Morning After Dallas Sniper Attack

View from my office the morning after the Dallas sniper attack.

Wow, how to summarize the last 12 hours. Last night there was a peaceful protest march in downtown Dallas in response to the recent killings by police in other states. Towards the end of the march, snipers began shooting at police officers. The shooting was audible a half mile away at my office in Deep Ellum where I was working late. I thought at first it was fireworks, then I starting seeing events unfold on social media with posts from friends who were at the march. At least 14 people were shot, 12 of them officers. 5 officers died, 4 DPD and 1 DART officer. There appear to have been four suspects, 3 male and 1 female. (update: this is still in flux, latest reports are back to just one suspect again). One of the suspects holed up in a parking garage and was involved in a standoff with police that lasted for hours. When neogtiations with police broke down and the suspect started shooting again, the police killed the suspect using a bomb delivered by a DPD robot.

A lot of downtown was on lockdown most of the night, including the parking lot where most of the protesters parked. My friends in the march were unable to get back to their cars and had to spend most of the night in Union Station. Uber was providing complimentary rides to get some of them home. I stayed over night at my office in Deep Ellum. Everyone I know at the march and in downtown is safe. From early reports of what the deceased sniper said to police, the shooting was racially motivated but does not appear to be associated with the protest march aside from taking advantage of the police protection that DPD always offers to marches and protests downtown. The route of the march had been announced beforehand, so the shooters could easily have planned the best location for their attack.

It’s morning now and already the political spin is running full bore, trying to turn this terrorist attack into rating points for one side or the other. Either we have to support all police, who are universally good and we must believe everyone they shoot to be evil thugs; or we have to assume that all cops are bad and corrupt and that everyone they shoot is innocent. This political effort to force all issues to be black and white is intentionally divisive and needs to be rejected. Reality is never that black and white. We need to support good cops while still calling out bad ones and peacefully protesting against injustices. There’s nothing inconsistent about marching in a protest against unjust police killings while still supporting our local police who are risking their lives to protect our right to free speech.

Art Conspiracy Mounted

Decapitated Robot, my piece for the ArtCon Mounted auction

Decapitated Robot, my piece for the ArtCon Mounted auction


This year’s Art Conspiracy SEED auction is called Mounted and has a faux taxidermy theme. Here’s how ArtCon describes it in their official news release “Conjuring visions animal, vegetable, mineral and digital, Life in Deep Ellum will be transformed from a gallery space into a lodge-like, electronic animalistic mounted dream sequence that only those crazy Art Conspirators can produce.” It’s coming up tonight so check it out if you can. My piece for the auction is called Decapitated Robot and it’s made entirely from found objects. I had to come up with a back story to explain the piece, and it goes something like this:

After a survey team crash landed on an alien planet, their robot turned homicidal due to a cognitive viral infection of unknown origin. The ensuing struggle resulted in many dead crew members and one decapitated robot. The survivors mounted the robot’s head on an airlock access panel and hung it in their camp as a reminder of their lost comrades.

So the idea was to the create something that could plausibly pass for an airlock hatch. In an ideal world, I’d live near an airplane grave yard where I could round up some kind of hatch but I had to make do with more mundane parts. Fortunately, I discovered that pretty much anything can conjure up the right idea if you apply diagonal airlock hazard stripes.

The robot head itself is made entirely from found metal objects from my personal junk stash. The face was once part of an Electrolux vacuum cleaner. Add in a handful of fasteners and adhesives from the local hardware store and you have what will hopefully pass for a severed robot head. If you want to see it in person, come by tonight and check out the auction. All the money goes towards the costs of the big Art Conspiracy charity auction this fall, which will benefit a local charity (this year’s beneficiary will be announced at tonight’s event). There will be lots of crazy art, food trucks, and bands.

What’s All This Occupy Dallas Stuff Anyhow?

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To borrow and mangle a phrase from the late Bob Pease, what’s all this Occupy Dallas stuff anyhow? I’ve been hearing wildly contradictory reports of what the Occupy Wallstreet group is about. Now the group or movement or whatever it is, has begun spreading out to other cities around the world. When Occupy Dallas started a few days ago, I decided I’d probably get a better picture of what’s going on if I just had a look for myself and talked to some of the people. That’s what I did and I thought it might be interesting to others if I shared what I found out. I can at least confirm or dispel a few of the things I’ve been hearing in the media.

The whole thing seems to have started with Adbusters but was quickly joined by Anonymous. As people in more and more cities began taking up the cause, more groups started latching onto the concept, making it unclear which groups are the “real” ones. There is now an “Occupy Together” website that seems to have coalesced into a center of information for the movement, though it dis-associates itself to some extent from the Occupy Wallstreet group. But for the most part, I think it’s safe to say that Adbuster, Anonymous, and Occupy are the focus of activity.

Officially, the group offers a fairly straightforward description of itself as a peaceful protest of the masses (the 99%) against abuse of power and wealth by the few (the 1%). They’re also protesting corporate greed, abuse of power by government; influence of government policy by wealthy individuals and corporations; and the political turmoil that has resulted from the two-party political system in the US (but it’s important to note that the group is not limited to the US). The group does not claim alignment with any specific political party and claims not to have a general right or left leaning. They claim to have no specific agenda.

I talked to a few participants in the Occupy Dallas group in person at their protest event and online. I also shot some photos of their base camp. I visited on Thursday when the primary protest was at the Federal Reserve Bank on Pearl Street and the base camp was at the JFK Memorial. After spending one night there, my understanding is that they’ve moved the base camp to Founder’s Park and the primary protest will begin moving to other major financial institutions such as Bank of America. At the time I visited there were estimated to be about 500 people involved. My guess is maybe 300+ were at the JFK memorial at the time and I saw more along the path between the memorial and the Fed, so estimates in the 400-500 range match the best guess I could make.

Here’s my impression along with my take on how accurate the media reports about them have been:

The people who were at the protest included Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Libertarians, Ron Paul supporters, Ron Paul opponents, Obama supporters, Obama opponents, Tea Party people (I have to note again that, as a tea drinker, I still hate that they’ve besmirched the good name of tea). There were fringe nutty people including assorted conspiracy theorists who thought the Federal Reserve, or the lack of a gold standard, or you-name-it, was part of a conspiracy to take away their freedom. But overall, it seemed less conspiracy and nutjob dominated than the Tea Party seems to be. There were a lot of college aged kids but an almost equal number of older people, including many who looked to be at or past retirement age. There were an almost equal number of men and women protesting. Many of the cars driving past on Main Street were honking and gesturing support. I didn’t see any passing drivers showing opposition.

Some in the right-wing media have begun claiming that these protester are law breakers and violent. This is completely false, at least in Dallas. The protest and base camp were peaceful. The police had set up barriers to provide a safe protest area around the Fed for the protesters. The police and protesters were interacting, talking, joking, laughing. At one point policemen were helping protesters carry water and supplies to their base camp. As the protesters have noted, the Police are part of the 99%, so there’s no reason for any hostility. I’m aware there has been some violence on both sides in the Wall Street protest but nothing out of the ordinary for a large protest and, in any case, nothing like that has occurred in Dallas (yet). The only way I can see a problem developing is if one side or the other stop being cooperative. But so far the protesters and police seem to be communicating, with the police willing to accommodate peaceful protest and the protesters willing to locate in areas acceptable to the police.

I heard Bill O’Reilly claim these are “anti-capitalism” protesters. I believe this is false.
No one I talked to expressed opinions that seemed even remotely anti-capitalist. The Dallas Fort Worth area has real Communist and Socialist groups; members of neither group were present at the Occupy protest. I think part of the problem here is that the far right has come to idolize money so much that they sometimes have trouble distinguishing greed from capitalism.

I’ve seen media claims that the protesters are all “hippies”. This is false. I saw a handful of people who might be described visually as hippy-like; long scruffy hair, tie-dyed clothes. One or two were hauling around acoustic guitars. They were greatly outnumbered by people who looked perfectly normal for Dallas. I saw people who fit just about any genre you want to mention from businessmen in suits to mohawked punk rockers on skateboards.

I’ve seen media claims that the group is a right wing movement associated with the Tea Party. I think this is definitely false. I heard that the Dallas Tea Party people at one point had planned a protest at the Fed to coincide with the Occupy protest but I’m not sure if it happened or not. There were at least a couple of Tea Party people present, there were also some Ron Paul supporters, Republicans, and anti-Obama people. I saw about the same amount of what I considered anti-right-wing signage as pro-right-wing signage. Also I’ve noticed the right-wing media outlets like Fox have started putting a lot of effort into casting the Occupy movement as left/evil/commie/socialist, so I assume as Tea Party people get the message from upstream, fewer of them will be willing to associate with the movement.

I’ve seen media claims that the group is a left wing movement. This one is trickier. I think it’s false in the sense of the left as the Democratic or Progressive US political party. But it may be true in a general sense depending on one’s definition of left. There were a few Obama supporters in evidence but there were also a lot of people looking to oust Obama in the next election, some even wanted to make demanding Obama’s resignation an official part of the group’s goals. More than a few of the protest signs seemed to me to be left-leaning but others I found moderate or even right-leaning. During the time I was there, I heard lots of talk about fending off attempts by the liberal MoveOn group to take over Occupy, take credit for it, or push the Occupy movement toward the left. The majority of people I saw or talked to believe the Democrat/Republican and Left/Right pardigms are in part responsible for a lot of our current problems and wanted nothing to do with either side. Overall though, I’d have to say there were probably more people I’d describe as left-leaning than right-leaning at the Dallas event, enough to put the average for the entire group slightly left of center.

Media reports have said that the group doesn’t know what it’s protesting or demanding. In my experience, this claim is closer to being true but is not entirely accurate. As a group, there seems to be consensus that what is being protested is 1) corporate greed 2) abuse of power by government 3) use of money to influence elections and legislation by indivduals and corporations. At an individual level, though, nearly everyone you ask has some additional gripe to add. Many are protesting specific politicians such as Obama, or specific institutions such as the Federal Reserve. Some are protesting abstract concepts like the personhood of corporations.

I heard a lot of debating and arguing amongst protestors while I was there. One protester would start in about a Fed conspiracy or the gold standard and another would disagree. For the most part the arguments sounded good natured and peaceful. But it was clear there was very little consensus in the group on what the root problems were (beyond the basic ones already mentioned) and no agreement on what the desired outcome should be.

I also heard a lot of complaints that I found contradictory and, well, baffling. For example one response I got included this complaint:

“We are fed sub standard and tainted foods by mega national food companies. We are sold cheap, sub standard and often dangerous goods made by corporations”

I thought about asking what happened to this person’s free will. The protesters are camped out within walking distance to the Dallas Farmer’s Market where they can buy food grown by local farmers. There are plenty of coops going where you can buy locally grown organic food and meats. Dallas even has a growing community garden trend. There are plenty of foods available that are grown locally, are not sub-standard, and are not grown by mega-corporations. The same can be said of many other goods. What this guy seemed to me to be saying, after correcting for reality, was more like “I choose to buy sub-standard food from mega-corporations and I demand the government stop me from doing that”. Which doesn’t really make sense when you consider the same group is complaining about too much government interference in our lives. It seems like there’s a bit of a personal responsibility gap in their reasoning.

This leads to the next media claim that was close to being accurate; the claim that the protesters are largely hypocrites. I found this one close to being true but perhaps less so than the previous one. I’m sure everyone has seen one of the photos of corporate product laden protesters protesting corporations. If you take a look at my own photos of the Dallas event you’ll see that the protester do indeed have a massive corporate footprint. They were using smart phones, social networking services, wearing corporate made clothes bearing corporate logos, drinking corporate bottled drinking water in plastic containers, using corporate made cameras, etc.

To what extent is that hypocrisy though? In many cases they’re not objecting to the existence of corporations or to corporate made products, just the excess corporate greed and corporation’s use of wealth to influence government. On the other hand, individuals like the one who made the comment about sub-standard food certainly sound hypocritical. A lot of the changes the protesters want might come about pretty quickly if they simply acted in line with their words. I wonder how many of them are eating locally grown foods, wearing locally made clothes, using an electrical provider that offers 100% renewable power, etc. While I don’t think it’s entirely fair to say the group as a whole is hypocritical, there is certainly plenty of hypocrisy to go around (but I suspect that I and most of my readers are guilty of a little hypocrisy in this regard too).

One of the protesters told me this was largely about “gaining a voice”. After some reflection I think that may be part of our problem. We’ve been so conditioned by our political system that our role should be talking, protesting, arguing but never doing. I think it never occurs to most people that they can actually do something themselves. I certainly sympathize with the primary complaints of the Occupy movement and hope their protests do some good but, in the end, somebody still has to find some solutions and actually do the work. I’d love to see a group as enthusiastic as the Tea Party or the Occupy Movement who actually wanted to DO something instead of just complain about things, however justified those complaints may be.

That’s all the insight I’ve got for now and it’s probably worth about what you paid for it.

Mushroom Cloud over Dallas

On the way in to work this morning, we saw a big mushroom cloud south of downtown Dallas. The radio said there were a series of explosions going on at an industrial gas supply company. Propane and acetylene cylinders were said to be flying through the air like fireworks. The major highways nearby were shut down, including 35, which we were on at the time. We managed to get across the grass onto the access road so we weren’t trapped in the traffic for too long. We didn’t see any of the flaming shrapnel described on the radio but grey ash was drifting down all over the road and our car. In a few places the ash was blowing around like snow in gusts of wind. I got a few photos of the scene with my cell phone as we detoured around the disaster area.

International Space Development Conference

As I write this, I’m sitting at the DPRG’s booth at the International Space Development Conference. The ISDC asked us to be an affiliate and demo some robots. In the next booth is a group of high-powered rocketry people who have some rockets about 15 feet tall. John Carmack’s Pixel lauch vehicle, built by his Armadillo Aerospace group, is sitting on the floor about 20 feet in front of me. Carmack and his engineers were here yestereday. I’ve also spotted a few other interesting people wandering around; Ben Bova and Buzz Aldrin. Larry Niven was supposed to be here somewhere but I haven’t seen him yet.

There are also loads of non-profit space colonization groups here. I remember 20 years ago at science fiction conventions seeing groups like the L-5 society asking for donations so they could colonize space. I optimisitcally became a member of several groups. Eventually I realized they weren’t really doing anything. After all these years, they still haven’t gotten any further than sitting at tables and telling people about how great it would be to colonize space. The names have changed. Apparently, the L-5 Society is defunct now. In it’s place we have groups like the Mars Foundation and some Moon Society. I talked to the people at a few of these and they seem to have the same strategy of achieving their goal by talking about it endlessly. It’s kind of depressing. They all seem to ignore the basic problem that it’s expensive to get into space to do all this colonizing. If they spent a little time working on that, they might get somewhere.

West Nile Virus

We received a warning from our neighborhood association yesterday saying that someone in our area had been diagnosed with West Nile Virus. Infected mosquitos have been collected in Irving as well. We seem to have a pretty good crop of dragonflies around our yard this year so hopefully they’ll take care of any mosquitos. They can eat about 600 mosquitos per day each. When I was mowing the yard this past weekend, there were five or six dragonflies following me around like personal bodyguards. If you’re in the Dallas, Texas area, the Dallas Environmental Health Services Department offers an interactive online map showing the status of animal tests, human cases, and mosquito collection in the area.