Peter’s Blog

“More then 1 in 100 American adults is in prison, report finds” - International Herald Tribune

For the first time in history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars, according to a new report.Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. An additional 723,000 people are in local jails. The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.

I’m reminded of this scene in Three Kings:

Check out this very interesting article in the IHT titled “Why work when you can hibernate?”. The author’s late effort to tie his historical observations to contemporary French politics are somewhat silly but the historical observations, that in much of France until the 19th Century (poorer) people literally tried to sleep through the winters is fascinating.

I think the break-up of Yugoslavia was traumatic on a level that most of us on the outside just don’t understand. While the direct warfare and killing was horrible, I get the sense that there was also weighty psychic trauma, as the society was ripped apart in a sort of fratricidal maelstrom. With this mental anguish, some now look back on Yugoslavia as a sort utopian society. Of course, whatever its merits (and there were some, especially compared to its replacement), Yugoslavian society was not perfect.

I mention this because my friend Adriana said this last night that she was Yugoslavian. But that country hasn’t existed whole for almost two decades! “But where in Yugoslavia?” someone pushed. Well, a bit of everywhere as it turns out: born in Sarajevo, lived in Belgrade, spent summers in (what is now) Croatia. And she’s not the first: Zoran, my tow truck driver in Portland (long story!), also proudly told me that he was Yugoslavian. I didn’t push for details.

The question then is, what happens when the country you identify with doesn’t exist any more? There are no easy answers, but if war is a force that gives us meaning, it is also a force which can destroy all identity.

Death Penalty Focus is a group I’ve been following for a while on their email list and I really admire their work. Mostly (completely?) based in California, they work to end the death penalty. They sponsor lectures, protests, letter writing campaigns and more. I highly encourage you to join the group and support their work to end the death penalty in California.

Last night I watched Larry Lessig’s corruption lecture and I just finished Tim Wu’s interesting piece on how laws stop being enforced. The latter directly ties into the first as my immediate response from Wu’s piece was to wonder why Congress doesn’t change laws that most people actually no longer support, something which Lessig answers.