"DC Cop Waves Gun at Snowball Fight!" Sorry. I'm siding with the cop.

"DC Cop Waves Gun at Snowball Fight!"  — that's the Reason Magazine headline on this video:



Additional text at the video page:

Around 2.30PM on Saturday, December 19, during a historic snowstorm, residents at the intersection of 14th and U Streets NW started throwing snowballs at passing Hummers.

There is a difference between a snowball fight and throwing snowballs at moving vehicles. In a snowball fight — like this cool one in Madison a couple weeks ago — you have voluntary participants playing at fighting with each other. Throwing snowballs at cars, on the other had, is surprising people who happen upon the scene and it's distracting them — and doing so at a time when it is particularly difficult to drive. Drivers do not know the extent of the interference when it begins, and they can be frightened or easily stimulated into braking or accelerating — when there is snow and ice and when pedestrians are nearby. Whether the vehicles are Hummers or not makes no difference. Were they protesting gas guzzling? That might seem cute or righteous or harmless, but it might not be. The drivers don't know.

One of the cars pelted was driven by a plainclothes police officer identified only as Det. Baylor. Baylor got out of his car and brandished his gun at the crowd.

"Brandished" is a heavy word and "brandished... at" connotes that he pointed the gun at people, which he did not.

Reason.tv's Dan Hayes was on the scene, capturing the tense confrontation between police and citizens who chanted "Don't bring a gun to a snowball fight!"

This reminds me of the 1960s era demonstrations where it seemed like a good idea to taunt the police instead of showing them respect. Baylor got out of his car, apparently, to try to deal with disorder that he couldn't have known the precise nature of. Alone, facing a confusing crowd, he got his gun in his hand.

Why couldn't people have spoken with him in a civil way and conveyed the assurance that there was no problem requiring police attention? Did they consider that there might be people elsewhere in the city, during the snow emergency, who actually would have benefited from help from a police officer who got delayed by unruly adults who thought snow suspended the rules and made it okay to throw objects at moving cars?

The quoted chant is "Don't bring a gun to a snowball fight!" and that sounds funny and fun-loving, but it got me thinking of the encounters with police that we saw in the 1960s when it took next to nothing to provoke shouts of "police brutality" and "pig." And in fact, if you watched the whole video, you heard the shout "Fuck you, pig."

I'm siding with the cop.

IN THE COMMENTS: Chef Mojo says "This was no innocent snowball fight" and links here, to a post at futureMAGINING, written at 1:39, about 40 minutes before Baylor arrived, called "Announcing The DC Snowpocalypse Guerilla Snowball Fight 2009!"

Where? 14th & U st. NW
What? Massive guerilla snowball fight in the middle of the street.

A fun snowball fight would be sited in a park of some kind, not in the middle of the street.

When? Saturday, December 19th, 2009 @ 2 PM.
We will also be tweeting details at twitter.com/futuremagining.

If you try to go to that twitter page now, it says "Sorry, the profile you were trying to view has been suspended due to strange activity."

The only way to play it safe is to bring a posse. This may be complete anarchy.

Remember, if you’re throwing a snowball- you’re game.

Now, that could be a set-up for fun, like the Madison snowball fight, but not in a busy city street.  The first few comments say that the fight belongs in a park, and the "admin" responds: "The reason we’re calling it a 'guerilla snowball fight' is because it’s in the middle of the street." If someone called the police, they were right to respond.

Now, futureMAGINING has a statement up about the incident, written by Yousef Ali:

The “detective” who started waving his gun around inappropriately without even identifying himself as an officer of the law needs to be reprimanded.  To those who were there with us at the snowball fight, the difference of knowing that the person waving a gun is a hot-headed law enforcement agent who is unlikely to shoot outside of strict protocol versus a random thug with a penchant for violence is HUGE.  When that gun was drawn, many feared for their lives and those of their friends.

Watching the video, I wondered why so many people were laughing and hanging around... and taunting the man. That's not how I'd behave if I thought I might be near a "random thug" with a gun in his hand. I'd say their behavior shows they knew he was a cop attempting to follow whatever the protocol is when one man faces a mob. Unfortunately, the video does not show the entire confrontation.

Snowed shirtless.

At yesterday's big Bascom Hill snowball fight between the lake shore dorms and the southeast dorms. 3,000 students, including these guys:



That photo is by Isabel Alvarez of The Daily Cardinal. Lots more pics at the link, not all of which are by Alvarez, but here's another cool Alvarez picture — of a guy using a snowball to stanch a bloody nose.

You've got to love those endlessly hardy Wisconsin students. It's really quite wonderful! It says here that was the "first-ever full day of canceled classes" — crazy! — and what better time to show up on campus?

“We just don’t have what it takes to win a snowball fight,” said Greg Stravinski, a junior and Witte Hall resident who fought for the southeast dorms. Stravinski admited the lake shore dorms easily won the fight.

“Southeast comes out stylish,” he said. “We’re all prettied up and the second the snow starts flying we get worried ... lake shore is always there until it’s over.”

Most of the snowball attendees wore standard winter attire, but some of the more enthusiastic students donned goggles, helmets, shields, gorilla and penguin costumes, gigantic slingshots and shovels.

One student from Witte left all his winter gear behind and charged Bascom Hill in only his boots and underwear on a $45 bet.

$45? I bet there are many guys here who would do it just for fun.

There were also huge snowmen all over town. Check out the video of the Great Snowman Wall of Gilman Street (and what happened when the snowplow truck came through):



More reports of snow-related Madison doings here — like those guys who rolled a 10 foot tall snowball out into University Avenue.

"Next came Solórzano, who performed in a leather jacket, throwing his first snowball from a cocktail shaker—a blend of cedar, benzoin, and cardamom which conjured the smell of whiskey."

"To a soundtrack of ragtime and death-metal bluegrass, he waved his towel with muscular grace, using it to represent (variously) lightning in a prairie thunderstorm, his dead lover’s body, and a bar tray that he used to deflect bullets. Between vigorous towel-waving sequences, he narrated his moral dilemma, of whether or not to take vengeance on his former best friend, an outlaw who’d killed his girl.... As the temperature surged to two hundred degrees, Solórzano slammed a snowball scented with black pepper and juniper tar onto the rocks, filling the room with a gunpowdery musk, and waved furiously, darting up and down the sauna stairs, tossing his towel in an elegant plume of white. The crowd went wild."

From "Sweating and Storytelling in a Williamsburg Sauna/Aufguss: a world championship for twirling a really hot towel" (The New Yorker).

Had you heard about Aufguss?

"EPIC!! #uwmadison #snowday #snowfight #Draco #Madison #Wisconsin #bascom."

"All my residents came back from the Bascom Hill snowball bruised, battered, & bleeding. #HoFoProblems Good thing it was a #lakeshorevictory"

Collected tweets — with pics — of the latest classic Madison snowball fight.

What are #HoFoProblems? I don't know, and that tweet seems to be the only tweet on Twitter with that hashtag. Urban Dictionary suggests that "Hofo" is short for "homophobic" or — less likely — a combination of "ho" and "mofo."

IN THE COMMENTS: James said: "HoFo is a House Fellow." HaHa.

"Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few."

"If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing to [requests for just a few minutes of your time], they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up 100 percent of your time — and squawk for more!"

ADDED: That quote — from Robert Heinlein (via Instapundit) — contains an atrocious mixed metaphor. First, time is analogized to money — "your total capital" — and then demands for it "snowball" — and here we've got an image not just of snow, but of getting larger and larger by rolling downhill. This increasingly large ball of snow somehow reaches a point where suddenly it's parasites — some sort of bacteria or fungi? — and they're consuming... well, I guess all that money. Having eaten all your money, these parasites "squawk for more" — they have powers of speech. What kind of parasites squawk? Maybe some animation in a TV commercial for an athlete's foot remedy. It's possible! But what happened to all the snow?

See, this is why I can't read science fiction.

"The children of Severance want the opportunity to have a snowball fight like the rest of the world."

Said 9-year-old Dane Best, quoted in "Boy gets Colorado town to overturn snowball fight ban" (BBC).

The rule was part of an old ordinance outlawing the throwing of missiles, such as stones, at property or people within the town.... The law itself is thought to date back to the town's founding about 100 years ago, although no-one is believed to have been charged with the offence.

Running out of time.

With little more than a hour to meet a deadline on a little piece I'm writing, the FedEx guy shows up with that Blue Snowball Microphone I've been waiting for. I can't resist screwing in the little tripod stand, plugging in the USB cord, and firing up Quicktime Pro to test it out. I justify the digression from my writing project by reading what I've written out loud to do my little sound test. I edit a bit as I go. Then -- atwitter with the hope that this is that device that can catapult my podcasting to a whole new level -- I play it back. Is it good? Well, I'll just do an extra little podcast tonight to demonstrate the power of the Snowball! But for now, I must get back to this writing.

Bonus revelation: I have yet to do any Christmas shopping! Me and deadlines -- we have a very close relationship.

The sign says "Memorial Union Terrace/CLOSED/For The Winter" but it's 60° here in Madison.

A man in shorts waits for a lake and a snowball to melt:



Many people have crossed the chain with the "CLOSED" sign, perhaps because the "CLOSED" sign is subject to interpretation — it's not substantively winter — or maybe because they don't care about your signs, man....



And here's another chain crossed:



That little yellow sign says "CLOSED," but come on... you can't close a lake...



Welcome to spring, everybody!

"We prefer to have the melody before working on the lyric. We feel that when we have the melody, there are words on the tips of those notes, and we have to find them."

Said Alan Bergman, quoted in "Alan Bergman, Half of a Prolific Lyric-Writing Team, Dies at 99/With his wife, Marilyn, he wrote the words to memorable TV theme songs and the Oscar-winning 'The Way We Were' and 'The Windmills of Your Mind'" (NYT).

I've always been fascinated by the song "The Windmills of Your Mind," and I blogged about it in 2019 when the composer — the man who wrote the notes on the tips of which the Bergmans found the words — Michel Legrand, died.

That post has many versions of the song embedded, but I'll chose just one here, the 1968 Noel Harrison version that I remember as a hit and that I know was heard in — and won an Oscar for — "The Thomas Crown Affair":

My old post ends:

My favorite picture from Time's cover story on Pete Buttigieg is not the cover....

... though that's very nice. It's this family snapshot of Buttigieg (c. 2000) playing on a Nintendo machine with his father:



I cannot express how much I love this picture. The dog's tail, lit up in the foreground, is such a nice, homey touch, obviously accidental, since the dog isn't posing and the photographer's poor sense of framing is attested to by the sheep "standing" on young Buttigieg's head. I like how young he looks back then, the man Time calls the "gay Episcopalian veteran." And I love seeing his father — his "late father Joseph Buttigieg" — playing so earnestly, with no thought — I suspect — that this scene would ever be gazed upon by the readers of a Time Magazine cover story. And what was in the tin — the kind of tin that almost surely originally housed a fruitcake? Hard boiled eggs? Snowball cookies? What's in the chest atop the dresser? Jewels? Silverware? An embalmed pet?  And what's in the trunk upon which the gay Episcopalian future veteran sits? Is that a guitar in the corner? A dobro? Mysteries of the Buttigieg childhood home. Beautiful!

Fighting the revolution in Iran with squirt guns.

Innocent fun or serious political threat?

After heeding a call on Facebook, a group of nearly 800 young men and women were among those who showed up at the park....

They chased strangers around a giant water fountain, screaming and laughing as they splashed each other with water from toy guns, bottles and plastic bags.

"We had a blast. It was a rare chance for boys and girls to hang out in a public place and have fun," said Shaghayegh...

Facebook... flash mobs... is it just fun and games? Look at London. In Iran, perhaps the regime is threatened by something that is only fun and games. But now that the authorities have cracked down, it's become political... and politicizing to the young people — the under-30s — who make up 35% of the population.

Farzan, a 22-year-old university student who was one of the organizers of the Tehran water war, says police tracked him down through Facebook and raided his house in the middle of the night. He was arrested, held for three days and beaten up, he says.

Young Iranians say although the event started out as innocent fun, it has now turned political. They are vowing to challenge them with more events.

A nationwide water war is scheduled for Friday, after the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

Didn't the American revolution begin with a snowball fight?

Object lesson.

I've always hesitated to use the phrase "object lesson." I do use it, and I want to be able to use it, but it nags at me that I might not use it correctly. This morning in a post that was to some extent about misreading, somebody misunderstood me, and I wanted to thank him for the "object lesson." 

Because I took the trouble to research the phrase, I ended up writing "Thanks for providing such a striking example of the problem." Not that I figured out it would be wrong to say "Thanks for the object lesson," but just that I wanted out of that comments thread and into a separate post about the meaning of "object lesson," which explains to me why I'd always felt uneasy about using it. That is, I'd learned it from hearing others use it, but I wasn't convinced they were using it properly. 

Here's an example of the way other people use the term. This is Paul Krugman in a NYT column from January 4th: "The past two months have... been an object lesson in the extent to which 'grass roots' anger is actually being orchestrated from the top." And here's the NYT Editorial Board, from early December: "[T]he painfully slow pace of recovery following the last recession provided an object lesson in the limits of relying on low interest rates." 

See how flabby that is?! It's an object lesson in... flabbiness! 

Now, check out the Wikipedia article "Object Lesson." Historically, "object lesson" is something crisply specific: 

"And thats why i post infrequently. Unless it is about Van Morrison."

Wrote D in the comments to the post about Stephen Colbert's lame effort to back out of his "cock holster" remark. D says:

I visit this blog everyday for the reasons espoused by many others already re: how the hostess find/pulls alot of interesting takes on the day's news articles. You can then find interesting tangents / new knowledge / stuff added by the many many commentators. Many with varied skills and knowledge bases whatever their political leans. Today, one of the posts has to do with a crazy scottish surfer. Comments then pulled towards using drones in search and rescue to reduce costs. And latest on towing insurance etc Ok that isnt everyones cup of tea, but that post will (i estimate) get 1/8 of this post And this post is about some guy and another guy who get paid lots o money to act in front of cameras, and they are riffing off what one guy said, a few nights ago, to show he's edgy. They are not capable of running search amd rescue operations. If people stop paying attention - including the # of comments on a top blog - hmm maybe the edgy guy becomes less important in the grand scheme of things. Might not get gigs in front of congress The posts today - the congress vote, the surfer, the army photographer, and the immigration post esp. - those posts deserve more comments than this fluff. IMHO. And thats why i post infrequently. Unless it is about Van Morrison.

Have I blogged about Van Morrison?! I guess I have. There was the time, back in December 2008, when I took some photographs in the snowy, foggy cemetery...



...  and the car radio just happened to be playing Van Morrison rendition of the old song "That's Life." (And the time I referred back to that old post.) And I've talked about the recording "Gloria" a few times:

1.  Way back in March 2004, before the posts had titles:

"A new Operation Chaos, it's called SOB, Save Our Biden, Operation Sling Blade."

"We need to keep this guy on the campaign."

Is it really this bad? Check out the amazing gush of Biden gaffes at that link. (Warning: It's Rush Limbaugh, but you need to read the evidence.)

You know, when I hear all that, it almost makes me think that Biden is screwing up on purpose to set up an Eagleton move.

You may have noticed the big internet rumor, but I'd like to claim credit for starting that meme, here, recorded on September 5th:



I was yanking Jane Hamsher's chain, but these things take on a life of their own.

IN THE COMMENTS: JMH notes that Jim Geraghty predicted on August 29th that Biden would withdraw:

Picture this scenario...

One month from now, the Palin pick has proven a bonanza for the McCain campaign. A large chunk of Hillary's 18 million voters have been won over. Conservatives are unified and energized, and the previously-undiscovered "Maxim magazine vote" is suddenly giving McCain large margins among young males.

Joe Biden will disappear from the campaign trail, and we will later learn it was to see a doctor. A previously-undiscovered, vaguely ominous health issue will be discovered, and Biden will sadly announce that he cannot continue as Obama's running mate. With a sudden need for a new one, Obama will turn... to Hillary Clinton.

Call it the Torricelli gambit.

But why would Hillary accept it? Also in the comments is Dust Bunny Queen:

Why in the world would Hillary allow herself to be put on the ticket at THIS point? Seriously. If Obama kicks Biden to the curb, doesn't this bring up several troubling issues.

1. When the going gets tough, Obama throws people under the bus. Grandmother, Rev Wright, Biden.

2. What kind of decision making does this indicate on the part of Obama. Can't he get anything right? Does he have such poor judgement that he has to continually make excuses and blame other people. Does Obama have ANY loyalty to anyone besides himself? Evidently not.

If I were Hillary, and NOW you want my help after kicking me in the teeth, I would say "thanks but no thanks" a la Sarah Palin and gleefully watch Obama melt down. I don't think he would have a snowball's chance if he made this sudden switch.

If she runs on his losing ticket it will just brand her as a loser. If she stays above the fray and then runs again in 2012 she has a fighting chance. Basically she should tell Obama "fat chance loser."

At the Snowball Café...

... let's play! It's so exciting!

***

"Café," here at the Althouse blog, signifies an open thread in the comments. Write about what you like. And if you happen to have any shopping you need to do, entering Amazon through this link will — at no extra cost to you — send me: 1. some money, and 2. the message that you appreciate what this blog gives to you. (That link is always at the top of the page, under the blog's title: click "Shop Amazon.")

"There was a time when residents in this liberal college city would greet homeless people by name."

The L.A. Times takes note of an attitude change in Madison, Wisconsin:

They'd stop to chat with Scanner Dan, the grizzled guy with a walkie-talkie buzzing at his hip as he asked for change. They'd offer odd jobs to a man known as Snowball, who was rumored to have been a smuggler for the Chicago mob during Prohibition.

Then two violent slayings in less than three months shook residents in the state capital, which is also home to the main campus of the University of Wisconsin.

Both victims were stabbed in their homes in the middle of the day by strangers, police said.

Though investigators have no suspects, the police focused on the city's homeless and transients, among others. Now a backlash against Madison's down-and-out population is brewing.

"Unlike standard ice, it doesn’t clink; instead, it makes a soothing, gently percussive shuffling sound, like someone shaking an afuche-cabasa in the apartment next door."

From "Pellet Ice Is the Good Ice" (The New Yorker).

Pellet ice is cylindrical, with smooth sides and rough ends, as if each piece had been snapped off of a long dowel of ice. Unlike most ice, which is either carved from a larger block or frozen in a mold, it is made from paper-thin flakes of ice that are pressed into a solid mass—a method familiar to anyone who’s packed soft fresh snow into a dense, compact snowball—and then pushed through round holes punched in a metal sheet, creating a fragile cylinder that breaks off into pieces. Here’s where pellet ice differs from crushed ice, with which it is often erroneously conflated: the compression of the nuggets creates flaky layers, which, as in a well-laminated pastry, render the ice pellets lightweight and airy, with crevices and tiny caves into which your drink can penetrate, and a yielding texture perfect for chewing. The ice is small, each piece only about a centimetre long and narrower in diameter, so it fills a glass more efficiently than lumbering cubes or half-moons, and somehow, in a quirk of thermodynamics, it allegedly melts more slowly.

It's the part about the sound that interests me the most. I have a quirky dislike for the sound of ice cubes clinking in a glass. I'm familiar with the alternative of omitting ice altogether, but this soothing, gently percussive shuffling sound is revelatory. Given my very low sense of taste and smell, I care more than most people about the texture and temperature of things I eat and drink, but rarely use ice, so I sacrifice a dimension of coldness because of a mild aversion to ice. But if ice brought cold and not merely silence but a soothing, gently percussive shuffling sound.... 

At the Snowball Café...

... have you got something for me?

Barehanded snowball fighting, Althouse-style....

... in a scarf beautifully knitted by Irene. Wait a minute...



... in a hat spiffily hand-knitted by Martha.



Gotcha!

(Seriously, thanks, Irene and Martha, for the cool handmade birthday stuff.)

"... $53,999, the highest non-winning total in show history..."

Did you watch yesterday's phenomenal "Jeopardy!" episode?

Described here at ESPN.

We've been enjoying the fantastic James Holzhauer, and yesterday, he had a worthy competitor, Alan Levin. I'm glad James won, but it was great to watch Alan almost get him.

Over at WaPo, Charles Lane writes "Jeopardy!’s James Holzhauer is a menace":

... Holzhauer’s streak reflects the same grim, data-driven approach to competition that has spoiled (among other sports) baseball, where it has given us the “shift,” “wins above replacement,” “swing trajectories” and other statistically valid but unholy innovations.

Like the number crunchers who now rule the national pastime, Holzhauer substitutes cold, calculating odds maximization for spontaneous play. His idea is to select, and respond correctly to, harder, big-dollar clues on the show’s 30-square gameboard first. Then, flush with cash, he searches the finite set of hiding places for the “Daily Double” clue, which permits players to set their own prize for a correct response — and makes a huge bet. Responding correctly, Holzhauer often builds an insurmountable lead before the show is half over.

Dazed and demoralized opponents offer weakening resistance as his winnings snowball....

Lane's essay went up yesterday just after Levin made his thrilling challenge, but obviously was written before. Bad luck for Lane! Ha ha.

[T]his professional gambler from Las Vegas does not so much play the game as beat the system. What’s entertaining about that? And beyond a certain point, what’s admirable?...

Of course, Holzhauer’s strategy could not work without his freaky-good knowledge of trivia, just as baseball’s shift requires a pitcher skilled at inducing batters to hit into it. The old rules, though, would have contained his talent within humane channels....

If you enjoy watching nine batters in a row strike out until the 10th hits a homer, you’re going to love post-Holzhauer “Jeopardy!”

Are you buying the baseball analogy? I like baseball well enough, but I have no opinion on whether the "grim, data-driven approach to competition... has spoiled... baseball." If it has, then is what Holzhauer is doing the same kind of grim spoilage? It seems to me that Holzhauer has plainly demonstrated a strategy to rack up much higher numbers, and it's exciting and available to other players. It requires taking a big risk early on, but you only get in a position to take that risk if you pick up a few of those $1000s in single Jeopardy and then hit the Daily Double. Yesterday, it didn't work because the show was wily enough to put the Daily Double at the $1000 level and it was the first square chosen. And Levin made some Jamesesque moves and nearly beat him. Is that like "data-driven" baseball?

IN THE COMMENTS: rhhardin says:

Actual base running in Jeopardy would be good. A ball would come in somehow.

I answer:

A model for a TV game show with a running component was "Name that Tune." They'd play a tune and the contestants had to name it, but instead of hitting buzzer to get the chance to give the right answer, you had to run across the stage and pull a cord.

I found a full "Name that Tune" show on YouTube. You can see the contestants in ridiculous action here (scroll to 6:00 to see the actual running):