Good stuff.

From the New York Times.

Witness Accounts in Midtown Hammer Attack Show the Power of False Memory

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/15/nyregion/witness-accounts-in-midtown-hammer-attack-show-the-power-of-false-memory.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below

The real world of our memory is made of bits of true facts, surrounded by holes that we Spackle over with guesses and beliefs and crowd-sourced rumors. On the dot of 10 on Wednesday morning, Anthony O’Grady, 26, stood in front of a Dunkin’ Donuts on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. He heard a ruckus, some shouts, then saw a police officer chase a man into the street and shoot him down in the middle of the avenue.

Moments later, Mr. O’Grady spoke to a reporter for The New York Times and said the wounded man was in flight when he was shot. “He looked like he was trying to get away from the officers,” Mr. O’Grady said.

Another person on Eighth Avenue then, Sunny Khalsa, 41, had been riding her bicycle when she saw police officers and the man. Shaken by the encounter, she contacted the Times newsroom with a shocking detail.

“I saw a man who was handcuffed being shot,” Ms. Khalsa said. “And I am sorry, maybe I am crazy, but that is what I saw.”

At 3 p.m. on Wednesday, the Police Department released a surveillance videotape that showed that both Mr. O’Grady and Ms. Khalsa were wrong.

The Pierces finally got their act together this year and will be attending Mountain Play (Peter Pan) on June 7. It’s a Marin tradition or something. Please join us.

https://mountainplay.org/current-events/now-playing/

Like many people, Robert completed his tax returns a few weeks ago.  Actually about a week before the deadline this year.  Whoo Hoo!

The effective federal income tax rate on Robert and Mira’s combined 2014 earnings was 1.4 percent.

Robert considers this percentage quite reasonable. The manner in which it is calculated, of course, is a nightmare.

Robert does not complain much about income taxes in the United States. He feels that most Americans, if they would turn off the television for a moment and stop their incessant bellyaching, would see that they don’t pay as much tax as they think they do.

Robert is (re-)reading Plato’s Republic.  He has not picked it up seriously since college. And then not so seriously.

His favorite passage for the moment is from Book 1.  As Plato-lovers know, this is the book in which Socrates has a conversation with Glaucon and Adiamantus (and others) about the nature of justice.  Glaucon challenges Socrates to explain why it is bad to be unjust. In setting up the challenge, Glaucon explains the conventional wisdom of the time (and thereafter) that, basically, only an insane man does what is just if he has the power to do what is unjust, profit from it, and suffer no ill consequences.

“They say that to do injustice is naturally good and to suffer injustice bad, but that the badness of suffering it so far exceeds the goodness of doing it that those who have done and suffered injustice and tasted both, but who lack the power to do it and avoid suffering it, decide that it is profitable to come to an agreement with each other neither to do injustice nor to suffer it. As a result, they begin to make laws and covenants, and what the law commands they call lawful and just. This, they say, is the origin and essence of justice. It is intermediate between the best and the worst. The best is to do injustice without paying the penalty; the worst is to suffer it without being able to take revenge. Justice is a mean between these two extremes. People value it not as a good but because they are too weak to do injustice with impunity. Someone who has the power to do this, however, and is a true man wouldn’t make an agreement with anyone not to do injustice in order not to suffer it. For him that would be madness. This is the nature of justice, according to the argument, Socrates, and these are its natural origins.” (Rep. 358 e-359 b)

The passage is very famous. It incorporates so many themes. Like a fine wine, it is so complex. It hints at so much. Notes of social contract theory, deontological moral theory, game theory, even some theory of bureaucracy. It is awesome!

Everything the Pierce Family knows about the classics and Shakespeare it learned from Gareth Hinds.

Robert remembers his first grade teacher, Mrs. Hurt.  She was an old lady.  Maybe she was not so old, but she had gray hair and she called the bathroom the lavatory, so she seemed old to Robert.

Mrs. Hurt took special interest in celebrating May Day with the kids. It is the last time Robert has done so. To this day he does not know if Mrs. Hurt was a socialist or just old fashioned in her celebration of May Day.