal assistants are sent out to find more of the same. However, evidence that threatens reason's most important client--you--is subjected to grueling cross-examination. Accuracy, validity, and plausibility all come under attack on the witness stand. The case is soon won. A victory for justice and truth, you think, conveniently ignoring the fact that yours was the only lawyer in the courtroom.

(Page 13) Fine adds this additional description toward the end of her book:

Evidence that fits with our beliefs is quickly waved through the mental border control. Counter-evidence, on the other hand, must submit to close interrogation and even then will probably not be allowed in. As a result, people can wind up holding their beliefs even more strongly after seeing counter-evidence. It's as if we think, "Well, if that's the best that the other side can come up with then I really must be right." This phenomenon, called "belief polarization," may help to explain why attempting to disillusion people of their perverse misconceptions is so often futile.

(Page 108)

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