There is a corruption at the heart of American politics, caused by the dependence of Congressional candidates on funding from the tiniest percentage of citizens.

See on www.ted.com

-Poliblogger

Posted: 03/25/2013 5:47 pm EDT  |  Updated: 03/25/2013 6:04 pm EDT

At least three states are seeking to force a constitutional convention to consider changes to the founding document.

Indiana, Georgia and Kansas have proposed a convention under the Constitution’s Article V, which allows two-thirds of the states to call a convention. The states’ reasons range from balancing the federal budget to overhauling federal powers. A constitutional convention has not been convened since the original one in 1787.

Forty-nine of the 50 states have filed at least one resolution with Congress calling for a constitutional convention. In order for a convention to be held, at least 34 states must pass a resolution on the same subject.

Sanford Levinson, a law professor at the University of Texas who backs an Article V convention, said the process is designed to be hard. “People who don’t like the idea of a convention, which is most people, want to make it impossible,” Levinson said.

Resolutions in Kansas and Indiana call for a constitutional convention to balance powers of states and the federal government. Georgia’s calls for the inclusion of a balanced budget amendment. The Indiana resolution — passed by the state Senate — gives broad outlines, while the Kansas resolution specifies that education, guns, health care, insurance and elections are strictly state powers with no role for the federal government.

“The idea is that the federal government never wants to limit its power,” Kansas state Rep. Brett Hildabrand (R-Shawnee), a sponsor of his state’s resolution, told HuffPost. “Most of the amendments are to expand the scope of the federal government. Except for the Bill of Rights, everything expands power.”

Some backers of a constitutional convention said they worry conventioneers could range beyond resolutions to amend any part of the Constitition. Hildabrand said he had such concerns, but was assured by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), that constitutional safeguards prevent a so-called runaway convention, requiring changes be approved by three-fourths of the states. Similar reasoning was used in the Indiana Senate debate.

Hildabrand said that he and other Kansas backers of a convention plan a national campaign to get other states to join the effort. He said they plan pressure conservative states, including Texas and Wyoming, to pass resolutions similar to the one in Kansas.

Levinson said its unclear whether convention delegates would be elected or picked by state legislatures. He said he wants an Article V convention that would “last for two years and is on CSPAN and holds serious hearings on the whole thing.”

Levinson said he doesn’t see states rushing to join the Kansas plan. “There is no way two-thirds of the states will get behind such a radical-right proposition,” he said.

via Article V Convention To Amend Constitution Pushed By Several States.

-Poliblogger.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, under fire over her office’s aggressive prosecution of Internet activist Aaron Swartz, was admonished by a federal appeals court in 2004 for advocating a harsher jail term for a defendant than she had promised him in a plea-bargain agreement, according to a court document.

Ortiz, a potential candidate for Massachusetts governor or the federal judiciary prior to Swartz’s January suicide, has come under congressional criticism for allowing Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Heymann to pursue an aggressive Internet fraud case against Swartz. A court decision from 2004 revealed that Ortiz, while an assistant prosecutor herself, also used an aggressive tactic. A Justice Department spokesman wasn’t available to comment.

The appeals court document was brought to light in an anonymous letter to members of Congress involved in the House Oversight Committee investigation into the Justice Department’s handling of the Swartz case.

Swartz committed suicide two years after he was arrested on federal hacking charges. Prosecutors had told Swartz they would recommend a seven-year prison sentence if he did not plead guilty to a felony and agree to serve six months behind bars. The charges against Swartz accused him of violating a terms of service agreement with the online database of academic articles, JSTOR. Swartz downloaded millions of articles quickly, rather than a few at a time. JSTOR had opposed Swartz’s prosecution.

The case has become a flashpoint for Internet activists seeking to reform outdated hacking statutes and for critics of the criminal justice system seeking to curtail abusive prosecutions. Several lawmakers have questioned Attorney General Eric Holder over the Justice Department handling of the case.

The letter from “A Concerned Boston Lawyer” was sent to House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), along with Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). It includes an ruling from a 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, also available on the court website.

According to the ruling, Ortiz had agreed to seek a sentence at the “low end of the guideline range calculated by the court” in a fraud case against Donald Gonczy if he agreed to plead guilty to wire and mail fraud for selling bogus appraisals to timeshare owners.

The court calculated a sentencing range of 70 months to 87 months. When Ortiz was asked to recommend a sentence, she began by stating that “the government would be seeking 70 months,” a punishment “in line” with the plea deal. But she followed this statement with a lengthy digression on the severity of Gonczy’s crimes. After the court interrupted her for being “repetitive,” Ortiz concluded, “The defendant at a minimum deserves what the guidelines provide for and those are his just desserts,” according to the document.

Gonczy ultimately received an 84-month sentence.

When Gonczy appealed, the Justice Department argued that Ortiz had been pressing not for a harsher sentence, but to pre-empt Gonczy’s argument for a sentence shorter than 70 months.

The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Ortiz’s argument.

“While paying lip service to a term of 70 months’ imprisonment, the AUSA [Ortiz] substantively argued for a sentence at the higher end of the guidelines,” Judge Juan Torruella wrote. “In doing so, the government violated the plea agreement it entered into with Gonczy.”

Torruella vacated the sentence and sent the case back to the lower court for a resentencing of Gonczy.

The appeal appeared to have little impact on the trajectory of Ortiz’s career. President Barack Obama nominated her to be the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts in September 2009, praising her “diligence, intellect, integrity and their commitment to serving the public good.” She was confirmed by a unanimous Senate vote in November of that year.

The current bipartisan House Oversight Committee investigation into the Swartz case has brought increased scrutiny to a common tactic in which prosecutors threaten a defendant with a lengthy prison sentence, pressuring them to plead guilty to avoid a catastrophic outcome.

“Overprosecution is a tool often used to get people to plead guilty rather than risk sentencing,” Issa told HuffPost in January. “It is a tool of question. If someone is genuinely guilty of something and you bring them up on charges, that’s fine. But throw the book at them and find all kinds of charges and cobble them together so that they’ll plea to a ‘lesser included’ is a technique that I think can sometimes be inappropriately used.’

Read the full anonymous letter to the House Oversight Committee here.

via Aaron Swartz Prosecutor Carmen Ortiz Admonished In 2004 For Aggressive Tactic.

(CNN) — Inspirational music has long served to focus the mind of some of the world’s greatest sporting stars.

Retired swimming champion Michael Phelps swore by the grizzly bark of rapper DMX, while former England footballer Stuart Pearce was known to crank out the snarling punk of the Sex Pistols.

For giant judo champion Teddy Riner, however, the motivational music of choice is something altogether more sensitive.

“The moments before the fight, I put my headphones on to enter into the zone,” Riner told CNN’s Human to Hero series.

via Giant judo champion: Celine Dion puts me in the zone – CNN.com.

Sometimes in life, when things aren’t going your way, you just have to accept that these were the cards you were dealt and move on. But somtimes, the cards you were dealt happen to include excitable kids in pink polos having the times of their lives. Those are pretty much the best cards.

via Kid at NBA Game + Unbridled Enthusiasm = Greatest GIF Ever from Look What I Found.

-Poliblogger

One hundred thirty-one prominent Republicans have signed a pro-same-sex marriage legal brief that is clearly at odds with the House GOP leadership and the party’s platform in the most recent election. Because of the prominence of the signers, the brief stands out among the more than 150 friend-of-the-court briefs filed in two same-sex marriage cases to be argued at the U.S. Supreme Court this week.

The man who rounded up the group is Ken Mehlman, the former political director for the George W. Bush White House.

For years, Mehlman forged a path as a Republican leader — chairman of the Republican National Committee and head of the 2004 Bush re-election campaign. And all the while he had a secret. In August 2010, he came out of the closet and is now arguably the most high-profile openly gay Republican in the country.

He has used his newfound openness to promote what he emphasizes is “the conservative case” for gay marriage. He says, “It’s amazing what happens when you make the case in terms that people who are on the right side of the political aisle find familiar, with voices that they find familiar, and they realize that if you believe in freedom, if you believe in limited government, if you believe in family values, then allowing adults who love each other to form families is something that makes a lot of sense.”

Mehlman, a lawyer and businessman, is no stranger to the Supreme Court. In fact, he helped get some of the conservative justices confirmed.

“I thought that it would be beneficial for the justices to hear those of us who are judicial conservatives explaining why, from our perspective, we saw Proposition 8 should be overturned,” he says. Proposition 8 is the California ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage.

An ‘Inflexion Point’

Mehlman compares the right to marry to other fundamental rights conservatives embrace — for example, the right to bear arms and the right of corporate free speech embodied in the Supreme Court’s controversial 2010 decision striking down the ban on corporate spending in candidate elections.

But what makes this brief different from others are the signers — an astonishing array of conservatives. Some have changed their minds about same-sex marriage — including former Utah governor and presidential candidate Jon Huntsman and Meg Whitman, who supported California’s Proposition 8 when she ran for governor. Then there are the top policy officials from recent Republican administrations. Among them: former National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey, former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and former White House Chief of Staff Kenneth Duberstein, to name a few. In addition, there are top political strategists from recent GOP campaigns — like Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Schmidt is among those who has had a change of heart on gay marriage. “In 2004 and 2000, I was not a supporter of marriage equality,” he says. “But over time, as you talk to gay people and you understand the importance that your marriage has in your life, why would you ever want to deny anyone that?”

Schmidt concedes that some parts of the country are still firmly opposed to same-sex marriage, but he contends the numbers are “moving as fast as any social justice issue has ever moved in the United States.” And he says that the reason for that change is, in part, that a clear majority of younger people support the legalization of same-sex marriage.

Alex Lundry, 35, who was director of data science for Republican Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign and who also signed the Mehlman brief, is representative of that younger generation. Like most in his age group, he has always supported gay marriage. “For me, I think it’s kind of a no-brainer that if you believe in freedom, then you should believe that gays and lesbians have the right to get married.”

The divide over same-sex marriage is at “an incredible inflection point in the party,” says Lundry, and it shows that “there’s some real soul-searching” going on over what it means to be a conservative.

Hearing The ‘Nightingale’

Pulling together such a wide-ranging group of people is never as easy as it looks. Another brief signed by 278 corporations urging the court to recognize same-sex marriage as a fundamental right was a heavy lift, according to some who were involved in the process. And like that brief, the Mehlman brief is the product of hundreds of long conversations — and many rejections, too.

For Mehlman, though, the brief is a particular triumph. He is clearly embarrassed about the role he played in the 2004 presidential campaign, when the GOP aggressively moved to put bans on same-sex marriage on many state ballots in order to bring out the conservative base. And he has repeatedly apologized to gay rights activists.

“You can’t change the past,” he says, “but you can try to, as much as you can going forward, be helpful and be constructive.”

It is hard not to see his passionate advocacy now as some measure of atonement for the part he played in 2004 and now regrets.

Mehlman credits another long-time conservative, Ted Olson, with helping him to speak out. Olson achieved conservative rock star status when he won the landmark 2000 case of Bush v. Gore, putting George W. Bush in the White House. He would go on to serve as the Bush administration’s chief legal advocate in the Supreme Court.

But in 2009, back in private practice, Olson filed the lawsuit challenging California’s ban on same-sex marriage — the case he will argue in the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

Mehlman calls Olson his “nightingale” because the nightingale “only sings when it hears other nightingales sing.” You never hear just one nightingale singing, Mehlman observes. “You’ll always have a group of them,” and when Olson made the case for same-sex marriage, “a whole lot of folks, myself and others included” listened to that song and got the courage to repeat it.

via Former Bush Aide Pushes ‘Conservative Case’ For Gay Marriage : NPR.

-Poliblogger

By ROD NORDLAND and ALISSA J. RUBIN

Published: March 25, 2013

BAGRAM, Afghanistan — The American military formally transferred all but “a small number” of the Afghan prisoners at the Bagram Prison to the Afghan government on Monday in a ceremony that almost, but not quite, marked the end of the American involvement in the long-term detention of insurgents here.

The transfer, in which the Americans were ceding control to the Afghan government over which Taliban will be released, was a choice of long-term influence in Afghanistan — by trying to improve the chances of negotiating an American presence here after 2014 — over holding firm in a thorny disagreement.

The Bagram commander, Gen. Ghulam Farouk Barakzai, said that the Americans had given the Afghans control of a total of 4,000 prisoners in the last year since the transfer began but that a small number still remained in American custody. He would not say how many or for how long they might be held by the Americans.

If recent history is any guide, the decisions the Afghans make on Taliban releases after taking control are not likely to reassure the American military.

Among those released in recent years by Afghan officials or Afghan courts were most of the 46 Taliban prisoners who had been returned from the Guantánamo Bay prison camp. One became the top insurgent commander in southern Afghanistan: Maulavi Abdul Qayum Zakir, whose real name is Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul. He was released from an Afghan prison in late 2008, just before the American troop surge was to start. Another was the suicide bomber who in December very nearly killed Asadullah Khalid, the head of the Afghan intelligence service. The attacker had previously been freed by a presidential pardon, according to officials of that agency.

Keenly aware of such cases, American military commanders had stubbornly insisted that they retain some control over decisions about releasing prisoners, which in turn led to a toxic, protracted dispute with the government of PresidentHamid Karzai.

Now, however, the Americans have given in, their eyes on a post-2014 security deal seen as critical to keeping insurgents from returning and keeping tabs on two of Afghanistan’s worrisome neighbors, Iran and Pakistan, officials said. Western and Afghan officials interviewed about the issue spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations. The handover ceremony came just hours before the new American secretary of state, John Kerry, arrived in Kabul for talks with President Karzai.

“It’s all part of the bilateral security agreement; it’s about a shift that’s going on in how the U.S. is looking at what’s important,” said one American official knowledgeable about detention issues. “We have to look at the larger picture: What’s the U.S. strategic interest here?”

The decision was said to have been eased in part by “private assurances” from Afghan officials not to release “enduring security threats,” as they call the most dangerous prisoners. They are believed to number no more than 50 among the nearly 4,000 prisoners at Bagram, in the sprawling prison compound connected to the American air base north of Kabul.

Since the transfer to the Afghans began last spring, they have released 1,376 of the prisoners, General Barakzai said. Those releases occurred when the Americans still had a veto and ran joint review boards with the Afghans to determine who could be released.

Even those earlier prison releases led to the return to the battlefield of some high-level Taliban figures, a senior Afghan military official said. According to the senior Afghan military officer, among those confirmed to have returned to the fight include Maulavi Said Khail, who is now a Taliban commander in Wardak Province; Maulavi Shaheer, who turned formerly peaceful Badakhshan Province into a new war zone, where 17 Afghan soldiers were killed in a single battle this month and 10 more taken hostage on Monday; and Maulavi Raouf, who has become one of several new commanders in Helmand Province, where the insurgents are trying to regain control as American surge forces have pulled out.

Afghan officials said the review boards will no longer exist and all prisoners at Bagram, present and future, will go straight into normal judicial proceedings. American officials, however, said they expected the Afghans to maintain review boards, but without American participation. The difference may be a semantic one, as Afghans expect teams of prosecutors to review which prisoners are released and which are prosecuted in court.

An American military official in Kabul insisted that the military has confidence that those insurgents whom the United States views as enduring security threats would not be released easily or quickly. “These people pose a threat to Afghan soldiers and Afghan civilians, too,” the official said. “We’re confident they will have appropriate measures in place to ensure dangerous detainees don’t pose a threat to Afghan and coalition forces.”

In the past, most releases of Taliban prisoners have occurred from Afghan prisons; only prisoners captured by the Americans are taken to Bagram. In addition, prisoners for whom criminal court cases can be brought have been routinely transferred from Bagram into the Afghan penal system.

Many of those have been released by the courts, or through presidential pardons. One recent example was Maulavi Dastager, who was released from Pul-e-Charki Prison and immediately rejoined the Taliban in Badghis Province, where he was responsible for an attack that killed 14 Afghan soldiers and policemen, according to a police commander in Badghis, Col. Amir Shah Naybzada. “The government is always making mistakes by releasing Taliban commanders who go right back to the insurgency,” he said.

In Kunar Province, a troubled area in eastern Afghanistan, Afghan intelligence officials gave the names of three Taliban fighters who were released in the past year and rejoined the fight in Narai District. One has since been recaptured.

Critics of Mr. Karzai were alarmed recently when he appointed a prominent cleric in Kabul, Maulavi Enayatulah Balegh, to review the cases of 700 mullahs and religious officials who are in Afghan prisons, mostly because of suspected insurgent activity. Known for his anti-American sentiments, Mr. Balegh recommended the release of hundreds of the Taliban clerics in a meeting earlier this month with Mr. Karzai.

In an interview, Mr. Balegh said he had determined that 100 to 150 of the imprisoned clerics were merely members of the Taliban but had not committed any crimes. Many of the others should be released as well, he said. “There are those who have served several years of their sentences; they need to be released,” he said. “Those who tried to carry out a bombing or an assassination but didn’t succeed, they need to be released. This is our goal: to empower the peace process.”

Mr. Balegh dismissed American concerns that released prisoners would return to the war. “We Afghans are the ones who face the most danger from these people who are released, not the Americans,” he said.

Opposition leaders in Afghanistan have complained that Mr. Karzai has repeatedly released high-level Taliban prisoners without getting anything from the Taliban in return, since they have so far refused to participate in peace talks with the Afghan government, dismissing it as a puppet of the Americans.

“What Karzai is doing is making random decisions on releasing the Taliban without getting any assurances from them,” saidAbdullah Abdullah, who ran against Mr. Karzai in the 2009 elections. “In most cases they have rejoined the battlefield.”

One of the most notorious such cases took place last year, when Afghan intelligence agents captured two would-be suicide bombers, both aged about 12. One of them, Nasibullah, was among a group of children who had been arrested the year before in an earlier attempted suicide bombing. Mr. Karzai publicly forgave and pardoned the youth.

Mr. Karzai has repeatedly made gestures to reach out to the Taliban even as he has undercut efforts by the international community to start talks with the insurgents separately, which the Taliban have favored. On Sunday, the Afghan Foreign Ministry announced that Mr. Karzai would travel later this week to Qatar, where he would discuss the possibility of that Gulf state’s serving as a site for the Taliban to open an office to be used in peace negotiations.

via Amid Fears of Releases, U.S. Cedes Prisons to Afghanistan – NYTimes.com.

By MELENA RYZIK

Published: March 24, 2013

Julieta Cervantes for The New York Times

It’s part of “Heard NY,” a site-specific performance by the Chicago artist Nick Cave, in collaboration with dancers from the Ailey School. Mr. Cave, known for his Soundsuits — costumelike sculptures that make noise as they move — has created the life-size horses out of colorful raffia. Each fits two dancers and rustles like a corn field when the herd “grazes” in Vanderbilt Hall or suddenly breaks into choreography, set to live percussion, steps from the main concourse.

The idea was to produce a dreamlike vision worth stopping for, Mr. Cave said, as people are rushing through the terminal. “You’re stopped in your tracks,” he said, “and then you do get on the train and you get home. How do you share this, how do you describe — just imagine, coming into Grand Central and you run into 30 horses? That’s when it becomes this transformative moment.”

The piece, a production of the public arts group Creative Time and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Arts for Transit program, has been in development for over a year. It is to include two performances daily, and the Soundsuits will be on view to the public as sculptures when they’re not galloping across the floor. This is Mr. Cave’s first public arts project in New York.

Nato Thompson, chief curator of Creative Time, said it fit with the group’s mission to make arresting art in unexpected places.

“Grand Central is an iconic public space not only for New Yorkers but for the world,” he said.  “We wanted something magical and family friendly that captured the spirit of a city on the move.”

On Saturday Mr. Cave and his choreographer, William Gill, met their dancers for the first time and began auditioning them to be either the front or the back of a horse. Don’t be disappointed if you’re the back, Mr. Cave advised. “Don’t think technique, think character,” Mr. Gill said. Mr. Cave added, “Don’t even think horse,” as the students sashayed and rolled across an Ailey studio.

They were looking for dancers who could bring personality to the suits. “Do you want to be a stallion, or do you want to be a lazy horse, a horse that just sort of trots?” Mr. Cave asked.

A dancer in a green T-shirt looked to his partner. “I think we should be aloof,” he whispered, “the Eeyore of the group.”

On Sunday they had their first performance, a public dress rehearsal in Grand Central. Passers-by stopped to gawk, cameraphones aloft, as the horses — heads standing eight feet high, rears bent over, yogalike — shimmied around a makeshift paddock in Vanderbilt Hall. One kicked up a little leg: a city pony, playing to the crowd.

‘Heard NY’ Brings Dancing Horses to Grand Central Terminal – NYTimes.com.

‘Planetarium’ at Brooklyn Academy of Music

By CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM

Published: March 24, 2013

 

Ed Lefkowicz

Planetarium at the Brooklyn Academy of Music featured songs composed by Nico Muhly, far left; Sufjan Stevens, center; and Bryce Dessner, playing guitar at right, backed by a string quartet and trombone septet.

I was reminded of something Ms. Sirota once told me in an interview: “When it comes to classical musicians, let’s be honest. We all secretly want to be rock stars.” Playing in front of a packed, young crowd she certainly seemed to be getting her wish — and this even before the laser show.

“Planetarium” is a grand, inspired and sometimes chaotic multimedia spectacle fronted by Mr. Stevens along with Bryce Dessner, the guitarist of the indie rock band the National, and the composer Nico Muhly. It came to Brooklyn after performances last year at the Barbican in London; the Muziekgebouw Frits Philips in Eindhoven, the Netherlands; and the Sydney Opera House. Those three institutions had commissioned a work that would be both a musical exploration of the solar system and an experiment in genre-crossing collaboration.

The first half featured works for string quartet, beginning with Mr. Dessner’s “Little Blue Something,” which used subtle electronic processing and extended technique to produce unusual sounds, from chalky to hollow. Mr. Muhly’s eight-movement “Diacritical Marks” contained exquisite musical miniatures, each playing with the flow and interruption of motion and emotion. Four selections from Mr. Stevens’s song cycle “Run Rabbit Run” were vividly characterized and ended in the rocklike abandon of “Year of the Boar.”

For the second act the curtain rose on a giant orb hung above the darkened stage. Projected onto it were striking video images by Deborah Johnson, the show’s production designer: scratchy charcoal animations, abstract blobs of pigments dissolving in liquid; hypnotic images from NASA’s Cassini mission. Underneath, Mr. Stevens had taken up residence at a set of controls with which he altered the sound of his voice as he sang a cycle of 11 songs, each devoted to a heavenly body — even Pluto, included, the program explained, “out of pity.”

To one side Mr. Muhly presided over a piano and a set of keyboards; opposite him was Mr. Dessner with his electric guitar. The amped-up string quartet, the drummer James McAlister and a trombone septet brought up the rear.

It was difficult to make out the words, and Mr. Stevens sang with a vulnerable, breathless tone that toggled between a clear upper and a raw lower register. Still, each song clearly inhabited its own cosmos of mood, color and momentum, all amplified by the often ingenious orchestration. Mars drew a flamboyant guitar solo from Mr. Dessner. The assembled might of all seven trombones added heavy metal to Mercury, proving that when classical musicians play rock, they help redefine it too.

‘Planetarium’ at Brooklyn Academy of Music – NYTimes.com.

Mosh Pit Math: Physicists Analyze Rowdy Crowd : NPR.

Physics and heavy metal don’t seem to have a lot in common, but Matt Bierbaum and Jesse Silverberg have found a connection. Both are graduate students at Cornell University. They’re also metal heads who enjoy going to concerts and hurling themselves into mosh pits full of like-minded fans.

About five years ago Silverberg took his girlfriend to her first gig. “Usually I would jump in the mosh pit,” he says. “But this time I wanted her to be safe and have a good time, so we stayed out on the side and watched things from there.”

While he was watching, he realized that the motion of people in a mosh pit looks kind of like molecules moving in a gas.

“It was basically just this random mess of collisions, which is essentially how you want to think about the gas in the air that we breathe,” he says.

Physicists have worked out the basic rules that describe this kind of motion, so Bierbaum and Silverberg decided to look for the rules of motion in moshing. They went to concerts and studied videos from YouTube. Silverberg emphasizes that no tax dollars went toward buying concert tickets — the study is a labor of love.

Using just a few variables, like how fast people moved and how dense the crowd was, Bierbaum and Silverberg created a mathematical model that they presented at this week’s March meeting of the American Physical Society. Using a mixture of simulated moshers and standing fans, they could reproduce mosh pits, circle pits and other common collective motions that take place at metal concerts. You can try some simulations for yourself in their mosh pit simulator below.

It’s not just the metal heads that obey these kinds of basic mathematical rules, says Andreas Bausch, a researcher at the Munich Technical University in Germany. Flocks of birds and schools of fish do similar things. So do car drivers. Now concertgoers can be added to the list, he told NPR in an email. “This is indeed cool stuff.”

The new mosh pit research could be interesting for another reason. In emergencies people panic, and the movement rules they follow change. Mosh pits might provide clues about the new rules.

“We hope that this will provide a lens into looking at other extreme situations such as riots and protests and escape panic,” Bierbaum says.

They plan to continue their research, while rocking on.