This…isn’t much better

By now you’ve probably heard of Julie Bass, the Oak Park Michigan woman who was cited for planting a vegetable garden in her front yard.  Some good news on that front: Prosecutors are now dropping the charges:

Charges against the woman who planted a vegetable garden in her front yard have been dropped, her attorney said Thursday.

But this, from Julie’s blog*:

on a dumber note, the city has decided to reinstate the case about our dog licenses. when they came over and saw we didn’t move the garden after their warning, they added a “no license” charge for our 2 dogs. we went within the week to pay for licenses and even paid late fees, and when we came to court the prosecutor asked to see the documentation that it had been taken care of.

Should I go with facepalm or facepalm collage?  Collage:

I’m sure this issue will be covered to death, so let me make a slightly different point: This is a fantastic example of what can happen when you combine a poorly written law with an overzealous prosecutor.  I cannot believe the word “suitable” made it into this statute.  I mean, I can, because I know how poorly statutes are often worded.  But people should realize that a statute written like this very literally means that a prosecutor (or anybody who has the power to issue a citation) can charge you with a crime – with the potential for jail time – because you did something that he doesn’t find “suitable.”  Of course, like cancer, it’s one of those things that can never happen to you right up until the moment it happens to you.  But it can happen.  And it does. 

Hell hath no fury like a prosecutor embarrassed. 

 

*[By the way, Julie’s blog is rolling in hits these days.  We’re doing pretty well over here, but damn.  Getting cancer to draw blog hits was a huge miscalculation.  If I would have known all I had to do was plant some turnips in the front yard, I could have saved a hell of a lot of hair and cells.  A real misfire on my part.]

A glimmer of good news for Detroit students

Freep:

The founder of a system of high-performing charter schools in Detroit and a staunch critic of the Detroit Public Schools has been named the leader of the DPS charter school office, the school district announced today.

Doug Ross, founder of New Urban Learning, a nonprofit charter school management company, joins DPS as the district is expected to move forward with plans to charter as many as 45 schools in coming years.

I interviewed Ross back in 2006 – before the first senior class graduated from his University Prep charter school in Detroit.  Now, the system has expanded to seven schools, which seem to be doing quite well. 

Sadly, I can’t find the article online at the moment.  But I was extremely impressed with Ross.  He didn’t sound like a bureaucrat.  Best of all, he didn’t speak in platitudes.  He recognized problems, had concrete plans to address them, and, by most accounts, has done a pretty good job of doing that.  His educational model explicitly recognized the unique challenges urban students face, and set out to address them: an “advisory” unit kept in place for all four years of high school to serve as a “family” of sorts; individualized learning plans to address slower (and faster) learners; placing the onus for student motivation on the teachers (since it might not always come from home); coordinating with local organizations to provide internships and training for students. 

I asked Ross directly why a public school system couldn’t replicate his model, and I’ll never forget his response:

“Envision a game of checkers,” Ross said. “Everyone is behind you, and they all want you to win. But every time you go to move a piece, somebody says, ‘no, that’s my piece! Don’t move that one!’”

If that isn’t politics in a nutshell… 

Stephen Henderson is equally enthused.  Details inside, but the bottom line is that Ross has spent less and achieved more with a comparable group of students (in 2006, students were admitted by random lottery.  I believe the system prioritizes siblings and the like now, but it’s still a comparable student body).

In a weird way, I’m glad Ross is still dealing with charter schools and not DPS as a whole.  I wouldn’t want him to get Michelle Rhee'd in two years.  Regardless, he seems like a rare guy who can not only accurately identify problems, but also has the desire to actually tackle them.

I think we have different definitions of “get out of the way”

This make head hurt:

Detroit— U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan this afternoon promised to be a "different kind of federal partner" under a plan to embed in the city up to a dozen federal officials to lend their expertise to Mayor Dave Bing's improvement effort.

He also said at a luncheon speech at the Economic Club of Detroit that federal officials want to learn from past urban policy failures and be more flexible with regulation, knowing "one size does not fit all."

…

The Strong Cities, Strong Communities program will focus on Detroit and five other U.S. cities. The six to 12 government staff members will work in the City of Detroit for up to two years, Donovan said in Detroit this morning during a tour a loft development. A press release said the staffers would come from four federal departments: Housing and Urban Development, Labor, Commerce and the Small Business Administration. But Donovan said the final team could include other departments because it is still being finalized based on Detroit's need.

The federal employees will work with city officials in four areas: planning and economic development; workforce development; buildings, safety, engineering and environmental; and transportation, which includes light rail, mayoral spokesman Dan Lijana said today.

I swear it will be different this time, Detroit.  Not like Black Bottom.  Or Poletown.  Or Brewster-Douglass.  Or the People Mover.  Or the War on Drugs.  And hot damn am I glad HUD is running this one! 

This was the announcement that was made Monday by some white guy at the Amsterdam Lofts – where $5 million in HUD funds produced units that rent for $1,350 a month in Detroit.  Daniel Howes of the Detroit News and Tom Walsh of the Free Press are rightly skeptical.

Nonetheless, the press conference was at least good for some high-larious lines. Like this:

During the lofts tour, Donovan discussed the program and said the federal employees will look at "how do we get out of the way? How do we eliminate red tape?" in helping the city spend federal funding efficiently.

This is how the federal government “gets out of the way”: by sending a dozen bureaucrats to a city to make the locals jump through hoops to get their money back.  It would be humorous if it weren’t so mind-numbingly stupid. 

And this:

"We are putting our money on Detroit because Detroit has momentum," Donovan said.

No you’re not.  You’re putting other people’s money on Detroit because you need votes.  Behold the mind of a bureaucrat.

And the truly bizarre:

"These are mid-career people. These are not interns," Lijana said.

Huh? What did the poor interns do!?  Now to the Free Press:

Bing said when he was first elected mayor, a lot of people pushed him to get money from the Obama administration, but the federal coffers were shrinking.

“He told me, ‘We don’t have any money,’” Bing said of his conversation with Obama. “If I can’t get capital, can I get other resources, I can use human resources. So getting this kind of support and collaborations is going to be for Detroit’s benefit.

That, if true, would be our first black President, a Democrat, telling the Mayor of what is quite possibly America’s most distressed and predominately black city, that he “doesn’t have any money” in a year in which he spent $3.5 trillion dollars and spent billions to bail out a bunch of people who actually have jobs.  Up is down.

And from the “stating the obvious” files:

But state Rep. Maureen Stapleton, D-Detroit, sounded a cautionary note, saying that many Detroiters are wary of outsiders coming into the city to help.

Well, yeah.  But who can’t help but love this guy!

If you’re trying to sell your plan to a city that historically has not welcomed outsiders, this is the guy you want on the job.  (Detroit News)

Part of me thinks, ah, what the hell: any money that ends up in Detroit is better than money spent on bombs or green jobs or whatever some politician dreamed up this morning.  And lord knows that actual poor people in a decimated city are among the least objectionable recipients of government funds, even for somebody with my frigid heart (except the truly poor probably won’t benefit from this at all).  I’d rather the feds not steal all this money in the first place, or at least leave it at the state or local level.  But they did, so the best most people can do is hope to get some scraps back. 

But the other part of me is just so disgusted with the way this all goes down, it’s hard to get excited.  Everybody sends all this money to DC.  We take our cut.  And the little bit that comes back does so via the Whitest Guy on Earth complete with a press conference, all sorts of strings, and a dozen employees to help a decaying city navigate the minefield the feds created in the first place.  And then that press conference focuses on – big surprise, light rail! – in a city that just saw five people shot at a high school reunion and a three year old girl killed by a stray bullet.  No mention of “crime” or “education.”  Green buildings and trains are apparently better vote grabbers.

And then they expect praise for this.  What a gross system.

Riding the Metro: apparently more dangerous than cancer

[Still cleaning out the link backlog for…oh…another week or so].

To celebrate my birthday last month, some woman decided to pull this stunt on the Metro:

A 51-year-old Mclean woman was “involuntarily committed” after she allegedly made a bomb threat aboard a Red Line train Monday morning, panicking fellow riders and causing train delays, according to officials.

The bomb scare took place at 7:45 a.m. when an eight-car train bound for Twinbrook was leaving the station, according to Metro Transit Deputy Police Chief Ron Pavlik.

The woman, whose name was being withheld, dropped to her knees and said, “You killed my family. Now I’m going to kill you all,” Pavlik said

This, of course, caused a panic.  Over nothing, really.  The women was mentally ill and taken to some facility.  But that didn’t stop the Washington Post from finding some juicy post-panic quotes:

Kathy Josephson, who was waiting for a bus at Rockville Station, said she would like to see more police and security in the transit system.

“Every time you go on Metro you’re taking a chance when you ride with your safety and security,” she said. Josephson said she hoped the woman would be charged with making a threat so it would deter others.

“You don’t play around and make threats like that,” she said. “It makes me nervous. They’re playing with my life and they should be in jail. There’s too many people doing crazy stuff.”

I’m not sure how many people had that reaction to a crazy person on the Metro, but I can’t imagine that’s what too many people actually thought.  I think that’s what people who were being interviewed by the Washington Post in the aftermath of this incident believed they were supposed to think and say.  “There’s too many people doing [whatever happens to be the subject of the article” is about the most generic post-event newspaper quote there is.

And “Every time you go on Metro you’re taking a chance when you ride with your safety and security” is true, but only because there’s a good chance some 13-year-old is going to punch you in the face and take your iPod, not because of some ranting and raving mentally ill woman.  If anybody actually believed that they were “taking a chance” every time they rode the Metro, nobody would ride the Metro.  Or any form of public transit.  At least not as an everyday commuter.  This is one of those times when what people say is both extremely predictable and extremely divorced from reality.  When you ask somebody in the aftermath of one of these events whether or not they’re scared, of course he will say yes.  But looking at the crowds of people taking the subway or buses to work in the morning provides a better measure of how scared people actually are.

So long as the bad guys don’t choose any of the other 85 stations, we’re good.

But the part that really made me crack up was the “I would like to see more police and security in the transit system” line.  Ms. Josephson is evidently not familiar with the Laws of Metro Cops:  Law #1:  Each additional police officer added to a Metro station will increase the circumference of the circle of police officers laughing and cracking jokes with each other by 5.14 feet.*  Law #2:  Each additional police officer added to a Metro station will increase the chance of the nearest handicapped man or pregnant woman getting the crap beat out of him/her as the cops scream “stop resisting!” by 6%.  

 

Suspected terrorist on a…terrorist scooter.

The suggestion that adding “police and security in the transit system” will have even the slightest effect on the chances of an actual terrorist attack is really quite absurd.  And evident if you think about it for more than a couple seconds.  Deep down, we all know this.  But we’re afraid to say it. 

So when you wonder why elderly cancer patients have to remove their underwear before they get on a plane, this is part of the reason why.  Because every time some yahoo does something that harms exactly nobody (either because they’re crazy or thwarted by vigilant bystanders), people scream about how scared they are (when they’re not) and how much they want to be protected (when they can’t be).  And journalists and politicians respond to that sentiment.  Because apparently these are the roles we’re supposed to play when these things happen.

 

*[This is absolutely true and evident to anybody who regularly rides the Metro.  I’ve had several opportunities to get a personal picture of this over the past few weeks, but I’m not terribly interested in getting my face beaten in by said circle of cops.  So google will have to do].

So…you’re saying I shouldn’t have slept with my cell phone under my left arm for the past ten years?

If the WHO is correct, how is Zack Morris still alive?

This is old news at this point, but still worth mentioning on a cancer blog: Cell phones might possibly cause cancer.  From one of the billion articles that pop up when you Google “cell phones cancer”:

Radiation from cell phones can possibly cause cancer, according to the World Health Organization. The agency now lists mobile phone use in the same "carcinogenic hazard" category as lead, engine exhaust and chloroform.

Before its announcement Tuesday, WHO had assured consumers that no adverse health effects had been established.

A team of 31 scientists from 14 countries, including the United States, made the decision after reviewing peer-reviewed studies on cell phone safety. The team found enough evidence to categorize personal exposure as "possibly carcinogenic to humans."

Like many “stories” that explode into a thousand articles all at once, this one is complete bull.  Or at least, mostly bull.  I can’t say things better than others have already said them, so I’ll let my little homies ride on you.  Starting with the American Cancer Society:

Unfortunately, drawing broad and sweeping conclusions based on a press release and a news conference leaves many of us wondering just what the evidence shows that led to the conclusion announced today that "radiofrequency electromagnetic fields" may be possibly cause cancer in people… 

Why has it been so difficult to answer the question about cell-phone use and cancer? 

It turns out that the simple answer is that the research hasn't clearly pointed in one direction of another.  In addition, there are so many variables that can confound these types of studies such that a clear conclusion isn't evident.  So we end up in a quagmire of scientific opinion instead of the crystal clear direction we would prefer.

Radley Balko:

So the headline says . . .

Mobile phones may cause cancer, experts say

But I can’t find anything in the article that shows a link, much less justification for the word cause. The article does note that numerous prior studies have failed to find a link between cell phones and brain cancer. It also points out that studies are limited by the sheer number of people who use cell phones. It mentions one study that “hinted” at a link between cell phones and one particularly rare form of brain cancer, but noted that the study required researchers to ask participants about cell phone use from years ago. The article also explains that cell phones haven’t been around long enough to draw any conclusions about long-term effects.

Orac:

There are a lot of problems with the claim that cell phones cause cancer, not the least of which is that the science and epidemiology just don't support it. In particular, the INTERPHONE study, whose results were reported last year, showed no evidence of a link between cell phone use and glioblastoma or meningioma. In fact, to me the decision by WHO is exceedingly puzzling because, if anything, over the last several years the evidence has been trending more and more towards being inconsistent with with a link between cell phone use and brain cancer--or health problems of any kind, other than getting into car crashes because of texting or talking while driving. I note that the INTERPHONE study relied on a dubious subgroup analysis in order to find that there was a 40% increased risk of glioma in the very heaviest users of cell phones that only barely achieved statistical significance and no increased risk of meningioma. Moreover, as I pointed out a year ago, among the heaviest users were reports of implausible levels of cell phone use, as high as 12 hours per day, every day. When a different method of quantifying cell phone use--asking how many calls per day a person typically made--was used, the increased risk of cancer disappeared.

The New York Times:

The research is plagued by methodological problems. Over all, the Interphone study suggested that cellphone users are less likely to get cancer. Nobody believes that cellphones protect you from cancer, so the finding is considered an anomaly, attributable to biases and errors in the data. Critics say you can’t pick and choose. If one finding must be dismissed because of faulty data, then so must the others.

Moreover, if cellphones caused brain tumors, we should have seen a worldwide increase in brain tumors pandemic as the phones became ubiquitous. That hasn’t happened.

“If you look at brain cancer around the world over 25 years that cellphones have been in use, there’s no suggestion at all of any increase in rates,” said Dr. Meir J. Stampfer, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and a consultant to the cellphone industry. “In science, unlike math, we can’t have absolute certainty, but in the scheme of things, this is not a health risk I would be concerned about at all.”

Geoffrey Kabat:

We are faced with a paradox in our increasingly health-conscious society. It is simply a fact of life that research is going to be done on topics like cellphones. But we can never prove a negative or exclude the possibility of a miniscule risk, no matter how large the study. So even when expert bodies concede that there is no convincing evidence of a threat, we get impossibly vague advisories like the current one warning us of "possible carcinogenicity." 

In an echo of the Harvard incident, Donald Berry, a professor of biostatistics at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas, said "anything is a possible carcinogen." Speaking from his cellphone, he added, "This is not something I worry about and it will not in any way change how I use my cellphone."

Ronald Bailey:

It's mildy amusing to note that mobile phone use appears to be prevent brain cancer among people who have ever made a cell phone call. Even among top ten percent of heavy users, their risk of brain cancer was well below Shapiro's 2.0 relative risk threshold.

Interestingly, as the number of cell phone subscriptions in the U.S. has risen from 1 million in 1987 to over 300 million today, the National Cancer Institute reports that brain cancer incidence [PDF] has been trending slightly downward.

And on and on.  Fortunately, the reality-based version of this story was pretty well covered – and a new study came out last week that swung the pendulum in the other direction.  Unfortunately, the reality-based version wasn’t the one that got all the short blurbs in the sources most Americans get their news from – local papers, popular sites like CNN.com, the evening news.  Which leaves the average Joe who isn’t following this stuff from 20 different sources and sifting through the conflicting views for hours on end wondering what to believe. 

As somebody who is more than a little concerned with what can and cannot cause cancer, this stuff really irks me.  Because every time we come up with some new cancer boogeyman – this week it’s cell phones, last week it was sugar, a couple decades ago it was coffee, and in between, I’m sure there are a couple thousand – everybody pays just a little less attention.  This isn’t a unique phenomenon.  Next time you hear a fire alarm, count the number of people who react as if the building is actually on fire. 

But with cancer, this stuff can kill.  Contrary to popular belief, we already have some pretty good cures for cancer: prevention and early detection.  But when we cook up a new cancer hysteria every couple months, it becomes harder for people to determine what is really truly dangerous, and what is just the latest fad.  I’m probably more on top of cancer news than most people, and even I have reached the point where I just say, “screw it, I’m not paying attention,” to this stuff.  And judging by the number of people still drinking coffee with sugar while talking on their cell phone, many others have as well. 

The bottom line is that we just don’t understand a lot of these things as well as we would like, and we probably never will.  Google “coffee and cancer” and you’ll find the article I linked to above that says coffee causes pancreatic cancer…and a bunch of other articles that report that drinking coffee lowers the risk of prostate cancer.  There’s evidence that shows that mild cell phone use actually reduces the risk of cancer – an impossibility that is rightfully labeled statistical error, but is nonetheless indicative of the uncertain nature of these studies. 

But uncertainty and reality don’t always make for good headlines and press releases.  So the WHO and the media decided to take that route, and spit out a bunch of garbage that was misleading at best, downright false at worst.  And while the next big cancer scare will make for some nice headlines, it will also desensitize people to the next big cancer scare, and the next one, and the next one, and, possibly, a real one.