BRIARCLIFF MANOR ROTARY CLUB MEETING
February 13, 2009
TODAY IN HISTORY
On this day in 1994, Sergei Bupka pole vaulted for a record height of 6.14 m.
TODAY IN BIRTHDAYS.
Today is Lana Turner’s birthday. I know a gentleman who would jump twice the height scaled by Sergei Bupka if she would just let him blow out her candles.
AN EXTREMELY MEAN WIFELY REMARK ABOUT ME
“He’s not at all mechanical. He’s just lately mastered the telephone.”
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OPENING CEREMONY: Our weekly meeting was officially opened, with Ernie Pacchiana officiating, at 12:21 PM to the sound of trumpets and loud “Huzzahs!”
OUR CLUB PRESIDENT’S REMARKS: President Fulfree hustled in just in time to hear Mr. Pacchiana perform The Salute To Our Flag and Mr. Rosen give Thanks To The Lord for his continuing beneficence.
ANNOUNCEMENTS, OBSERVATIONS AND HAPPY THOUGHTS: President Fulfree announced that the Rotary Hospital Visit would take place this coming Saturday, at which time Stuffed Animals will be distributed to the Little Ones in the Children’s Ward. Sy Yuter alerted us to the fact The First Rotary Gourmet Dining Group Event would take place at Central Seafood in Hartsdale on March 15th, 6 pm and would feature a sumptuous, many-coursed Chinese feast. The cost is $30 a person: personal checks to Briarcliff Rotary before March 8th. Geraldine Mahoney followed up with the news that the new wing of the Briarcliff Library will be open to the public this coming Thursday. Hooray!! President Fulfree came back to announce the death of a Briarcliff fireman, services for whom will be held at St. Teresa’s church.
NEXT WEEK’S SPEAKER: Next week, our speaker will be the Hon. John Alfano, who will bring us abreast of Things Charitable with his talk on “Rotary Charities.”
TODAY’S SPEAKER: Our “Evening Valentine Day’s Party” was cancelled. In its place, we held our usual weekly knockabout meeting at the same old comfortable place—the Little House by the Tennis Courts.
OUR SPEAKER today was our very own Paul Rosen, who spoke compellingly on “The Unreliability of Eye-Witness Testimony.”
Paul opened his talk by pointing out that a recent study has shown that one-half of one percent of eye-witness identification is wrong. That doesn’t sound like much, but it amounts to 8,500 people being wrongly incarcerated each year in our prisons.
The mis-identification has many causes. Time is one factor. The more time that has elapsed between the time of the crime and witness-identification, the more errors creep in. Another cause of problems in identification is Emotion. Witnessing a crime is a highly emotional experience—an experience that tends to blot out or distort memories. Still another problem is Criminal Lineups. When presented with a number of potential suspects (selected by the police), we believe the guilty party is among them, and so we, as the eyewitness, choose the person who most-likely resembles the person who committed the crime. The same holds true when an eye-witness views photographs of suspects: we tend to think that the guilty party is among those shown. This is not always the case—maybe the criminal is not among those shown to us. Yet another factor is the repeated re-telling of an event. If we are wrong, the constant repetition imprints itself on our brain and solidifies our error. One more factor in misidentification is predisposition—the human tendency to jump to a conclusion that is sometimes wrong.
To illustrate this proposition, Paul told the story of two hunters. All day long they had failed to sight a bear. As sundown approached, they saw what looked like a bear and sounded like a bear, so they raised their rifles and shot. What they shot at was a couple making love in the woods.
They killed a woman.
One of the eye-witness tests, Paul continued, is to show a man rushing into a building to plant a bomb on the building roof. He is one person among many persons shown. Among those bystanders is a gorilla. Astonishingly, almost no one sees the gorilla!
So much for eye-witness reliability.
It was a splendid talk, that ended with Paul’s admonition to pay no attention to the crime shows on television that display identification equipment that does not exist. It’s only entertainment. Only fiction.
Bravo, Paul!
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THE DRAWING: The winner of the first drawing was Shelley Lotter; the second lucky winner was “Mr. Money” himself, Ernie Pacchiana.
Bishop John, receiving the results in Barbados, where he is currently lolling about on the beach, pronounced the drawing “the handiwork of Satan,” and proposed a hand-wrestling match to the finish --winner take all.
CLOSING CEREMONY: This week’s meeting drew to a close precisely at 1:29 PM., with “Taps” beaten out on the drums by President Fulfree, accompanied by Geraldine Mahoney on tambourine and Zach Cosentino on glockenspiel.
It was awe-inspiring.
Submitted by
Recording Secretary, Don Wilde
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