DotTeeVee: DUI checkpoint refusal at illegal Tahoe roadblock

Our freedom to be a jerk might be the most precious one we have. All right, after our freedom to buy products and pay taxes. It's a strong runner up, anyway. The best part about exercising your civil right to social retardation and inability to grasp how things work is that you can make a post hoc claim that you were actually fighting the good fight and are some sort of bizarre hero. Even better if this process can be recorded and then shared with the world via the invisible wires.

Like most totally righteous stories this one begins with the Man With No Face riding his steel horse right into the teeth of low-level totalitarianism. We get lots of annotations during this process so that we "get" that this is no mere "watch me break local speed limits on my bad bike!" or "here's my vacation" video, but rather the courageous stand of the last honest man against forces of pure evil. Forces that can't be bothered to put up "burning beam lights" to mark the exact location of their tyranny.

  Epic fascism fail!

This is just a theory and there's no way I can prove it, but I think the fact that we're in broad daylight might, just might, explain the lack of flares and lanterns. For whatever reason, this seems to be a major issue for this guy, to the point that viewers are totally missing the point. He even says exactly that in the "video description." What the point is, exactly, remains impenetrable. 

Like a scene from an ill-conceived "Maximum Overdrive" re-imagining we join a line of cars waiting to have their freedom infringed upon by the jack boot squad. Literally nothing is happening, so I take the uploader's advice and skip ahead to the beginning of the "seizure" at the 4:30 mark. No, there's not going to be any epilepsy. Sorry to get your hopes up. 

By the author of "Lil Billy and the Star Chamber."

With the promise of Fourth Amendment usurpation, I jump ahead to the middle of the video. I deeply apologize for any sanctimonious wise-assery that might have been missed. An officer in one of those fluorescent vests usually worn by midnight joggers (remember, no lanterns!) gives the international gesture for "open your helmet's visor, Sir Knight, I wish to parley rather than engage in a manful clash of arms." This pretty unambiguous signal leads to more annotation smart mouth. It's almost as if this patriot and guardian of our rights is going out of his way to find things to be offended by.

  Another highway patrol pretty boy.

After using his words, the visor is raised. You know, maybe if we just comply with the instructions this will end easily and painlessly. The officer wants to know if any drinking has been going on and, channeling the spirit of Ghandi our hero is all "No questions!" This stand against the machinery of the wicked goes back and forth a few times before the motorsickle man is instructed to "pull over." Because this is an "order" compliance occurs. If only he'd been ordered to answer the question all of this could have been avoided, perhaps. 

This is a bit of a mixed message.

With that the "illegal seizure" portion of the video ends and we enter into the "unlawful imprisonment" phase. Maybe I missed it, but I didn't really see any property rights violated. I saw some goof that wanted to be difficult and a very long-suffering and good-humored officer, but that was about it. Hopefully the coming outrages will be of a higher class. 

So we "potato-potato-potato-potato" the chopper toward what I'm sure the creator of this video would call "The Free Speech Zone" but is actually used for drunks and cranks. This break in the scintillating drama that is unfolding provides another chance to quote chapter and verse from local statutes, like an alternate universe Joe Friday who was kicked off the force and became a human derelict fighting imaginary battles against enemies that exist only in his mind. He also bitches about taxes. I mean, taxes? What's up with those? Am I right?

Yeah, get busy guys. Smuggle arms to Mexican drug runners or something!

Next the possibility of actual martyrdom is broached, as an officer "reaches for his weapon!" Sadly the "mad cop disease" doesn't actually kick in, but that won't stop the Sole Defender of the Constitution from making repeated and paranoid references to this for the rest of the video. Instead, the same question about drinking is repeated, without result. He even gets uppity about raising the visor again, until "ordered." 

If you're having trouble following the logic of what the Minority of One does, here's a handy cheat sheet: Orders = Yes, Questions = No, Favors = No, Common Decency that Could Immediately End This Situation = No. Hand signs to raise visor = No, After the Fact Snark and Tough Talk = Yes.

After deflecting some more polite requests he really puts it down: "Let me know when I'm free to go." Ok, it's not exactly going to be the first choice of quotes to go on the statue that will one day be built for the brave, brave man who defeated the DUI checkpoint, but it will have to do.

 This is a prison planet, man.

The inevitable "ihnen paperien, bitte" occurs and incredibly this is also complied with after minimal fuss. This guy isn't so much anti-tyranny as he's anti-questions about drinking. Everything else he just goes along with. Der Kommissar checks the papers and apparently everything is in order because no one goes for their weapons or anything. Upon request the officers provide their own information, which will make it nice and easy for the modern answer to Samuel Adams to file a report on how polite and professional they were in the face of his crazy behavior.

The officer even apologizes for any inconvenience he may have caused. Tyranny! Hand on weapon! 1984!

Free to go it's time to drive off into the sunset. We're told that because of this video the roadblocks were either cancelled or provided with adequate illumination (even thought that isn't the point!). Another glorious victory for people that hate answering questions. We wrap up with an offer to see our hero deal with a "phony" roadblock and get arrested for DUI. Yeah, maybe later.

 The Catcher in the Road.

Komment Korner  

your a redicules kid grow up

Thanks for sharing your opinions with me.

 

i hope ur meaing to burn your clutch out 

Well score one for the cops. They acted professionally against a guy looking to create a problem. This tried to draw attention to himself and make the cops look bad..... FAIL. The cops look real good and this guy just made bikers look bad.

you need to grow up or get laid

Aaron Zehner's first novel The Foolchild Invention is available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

News You Can't Use: Dim Lighting Sparks Creativity

Bright light is bad. It hurts the eyes, makes it hard to fall asleep, reveals the profound ugliness of so-called "reality" and makes it much harder to get on to the "are you done yet?" In addition to these issues, it may also be the enemy of creativity, according to the latest pseudo-science to come out of a nation that fully personified evil less than a century ago.

There are certain times when you want the lights turned way down low. One such time, according to recent research, is when you need to think creatively.

Arrgghhhh, light! Get it off me, get it off! It's wrecking my creative thinking!

“Darkness increases freedom from constraints, which in turn promotes creativity,” report  Anna Steidle of the University of Stuttgart and Lioba Werth of the University of Hohenheim.

Ja, now to turn off zee lights und deploy mein efficient creativity free of "constraints." We've seen German science freed of those already and it wasn't pretty.

A dimly lit environment, they explain in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, “elicits a feeling of freedom, self-determination, and reduced inhibition,” all of which encourage innovative thinking.

Sounds more like the effects of inhaling a few King Cobras. Could habitual alcoholism, with a heavy focus on the so-called "cheap shit" inspire the innovations of the next century? I'm willing to study this for a very reasonable six figure fee.

After spending two minutes attempting to solve each problem, participants rated how free from constraints they felt. They noted the degree to which they felt externally controlled, and reported their level of self-assurance.

Unless you're, like, hooked to wires or something you're not being "externally controlled."

The results: Those in the dimly lit room solved significantly more problems correctly than those in the brightly lit room. They also felt freer and less inhibited than their intensely illuminated counterparts. Participants in the bright and the conventionally lit rooms did not differ significantly from one another on either scale.

From now on "dim" will describe the intelligent. I like the idea of "intensely illuminated" when there's an ordinary light bulb. "I'm baking like a Turkey here, turn it off, it's externally controlling me!"

May not contribute significantly to "self-assurance."

“These results indicate that dim illumination heightens perceived freedom from constraints, which in turn improves creative performance,” the researchers conclude. 

Support the Dark Party and our efforts to bring perceived freedom!

Don’t have a dimmer switch at your desk? No worries. Other experiments found that merely priming the idea of darkness—such as by taking five minutes to describe an experience of literally being in the dark, and recalling how it felt—was sufficient to boost creativity. 

Try to visualize, if you can, darkness. Remember how good it felt? Now...create! 

However, the darkness-spurs-innovation equation did not always hold true. In another experiment, the researchers found “the darkness-related increase in creativity disappeared when using a more informal, indirect light instead of direct light.”

Basically the problem was they were dangling a bulb over some poor German student like in one of those police interrogation rooms, while probably barking things like "achtung!" and "schnell, schnell!" I can see how that might prove an issue. 

"Sit there and start being creative. Now!" 

“Creativity may begin in the dark,” Steidle and Werth write, “but it shouldn’t end there.”

Actually in most cases it probably should.

These results would seem to contradict those of an earlier study, which found creativity is boosted by the presence in the room of a bare light bulb. However, a closer reading finds they are compatible: It was the symbolic power of the bulb (which has gone off over many a cartoon character’s head to signify a mental breakthrough) that boosted creativity, not the level of illumination in the room.

Basically if you're willing to do enough bizarre contortions and tell enough "just so" stories you can reach any crazy conclusion you want. 

So if you’re struggling to finish that screenplay or come up with the next must-have app, you might try illuminating your workspace with one bare bulb of minimal wattage. If you don’t want to be thought of as a dimbulb, perhaps the answer is a dim bulb.

Can bright light be blamed for this horrible abomination?

Update: OK, that last suggestion wasn’t as clever as I thought it was. (What can I say? I was writing in a very bright room.)

Yes.

[Science 17/70] Maybe dimming the lights would make me more creative.

Full Article. 

Komment Korner   

Generalization: Distractions inhibit creativity. Who'd a guessed it?

PS the glow from a TV is not NOT "light" it's evil!

Dim Lighting Sparks Creativity. ONLY WHEN SHE IS IN THE MOOD!

Typical liberal train of thought. "By remaining in the dark you shall be enlightened"! Just keep dreaming.

Aaron Zehner's first novel The Foolchild Invention is available in e-book format at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.