Isaac Laquedem

Parisians adopt a Portland attitude toward the bicycle

Do you recall Portland's experiment with placing yellow bicycles around town, available for anyone to ride free from place to place?  They didn't last very long.

The New York Times reports that an entrepreneur tried a similar idea in Paris, placing rental bicycles around town, available for one euro (about $1.40) per half-hour, in exchange for being permitted to erect billboards and rent them out.  The Parisians aren't treating their bicycles much better than we treated ours.  Vandals have bent and broken some.  Others get fished out of the Seine, and a few have been found on ships bound for North Africa.  Our old yellow bicycles led more humdrum lives, but they were also a lot less expensive than the Parisian versions.

$2000 for a dog, but no money for the bank

Back on June 22, I wrote that if I had pleaded guilty to a mail fraud in a case that cost investors $355 million, I'd be embarrassed to have the Wall Street Journal report that my family spent $2000 to buy a dog.  I'd be even more embarrassed if it were reported (as the Oregonian did on Saturday) that although we could spend $2000 to buy a dog with a pedigree, we were now 10 months behind on our mortgage payments for our house in Green Hills.  Admittedly, those mortgage payments are $33,000 a month, so the dog (a purebred something-fancy-or-other) cost only about two days' worth of that family's mortgage payments.  The one pet I have was free, a gift from Youngest Sister, but then my mortgage payments aren't anywhere near $33,000 a month either, and I'm current.

Not that I don't like dogs, but . . .

If I had pleaded guilty to mail fraud in a case that cost investors $355 million, and spent two years in a federal prison because of it, I'd be reluctant to have the Wall Street Journal print on its front page last Saturday that the family dog cost $2000.

The Silverton shooting is a sign of our changing society

The justice system will eventually come to a conclusion about the tragedy in Silverton last week, in which a police officer shot and killed a young man who had beaten on the wrong door.  Others have commented on whether the officer was justified.  The thought that struck me, as I read the story, was that 20 years ago it might have been a story about a police officer named Hanlon who shot an illegal alien named Gonzalez; but last week the story was of a police officer named Gonzalez who shot an illegal alien named Hanlon.

More news from Paris: Shaquanda Cotton is released

Shaquanda Cotton, the 15-year-old girl from Paris, Texas who was serving an indeterminate sentence of up to 7 years for shoving a hall monitor at school, was released this weekend by the Texas Youth Commission after spending a year behind bars for the offense.  The Chicago Tribune, which brought her story to national attention, reports her release here in a story by its reporter Howard Witt.  My previous post about her case is here.

The Tribune story notes the curious fact that the Texas Youth Commission, the agency which runs the state's juvenile justice and detention system, is itself being run by a specially-appointed conservator because of allegations that prison officials coerced incarcerated children into having sex.  It also notes that prison officials extended her sentence because they found contraband in her cell -- an extra pair of socks.  Meanwhile, the federal Department of Education is looking into charges that the Paris school district imposes harsher discipline on blacks than on whites. 

The TYC's conservator, Jay Kimbrough, is apparently a man of action: the Texas senate confirmed his appointment on Thursday, reviewed her case Friday morning, and ordered her released Friday afternoon.  Hurrah!

The McMinnville schoolboys, Shaquanda Cotton, and the judgment of Paris

The case of the two McMinnville schoolboys who are facing juvenile charges for slapping the rears of their female classmates has sparked a fair amount of discussion.  Some think that the school, not the court, should be handling the matter; others think that the serious adult response is the right one. 

It's instructive to compare McMinnville's decision with a recent case in Paris, Texas, in which a 14-year-old girl was accused of shoving a hall monitor when she wanted to get into the school building before the school day started.  Although the good people of Paris were known for being soft on crime outside the schoolhouse -- a man convicted of criminally negligent homicide in the deaths of two persons got probation, and a 14-year-old who burnt down the family home also got probation -- the same Lamar County judge, Chuck Superville, who handed down those two sentences of probation gave the 14-year-old who shoved the hall monitor 7 years in prison.  She'll be locked up until she's 21.

Why do the arsonist and the killer get probation while the hall monitor shover gets 7 years in prison?  Oh -- I forgot to mention that the arsonist and the killer are white (the killer's victims were black), and the shover (whose name is Shaquanda Cotton) is black.  But that couldn't have had anything to do with Judge Superville's decision in these three cases, could it?  Of course not -- not even in Texas. 

A little bit of sexism sneaks into a different OMSI exhibit

Last month I mentioned that an exhibit at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry referred to white scientists and inventors by their full names or their last names, and a nearby exhibit in the same room referred to black scientists and inventors by their first names.  For example, after the first reference, Albert Einstein was called "Einstein" and George Washington Carver was called "George."  You can check it out in the Physics Hall, just off the Turbine Room.

This week I noticed an exhibit in the Turbine Room itself that described progress toward computers and programming, mentioning the accomplishments of Charles Babbage and his good friend Ada Byron, who after her marriage became Lady Lovelace.  After first reference, the exhibit referred to Charles Babbage as "Babbage," and to Ada Byron as "Ada."  It's time for OMSI to find some Liquid Paper correction fluid and bring these exhibits up to date, perhaps adding Bette Nesmith Graham to the list.

A little bit of racism sneaks into an OMSI exhibit

Years ago I picked up one bit of American cultural history, which was that in the South, whites addressed blacks by their first names in circumstances in which they would address other whites by a title and their last names.  One echo of this unhappy custom showed up in the book In the Heat of the Night, and in the film of the same name.  Early in the story, the deep-South sheriff (played in the film by Carroll O'Connor), investigating the murder of his town's leading citizen, takes into custody a black man, Virgil Tibbs (played in the film by Sidney Poitier) before discovering that Tibbs is a homicide detective from California.  The sheriff says to Tibbs, "Incidentally, Virgil is a pretty fancy name for a black boy like you.  What do they call you around home where you came from?"  Tibbs responds, "They call me Mr. Tibbs."

That came to mind when I visited the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry this week.  A small room off of the Turbine Room holds exhibits about the physical sciences, including a telegraph, a build-your-own-circuit display, and a van de Graaf generator.  It also has some placards that describe famous scientists of the past, including Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison.  A display headlined "Faces of Science" describes the careers of three eminent American scientists and inventors, all black: George Washington Carver (1864-1943), Lewis Howard Latimer (1848-1928), and Elijah McCoy (1844-1929).  Curiously, OMSI's writeups of the first two persons I named describe them as Franklin and Edison, but the writeups of the last three describe them as George, Lewis, and Elijah.

Someone at OMSI has messed up.  What's the chance that OMSI will correct its gaffe by September, before the school tours start up again?

The Schoolhouse Supplies Spelling Bee approaches

A year ago I attended the annual Celebrity Spelling Bee sponsored by Schoolhouse Supplies, a nonprofit that gathers and distributes school supplies to teachers in the Portland Public Schools.  Margie Boule nearly won the title, but was aced out in the final round by Nicole Vogel (the word was "isosceles"), who defeated a game field of local notables that included Mayor Potter and Jonathan Nicholas.  Ms. Boule is competing this year.  I enjoyed it so much last year that I'm bringing some friends this year.  You might like it too (tickets are available online), and it's an easy and enjoyable way to help the schools. 

FOLLOW-UP:  The executive director of Schoolhouse Supplies, who took with good humor my message to him about a spelling error on the Schoolhouse Supplies website, politely pointed out that I had made a few mistakes of fact.  He corrected the spelling error, and I've edited the above post to correct the factual errors.

Happy Birthday, L.J.!

The day can't end without good wishes to one of the Laquedem sisters, who celebrates her birthday today.  Happy birthday, Little Jewel!