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At his trial in a Michigan state court for first-degree murder, petitioner testified that he acted in self-defense. On cross-examination, the prosecutor questioned petitioner about the fact that he was not apprehended until he surrendered to governmental authorities about two weeks after the killing, and in closing argument again referred to petitioner's pre-arrest silence, thereby attempting to impeach petitioner's credibility by suggesting that he would have spoken out if he had killed in self-defense. Petitioner was convicted of manslaughter, and after his conviction was affirmed in the state courts he sought habeas corpus relief in Federal District Court, contending that his constitutional rights were violated when the prosecutor questioned him concerning prearrest silence. The District Court denied relief, and the Court of Appeals affirmed.
POWELL, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C. J., and WHITE, BLACKMUN, and REHNQUIST, JJ., joined; and in all but Part II of which STEWART, J., joined. STEWART, J., filed a statement concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, post, p. 241. STEVENS, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in Part I of which STEWART, J., joined, post, p. 241. MARSHALL, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BRENNAN, J., joined, post, p. 245.
Carl Ziemba, by appointment of the Court, 444 U.S. 914 , argued the cause and filed a brief for petitioner.
Robert A. Derengoski, Solicitor General of Michigan, argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Frank J. Kelley, Attorney General, and Thomas L. Casey, Assistant Attorney General.
MR. JUSTICE POWELL delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question in this case is whether the use of prearrest silence to impeach a defendant's credibility violates either the Fifth or the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
On August 13, 1974, the petitioner stabbed and killed Doyle Redding. The petitioner was not apprehended until he turned himself in to governmental authorities about two weeks later. At his state trial for first-degree murder, the petitioner contended that the killing was in self-defense.
The petitioner testified that his sister and her boyfriend were robbed by Redding and another man during the evening of August 12, 1974. The petitioner, who was nearby when the robbery occurred, followed the thieves a short distance and reported their whereabouts to the police. According to the petitioner's testimony, the next day he encountered Redding, [447 U.S. 231, 233] who accused him of informing the police of the robbery. The petitioner stated that Redding attacked him with a knife, that the two men struggled briefly, and that the petitioner broke away. On cross-examination, the petitioner admitted that during the struggle he had tried "[t]o push that knife in [Redding] as far as [I] could," App. 36, but maintained that he had acted solely in self-defense.
During the cross-examination, the prosecutor questioned the petitioner about his actions after the stabbing:
The petitioner was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 to 15 years' imprisonment in state prison. The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction, and the Michigan Supreme Court denied leave to appeal. The petitioner then sought a writ of habeas corpus from the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, contending that his constitutional rights were violated when the prosecutor questioned him concerning prearrest silence. A Federal Magistrate concluded that the petition for habeas corpus relief should be denied. The District Court adopted the Magistrate's recommendation. The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed. 599 F.2d 1055. This Court granted a writ of certiorari. 444 U.S. 824 (1979). We now affirm. 1 [447 U.S. 231, 235]
At trial the prosecutor attempted to impeach the petitioner's credibility by suggesting that the petitioner would have spoken out if he had killed in self-defense. The petitioner contends that the prosecutor's actions violated the Fifth Amendment as applied to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fifth Amendment guarantees an accused the right to remain silent during his criminal trial, and prevents the prosecution from commenting on the silence of a defendant who asserts the right. Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609, 614 (1965). In this case, of course, the petitioner did not remain silent throughout the criminal proceedings. Instead, he voluntarily took the witness stand in his own defense.
This Court's decision in Raffel v. United States, 271 U.S. 494 (1926), recognized that the Fifth Amendment is not violated when a defendant who testifies in his own defense is impeached with his prior silence. The defendant in Raffel was tried twice. At the first trial, a Government agent testified that Raffel earlier had made an inculpatory statement. The defendant did not testify. After the first trial ended in deadlock the agent repeated his testimony at the second trial, and Raffel took the stand to deny making such a statement. Cross-examination revealed that Raffel had not testified at the first trial. Id., at 495, n. The Court held that inquiry into prior silence was proper because "[t]he immunity from giving testimony is one which the defendant may waive by offering himself as a witness. . . . When he takes the stand in his own behalf, he does so as any other witness, and within the limits of the appropriate rules he may be cross-examined. . . ." Id., at 496-497. Thus, the Raffel Court concluded that the defendant was "subject to cross-examination [447 U.S. 231, 236] impeaching his credibility just like any other witness." Grunewald v. United States, 353 U.S. 391, 420 (1957). 2
It can be argued that a person facing arrest will not remain silent if his failure to speak later can be used to impeach him. But the Constitution does not forbid "every government-imposed choice in the criminal process that has the effect of discouraging the exercise of constitutional rights." Chaffin v. Stynchcombe, 412 U.S. 17, 30 (1973). See Corbitt v. New Jersey, 439 U.S. 212, 218 , and n. 8 (1978). The "`threshold question is whether compelling the election impairs to an appreciable extent any of the policies behind the rights involved.'" Chaffin v. Stynchcombe, supra, at 32, quoting Crampton v. Ohio, decided with McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183, 213 (1971). 3 The Raffel Court explicitly [447 U.S. 231, 237] rejected the contention that the possibility of impeachment by prior silence is an impermissible burden upon the exercise of Fifth Amendment rights. "We are unable to see that the rule that [an accused who] testifies . . . must testify fully, adds in any substantial manner to the inescapable embarrassment which the accused must experience in determining whether he shall testify or not." 271 U.S. at 499. 4
This Court similarly defined the scope of the Fifth Amendment protection in Harris v. New York, 401 U.S. 222 (1971). There the Court held that a statement taken in violation of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), may be used to impeach a defendant's credibility. Rejecting the contention that such impeachment violates the Fifth Amendment, the Court said:
In determining whether a constitutional right has been burdened impermissibly, it also is appropriate to consider the legitimacy of the challenged governmental practice. See Chaffin v. Stynchcombe, supra, at 32, and n. 20. Attempted impeachment on cross-examination of a defendant, the practice at issue here, may enhance the reliability of the criminal process. Use of such impeachment on cross-examination allows prosecutors to test the credibility of witnesses by asking them to explain prior inconsistent statements and acts. A defendant may decide not to take the witness stand because of the risk of cross-examination. But this is a choice of litigation tactics. Once a defendant decides to testify, "[t]he interests of the other party and regard for the function of courts of justice to ascertain the truth become relevant, and prevail in the balance of considerations determining the scope and limits of the privilege against self-incrimination." Brown v. United States, 356 U.S. 148, 156 (1958).
Thus, impeachment follows the defendant's own decision to cast aside his cloak of silence and advances the truth-finding function of the criminal trial. We conclude that the Fifth Amendment is not violated by the use of prearrest silence to impeach a criminal defendant's credibility.
The petitioner also contends that use of prearrest silence to impeach his credibility denied him the fundamental fairness guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. We do not [447 U.S. 231, 239] agree. Common law traditionally has allowed witnesses to be impeached by their previous failure to state a fact in circumstances in which that fact naturally would have been asserted. 3A J. Wigmore, Evidence 1042, p. 1056 (Chadbourn rev. 1970). Each jurisdiction may formulate its own rules of evidence to determine when prior silence is so inconsistent with present statements that impeachment by reference to such silence is probative. For example, this Court has exercised its supervisory powers over federal courts to hold that prior silence cannot be used for impeachment where silence is not probative of a defendant's credibility and where prejudice to the defendant might result. See United States v. Hale, 422 U.S. 171, 180 -181 (1975); Stewart v. United States, 366 U.S. 1, 5 (1961); Grunewald v. United States, 353 U.S., at 424 . 5
Only in Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610 (1976), did we find that impeachment by silence violated the Constitution. In that case, a defendant received the warnings required by Miranda v. Arizona, supra, at 467-473, when he was arrested for selling marihuana. At that time, he made no statements to the police. During his subsequent trial, the defendant testified that he had been framed. The prosecutor impeached the defendant's credibility on cross-examination by revealing that the defendant remained silent after his arrest. The State argued that the prosecutor's actions were permissible, but we concluded that "the Miranda decision compels rejection of the State's position." 426 U.S., at 617 . Miranda [447 U.S. 231, 240] warnings inform a person that he has the right to remain silent and assure him, at least implicitly, that his subsequent decision to remain silent cannot be used against him. Accordingly, "`it does not comport with due process to permit the prosecution during the trial to call attention to his silence at the time of arrest and to insist that because he did not speak about the facts of the case at that time, as he was told he need not do, an unfavorable inference might be drawn as to the truth of his trial testimony.'" Id., at 619, quoting United States v. Hale, supra, at 182-183 (WHITE, J., concurring in judgment). 6
In this case, no governmental action induced petitioner to remain silent before arrest. The failure to speak occurred before the petitioner was taken into custody and given Miranda warnings. Consequently, the fundamental unfairness present in Doyle is not present in this case. We hold that impeachment by use of prearrest silence does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment.
Our decision today does not force any state court to allow impeachment through the use of prearrest silence. Each jurisdiction remains free to formulate evidentiary rules defining the situations in which silence is viewed as more probative than prejudicial. We merely conclude that the use of prearrest silence to impeach a defendant's credibility does not [447 U.S. 231, 241] violate the Constitution. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
[ Footnote 2 ] In Raffel, the defendant's decision not to testify at his first trial was an invocation of his right to remain silent protected by the Fifth Amendment. In this case, the petitioner remained silent before arrest, but chose to testify at his trial. Our decision today does not consider whether or under what circumstances prearrest silence may be protected by the Fifth Amendment. We simply do not reach that issue because the rule of Raffel clearly permits impeachment even if the prearrest silence were held to be an invocation of the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.
[ Footnote 3 ] In Crampton v. Ohio, the Court considered a claim that a murder defendant's right to remain silent was burdened unconstitutionally because he could not argue for mitigation of punishment without risking incrimination on the question of guilt. The Court recognized that a defendant who speaks in his own defense cannot avoid testifying fully.
[ Footnote 4 ] Both MR. JUSTICE STEVENS, post, at 241-242, n. 2, and MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL, post, at 252, suggest that the constitutional rule of Raffel was limited by later decision of the Court. In fact, no Court opinion decided since Raffel has challenged its holding that the Fifth Amendment is not violated when a defendant is impeached on the basis of his prior silence. In United States v. Hale, 422 U.S. 171, 175 , n. 4 (1975), the Court expressly declined to consider the constitutional question. The decision in Stewart v. United States, 366 U.S. 1 (1961), was based on federal evidentiary grounds, not on the Fifth Amendment. The Court in Grunewald v. United States, 353 U.S. 391, 421 (1957), stated that it was not required to re-examine Raffel. In all three cases, the Court merely considered the question whether, as a matter of federal evidentiary law, prior silence was sufficiently inconsistent with present statements as to be admissible. See also n. 5, infra.
[ Footnote 5 ] MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL contends that the petitioner's prearrest silence is not probative of his credibility. Post, at 248-250. In this case, that is a question of state evidentiary law. In a federal criminal proceeding the relevance of such silence, of course, would be a matter of federal law. See United States v. Hale, supra, at 181. MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL's further conclusion that introduction of the evidence in this trial violated due process relies upon the Court's reasoning in Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610 (1976), and United States v. Hale. Post, at 246-250. But the Court's decision in Hale rested upon nonconstitutional grounds, see n. 4, supra, and Doyle is otherwise distinguishable, see infra, at 240.
[ Footnote 6 ] The Court reached a similar result in Johnson v. United States, 318 U.S. 189 (1943). A trial judge mistakenly told a defendant that he could claim the privilege against self-incrimination. After the defendant invoked the privilege, the prosecutor commented on the defendant's refusal to speak. Under its supervisory power, this Court held that the prosecutor's comments constituted error because the trial court had assured the defendant that he might claim the protections of the Fifth Amendment. The Court stated that "[e]lementary fairness requires that an accused should not be misled on that score." Id., at 197; see Doyle v. Ohio, supra, at 618, n. 9. See also Raley v. Ohio, 360 U.S. 423, 437 -438 (1959).
MR. JUSTICE STEVENS, concurring in the judgment.
My approach to both of petitioner's constitutional claims differs from the Court's. I would reject his Fifth Amendment claim because the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination 1 is simply irrelevant to a citizen's decision to remain silent when he is under no official compulsion to speak. I would reject his due process claim for the reasons stated in my dissenting opinion in Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610, 620 .
The Court holds that a defendant who elects to testify in his own behalf waives any Fifth Amendment objection to the use of his prior silence for the purpose of impeachment. As the Court correctly points out, this holding is squarely supported by Raffel v. United States, 271 U.S. 494 , in which the Court upheld the use of a defendant's failure to take the stand at his first trial to impeach his testimony on retrial. Nevertheless, I would not rely on Raffel because such reliance incorrectly implies that a defendant's decision not to testify at his own trial is constitutionally indistinguishable from his silence in a precustody context. 2 But the two situations are fundamentally different. [447 U.S. 231, 242]
In the trial context it is appropriate to presume that a defendant's silence is an exercise of his constitutional privilege and to prohibit any official comment that might deter him from exercising that privilege. 3 For the central purpose of the Fifth Amendment privilege is to protect the defendant from being compelled to testify against himself at his own trial. 4 Moreover, since a defendant's decision whether to testify [447 U.S. 231, 243] is typically based on the advice of his counsel, it often could not be explained without revealing privileged communications between attorney and client.
These reasons have no application in a prearrest context. The fact that a citizen has a constitutional right to remain silent when he is questioned has no bearing on the probative significance of his silence before he has any contact with the police. We need not hold that every citizen has a duty to report every infraction of law that he witnesses in order to justify the drawing of a reasonable inference from silence in a situation in which the ordinary citizen would normally speak out. 5 When a citizen is under no official compulsion whatever, [447 U.S. 231, 244] either to speak or to remain silent, I see no reason why his voluntary decision to do one or the other should raise any issue under the Fifth Amendment. 6 For in determining whether the privilege is applicable, the question is whether petitioner was in a position to have his testimony compelled and then asserted his privilege, not simply whether he was silent. A different view ignores the clear words of the Fifth Amendment. See n. 1, supra. Consequently, I would simply hold that the admissibility of petitioner's failure to come forward with the excuse of self-defense shortly after the stabbing raised a routine evidentiary question that turns on the probative significance of that evidence and presented no issue under the Federal Constitution. 7
For the reasons stated in Part I of my dissenting opinion in Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S., at 620 -626, I do not agree with the Court's view that the warnings required by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 479 , contain an implicit assurance that subsequent silence may not be used against the defendant. [447 U.S. 231, 245] See ante, at 239-240. As the Court actually acknowledged in Doyle itself, see 426 U.S., at 619 -620, n. 11, any such implicit assurance is far from being unqualified. 8 Moreover, I continue to disagree with the Court's view, repeated today, ante, at 240, that there was "fundamental unfairness present in Doyle." In my judgment the fairness or unfairness of using a defendant's postarrest silence for impeachment purposes does not simply depend on whether or not he received Miranda warnings. Rather, it primarily depends on whether it is fair to infer that the defendant was silent because he was asserting his constitutional privilege. 9
In any event, since I was unpersuaded by the due process rationale of Doyle, 10 I readily concur in the Court's rejection of a similar argument in this case.
MR. JUSTICE STEWART concurs in Part I of this opinion.
[ Footnote 1 ] The Fifth Amendment provides in pertinent part:
[ Footnote 2 ] Moreover, there is a serious question about the continuing vitality of Raffel. In Johnson v. United States, 318 U.S. 189, 199 , the Court stated that when a trial judge "grants the claim of privilege but allows [447 U.S. 231, 242] it to be used against the accused to his prejudice, we cannot disregard the matter. That procedure has such potentialities of oppressive use that we will not sanction its use in the federal courts over which we have supervisory powers."
In Grunewald v. United States, 353 U.S. 391, 415 -424, the Court held that it was error to permit the prosecutor, when cross-examining the defendant at trial, to use his assertion of the Fifth Amendment privilege while a witness before the grand jury for impeachment. In effect, the Court limited Raffel to cases in which the probative value of the cross-examination outweighed its possible impermissible effect on the jury; see 353 U.S., at 420 -421. Because the Court held the probative value of the assertion of privilege to be negligible on the issue of the defendant's credibility, it was "not faced with the necessity of deciding whether Raffel has been stripped of vitality by the later Johnson case, supra, or of otherwise re-examining Raffel." Id., at 421. Mr. Justice Black, writing for four Justices, would have expressly overruled Raffel. He could "think of no special circumstances that would justify use of a constitutional privilege to discredit or convict a person who asserts it. The value of constitutional privileges is largely destroyed if persons can be penalized for relying on them." 353 U.S., at 425 .
See also Stewart v. United States, 366 U.S. 1, 5 -7; United States v. Hale, 422 U.S. 171, 175 , n. 4.
[ Footnote 3 ] "For comment on the refusal to testify is a remnant of the `inquisitorial system of criminal justice,' Murphy v. Waterfront Comm'n, 378 U.S. 52, 55 , which the Fifth Amendment outlaws. It is a penalty imposed by courts for exercising a constitutional privilege. It cuts down on the privilege by making its assertion costly." Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609, 614 (footnote omitted).
[ Footnote 4 ] "The Fifth Amendment protects the individual's right to remain silent. The central purpose of the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination is to avoid unfair criminal trials. It is an expression of our conviction that the defendant in a criminal case must be presumed innocent, and that the State has the burden of proving guilt without resorting to an [447 U.S. 231, 243] inquisition of the accused." Lefkowitz v. Cunningham, 431 U.S. 801, 810 (STEVENS, J., dissenting) (footnote omitted).
[ Footnote 5 ] There is, of course, no reason why we should encourage the citizen to conceal criminal activity of which he has knowledge. In Roberts v. United States, 445 U.S. 552, 557 -558, we pointed out:
[ Footnote 6 ] "Petitioner insists that he had a constitutional right to remain silent and that no adverse inferences can be drawn from the exercise of that right. We find this argument singularly unpersuasive. The Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination is not self-executing. At least where the Government has no substantial reason to believe that the requested disclosures are likely to be incriminating, the privilege may not be relied upon unless it is invoked in a timely fashion." Roberts v. United States, supra, at 559.
[ Footnote 7 ] Under my approach, assuming relevance, the evidence could have been used not only for impeachment but also in rebuttal even had petitioner not taken the stand.
[ Footnote 8 ] It is interesting to note that MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL and MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN share my view that the Miranda warnings in Doyle did not create the right to remain silent or create an otherwise unavailable objection to the use of the defendants' silence for impeachment purposes. See post, at 247-248, n. 1. I do not, however, agree with their assumption that a holding that evidence of silence is admissible necessarily rests on the premise that a quiet person has any duty to speak. See post, at 250-251, n. 4. A dog's failure to bark may be probative whether or not he has been trained as a watchdog. Cf. A. Conan Doyle, Silver Blaze, in The Complete Sherlock Holmes (1938).
[ Footnote 9 ] Generally, in the absence of an express assertion of the privilege, the presumption is that the privilege was not exercised. See Roberts v. United States, supra, at 559-560.
[ Footnote 10 ] It strikes me as anomalous that, assuming Raffel v. United States, 271 U.S. 494 , has survived Doyle, a defendant who takes the stand is deemed to waive his Fifth Amendment objection to the use of his pretrial [447 U.S. 231, 246] silence, but not to waive what I regard as a much less focused, and hence weaker, due process objection. Perhaps the Court's opinion can best be understood by assuming that Raffel is not good law on its facts under the Doyle rationale.
MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL, with whom MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN joins, dissenting.
Today the Court holds that a criminal defendant's testimony in his own behalf may be impeached by the fact that [447 U.S. 231, 246] he did not go to the authorities before his arrest and confess his part in the offense. The decision thus strikes a blow at two of the foundation stones of our constitutional system: the privilege against self-incrimination and the right to present a defense.
The Court's decision today is extraordinarily broad. It goes far beyond a simple holding that the common-law rule permitting introduction of evidence of silence in the face of accusation or in circumstances calling for a response does not violate the privilege against self-incrimination. For in this case the prosecution was allowed to cast doubt on an accused's testimony that he acted in self-defense by forcing him to testify that he did not go to the police of his own volition, before he had been indicted, charged, or even accused of any offense, and volunteer his version of the events.
The Court's holding that a criminal defendant's testimony may be impeached by his prearrest silence has three patent - and, in my view, fatal - defects. First, the mere fact of prearrest silence is so unlikely to be probative of the falsity of the defendant's trial testimony that its use for impeachment purposes is contrary to the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Second, the drawing of an adverse inference from the failure to volunteer incriminating statements impermissibly infringes the privilege against self-incrimination. Third, the availability of the inference for impeachment purposes impermissibly burdens the decision to exercise the constitutional right to testify in one's own defense.
The use of prior silence for impeachment purposes depends, as the majority recognizes, ante, at 238, on the reasonableness [447 U.S. 231, 247] of an inference that it is inconsistent with the statements that are to be impeached. If the defendant's prior silence does not make it more likely that his trial testimony was false, the evidence is simply irrelevant. Such an inference cannot fairly be drawn from petitioner's failure to go to the police before any charges were brought, admit that he had committed a homicide, and offer an exculpatory explanation.
In order for petitioner to offer his explanation of self-defense, he would necessarily have had to admit that it was he who fatally stabbed the victim, thereby supplying against himself the strongest possible proof of an essential element of criminal homicide. It is hard to imagine a purer case of self-incrimination. Since we cannot assume that in the absence of official warnings individuals are ignorant of or oblivious to their constitutional rights, we must recognize that petitioner may have acted in reliance on the constitutional guarantee. In fact, petitioner had most likely been informed previously of his privilege against self-incrimination, since he had two prior felony convictions. App. 28. One who has at least twice before been given the Miranda warnings, which carry the implied promise that silence will not be penalized by use for impeachment purposes, Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610 (1976), may well remember the rights of which he has been informed, and believe that the promise is still in force. Accordingly, the inference that petitioner's conduct was inconsistent with his exculpatory trial testimony is precluded. See Doyle v. Ohio, supra; United States v. Hale, 422 U.S. 171, 176 -177 (1975). 1 [447 U.S. 231, 248]
Moreover, other possible explanations for silence spring readily to mind. It is conceivable that a person who had acted in self-defense might believe that he had committed no crime and therefore had no call to explain himself to the police. Indeed, all the witnesses agreed that after the stabbing the victim ran across the street and climbed a flight of stairs before collapsing. Initially, at least, then, petitioner might not have known that there was a homicide to explain. Moreover, petitioner testified that he feared retaliation if he went to the police. One need not be persuaded that any of these possible explanations represents the true reason for petitioner's conduct to recognize that the availability of other plausible hypotheses vitiates the inference on which the admissibility of the evidence depends. See United States v. Hale, supra, at 176-177, 180.
The Court implies that its decision is consistent with the practice at common law; but at common law silence is admissible to contradict subsequent statements only if the circumstances would naturally have called for a response. For example, silence was traditionally considered a tacit admission [447 U.S. 231, 249] if a statement made in the party's presence was heard and understood by the party, who was at liberty to respond, in circumstances naturally calling for a response, and the party failed to respond. 2 Silence was not considered an admission if any of the prerequisites were absent, for in such a case the failure to speak could be explained other than as assent. Similarly, failure to assert a fact could be used for impeachment if it would have been natural, under the circumstances, to assert the fact. But the authority cited by the majority in support of this proposition, ante, at 239, makes it clear that the rule cannot be invoked unless the facts affirmatively show that the witness was called on to speak, circumstances which are not present in this case. 3 As we have previously observed, "[i]n most circumstances silence is so ambiguous that it is of little probative force." United States v. Hale, supra, at 176.
Since petitioner's failure to report and explain his actions prior to his arrest was not probative of the falsity of his testimony at trial, it was fundamentally unfair and a deprivation [447 U.S. 231, 250] of due process to allow the jury to draw from that silence an inference that his trial testimony was false. Doyle v. Ohio, supra.
The use of prearrest silence for impeachment purposes also violates the privilege against self-incrimination secured by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The privilege prohibits the government from imposing upon citizens any duty to present themselves to the authorities and report their own wrongdoing. See, e. g., Marchetti v. United States, 390 U.S. 39 (1968); Grosso v. United States, 390 U.S. 62 (1968); Haynes v. United States, 390 U.S. 85 (1968); Albertson v. SACB, 382 U.S. 70 (1965). As I have explained, in order to offer his exculpatory explanation petitioner would inevitably have had to incriminate himself as to facts that would be crucial in any subsequent prosecution. To penalize him for failing to relinquish his privilege against self-incrimination by permitting the jury to draw an adverse inference from his silence is to place an impermissible burden on his exercise of the privilege. See Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609 (1965). In practical effect, it replaces the privilege against self-incrimination with a duty to incriminate oneself. The Court attempts to avoid this conclusion by asserting that the burden does not threaten the purposes underlying the Fifth Amendment. See ante, at 236. But it is hard to see how the burden could be more substantial or direct. 4 [447 U.S. 231, 251]
It is sophistry to assert that the use of prearrest silence for impeachment does not infringe the privilege against self-incrimination because the fact of the silence will not come out unless petitioner chooses to testify, see ante, at 238. An accused has the absolute right to testify in his own defense, as well as the absolute right to refuse to incriminate himself prior to trial. He may not be forced to choose between those fundamental guarantees. We may not ignore the commands of the Constitution by asserting that the defendant brought his difficulties on himself by exercising the precious right to present a defense. Nor should we piously proclaim the protection of individual liberties but extend that protection only to the prosecution's case in chief while ensuring that the evidence can come before the jury by the back door. See Harris v. [447 U.S. 231, 252] New York, 401 U.S. 222, 226 -232 (1971) (BRENNAN, J., dissenting).
The Court's reasoning is not saved by its reliance on Raffel v. United States, 271 U.S. 494 (1926). Raffel held that a defendant could be required, upon testifying at a retrial, to disclose his failure to testify at the earlier trial. In my view, Raffel was wrongly decided; our subsequent cases, without expressly overruling it, limited it so severely as to appear to rob it of any continued vitality until its resurrection today. In Grunewald v. United States, 353 U.S. 391 (1957), the Court read Raffel as holding simply that a defendant who testifies at a second trial cannot continue to take advantage of the privilege asserted at the first trial. Instead, by taking the stand the defendant "becomes subject to cross-examination impeaching his credibility just like any other witness." 353 U.S., at 420 . But Grunewald carefully pointed out that "[t]he Court, in Raffel, did not focus on the question whether the cross-examination there involved was in fact probative in impeaching the defendant's credibility." Ibid. The logical underpinnings of Raffel were cut away almost completely by Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609 (1965). 5 Thus the majority's statement that Raffel holds that "the Fifth Amendment is not violated when a defendant who testifies in his own defense is impeached with his prior silence," ante, at 235, is both simplistic and overbroad. [447 U.S. 231, 253]
Further, the Court implies most unfairly that to exclude evidence of petitioner's prior silence would be to countenance perjury. See ante, at 237-238. The Court quotes from Harris v. New York, supra, but in that case the defendant made two contradictory statements at different times. It was logical to infer, absent an explanation to the contrary, that the defendant was lying on one occasion or the other. See also Walder v. United States, 347 U.S. 62 (1954). Here there is only one statement, and a silence which is not necessarily inconsistent with the statement. There is no basis on which to conjure up the specter of perjury.
Finally, impeachment by prearrest silence impermissibly burdens the constitutionally protected decision to testify in one's own defense.
Under today's decision a defendant who did not report his conduct to the police at the first possible moment must, in deciding whether to testify in his own defense, take into account the possibility that if he does testify the jury may be permitted to add that omission to the reasons for disbelieving his defense. This means that a person who thinks he may have done something wrong must immediately decide, most likely without the assistance of counsel, whether, if he is ever charged with an offense and brought to trial, he may wish to take the stand. For if he may later want to take the stand, he had better go to the police station right away to preserve his exculpatory explanation of the events - even though in so doing he must incriminate himself and provide evidence which may be crucial to his eventual conviction. But if he decides not to incriminate himself, he may anticipate that his right to testify in his own defense will be undermined by the argument that his story is probably untrue because he did not volunteer it to the police at the earliest opportunity. All of these strategic decisions must be made before the individual even [447 U.S. 231, 254] knows if he will be charged and of what offense he will be accused.
To force persons to make this kind of choice between two fundamental rights places an intolerable burden on the exercise of those rights. "It cuts down on the privilege [of testifying in one's own defense] by making its assertion costly," Griffin v. California, supra, at 614, and is therefore forbidden.
I have explained why I believe the use for impeachment purposes of a defendant's prearrest failure to volunteer his version of events to the authorities is constitutionally impermissible. I disagree not only with the Court's holding in this case, but as well with its emerging conception of the individual's duty to assist the State in obtaining convictions, including his own - a conception which, I believe, is fundamentally at odds with our constitutional system. See, e. g., Roberts v. United States, 445 U.S. 552, 569 -572 (1980) (MARSHALL, J., dissenting). This conception disparages not only individual freedoms, but also the social interest in preserving those liberties and in the integrity of the criminal justice system. There is no doubt an important social interest in enabling police and prosecutors to obtain convictions. But the Court does not serve the Nation well by subordinating to that interest the safeguards that the Constitution guarantees to the criminal defendant.
[ Footnote 1 ] See also E. Cleary, McCormick on Evidence 161, pp. 355-356 (2d ed. 1972). For this reason I would not reach a different result from that of Doyle v. Ohio simply because in Doyle the defendant had received the Miranda warnings. The furnishing of the Miranda warnings does not create the right to remain silent; that right is conferred by the Constitution. I have no doubt that if an accused were interrogated in police custody without receiving the Miranda warnings and remained silent, that silence would be inadmissible despite the lack of warnings. In that [447 U.S. 231, 248] situation, no less than under the facts of Doyle, silence is "insolubly ambiguous." 426 U.S., at 617 . Thus, properly considered, the use in Doyle of post-arrest silence for impeachment purposes was fundamentally unfair not because it broke an implied promise by a single narcotics agent, but because it broke a promise made by the United States Constitution. Similarly, persons who are not taken into police custody may rely on their privilege not to incriminate themselves in failing to report their conduct to the police. Such silence is also "insolubly ambiguous."
I do not regard the facts of Doyle and this case as analytically indistinguishable, however, for in Doyle the possibility that the defendant may have known his constitutional rights became a certainty when he was informed of those rights by the police. I simply believe that in both cases, the existence of the privilege against self-incrimination renders the probative value of the accused's silence so negligible that, in view of its plainly prejudicial effect, the use of that silence for impeachment purposes violates the defendant's federal right to due process. That is why I disagree with the Court's statement that the lack of probativeness of the evidence was merely "a question of state evidentiary law." Ante, at 239, n. 5.
[ Footnote 2 ] See, e. g., McCormick, supra n. 1, 161, 270; 4 J. Wigmore, Evidence 1071, 1072 (J. Chadbourn rev. 1970); Gamble, The Tacit Admission Rule: Unreliable and Unconstitutional - A Doctrine Ripe for Abandonment, 14 Ga. L. Rev. 27 (1979); Brody, Admissions Implied from Silence, Evasion and Equivocation in Massachusetts Criminal Cases, 42 B. U. L. Rev. 46 (1962); Heller, Admissions by Acquiescence, 15 U. Miami L. Rev. 161 (1960); Note, Tacit Criminal Admissions, 112 U. Pa. L. Rev. 210 (1963).
[ Footnote 3 ] The Wigmore treatise lists three categories of cases in which silence may be used for impeachment:
[ Footnote 4 ] I confess I find MR. JUSTICE STEVENS' view of the Fifth Amendment incomprehensible. Apparently, under that view, a person's right not to incriminate himself exists only if the government has already attempted to compel him to do so. See ante, at 243-244 (opinion concurring in judgment). If no officials have tried to get the person to speak, he evidently has a duty to incriminate himself, because the reporting of crime is a civic duty and the Fifth Amendment is not applicable since the decision to speak or remain silent is, at that time, "voluntary." See ante, at 244.
But the prohibition against compelled self-incrimination is another way of expressing the right not to incriminate oneself. See, e. g., United States v. Burr, 25 F. Cas. 38, 39 (No. 14, 692e) (CC Va. 1807) ("It is a [447 U.S. 231, 251] settled maxim of law that no man is bound to criminate himself"). After all, the only means of compelling a person to incriminate himself is to penalize him if he does not. Of course the voluntary decision to remain silent in the absence of any official compulsion does not "raise any issue under the Fifth Amendment," ante, at 244 (STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment), since there has been no self-incrimination at all. A voluntary decision to speak also does not implicate the Fifth Amendment because the self-incrimination was not compelled. But to impose a duty to report one's own crime before an official accusation has been made would itself be to compel self-incrimination, thus bringing the Fifth Amendment into play. And, as Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609 (1965), makes plain, the Constitution also prohibits the government from burdening the right not to incriminate oneself by penalizing silence. In the present case the violation of the Fifth Amendment occurred not when the defendant remained silent, but when that silence was later used against him at his criminal trial.
MR. JUSTICE STEVENS relies heavily on Roberts v. United States, 445 U.S. 552 (1980). That case held that a more severe sentence could be imposed on a defendant as a result of his refusal to provide information about criminal activities of other persons. The Court rejected Roberts' Fifth Amendment claim on grounds plainly inapplicable to this case: "At least where the Government has no substantial reason to believe that the requested disclosures are likely to be incriminating, the privilege may not be relied upon unless it is invoked in a timely fashion." Id., at 559; but see id., at 565-566 (MARSHALL, J., dissenting).
[ Footnote 5 ] Mr. Justice Black's concurring opinion for four Members of the Court in Grunewald, which he would have decided on constitutional grounds rather than under the Court's supervisory powers, eloquently foreshadowed the reasoning of Griffin:
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PONANT invites you to experience Australia's unique and spectacular Kimberley coast in a remarkable new way, under sail aboard its emblematic yacht Le Ponant. The majestic three-masted yacht, with elegant lines and an intimate atmosphere for only 32 like-minded guests, is redefining barefoot luxury expeditions. A crew to guest ratio of more than 1 to 1 and an expedition staff to guest ratio of 1 to 8, combine to provide the pinnacle Kimberley expedition sailing experience. Unique to the experience, PONANT has partnered with the Paspaley group to include a spectacular scenic flight over the Kimberley landscape aboard their Grumman Mallard amphibious aircraft between Kuri Bay and Kununurra.
Often referred to as the "Antarctica of the tropics," the Kimberley is renowned for its natural beauty and cultural significance. It is the pristine environment, wild, rugged and remote landscapes that gives rise to the comparison. The ancient landscape is the epitome of a sunburnt country, the vast plains and rugged red sandstone gorges are quintessentially Australian and like nowhere else. The Kimberley is one of the world's last great Wilderness areas, and one of Australia's greatest natural assets.
The 13,000km of remote isolated coastline boasts more than 2,600 islands and is home to the oldest continuous culture on earth, the world's largest living reptile, the only two 'Horizontal Falls' on the planet, the world's largest inshore reef, extensive undisturbed mangrove forests, wild rivers, important seabird and marine turtle breeding colonies and the largest population of migrating humpback whales on the planet. It is a national biodiversity hotspot and listed in the top 4% of least impacted marine environments worldwide.
Our Barefoot luxury sailing expeditions are fully flexible itineraries with no predetermined destinations. With a maximum of 32 guests, we are able to create bespoke itineraries showcasing the changing environment throughout the dry season from April to September. Each day's activities will be determined by the Captain and Expedition Leader, taking into account the season, prevailing weather, tide and sea conditions to deliver the best experience possible.
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Sail through spectacular ancient landscapes aboard the luxurious and intimate three masted yacht, Le Ponant. Discover the pinnacle Kimberley sailing experience, with fully flexible itineraries and no...
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*Price is per person, based on double occupancy, based on availability, and subject to change at any time. The category of stateroom to which this price applies may no longer be available.
Important trip details
Boarding conditions and passenger travel abilities
We invite you to read our boarding conditions and passenger travel abilities by clicking here.
Any new reservation implies the acceptance of these conditions.
The evolving COVID-19 health formalities are available in real time by clicking here.
Please note
Given the particularly changing international sanitary context, this itinerary as well as the land programmes and shore excursions may have to evolve according to port authorisations and governmental regulations in force at the time of your trip.
Therefore, for even greater peace of mind, we strongly recommend that you book your land programmes before and after your cruise with PONANT.
Health formalities related to COVID-19 will be confirmed to you before your departure.
In this exceptional context, your safety remains our first priority. The effectiveness of our procedures, our cutting-edge medical equipment and the smaller scale of our ships means we can offer maximum safety so that you can relax and enjoy your cruise. The revised passenger circuit and our enhanced hygiene measures can be found on this page: https://au.ponant.com/sail-with-confidence.
The information below is current but subject to change at any time without advance notice from government authorities. Please consult your respective government agencies for visa and health information.
Passport valid for at least six (6) months beyond the completion of your trip. Passport must contain at least two completely clear, blank, unused visa pages for each visa required, not including any amendment pages. Visa pages with stains or ink from other pages in the passport are not usable. Guests who deviate from the scheduled embarkation or disembarkation port should research the foreign entry requirements for the port country. Due to government regulations, regrettably, Ponant will have to deny boarding to any guest who fails to obtain the appropriate travel documentation for this trip.
Australia: an Electronic Travel Authority (ETA) must be obtained before your arrival in Australia. For more information, please visit https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/getting-a-visa/visa-finder/visit. Carriers should be aware that there will not be any physical evidence in your passport. A copy of your ETA must be sent to PONANT at the latest 45 days prior to your cruise date. We also ask you to keep a copy of your ETA and keep it with your passport throughout the duration of your trip.
Australian customs regulations are very strict, especially for the import of food items such as fresh food (even sealed), fruits, eggs, meat, plants, vegetables, seeds, grains. Fur and feathers are also forbidden. We highly recommend you consult this website for further details : https://www.abf.gov.au/entering-and-leaving-australia/can-you-bring-it-in.
It is recommended that you contact your health professional for any specific medical advise relating to travel through these regions, including advice on Malaria prevention and dengue fever.
Warning about the use of drones: the use of drones aboard PONANT ships, whether they are sailing at sea, at a port of call or anchored, is strictly forbidden. The use of drones on land in the Arctic and Antarctic regions is also strictly forbidden by international polar regulations. In other regions, it may be possible to use drones on land if permission has been obtained from the relevant authorities of each country and each region travelled through, as well as a pilot's licence that should be obtained from your home country. Passengers are responsible for obtaining these permits; they should be able to present them at all times. Passengers who do not obtain these authorisations expose themselves to the risk of legal proceedings.
Expedition programmes include activities such as zodiac outings and landings (sometimes with "wet landings"), moderate walks to more active hikes, all accompanied by your expedition team of naturalist guides.
Ports of call, visited sites, outings and landings will depend on weather conditions, winds and the state of the sea. These can force a change of plans at any time. The Captain and the Expedition Leader may at any time cancel or stop any activity, or even modify the itinerary. The final itinerary will be confirmed by the Captain, who will take into account the touristic quality of the sites and above all, the safety of the passengers. His decision will be based on advice from experts and authorities.
Travelling to isolated regions is an exhilarating experience. In remote areas, please remember that you are far from modern hospitals with full medical facilities, thus evacuation is extremely expensive. Without adequate medical coverage, all expenses will have to be immediately paid with your personal funds. We urge you to subscribe to full coverage insurance, choose your insurance company very carefully, be extremely vigilant and ensure your insurance is fully comprehensive, especially if you are insured by your credit card. PONANT offers an insurance contract with extensive guarantees, please contact us for more information.
Clothing tips:
Please note:
During your visits to some local communities, all guests will be required to dress respectfully. Ladies must have their shoulders and thighs covered. Gentlemen should have their shoulders covered also.
Ideal clothes for life on board:
During the days spent on board, you are advised to wear comfortable clothes or casual outfits. The entire ship is air-conditioned, so a light sweater, a light jacket or a shawl may be necessary. When moving about in the public areas of the ship and the decks, light but comfortable shoes are recommended.
Informal evening:
In the evening, you are advised to wear smart-casual attire, especially when dining in our restaurants where wearing shorts and tee-shirts is not allowed.
For women:
For men:
Officer's evening:
For all cruises longer than 8 nights, an Officer's Evening with a white dress code may be organized. Therefore, we encourage you to bring a stylish white outfit for the occasion (otherwise black and white).
Gala evening:
During the cruise, two gala evenings will be organised on board. Thus, we recommend that you bring one or two formal outfits.
For women:
For men:
A small shop is available on board offering a wide range of outfits, jewellery, leather goods and many accessories.
A laundry service (washing/ironing) is available on board, but unfortunately there are no dry cleaning services. For safety reasons, your cabin is not equipped with an iron.
In your hand luggage, remember to bring any medicines that you need, and possibly a small spare bag of toiletries (in case of delay in the delivery of your baggage by the airline). Remember to always have your travel documents with you in case you need them: hotel vouchers, cruise vouchers, return flight tickets... Never leave them in your hold luggage.
All our cabins have a safe. We recommend not to go ashore with valuable jewellery.
PONANT activities
Embarkation 24/9/2023 From 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm
Departure 24/9/2023 at 6:00 pm
Located in the northwest of the Kimberley region and in the far north of Western Australia, the town of Broome is reputed for its history and its glorious pearling era. The fascinating Chinatown district, which is the historic city centre, and the famous Japanese Cemetery, dates back to 1896, and has a past marked by the immigration of numerous Chinese and Japanese workers, attracted by the prosperous pearl industry at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century. Broome is also famous for the "Staircase to the Moon", an optical illusion created by the Moon reflecting on the sand banks at low tide, like a staircase climbing up towards the sky, a unique spectacle provided by nature…
Arrival 25/9/2023
Departure 30/9/2023
Whilst there is no standard itinerary, our sailing expedition will feature the iconic destinations of Montgomery Reef and the Horizontal Falls, described by Sir David Attenborough as "One of the greatest wonders of the natural world." Additional destinations that may be visited include The Lacepede Islands, Home to the world's largest breeding colony of Brown Boobies and Western Australia's most important breeding habitat for Green Turtles. The iconic Cape Leveque, at the tip of the Dampier Peninsula, best known for its pristine white sand beaches and golden red sandstone cliffs. The 800 islands of the Buccaneer Archipelago provide an ideal sailing ground to explore. Scattered amongst the islands are secluded white sandy beaches including Silica Bay, historical pearling locations such as Strickland Bay and The Edeline Islands and the remarkable geological scenery of Whirlpool Pass and Nares Point. Further North Collier Bay showcases the massive tides that the region is renowned for at the Horizontal Falls and Montgomery Reef. Here the many outdoor rock art galleries including Wijingarra Bard Bard provide an insight into the remarkable history and culture of Australia's First Nations People. To the East lies Doubtful Bay providing access to multiple river systems, including the Sale River and Red Cone Creek, lined with mangroves, creating the ideal environment to spot crocodiles and an abundance of birdlife. High above the saltwater influence freshwater waterholes provide the ideal locations for cooling off after a day of exploration.
Arrival 1/10/2023 early morning
Disembarkation 1/10/2023 at 7:00 am
Located 370km north of Broome and 460km west of Kununurra, Kuri Bay lies at the heart of the Lalang – Garram/Camden Sound Marine Park. It was the location of Australia's first cultured pearl farm and is named after the company's first principal, Tokuichi Kuribayashi. Today it is the home of Paspaley, the world's most important producer of cultured pearls. Such is the superior and widely recognised quality of the gems they are in their own category and recognised simply as Paspaley Pearls.
Kuri Bay is the ideal location for starting or ending your Kimberley sailing expedition combining a spectacular scenic flight over the Kimberley landscape aboard a Paspaley Grumman Mallard amphibious aircraft between Kuri Bay and Broome or Kununurra
Tropical Expedition
Explore the planet's most remote tropical regions during a PONANT expedition cruise. In the heart of Oceania's archipelagos or the Indian Ocean atolls, along the wild coastlines of Central America or Australia, our luxury amenities and services will make your expedition cruise an unforgettable experience. Our expedition leaders and their teams of naturalist guides devise exceptional itineraries and organise daily outings, shore visits in Zodiac® dinghies, or snorkelling when the cruises are conducive to it, to take you as close as possible to nature. Aboard the ship, they share their knowledge during lectures on a variety of topics such as the fauna and flora, the history of the great explorations, geology and climatology. On land, using the local transport options or during hikes, discover the must-see natural sites and, for a few hours, partake in the life and ancestral customs of the local populations.

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"Find out how much you can eat on one tank of fuel," they said. "It will be fun," they said. If the car you're given to do this is an A7 TDI, it has a huge fuel tank and gets better miles per gallon than a Japanese econosedan you should prepare for a world of hurt.
If the city you're trying to do this in is Austin and you have out-of-towners in tow ready to eat all of the Texan things, you're extra screwed. We're best known for barbecue, Tex-Mex and heavy, cheesy, fried and/or buttery things. The Texas State Fair in Dallas gets more attention for who can fry the most ludicrous, terrible, this-will-give-you-the-'beetus thing than it does for any of the actual fair attractions.
You will die if you attempt something like this in one day here with this car. You'll die happy, but you'll die. So, I ended up spreading out my pain over multiple days.
(Full disclosure: Audi somehow trusted me not to return this car with 944 mystery fluids all in the hatch...and this was the week before a LeMons race. Anyway, it's their car.)
Round One: Meat Coma
The original suggestion was barbecue. How much barbecue can you eat on one tank of diesel?
Problem is, the best barbecue I've had — short of driving up to Stanley's in Tyler for RIBS!, glorious RIBS! — is right there in Austin proper. Sadly, I didn't have a free day to make that four-and-a-half-hour drive (one way) to the northeast corner of the state, so I started off with a solid bet closer to home: John Mueller Meat Company.
Now operating out of a trailer in East Austin, J. Mueller's specialty is a gigantic beef rib that is the size of Rutledge Wood's head, perfectly seasoned and smoked to perfection. The other meats—especially the brisket and the sausage—are fantastic as well, but the defining pièce de meatsistance to me are the beef ribs, so that's what I came for.
One obstacle stood between myself and meat nirvana: downtown Austin. Downtown is a lovely place to walk around and explore, but in a car, it becomes a festering pit of confused tourists, narrow lanes, one-way streets, questionable parking jobs and terrible driving. It's the last place in the world I'd want to take a large car.
It's a good thing that the A7 didn't feel like a large car.
What the A7 has in size is compensates with in toys. Flashing lights on the mirrors let you know there's a car in your blind spot, letting you know when it's a bad idea to change lanes. Cameras in the front and rear keep you from plowing into curbs, pedestrians, varmints and other hazards.
It was nimble and had decent feedback in all of the controls as soon as I switched the car's settings over to "Dynamic." ("Comfort" felt uncomfortably numb and disconnected.) It was maneuverable. Most of all, it was a total surprise. Most large cars I've driven feel unwieldy the second you hit heavy traffic or narrow roads. This? This car was perfectly at home wafting through downtown at lunch hour.
Thus, barbecue acquired.
The pits at John Mueller Meat Co. aren't a big fiery circle out front to wow all the gullible tourists and hide the shame of meh meat. Rather, they're tucked inside a cage at the corner of the lot. It's a food trailer. You're here to eat, not soak in the atmosphere. If you want consistently smoky, tender meatstuffs with the kind of crisp, peppery bark around the edge that defines Texas' 'cue—go here.
Mock my single rib order all you want, but that single beef rib is multiple pounds worth of meat in one smoked-to-a-pulp package.
The sauce is a fabulously oniony stew of tangy happiness, but you don't really need it. Good BBQ doesn't need sauce. I like sauce for its texture, but to be honest, the pink-hued smoky ring around the edge of the meat usually holds enough flavor for me if they've done it right.
The sides here are good, too, but seeing the giant rib plopped onto my tray was enough to convince me that the only "vegetable" I needed was a small hunk of cheddar.
The gargantuan beef ribs are so tender that attempting to eat them neatly off the bone often results in this:
Nobody ever said barbecue wasn't messy to eat.
The second problem with this plan came as soon as I got a quarter of the way through my gigantic order: I'm not a huge eater. I have the approximate stomach capacity of a small canary.
Worse yet, I was hoping to do a LeMons race the next weekend. No time for a real, prolonged meat coma. No room to grow a BBQ gut that would make climbing in and out of the car a nightmare. Nope.
I tried. I really did. I powered through as much meat as I could handle without drooping over into my food at the table.
In the end—with apologies to Adam Richman—food won.
I not only had enough rib-meat left over to feed Uganda, but I was pretty solid on my meat fix for a while. Barbecue is one of those foods where I either eat the good stuff, or I hold out until I get the good stuff. I've filled my quota of delicious meaty goodness for the next year or so...or until I forget and want some barbecue again.
Approximate miles travelled: 30 miles
Gastrointestinal Pain-O-Meter: Eigh—zzzzzzzz/10. Huh? Oh, uh. Zzzzzzzzz.
Round Two: Gourmet Munchies
I can't quite hold up my head right now. Is it possible to OD on meat? I think it might be possible to OD on meat. I'm so drowsy. I need coffee. Espresso. Espresso coffee with a Red Bull chaser.
Next was a small gathering at the local Audi dealership where several personalities from the world of endurance racing were set to make an appearance. Yay, LMP1s in Austin. Yay!
East Side King, the food truck branch of Paul Qui's Asian fusion eatery empire, was the caterer. Qui — with a background that includes one of my favorite restaurants of all time (Uchiko) and some Bravo reality TV competition thing I never watched — puts out food trailer eats that would be at home at an afternoon tea. There's even bite-size finger sandwiches on the menu. They're the most indulgent finger sandwiches you'll ever have, but I recognize that size and shape. That's a finger sammich, no doubt.
I was still full from the ribpocalypse, so I opted for something small and light. It was a delicately fried chicken dish called the Thai Chicken Karaage, the upside of which being that it was light and crisp without being greasy or heavy, plus the spice of Sriracha and fresh cut onion and herbs helped wake me up a bit.
Even my LeMons team mascot, Fluffy Bunny, ate well. East Side King's munchies are apparently light enough for a stuffed rabbit to handle, and I know that having our LeMons bunny fed by actual Le Mans drivers (André Lotterer and Loïc Duval) adds at least 5 imaginary horsepower to the LeMons 944.
Lo and behold, I discovered that John Hindhaugh — voice of Radio Le Mans — races a 924, too. I'm tellin' ya, all the cool kids are getting wedgie Porsches. (Well, some cool kids plus me.)
Unfortunately, once again, I'd only eaten up about 20 miles for the day, and the trip-o-meter was mocking me with over 500 miles left 'til empty.
So, I took the scenic route back to central Austin via Highway 360, the fun uphill part of RM 2222 and through the twisty part of Shoal Creek Blvd., effectively making a giant spiral around my apartment before I actually got in the general vicinity [exact location not shown on map]. Take THAT, huge fuel tank.
The A7 was just as comfortable eating up highway miles on 360 as it was in town. The heated seats made my aching back happy, even if the lumbar support must have fallen victim to a portly dude who had this car before me. The ridiculous amount of readily available, mid-range torque made the rest of me happy. And for once, I was in a car with a lot of extra toys that didn't thoroughly annoy me.
Admittedly, I am a bit of an automotive luddite: if it's not light, simple and only what I need, I tend to be a bit of a curmudgeon. I get cars to drive them, so if any of the non-driving-related items are hard to figure out or a nuisance, I tend to get very frustrated with them very quickly and start whining that I'd like my Lancer back.
The controls on the steering wheel and the giant-knob-controlled interface in the center of the car are so intuitive that even I could figure out how to tinker with the radio and other settings within five minutes of hopping into the car.
Almost everything you'd want to change while driving is configurable with the buttons on the steering wheel. Most of the menus are viewable on the screen in front of the driver's face, too. All of this meant that the next 500 or so miles I still have on this tank of diesel would at least be tolerable, if not actually pleasant.
This long route home is probably cheating, but I don't care. I'd eaten enough little Thai chicken bits and who knows what else out of other dishes that folks were sharing that I still had no hope of leaving this challenge without a few extra pounds.
Approximate miles travelled: 60 miles
Gastrointestinal Pain-O-Meter: 2/10
Round Three: The White Napkin of Defeat
Day one of ALMS/WEC weekend! Rain! Racecars! IN THE RAIN! Today was supposed to be AWESOME!
Then I found out about a major setback with the LeMons car.
I had a salad in the Media Center and a long, infuriated cry.
I even waterlogged my camera so that the shutter speed wheel quit working, but let's be honest—that was the least of my worries.
I lucked out on the way out of COTA, though: I got lost trying to find an alternate route to the airport! That ate up a few extra miles.
Needless to say, between the lateness and the borked race car, the LeMons crew chief I picked up from the airport may have been even less amused than I was—and that's no small feat.
Approximate miles travelled: 70 miles
Gastrointestinal Pain-O-Meter: 0/10
Life Pain-O-Meter: I don't even want to talk about it.
Round Four: Magical Lard Sauce!
Day two of ALMS/WEC. Lunch came with a spectacular view of the pit straight leading up to turn 1 and the pits below, thanks to the Audi press folks.
It was fairly standard suite food—chicken, salmon, salad, etc.—but luckily, the munchies just kept on coming. After the main lunch course came out was dessert. After dessert was an array of meats, cheeses and dips. This is clearly the way to watch a race if you didn't eat much the day before.
Pardon me for neglecting to take any pictures of suite food, but I was a bit distracted by the view outside.
Having suite food just meant that by the time dinner rolled around, I was full anyway. That being said, when my LeMons crew guy mentioned that he had a buddy staying up in Round Rock who'd like to grab a bite to eat, I was all over it. I could think of no better way to get rid of excess diesel fuel in the A7.
My pick for eats up north? Jack Allen's Kitchen, a southern food joint that uses as many local ingredients as possible. Like all good southern food establishments, they come up with new and creative things to deep fry. In fact, part of the menu purports to be "Chicken Fried Anything:"
Lies! I can think of additional things to chicken-fry.
Regardless, a chicken fried steak sounded perfect. While I opted to start with a salad because of food overload throughout the day, what came afterwards was a monumental tribute to Paula Deen's arteries:
I received a perfect chicken fried steak, with a coating that was crisp all the way down to the hammered, tender meat beneath it. You know, because steak itself just isn't enough—we need to deep fry it and serve it with gravy in order for it to be worthy.
Confession time: I usually don't like gravy. I spent enough time out of state to be able to say this and mean it: it's bland lard sauce.
But, hark! I see spices besides flour, black pepper and yucky gloops of sadness! The presence of green chiles in this particular gravy caught my interest.
So, I tried it, and it was good. This gravy was more buttery than most white gravies, and the chilies gave it a much-needed kick of actual flavor besides "I think this is actually papier-mâché goop."
If you stack all the green chiles on top of your chicken-fried steak, it's like a deep-fried butter-lard-chile meatsplosion in your mouth.
Approximate miles travelled: 77 miles
Gastrointestinal Pain-O-Meter: 9/10, +42 Powers of LARD
Round Five: Hoon the Fuel Away
After last night's lardstravaganza, I was feeling about as puffy as my LeMons team's mascot bunnies. Worse yet, even with multiple trips across Austin, I still had about half a tank of diesel to use.
Drifting was listed on the morning's schedule for day three of the ALMS/WEC weekend at Circuit of the Americas. I like watching people go sideways and kill tires, but I can't exactly ask them super-awkward questions about the future of sportscar endurance racing in America.
The drift show gave me an idea, though. If I wanted to have any hope of using up the rest of this tank of fuel, I'd have to do something more than putter around in traffic.
I must hoon this Audi.
It is my solemn duty to the good people of this world to hoon this car.
So, it was time for a detour: off to Harris Hill Road, a racetrack that is a nice thirty-eight miles or so out of the way.
I found one flaw with the iPhone connection as I set off on my mission for hoonage: it never wanted to pull up all of my songs. I could pull up folders—artists, genres, purchased songs, etc.—but I could never just tell it to bring up everything that was stored on my phone.
I also realized that my phone was still called "iPuffalump Quattro."
Because rallyphone.
This, of course, matters little when you're trying to get the car sideways.
...which I was.
This, however, does matter:
After being stuck in a Jetta rental without any form of nannies-off button, "ESC OFF" was one of the first items I looked for on this car.
Spoiler up: +2 imaginary torques.
The A7 wasn't as quick around the track as its ridiculous amount of torque would suggest, but it was easy to toss around, flick the tail end out, and mash down the go pedal to straighten it all out again. For a long, heavy car, it was very forgiving.
It doesn't have a real handbrake—it has one of those stupid electronic handbrakes. While I didn't need the emergency brake to get sideways, I'm sure there are times when you'd want a real one. Rallycross. Tighter hairpins. Stopping your out of control vehicle if your electrical system shorts out. You know, emergency brake stuff.
Most of all, I can't pretend to be Michèle Mouton with a toggle switch, grr.
Another hindrance to The Hoon: Tiptronic in manual mode is still stupid Tiptronic as usual: "I know ze gear you want more than you do, mein dummkopf!" Wanna hold the gear you selected all the way around a corner? DE-NIED.
A funny thing happens when you leave it in regular ol' D, though: it usually holds the same gear throughout a corner. So, I let it make its own mind up about shifting, and many lulz were had.
Per the Datsun driver I went out on track with, the A7 will lift a wheel up and tripod in corners, too. And per my passenger, this was the happiest I'd been all weekend: while tossing around a luxobarge on track.
The sheer weight of the A7 overheated the tires rather quickly, though, but by then, I'd gotten down to just under a quarter tank of fuel.
Mission accomplished, and in plenty of time to catch the WEC race.
Approximate miles travelled: 76 miles + 40 minutesish worth of track time (???, profit)
Gastrointestinal Pain-O-Meter: 0/10 (driver); 4/10 (passenger)
Round Six: You Can't Say No to Queso
Take everything Top Gear complained about when they were discussing Mexican food, turn it up to 11, and that's Tex-Mex. More cheese. More spice. Very strong margaritas. More of absolutely everything that's bad for you, but so good to eat.
I just walked around COTA all day shooting pictures of race cars in the series I most wanted to see come to Austin. I hooned an A7 TDI. I even got injury advice from Allan McNish. I had a pretty good day, if we completely ignore the broken LeMons car (which I tried very hard to do).
The only thing that could make it better is my favorite food in the entire world: queso.
Queso is cheese—specifically, cheese dip. It's a melty amalgamation of cheese, peppers, onions, tomatoes and sometimes meat. Some places even add a scoop of guacamole for extra ridiculousness.
So, off to Trudy's, one of Austin's Tex-Mex strongholds. I'm close enough to finishing off a tank of diesel, so I can't think of anything better to finish off my stomach, once and for all.
The salsa here is so good that I almost don't need to order queso. Just kidding—I always need to order queso.
Anyway, the red salsa has a decent heat to it, while the green salsa is oniony, tart and sweet. If there's ever a time when I go to Trudy's and don't finish off the green salsa, there's probably something wrong with me.
Enchiladas sounded perfect right about now, too. Usually, I'll order cheese enchiladas, which is cheese inside a tortilla that's covered with cheese and sauce, and sometimes I'll get queso as the sauce (read: more cheese).
Trudy's has a far more diabolical creation: migas enchiladas. It's exactly what it sounds like: enchiladas filled with migas, a breakfast dish of scrambled eggs, peppers, tomatoes, onions, and bits of fried tortilla.
The migas enchiladas sound like they were the product of being directly north of a college campus, where all food must be combined into one terrible-for-you package that tastes irresistibly awesome.
The problem with Tex-Mex is that the endless chips and salsa feel a lot like the A7's endless fuel tank: you get so much that you don't hardly know what to do with yourself.
So, you eat and you eat and you eat until you feel like you need to be rolled out of the restaurant, and because much of the main course is cheese-based, you're going to need a nap, too.
Not that any of this is a bad thing. Hey, I could use more sleep.
After dinner, I napped en route to the secret hideout for the LeMons car—34 miles away (one way) at an undisclosed location south of Austin.
Apparently the A7's adaptive cruise control works really well at adjusting to the stopping cars in front of you. I'm glad I slept through my LeMons crew chief testing that out.
Approximate miles travelled: 90 miles
Gastrointestinal Pain-O-Meter: 10/10
Round Seven: Tacos for Breakfast
At this point, we've all eaten enough to need to pass out somewhere. Luckily, a full-size person CAN pass out in the A7's trunk!
Regardless, the tank's not quite empty yet, so it's taco time. Houndstooth Coffee and Tacodeli are in the same building as each other just down from this beauty, so that's as good a place as any to finish off the fuel tank and my belly.
Houndstooth gets my repeat business for two reasons. First off, they make one of the smoothest lattes in Austin. Secondly, the little cups fit in the Lancer's cupholders. Mitsubishi didn't have Big Gulps in mind when they made my car. These lattes are just the right size.
Upon acquiring caffeine, I noticed that the tensioned fins in the A7's cupholders make even small cups a tight fit. This is great if you're trying to weaken the sides of a can to be better able to smash it against your forehead (...bro). It sucks, however, if you don't want to spill flaming hot liquid on yourself as you try to pry a coffee cup out.
Here's one of Tacodeli's photos of a breakfast taco. Why? Because we ate our tacos so fast that I didn't even think to hipstergram mine.
Breakfast tacos are one of the most perfect foods ever created—an über-convenient way to deliver breakfast foods like eggs, sausage and bacon into your mouth in an easy to handle, convenient and quick to devour package.
That being said, eggs are best served up warm. Eat 'em when you get 'em.
Regardless, Tacodeli's breakfast tacos are among my favorites in town. While their lunch tacos skew towards the gourmet, they stick to the basics for their breakfast tacos. Simple stuff like migas and egg/meat/potato/veggie build-a-taco combos are just done well. Perfectly fluffy eggs. Addictive salsas to go on top—the green salsa doña gets the most love, but my favorite is the bright orange habanero, a creamy blend of those sweet spicy peppers that goes especially well with eggs.
With breakfast came the end of the fuel tank—we went straight from tacos to put some diesel in the thing.
Approximate miles travelled: 20 miles
Gastrointestinal Pain-O-Meter: 5/10
I was actually a little sad to give the A7 TDI back. The A7 was unexpectedly easy to live with, hilarious to drive in anger and part of me wonders if all that torque could pull a 944.
That being said, after eating my way thorough 19 gallons of diesel, I probably didn't need to eat again for the rest of the week.
Photo credits: Tacodeli (tacos)


text:
Movie Reviews
'Shanghai Calling,' And The Answer Is, 'Why Not?'
Shanghai Calling
- Director: Daniel Hsia
- Genre: Comedy, Romance
- Running Time: 98 minutes
Rated PG-13, language and brief sexual content
Language: English and Mandarin, with English subtitles
With: Daniel Henney, Eliza Coupe, Bill Paxton
As Ugly Americans go, Manhattan corporate attorney Sam Chao (Daniel Henney) has a lot going for him. He's a handsome dude with perfectly symmetrical features, a toned bod we get to peek at all but naked, and facile charm to burn.
He also happens to be the son of Chinese immigrants, but he has brushed aside his heritage along with anything else that might get in the way of making partner. So when his bosses suddenly banish Sam to the boondocks — as he sees it — of Shanghai to open a new office for the firm, he complies in a mighty sulk. (Never mind that he's been dispatched to a city widely regarded as one sitting on the cutting edge of global capitalism.)
The rest, as you will have guessed, is a humbling storm of adversity that will teach this arrogant young hipster — who begins his stint by alienating just about everyone who might help him — how to be a mensch. Snobbery and prejudice will be shed, along with ambition. Love will walk in, along with an improved attitude and refreshed ethnic pride.
Never mind the secondhand plot, or the familiar, kinetically shot lunar cityscape, with its gleaming skyscrapers, grimy back alleys and ever-present construction. Written and directed by Daniel Hsia — an American who's worked mostly in television — with a brash fizz and pop that matches the brittle flair of Sam's new home, Shanghai Calling is a Sino-American collaboration with made-for-TV production values aimed at young audiences on both sides of the Pacific Ocean.
Market-driven it may be, but this warmhearted frippery refuses to wear a long face. Far from moaning that our brave new connected world is going straight to hell, Shanghai Calling envelops that world in a big, goofy bear hug. The action turns on the apparent theft of the blueprint for a post-Apple cellphone that restores the retro click of typing.
Hsia embraces the crazy quilt of tradition and modernity that is 21st-century Shanghai. Where Sofia Coppola's far artier Lost in Translation was constantly inviting us to chortle at the craziness of modern Japan, Shanghai Calling is as playful with Western misconceptions about the East as it is with the pretensions of New China, without neglecting the price paid for progress by its workers.
Sam does get to root out graft and corruption. But it's not where he thinks it is, and he doesn't do it alone; it takes a village full of the very misfits he's disparaged and insulted, all of whom turn out to be a lot more streetwise than he is.
The movie doesn't so much dissolve stereotypes as toy with them until they're defanged. Sam assumes that his gorgeous, sloe-eyed assistant (played by Zhu Zhu, a polymath who also models and hosts MTV China) is hopelessly in love with his awesome self. A mysterious private-eye-or-whatever named Awesome Wang (Geng Le) shows up to thicken the plot, along with the usual posse of wacky American expats, among them the backslapping, self-appointed mayor of Shanghai's American Quarter (Bill Paxton) and an American inventor (Alan Ruck) who seems a tad too eager to show off his mastery of Chinese calligraphy.
And let's not forget the statutory mettlesome blonde (however fetchingly played by Scrubs' Eliza Coupe) with "love interest" written all over her.
Shanghai Calling doesn't aspire to fresh insight, let alone profundity. But it's nice to see the American migration narrative get out of the house for some fresh air. And if this irresistibly high-spirited confection performs well worldwide, I have a feeling we'll be seeing it cloned all over the global movie map. As copycat pop trendsetting goes, we could do worse.


text:
Commons performance is a small framework for developing configurable microbenchmark clients. The "framework" consists of two abstract classes, "ClientThread" and "LoadGenerator." ClientThreads generate requests with configurable inter-arrival times (following various load generation profiles) and gather response time statistics. LoadGenerators spawn ClientThreads and aggregate statistics across threads. Configuration is loaded at the beginning of a run from an XML configuration file.
Concrete implementations are provided for commons pool and commons DBCP. A primitive http load generator is also included as another sample LoadGenerator. See the class javadoc for ClientThread and LoadGenerator for more information on how to extend these classes to develop other microbenchmark clients. The Pool, DBCP, and HTTP implementations (in the pool, dbcp http packages, respectively) provide examples of how to do this.
Pool, DBCP and http tests | Configuration | Statistics | Development tasks
The first time you run against a configured database, a table with 10000 rows will be created and populated with random data.
Base configuration for all microbenchmark implementations using Commons Performance is included in the "run" section of the XML configuration file. The base parameters determine how many request threads are spawned, how many iterations each performs and how inter-arrival times (times between requests from each thread) are computed. A minimal configuration file would contain only the "run" element nested in the "configuration" root element. Configurations for the DBCP and Pool tests include additional parameters specified in other elements.
|XML path to parameter
|What the parameter means
|Sample setting
|Number of iterations for each client thread
|100 - each thread executes 100 requests.
|Number of ClientThreads
|10 - 10 client threads run concurrently
|Minimum time between client requests per thread
|250 - peak load is 4 client requests per thread per second
|Maximum time between client requests per thread
|500 - minimum load is 2 requests per client per second
|Standard deviation of inter-arrival times (only used when delayType is "random"
|10 standard deviation of inter-arrival times is 10ms.
|Whether inter-arrival times are random or deterministic. "constant" means deterministic, "gaussian" or "poisson" means random, following the given distribution, with mean determined by rampup or cycle state
|"constant" - if cycle-type is "none", clients will fire requests at a constant rate of one request every min-delay ms (after ramping up if rampTime is positive.
|"linear" means that load ramps up or down linearly, "random" means it takes random jumps in the direction determined by cycle state
|"linear" - if cycle-type is "none" and delay-type is constant, clients will ramp up linearly to delay-min interarrival times and then fire requests at a constant rate of one request every min-delay ms.
|The amount of time (in milliseconds) that a client spends ramping up or down
|10000 - client threads take 10 seconds to ramp up from delay-min at the beginning of the run and if the cycle-type is "oscillating," the same amount of time to ramp back down to delay-max after sustaining peak load for peak-period
|The amount of time (in milliseconds) that a client spends at peak load (only used if cycle-type is "oscillating"
|20000 - client threads sustain peak load (one request per delay-min milliseconds) for 20 seconds each cycle
|The amount of time (in milliseconds) that a client spends at minimum load (only used if cycle-type is "oscillating"
|10000 - client threads stay at minimum load (one request per delay-max milliseconds) for 20 seconds each cycle
|"oscillating" means that load follows a cycle, starting at delay-max, ramping up to delay-min over ramp-period, staying at peak load for peak-period, then ramping down again over ramp-period, staying at delay-max for trough-period, and then repeating
|"none" - clients ramp up at the beginning of the run to delay-min and stay at that level throughout the run
|XML path to parameter
|What the parameter means
|Sample setting
|Type of pool to use
|GenericObjectPool - use a GenericObjectPool as the underlying object pool. The only alternative currently is "AbandonedObjectPool"
|The commons pool maxActive setting - the maximum number of object instances that can be checked out from the pool at a given time
|10 - at most 10 object instances can be in use by clients at a given time
|The commons pool maxIdle setting - the maximum number of object instances that can be idle in the pool at a given time
|5 - at most 5 object instances can be sitting idle in the pool at a given time
|The commons pool minIdle setting - the minumum number of object instances that must be available (idle) in the pool at a given time
|4 - there must always be 4 idle object instances waiting for clients in the pool
|The commons pool maxWait setting - the maximum amount of time (in milliseconds) that a client will wait for an instance to become available in the pool before throwing an exception. This parameter is only relevant when exhausted-action is "block"
|-1 - a negative value means wait indefinitely
|The commons pool exhaustedAction setting - determines what the pool does when it gets a request for an object instance and there are no idle instances available. Must be one of "block" (client waits) "fail" (throw exception) or "grow" (create a new object instance)
|block - client will wait until an instance becomes available or max-wait is exceeded
|The commons pool testOnBorrow setting - determines whether or not the pool invokes the object factory's validate method on object instances borrowed from the pool before giving them out to clients. Must be either "true" or "false"
|false - object instances are not validated when they are borrowed from the pool
|The commons pool testOnReturn setting - determines whether or not the pool invokes the object factory's validate method on object instances when they are returned to the pool. Must be either "true" or "false"
|true - object instances are validated before being returned to the pool.
|The commons pool timeBetweenEvictions setting - the amount of time (in milliseconds) between runs of the idle object evictor. A negative value disables idle object eviction.
|30000 - the idle object evictor runs every 30 seconds
|The commons pool testsPerEviction setting - the number of objects in the pool checked for expiry on each evictor run
|10 - the evictor will examine up to 10 objects in the pool on each eviction run
|The commons pool idleTimeout setting - the amount of time that an instance can remain idle in the pool before becoming eligible for eviction. A negative value means instances do not expire.
|20000 - instances become eligible for eviction when they have been sitting idle in the pool for more than 20 seconds
|The commons pool testWhileIdle setting - determines whether or not the idle object evictor validates objects that it examines during its runs. Must be "true" or "false"
|true - each time the idle object evictor runs, it invokes the factory validate method on the idle objects that it examines during the run
|Determines whether or not abandoned object discovery events are logged. Only meaningful if pool type is AbandonedObjectPool. Must be "true" or "false"
|true - each time an abandoned object is found, a stack trace showing its origin is logged
|Determines whether or not abandoned objects are removed when found. Only meaningful if pool type is AbandonedObjectPool. Must be "true" or "false"
|false - abandoned objects are not removed
|Inactivity timeout used to determine when an object is deemed to be abandoned.
|50000 - objects not used for more than 50 seconds are considered abandoned.
|XML path to parameter
|What the parameter means
|Sample setting
|The fully qualified class name of the jdbc driver to use. Must be available in the classpath.
|com.mysql.jdbc.Driver - use mysql jdbc driver
|The jdbc connection url
|jdbc:mysql:///test - use the test mysql database on the local host
|The jdbc connection username
|sa - all connections are created using "sa" database login id
|The jdbc connection password
|'' (empty element) - no password
|The type of query used by the tests. Admissable values are "integerIndexed", "integerScan", or "textScan". The first part is the type of column used in the SELECT statement and the second determines whether or not the column is indexed
|integerScan - generate queries that select on values from a non-indexed integer column
|The type of database connection factory to use. Admissable values are "Driver" or "DriverManager".
|DriverManager - use DriverManagerConnectionFactory
|The autocommit property assigned to connections returned by the pool. Must be "true" or "false"
|true - connections are set to autocommit transactions
|The readonly property assigned to connections returned by the pool. Must be "true" or "false"
|false - connections are read/write
|The validation query used to test connections. Only meaningful when one of test-on-borrow, test-on-return, test-while-idle is true.
|"SELECT * FROM TEST" - this query is executed to validate connections. If it returns at least one row, validation succeeds.
|The PoolableConnectionFactory type. Currently only "PoolableConnectionFactory" is supported
|PoolableConnectionFactory - only valid setting
|Whether or not prepared statement pooling is turned on. Must be either "true" or "false"
|true - prepared statements are pooled
|When pool-prepared-statements is true, this setting determines the maximum number or pooled prepared statements that can be open at a given time
|10 - at most 10 prepared statements can be open at the same time
|XML path to parameter
|What the parameter means
|Sample setting
|url of resource to test
|http method -GET or POST
|http socket connection timeout in milliseconds
|20000 - timeout after 20 seconds
|string to look for in http response indicating success
|'successful' - threads throw HttpException if this string is not found in the response
Runs consist of client threads submitting requests in a loop, with configurable delays in between. Statistics on latency of the core request operation are gathered by thread and overall. The "number of misses" reported per thread is the number of times that the request operation itself took longer than the presribed interarrival time for the thread (e.g. the thread is supposed to send one request each 100ms, but it has to wait 150ms for a response). If the number of misses is a significant percentage of the number of iterations, you should consider increasing the number of service nodes (pool maxActive) or decreasing the delay-min / delay-max.


text:
Governor, Minneapolis play blame game over crime
Last month's fatal shooting in the Uptown neighborhood, and another fatal shooting last weekend outside the Block E entertainment complex downtown, are causing many people to ask whether the city is safe for visitors. Both victims were young men who didn't live in Minneapolis, and were enjoying a night out in the city.
Gov. Pawlenty responded to the killings by questioning Minneapolis' budget priorities.
"They got a lot of money, for example, sitting in the neighborhood revitalization programs that in my view are getting frittered away, or at least not spent on high-priority items," said Pawlenty. "One suggestion amongst others is, quit putting the money into the neighborhood revitalization programs, at least part of it, and get it into more concentrated efforts, particularly in the north side and some of the troubled neighborhoods in downtown and in Minneapolis."
"I think the governor forgot his own actions," responds Sen. Jane Ranum, DFL-Minneapolis.
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Ranum says Pawlenty should stop blaming the city.
"He's the one that went after local government aid. He's the one that fought against the increase that we got last year," said Ranum. "No one can underestimate what has happened to public safety in the community of Minneapolis, or for that matter, in other communities."
Pawlenty pushed for local government aid cuts when the state faced a $4.5 billion deficit. He said then that cities and counties should tighten their belts along with the state. In the case of Minneapolis, local government aid was reduced by some $37 million, or about one-third.
At the same time, the city lost some federal funding, and eliminated about 120 police officer positions. Last year, the state partially restored the city's LGA funding, and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak says the city added 71 new police officers.
"Our highest priority is to put money into officers on the street," said Rybak. "Any money that comes back from the state, we will guarantee it will go into public safety -- and especially, first and foremost, into presence of police officers."
Rybak says he has no authority over neighborhood revitalization funding because of state law, but says he's talked to the neighborhood programs about working with the city on public safety.
Gov. Pawlenty is the one that went after local government aid. He's the one that fought against the increase that we got last year.
Apart from the blame game, state leaders have different ideas on what to do about crime in Minneapolis. Three of the city's DFL senators say the state should spend $180,000 to expand a camera surveillance program being used in downtown Minneapolis. The money is included in a Senate public safety budget bill.
Sen. Linda Berglin says the state should pay to link the program to cameras in high-crime neighborhoods.
"In downtown Minneapolis, they have reduced the number of incidences. They've reduced purse-snatchings, they've reduced panhandling, they've reduced nuisance crimes, they've made downtown more livable," Berglin said.
The Minneapolis lawmakers say they want people to feel safe coming to their city.
Gov. Pawlenty didn't fund the Minneapolis camera program in his supplemental budget this year.
Since Pawlenty accused the city of "frittering away" money, his office has talked to the mayor's staff to schedule a face-to-face meeting later this week. Rybak says he looks forward to talking to Pawlenty about the city's efforts to fight crime.
A Pawlenty spokesman says the governor wants to meet with Rybak, Interim Police Chief Tim Dolan and other law enforcement officials to see if there are ways the state and city can work together to lower crime.


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+55 21 2025-5000
E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com
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text:
Anti-Gay Pastor Fred Phelps Sr. Dies At 84
TOPEKA, Kan. — The Rev. Fred Phelps Sr., the founder of a Kansas church known for anti-gay protests and pickets at military funerals, has died. He was 84.
Daughter Margie Phelps says Fred Phelps died shortly after midnight Thursday. She didn't give the cause of death or the condition that recently put him in hospice care.
Phelps founded the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, though most the small church's members are part of his extended family.
Their activities inspired a federal law on funeral picketing and laws in more than 40 states. But in a major free-speech ruling in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the church and its members couldn't be sued for damages.
Phelps' church preached that deaths of U.S. military personnel were God's punishment for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality.