Everyone’s heard about Apple’s release of the iPhone G4 on Monday, but less attention was paid to the release of Safari 5. The biggest deal with that is Safari’s new extensions architecture. Apple’s planning to host a gallery of vetted extensions this summer, but until then, if you want to live dangerously, you can check out what people have cooked up at the Safari Extensions Tumblr blog.

Below the cut: Stuff only Mac users care about, probably.

I’ve been hoping for some time that FiveThirtyEight.com would have a look at Wednesday’s Dutch elections. Although I really enjoy reading Peter Paul Koch’s analyses over at Quirksmode, I wondered what the the internet’s go-to guys on poll interpretation would do with the numbers. There’s so much to discuss, both in terms of content and methodology (particularly since the Netherlands has no electoral districts).

Well, 538 tackled the story today. Unfortunately, it covered almost none of the ground I was hoping for. Indeed, the article by Dan Berman starts to go wrong in the title: Is a Stable Government in the Netherlands Coming? There are several reasons that made me wince.

1. It makes the Netherlands sound like it’s in the same kind of trouble as, say, Thailand. A country with an “unstable government” is one where the people are taking to the streets, where the army is considering taking over, where the Bastille is on the verge of being stormed. It is not the peaceful, stable place I live in, where a long-serving Prime Minster has, probably for the last time in his career, failed to keep his coalition together for the maximum time between elections.

   The headline is particularly annoying because it fits into a pervasive narrative that is only ostensibly about the Netherlands (and, indeed, Europe). Our “socialist” system is doomed, notwithstanding the global financial crisis. We’re on the verge of either mandating the hijab or crushing the Muslim community (I think it’s the latter, this week). Our decision to tolerate and monitor soft drugs and prostitution rather than push them underground makes Amsterdam a “cesspool of corruption and crime”. And now our government is unstable, probably because of all of the above factors. Alas that we are not like America, which has no problems with its economy, its treatment of immigrants, drugs, sex, or politics!

   I rant. I know this. But I also know that plenty of people will read the headline and connect it to the narrative I’ve sketched above. None of that farrago reflects the reality of Dutch life; it’s all about affirming a particular view of American culture. And the provocative headline fits in very nicely, however much the body of the article is actually relevant to the situation at hand.

   The kindest thing I can say about it is that it was written with a tin ear.

2. It’s factually wrong, even in the limited sense that Berman means it. He sees the fall of Balkenende’s fourth administration as a bad thing for the Netherlands as well as for the Prime Minister.

   In reality, it just means that the country wants to choose a new direction, a new set of solutions to its current challenges. The mechanism for doing so in the Netherlands is different than in the US. One aspect of that difference is that one doesn’t have to wait for a year divisible by four to throw the bastards out. That’s not in- or unstability. It’s the approved process.

3. The question expects a “yes” answer, but frankly, it’s not likely.

   The three-party coalitions (scroll down) that are even possible if the polls are correct are not very solid. Apart from the forbidden coalition (for historical reasons, the three central parties may not form a government), the choices require the right wing (VVD) to find common ground with the left (PvdA/Labour, and possibly the Socialists as well), or else to rely on Wilders and the PVV. Even the best of these options includes some deep divisions between participating parties. I wouldn’t put money on any of them lasting to full term. And a four-party coalition is even less stable.

   The smart money here says that the next government will be slow to form and quick to run into trouble.

The article itself isn’t bad in the assembly of facts it lays out, though its few links bias toward non-Dutch and non-expert sources such as the Guardian and Wikipedia. (There are specific factual niggles: it’s not clear from the text that Fortuyn was assassinated before an election. Balkenende’s portrayed as switching coalition partners “at will”, but there was an election between his second and third administrations, which means that it wasn’t his will that formed Balkenende III.) But it reminds me of a waltz played in 4/4 time: the notes are right, but they don’t mean what they should.

The place this really becomes a problem is in the conclusion and prediction of what will happen next. It very much oversimplifies the mechanics of forming a coalition. There’s no acknowledgement that incompatible platforms (or a simple refusal to work with each other) can doom a mathematically possible coalition. Nor is there any mention of the existence of a forbidden coalition, or the requirement that the new government include at least one party that increased its seats in the election. The only divergence from the assumption that the simplest coalition to hit the winning number gets the prize is a mention that Wilders may be too unreliable to sit in government.

That’s a pity, because coalition-forming is a fascinating part of Dutch politics. The intricacies and complexities of the process for forming a government here would make a wonderful article on 538.com.

Instead, I refer you once again to PPK, who does have a complex and nuanced prediction of how the Netherlands will deal with forming a coalition if the election goes as the polls says it will.

1/2 C. walnuts
1 pint fresh baby arugula, tightly packed
4 healthy garlic cloves
a lot of olive oil*
salt, black pepper, white pepper
1 large lemon
2 C. finely grated hard sharp cheese

Throw your walnuts dry into a frying pan and toast, stirring constantly, until they smell like toasted walnuts. Immediately remove the pan from the fire and the walnuts from the pan. As soon as they’re cool enough to handle, rub the walnuts lightly between your hands to remove as much of the skin as will yield without a fight.

If your food processor is as small as mine, you now reduce the walnuts to particles that look like fine sand, then set them aside until after you’ve pulverized the arugula. This isn’t the fastest way to make pesto, but it does allow you to write recipes that call for an unspecified amount of olive oil.

Set a pot of water on to boil, peel the garlic cloves, grate the zest off the lemon, juice the lemon, and grate the cheese. I used a mixture of cheeses that was about two-thirds fresh Parmesan, and one-third Le Maréchal, which Patrick bought this past weekend because our grocery was giving out yummy free samples.

Stuff the arugula into the food processor along with the lemon zest, the garlic, and enough olive oil to get everything to cooperate. Turn the processor to “smite hem in pecys” and let ‘er rip.

Pause. Add the salt, pepper, and pepper. Process a bit to get them mixed in, and add more if needed. Meanwhile, if the water is boiling, add the pasta. As it happens, I used fusilli col buco, but almost any pasta would do.

The arugula has now been radically reduced in volume, so repatriate the walnuts. Add more olive oil. Process, adding yet more olive oil if necessary to keep things moving. When the texture is already right for pesto, add the lemon juice anyway, because the cheese is going to soak up liquid.

If the pasta is cooked, take it off the fire and drain it. Add the cheese to the sauce. It’s quite a lot of cheese—more than pesto would normally use. If you aren’t cooking for Patrick, you can add less. Process just until mixed, then readjust the seasonings again if necessary. Toss the pasta with the sauce. Eat happily.

Something fundamental has changed in China’s legal system. Like most discussions of the law, my explanation starts with a story.

A man named Zhao Zuohai quarreled with his neighbor, who then disappeared. Eighteen months later, a decomposed and headless body was found. After an interrogation that seems to have involved beatings, firecrackers, and being forced to drink water spiced with chili, Zhao confessed to murder. He was convicted and sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted, but while he was in jail, his wife divorced him and several of his children were adopted.

And then, nearly a decade later, the neighbor turned up alive and well.

Mr. Zhao has been awarded compensation, and three policemen have been arrested, according to Xinhua. But this case, along with other recent events, appears to have struck a nerve in China. Five bodies of the Chinese justice system have just issued new rules to address the matter, and they’re getting some attention worldwide.

The BBC headline is typical of most Western reporting I’ve seen: China bans evidence from torture. It’s easy to leap from that to the conclusion that China has just banned torture. But, as the BBC article states, “Laws banning torture are already in place, but analysts say they are widely disregarded.” A close reading of the details shows that the change is less dramatic, but more revolutionary.

According to the China Daily (which follows Xinhua), two sets of regulations were issued on Sunday, May 30:

One rule is highly theoretical: it sets out an evidentiary standard for capital cases. It states the principle that “the facts must be determined according to evidence”, replacing the former requirement that convictions must be “based on facts and judged according to law”.

The other is more practical, dealing with what kind of evidence is admissible in criminal trials as a whole. As the China Daily article says, “facts and evidence must be indubitable and sufficient, and evidence in doubt or obtained illegally must be excluded.” Evidence obtained through torture (which is illegal) is inadmissible under that clause, as is anonymous evidence, testimony “made under violence or threat”, unqualified expert witness testimony, and unsubstantiated conjecture. Defendants can request an investigation into whether the evidence against them was properly obtained.

This second regulation defines what an American would call the exclusionary rule. The main role of the exclusionary rule in Western jurisprudence is to reduce the temptation of authorities to break the law and violate citizens’ rights in pursuit of evidence by making said evidence useless in court. I’d rate it as middling effective, on the whole, but even its worst incarnation is better than its absence.

Apparently, and rather astonishingly, there was no such thing in the Chinese legal system before Sunday. According Bian Jianlin, the law professor quoted in the China Daily article, “no previous law or regulation clearly stated that when evidence may have been acquired through forced confession it must be excluded”. Even with the NYT article as confirmation, I’m having trouble believing this; I’d almost be relieved to hear that I was wrong.

Mind you, there are plenty of loopholes left. Officials don’t always follow the stated laws (or the prohibition on torture would be enough). Also, I don’t see anything about fruit of the poisonous tree: evidence obtained using illegally obtained evidence. So one could still use inadmissible techniques to generate leads to admissible evidence. And statistics-driven policing is global, motivating and excusing the breaking and bending of rules.

But coming from societies where we’ve had the exclusionary rule long enough to take it for granted, where Jack Bauer and DCI Gene Hunt get a kind of sneaking respect for transgressing it, it’s refreshing to see one of the foundations of our legal systems reaffirmed, rediscovered, reestablished.

I am not a lawyer. I am not an expert on international relations. I am not an expert on China, Chinese law, or American jurisprudence. I know just enough to be dangerous. Fear me, but don’t rely on me.

On August 12, 2000, the Russian submarine K-141 Kursk sank in the Barents Sea. Investigators later concluded that a quantity of hydrogen peroxide propellant leaked and caught fire in the torpedo room. The fire then detonated all of the ammunition on board. Although 23 of the 118 men on the sub survived both blasts, none lived to be rescued.

It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly ten years. I remember those tense days, dancing with frustration that the Russian government didn’t ask for help with the rescue sooner, hoping that the rumors of tapping sounds from inside the sub were true, feeling crushed when that hope proved false.

We focus so much on these disasters and the people caught up in them: the woman who ran back toward a tsunami to reach her children, the last survivors pulled from the rubble after earthquakes, missing miners and office workers. Safety experts call it rubbernecking and tell us not to do it where we might become casualties ourselves (and they’re right). But there’s more to this pull than just the hunger for the dramatic.

Our capacity to care about these stories, these people, is part of what it is to be human. It’s what makes us love and makes us lovable. And though of course I would rather that the Kursk had not sunk or its crew died, I would not trade my ability to grieve for them for any treasure you could name.

It occurs to me that, while we have this quiet time on Making Light, I could do a few background posts on life in the Netherlands. And one of the most important concepts of the culture here, one that keeps surprising and educating me, is samen leven.

The term literally means “to live together”. It’s one of the core values of Dutch culture: the concept that no matter how much we differ, we all have to find a way to not just coexist but actively cooperate. The simplistic folk-sociological explanation of this is that it’s a crowded country with a shared objective: keep our feet dry, keep the sea back. And I suspect there’s more than a grain of truth in that, though there are similarly crowded cultures that have used other strategies, such as reticence, to the same effect.

But the Dutch are famous for their bluntness; I think they could give up cheese more easily than they could speaking their minds. So the samenleving is a safety net, a guarantee that even the most extreme views* will be tolerated†.

Samen leven, like all forms of tolerance, is challenged by the existence of intolerance. In the Netherlands these days, that clash is usually between conservative immigrant groups, particularly some (but not all) communities who trace their roots to Muslim countries‡ and right-wing politicians such as Pim Fortuyn and Geert Wilders. Whether the Muslims are being intolerant or their opponents are is hotly debated on all sides of society (with, of course, due attention to and consideration of all views).

In any case, Rush Limbaugh would not get much of an audience here.

But the Dutch are good-humored about their passion for tolerance. My bike is not the standard Dutch bike; it’s a rams-horn touring bike. A colleague said that I wasn’t really living the Dutch lifestyle with a bike like that. My only reply was, “Samen leven.” And he laughed, and withdrew the allegation.

More seriously, samen leven is as deeply rooted in Dutch culture as an explicit love of liberty is in America. Like liberty, like any cardinal value, the single-minded pursuit of that kind of tolerance is probably more of a weakness than a strength, but it’s an interesting and challenging mindset for an American to encounter and live together with.

The New Testament is to the Old Testament as the Aeneid is to the Iliad and the Odyssey: discuss.

Jim Macdonald called to say he’s okay, he was first on the scene but he’s not injured; so if any of you catch a news story about the MDM Muzzleloader gunpowder factory exploding in tiny Colebrook, New Hampshire, word is that there are two dead so far, but neither one is Jim.

He says about a thousand pounds of black powder exploded, the factory is on fire, and somewhere in there is another room full of black powder. He also says that he’s standing well back from the site.

What the news reports are saying: The initial explosion happened a bit after 1:00 this afternoon, seriously damaging nearby buildings, shaking other buildings blocks away, and filling the air with heavy black smoke. A town spokeswoman, Mia West, said “exploding ammunition” made it impossible for the firemen to get in and fight the fire until around 3:00. Bridge and Gould streets have been closed, 40 homes have been evacuated, and a shelter is being set up at the town office.

The New Hampshire State Emergency Operations Center was activated just before 3 p.m. They’ve pegged the incident at Level 2 on their scale of one to four, which ranges from “normal business” to “major disaster.” New Hampshire Fire Marshal Bill Degnan has confirmed the two fatalities, but says he didn’t know how many other people were injured, or how many people were in the facility at the time.

Reported as being on scene: fire crews from Colebrook and from Beecher Falls, Vermont; state and local police; the Fish and Game Department (a big deal in those parts); the Border Patrol; and the 45th Parallel EMS.

An update from WMUR.com, timestamped 4:38 p.m. EDT:

Rescuers Seek 3 After Explosions Rock Colebrook
Explosions Reported At Muzzleloader Plant

Emergency officials said they are looking for three people who were in a building that exploded in Colebrook on Friday.

Officials said the three were at the MDM Muzzleloader plant when three explosions shook the town just after 1 p.m. Friday.

Officials said the explosion occurred at Black Mag Industries, a subsidiary of MDM Muzzleloaders. The facility makes synthetic gunpowder for certain types of firearms. The material is less explosive than regular gunpowder.

People said they heard the explosions from miles away and saw heavy black smoke coming from the area.

Fewer than 20 people work in the office, according to the fire marshal’s office.

Update, 5:20 p.m.: a report from inside the debris field

Jim just called. He said the explosions happened around 1315 (1:15 p.m.), when he and Debra were driving downhill — that’s in the direction of the explosion — to go to the hardware store. There were three initial explosions: a big one, a much softer one, and then one so big that it literally moved his car. Jim said the explosions sounded like shellfire.

Apparently today was the day that Black Mag Industries was packing black powder into pellets. The explosions blew the entire back wall off the building, and threw major pieces of equipment into the air. There’s shrapnel lodged forty feet off the ground in trees. The building is still on fire. There were explosives inside the building that have not yet been accounted for. The accident scene’s perimeter is a half a mile across.

The building also held a warehouse and the River of Life Worship Center.

Jim was first on scene, and triaged his first patient at 13:20. When I asked if they were handling many injuries, he just said “two green tags and two black tags.” The emergency services there are rigging lights and bringing in cots for emergency personnel, so they expect to be there for a while. Jim says he’s tired and will be a lot tireder before it’s over.

To the list of organizations on scene, Jim adds Pittsburg Fire & Rescue, Grafton County Sheriff, OSHA, the BATF, the Department of Homeland Security, PSNH, Fairpoint Communications, the state police with their helicopter, and representatives from the governor’s office. He says the representatives from the governor’s office got there an hour and a half after the initial explosion, which was impressive because the governor’s office is a three-hour drive from Colebrook.

Update, 6:30:

Jim called again. The fire is out, the explosives are accounted for, and the firemen are rolling up their hoses, though they’ll be keeping an eye on the building for a while to make sure the fire doesn’t start up again.

The two additional missing persons didn’t exist. They were accidentally generated by earlier reports persisting into later news stories. Two people got out of the building, two didn’t.

===

Other local reports: Charlie Jordan, editor of the Colebrook Chronicle, reports the story on YouTube.

Vermont’s WCAX.com interviews Charlie Jordan at greater length. Lots of interesting details, including part of the plant “going airborne.”

WMUR has continued to collect photos for their slide show. Last I looked they had twenty-eight of them.

Finally, an anonymous comment posted to the story at WCAX.com:

i was on my computer when i thought my apt building was going to fall down from the shakes and blasts i was terrified saw the smoke black filling the sky i am not even a mile away the people in the rite aid came running out one lady almost balling this has been a very frightening day for me as i did not know what to do

Manchester, NH Union-Leader: Explosion rocks downtown Colebrook. Photos and local detail.
NECN Network: Explosion at manufacturing plant in Colebrook, New Hampshire. More photos; rudimentary story.
Associated Press: Explosion, fire at northern NH gun factory. Standard dehydrated compressed AP version.
Fox News: Emergency Crews Rush to Scene of Three New Hampshire Explosions. Scanty story, but at least it isn’t copied from AP.

Video … … and more … and more from WCAX

Video from WMUR

Video from my front yard by my elder son. The two vehicles which pass by at the very bottom of the screen are two of the three ambulances that responded.

The Colebrook News and Sentinel (the other weekly paper) with some more photos. Some we’ve seen before (the initial explosion, shot from about three miles away), but some we haven’t, including the back of the building while the Beecher Falls VFD personnel are setting up their hoses.

STS-132, originally uploaded by pnh.

Wooooooooooooooooooooooo!