You seriously need to get over yourself.

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, but go #### yourself.


I'm pretty sure that every police officer in major cities either smoke so much weed that they can't get the smell of marijuana out of their noses, or they have the most sensitive noses ever, or they just make #### up.

Hmm. I'd guess the last.

You seriously need to get over yourself.

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, but go #### yourself.

It may have been a callback to one of the threads about forcing people to sing God Bless America from a few years ago.

GOD BLESS AMERICA, LAND THAT I LOVE, STAND BESIDE HER, AND GUIDE HER, THROUGH THE NIGHT WI-

oh, we don't have to sing it? i always liked America the Beautiful way more.

It may have been a callback to one of the threads about forcing people to sing God Bless America from a few years ago.

I don't understand that connection at all.

Do Lassus and Rauseo go tagteam on the unpatriotic heathens?

At night it'd be harder to see through tinted glass, but that excerpt doesn't say the standard of being able to see inside is different in day vs. night. So if the cop can't see in, he has a legitimate* reason to pull someone over.

Even if the law is specifically designed to let the police pull over anyone, the police still have a responsibility to not pull over people inequitably.

I think DWB happens but I also think it seems that people attribute DWB to every single time a B gets pulled over.

And I think differently, I think it happens a ton of the time and sometimes people are wrong. People of color, just like those in the ethnic majority are not equipped with some magical power to be right 100% of the time on these kinds of issues. That's one of the most annoying things about it--you can look for non-verbal cues, but a lot of the time, you have no idea whether you lost that job because you suck or because the interviewer "just didn't feel comfortable with you". Even when there are concrete cues, a lot of people (not just white people) who weren't even there will dismiss it as you being a paranoid person of color.

Because no one is infallible, the opposite dynamic is also true. People of color won't trust white people to judge a situation when the POC wasn't even there because they are used to privilege obscuring observation. Obviously, that's frustrating too.

A little empathy the privileged would be nice, but hey, really more empathy both ways would be nice.

Concretely, this means saying things like, "I understand that DWB happens more frequently than I might notice, but we don't really know what happen in this situation. Maybe Martin is right, maybe he's just used to the social dynamic and making a faulty assumption."

Conversely, it's important to understand the privileged dynamic and empathize. Of course, when I do it's often still taken poorly by those who believe that their perspective is the only important one.

I've got to go pick up my students. But I saw the X signal, so I'll way in more later ;)

I know nothing about criminal law, but some umpiring discussions were up thread.

When I was a teenager, I used to umpire baseball games. This experience taught me that getting safe/out right on force plays is actually very easy if the ump is in position, even for an inexperienced ump like me. I would guess that MLB umps get force plays right about 95% or better. Just because the calls are pretty easy to make.

Tag out plays can be tougher, because it is harder to anticipate where the tag will be made and to position yourself accordingly. The MLB ups are usually really good about being in the right spot, and usually have the best view of the play. (Better than pretty much any camera, though without the benefit of slow motion.) I imagine that observing and umpiring 1000's of hours of baseball has taught these guys how to anticipate plays really well, and they probably get these tag plays right most of the time. That, and the players are very good, and typically make tag plays go in only a few different ways.

Balls and strikes are one problem, but let's face it, people have been arguing balls and strikes for as long as they have been playing baseball. The plate umpire makes a lot of ball/strike calls over the course of a game; they are going to mess some up.

The phantom tag plays around 2nd base also bug me. But the players are used to these, and this has sort of become the way the MLB game is called. I would prefer it not be this way.

I would also prefer that the umpires not argue directly with managers, but behave like officials in most other pro sports. The head shaking and all of that is just showmanship done for the fan's benefit. These guys should be there to make the call and stay out of the way. But again, this is my opinion, and umpires and managers shouting at one another is just part of MLB.

Is there ever a situation where racial - or any kind of - profiling is acceptable?

I'm a brown dude with an obviously Muslim middle name. I get randomly selected for searches at airports, and there always seems to be a closer eye on me than on other passengers. The scrutiny seems to be a lot milder when I travel with my white wife and baby son. I don't really mind - rarely takes more than a minute of my time - particularly when I'm as worried about airport security as the next guy.

Am I being complicit with profiling, just being a good citizen, or both? I don't really know.

I also recommend this strategy.

You gotta love the player from Los Angeles groping to the implication that this must be something racial because Pittsburgh cops are involved.

It's interesting that the mlb.com story, from their Pittsburgh beat reporter, doesn't mention the license plate issue.

The big thing is that the SCOTUS ruled that a Terry frisk at a car stop means the police officer is allowed to search the car itself, which to me is one of the things that makes me want Scalia to get off the court ASAP. If a person is in the back of a squadcar (as they are during these car searches in most police protocol) they sure as heck can't get to a handgun in the console, much less one in the hatchback trunk.

Yes, damn Scalia for voting to allow a search five years before he arrived on the court!

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

It means I think you're a blowhard.

I'm so sorry I don't share your opinions of umps and pigs.

Balls and strikes are one problem, but let's face it, people have been arguing balls and strikes for as long as they have been playing baseball. The plate umpire makes a lot of ball/strike calls over the course of a game; they are going to mess some up.

It always did make more sense to me to position the "plate" umpire behind the pitcher.

One time, with little kids (< 10 years, I think), my partner didn't show. I tried calling balls and strikes standing behind the pitcher, so I could cover the field as well. (The coaches both agreed.) It is really pretty hard, because you don't have a good angle to see the ball cross the plate. You can judge height, and can see if the ball crosses the plate or not, but it is very hard to see if the ball has the proper height as it crosses the plate. With little kids, this is not a big deal, as anything close is a strike. With professional pitchers, throwing curve balls and sinkers, I think this would be a big problem. I pity the umpire who would have to call balls and strikes for Tim Wakefield in this way.

Using an electronic ball tracking system would be quite good. The problem is that it would have to get feedback to the umpire very fast, so as to not further slow down the game. I am not a machine vision expert, but I am guessing that doing this reliably and quickly would pose some challenges. Probably not insurmountable ones, but I suspect that it is more difficult that people think. Processing all of the video quickly enough would likely need a lot of computing power, particularly if we wanted to get the call as quickly as an umpire does. If any machine vision experts are reading this thread, I am sure they will correct me.