Michael Kevane

After teaching in the evening MBA program, I usually come home and decompress watching something.  Over the last several weeks, I watched the over-the-top police drama Luther, with Idris Elba.  It was pretty good for decompression candy.  Last night though I watched Fixer: The Taking Of Ajmal Naqshbandi.  Depressing, sad, and compelling.

At the African Studies Association meetings last November, I picked up a copy of Bitter Bread of Exile – Sir Edward Mutesa II by A.B.K. Kasozi.  It was not until the next day that I realized that the Kasozi writing the book was the Kasozi I knew, via my colleague Kate Parry of FAVL (her husband!).  It is a fascinating collection of short essays/chapters on various aspects of Mutesa’s exile in England, until his death, and also dealing with the burial question.  I know almost nothing about Uganda, so everything was new and interesting.  As Kasozi writes, the book is hopefully an invitation for lots more research on this period.  Too much of history of early post-independence Africa (and even contemporary Africa) is being lost: records were deliberately not kept, lies were propagated, evidence destroyed.  One can think of innumerable episodes.  I hope younger generations are inspired.

Apparently this is what he said on 4th of July:

« Au fil des années, nous avons clarifié ce que « Egalité » signifiait et formulé 27 Amendements à la Constitution. La plupart des amendements ont élargi les libertés de l’individu. Les autres ont délimité le pouvoir du gouvernement, comme le 22è Amendement limitant la présidence à deux mandats. Aujourd’hui, nous, Américains, restons unis sur la base de notre entendement que nous sommes tous créés égaux et dotés de droits inaliénables, y compris le droit de participer au gouvernement.Excellences Mesdames et Messieurs. Du peu d’expérience que j’ai pu acquérir au cours de mes quelques mois de séjour ici, je vois que le Burkinabé possède non seulement la résilience, mais aussi et surtout le courage et la détermination pour atteindre ce même objectif ».

via Independence Day des Etats-Unis : Un autre Compact pour le Burkina Faso.  I think this is good diplomacy by the ambassador, but I hope there is a backup plan.  It is great to affirm over and over the importance of alternance and respect for the constitution.  But if President Compaoré bullies* through a referendum and then presidential vote, and a united opposition takes to the streets, sides will have to be chosen.

*bullies is a technical word in political science… it means… oh, sorry, gotta run to take this call.

As the upcoming mayoral election comes up for San Jose, we have two candidates: Sam Liccardo and David Cortese.  Crime and policing are, at this point, going to be at the center of the campaign.  So I thought I should become a bit more educated about “the facts.”  So I turned to the FBI uniform crime reporting statistics.  The charts below give the crime rates per 100,000 of population.  The note on the table for San Jose declares “Due to reporting changes or annexations, 1997 figures are not comparable to previous years’ data.” But it doesn’t seem that there is any clear 1997 break in the series, so perhaps the change was relatively minor (experts weigh in perhaps?).  Anyway, I thought to present the whole series.  There is an uptick in 2012 (the last year available) in property crime, very clearly.  But still fairly small in the overall picture.  Tomorrow I’ll take a look and see if that uptick was common to other California cities.  On the whole, my takeaway is that the 2000s have seen a good, steady reduction in crime rates.  That is reassuring.  There is no “crisis” and policy shouldn’t respond to a rhetoric of crisis.  We need to keep building on good police work and social work of the past two decades.

(Right click on the graphs to open in new tab, to see more clearly.)

My gut feeling is that nowhere close to the deaths and disability years of alcohol.

Excessive alcohol use accounts for one in 10 deaths among working-age adults ages 20-64 years in the United States, according to a new report. Excessive alcohol use led to approximately 88,000 deaths per year from 2006 to 2010, and shortened the lives of those who died by about 30 years. These deaths were due to health effects from drinking too much over time, such as breast cancer, liver disease, and heart disease; and health effects from drinking too much in a short period of time, such as violence, alcohol poisoning, and motor vehicle crashes.

via One in 10 deaths among working-age adults in U.S. due to excessive drinking, report finds — ScienceDaily.