Amtrak has an annual photo contest that has been running since 2003. Duane Kerzic was standing on the public platform in New York’s Penn Station, taking photos to enter in next year’s photo contest, when he was approached by Amtrak police. They asked him to delete his photos immediately, and he refused. He was subsequently arrested for not deleting these photos. After the fact he was also charged with trespassing.
According to Amtrak’s weekly newsletter, photography is allowed in public areas, which includes the area Kerzic was in while photographing. Hell, thanks to the photo contest they run, they’re encouraging people to take photos just as Kerzic did. History shows, however, that Amtrak police have a habit of disregarding this.
IANAL, but as far as I know there’s no legal way they can make you delete photos you’ve taken while not trespassing. Kerzic claims the officers never told him to leave the premises (as you’d expect them to if they actually thought he was trespassing), but considering he was standing in a public area with a legally purchased ticket I find it absurd that anyone could consider what he did trespassing or in any way illegal.
These sorts of incidents reflect very badly on police in general. The more I read about this sort of thing, the less respect I’m likely to have for law enforcement, and I’m starting to think that’s a good thing. Respect should be earned — just because they’re dressed in a uniform doesn’t mean we should automatically respect them. It’s important to stand up for your rights. I don’t know if I would have tried to argue with or resist the Amtrak police had I been in Kerzic’s position, but I think (at least in retrospect) that it would have been the right thing to do. If you’ve done nothing wrong and are being detained or arrested with no legal justification, I think you have the right — or maybe even the duty — to resist and stand up for yourself.
I’m studying JAVA in school, but I’ve always felt Python was a more fun language, and I always recommend it to friends wanting to try programming for the first time. Here are a few good resources that can help you get going in your attempt to learn Python, whether it be your first language or just another tool in your programming arsenal.
One last night at my house — I went to sleep at 8:30am — and another one tomorrow night. I’m practically trading day for night here.
Posted in Other | Tagged life |
Jon Swift has a nice list of interesting blog posts. It’s a good read — and not only because one of my posts is listed. 
I have a very long vacation from school (6 weeks total, started this week), and I had been mentally piling up things to do over the break. Things I wanted to learn, read, play, watch, etc. Now that the break is here I’ve done a bit of it, but I find that more often than not I’m just lazily surfing the net or refreshing pages on forums.
Objectively I know this isn’t much worse than some of the things on my mental list (playing Fallout 3, for example), but to me even playing a long video game is starting to feel like work. Well, not really work, but like an investment of time and effort — if that makes any sense.
I’ve managed to drag myself out of it, I think, but I still find it weird. Maybe I’ve been spending too much time online. Wait, what am I saying? I can’t believe I just wrote that…
Posted in Other | Tagged life |
Alan Turing was the father of computer science, as well as an atheist and a homosexual (at a time when homosexuality was illegal and considered a mental illness). These two famous quotes are attributed to him:
- “Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.”
- “I am not very impressed with theological arguments whatever they may be used to support. Such arguments have often been found unsatisfactory in the past. In the time of Galileo it was argued that the texts, ‘And the sun stood still… and hasted not to go down about a whole day’ (Joshua x. 13) and ‘He laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not move at any time’ (Psalm cv. 5) were an adequate refutation of the Copernican theory.”