Anyone who's connected enough to be on the internet and reading blogs (especially an obscure one like mine) no doubt is already aware of the ongoing crisis in Haiti spawned by the recent earthquake. Right now the low-end estimate of the death toll is around 45,000, with countless people wounded and even more people displaced and without adequate food and clean water. Keep in mind that even in the best of times Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and has essentially no meaningful disaster-relief infrastructure. Right now it's a living hell.
As humanists, and more importantly as human beings, we have a duty to help those in need. If you've got the means to do so, I urge you to make a donation to either Doctors Without Borders or the Red Cross. I can assure you that it's well worth it, even if you can only afford to give a little. Both of these organizations do a lot of good in the world, and the aid they give isn't predicated on any sort of religious or political conversion on the part of the recipients. If you haven't supported either of these groups in the past, today is the perfect day to start.
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Quote Mining in the News...
The Huffington Post frankly tends to be just as sensationalistic as the right-of-center blogs* and thus I can't really say I'm a huge fan, but I ran into this post today and thought it was pretty interesting. It highlights a video contrasting edited down news footage from Fox News with longer clips of the same events as reported on other news stations. It's a good reminder of how snipping a few seconds off the beginning or end of a quote can utterly change its meaning.
*Remember this boner of an article from last year when the Huffington Post helped give traction to a rumor from the Daily Kos that Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol was actually the mother of Palin's down syndrome child Trig?
*Remember this boner of an article from last year when the Huffington Post helped give traction to a rumor from the Daily Kos that Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol was actually the mother of Palin's down syndrome child Trig?
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Tragedy in Florida
Did anyone else see this? Apparently a Florida woman publicly murdered her teenage son and then committed suicide this weekend because she thought she was the Antichrist and had to destroy herself for the good of the world. Marie Moore shot her son in the back of the head with a pistol while the pair was enjoying some target practice at an indoor gun range. Immediately thereafter she shot herself. A recording that Moore left to her boyfriend included a rambling and bizarre explanation that she needed to kill the boy in order to "send him to heaven" and so that her own death would begin "a thousand years of peace on earth".
The MSNBC article says that Moore was mentally ill* and have been involuntarily committed a few years ago, which makes it all the more bizarre that she was able to rent a gun at a gun range. Apparently she had to fill out a set of forms to the effect of "Are you crazy? Yes/No" in order to use the gun range, but there was no way for the company, Shoot Straight, to verify the answers. That's freakin' ridiculous. Hell, I had to jump through more hoops than that to get a Hollywood Video card.
If you follow the link in the opening sentence of this post you'll also have the opportunity to listen to one of Moore's recordings, and frankly it's pretty chilling. She talks about how she "wants everyone to turn to God and stick with God" and how the murder/suicide she was planning would bring about this end. This is a ghastly situation, especially with the spate of other religiously-motivated shootings recently. To be fair, this woman was obviously unstable to begin with, but her apocalyptic religion did her, and her son, no favors.
*As if that weren't obvious.
The MSNBC article says that Moore was mentally ill* and have been involuntarily committed a few years ago, which makes it all the more bizarre that she was able to rent a gun at a gun range. Apparently she had to fill out a set of forms to the effect of "Are you crazy? Yes/No" in order to use the gun range, but there was no way for the company, Shoot Straight, to verify the answers. That's freakin' ridiculous. Hell, I had to jump through more hoops than that to get a Hollywood Video card.
If you follow the link in the opening sentence of this post you'll also have the opportunity to listen to one of Moore's recordings, and frankly it's pretty chilling. She talks about how she "wants everyone to turn to God and stick with God" and how the murder/suicide she was planning would bring about this end. This is a ghastly situation, especially with the spate of other religiously-motivated shootings recently. To be fair, this woman was obviously unstable to begin with, but her apocalyptic religion did her, and her son, no favors.
*As if that weren't obvious.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Shock: Skinhead Morons Hate Obama...
Well, I can't say I'm really surprised at this one: MSNBC is reporting that the Feds have broken up a plot by a pair of neo-nazi mouth-breathers to assassinate Barack Obama. Basically Dan Cowart and Paul Schlesselman wanted to kill 88 black folks and then murder Obama by...riding at him in a car while shooting out of the windows and wearing white tuxedos and tophats...
You know...since Barack Obama always just stands out in the middle of the road...
Anyway, these dingleshits made just enough noise to get themselves arrested. (They got caught planning a robbery to finance the attack - A robbery which, depsite their repeated vows to "die trying" in their "mission", was thwarted when they saw a dog nearby and fled to Cowart's Grandma's house.) Said one law enforcement official:
*By the way, some my link to Encyclopedia Dramatica goes to a page that uses dirty words...Can't imagine why anyone reading this blog would care, but you've been warned.
You know...since Barack Obama always just stands out in the middle of the road...
Anyway, these dingleshits made just enough noise to get themselves arrested. (They got caught planning a robbery to finance the attack - A robbery which, depsite their repeated vows to "die trying" in their "mission", was thwarted when they saw a dog nearby and fled to Cowart's Grandma's house.) Said one law enforcement official:
We take this very, very seriously but we see no evidence these guys have the ability or the wherewithal to pull off what they say they wanted to do.Fucking morons.
*By the way, some my link to Encyclopedia Dramatica goes to a page that uses dirty words...Can't imagine why anyone reading this blog would care, but you've been warned.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Odds and Ends from Skippy's Very Long Week...
Okay, so this week there have been two huge Supreme Court decisions (Briefly: Can you execute people for crimes not involving a murder? No. Do American citizens have a Constitutional right to own handguns? Yes.), Barack Obama and James Dobson have been arguing over whether or not the Old Testament applies to Christians, Ray Comfort has informed his readers that God is throwing lightning at California for legalizing gay marriage, and North Korea is planning to implode parts of its own Yongbyon nuclear complex to comply with international pressures regarding its nuclear program. It 's been an amazing news week! So where the hell have I been this whole time?
Your pal Skippy has spent the entire week engaged in two different pursuits, one tedious, the other maddening. Firstly, I decided over the weekend that I was going to make a Microsoft Works database of all my DVDs. I should have known that this was a fool's errand because the only thing I own that's bigger than my book collection is my movie collection, but I'm very, very bad at estimating numbers. Anything indistinct grouping of objects that seems to be more than 10 or so gets counted in my mind as "around 20". My girlfriend and I own 9 narrow floor shelves full of DVDs, so I was banking on around 180 entries in my database. Little did I suspect that each of those shelves actually holds about 75 DVDs, and I also didn't take into account how many of those DVDs have more than one movie on them. (Hint: Lots.) I can prune out a lot of my girlfriend's movies that I don't really care about (Not planning on watching the Dungeons and Dragons movie any time soon...) and some of those shelves have a number of old VHS tapes on them that I needn't count, but I still probably have around 250 films left to key in even after having worked on this since Saturday evening. I guess there's a sense in which it's obscene to complain about having too much awesome stuff, but I think I may have written a check that my data entry skills can't cash.*
Secondly, and much more seriously, I've been dealing with a potential abuse case at work. HIPAA regulations prevent me from discussing anything specific on here, but suffice to say that trying to activate the Adult Protective System in Indiana is a task of unparalleled frustration. I'd compare it to trying to use a teddy bear to hammer a piece of cooked spaghetti through a rock. Indiana has a branch of bureaucracy called the Bureau of Quality Improvement Services, which sounds like a PR organization but which actually is in charge of investigation abuse reports filed by state-affiliated social services agencies. The problem is that BQIS is understaffed and is geared more towards dealing with things like deaths and sexual abuse cases than issues of unexplained bruising. A report filed to them for anything less than a bloody, on-camera decapitation will just get lost in a the flotsam and jetsam of paperwork.
Indiana Adult Protective Services on the other hand is willing to work on lower key sorts of cases, so a report is being filed with them as well. The problem with APS, however, is that they are unwilling to remove any individual from a home against their will unless there's an imminent danger of death. The occasional smacking around doesn't cut it as grounds for forcibly removing an individual who is their own guardian from a threatening home situation, and in Indiana you could be a severed twitching foot hooked up to a car battery and still be considered your own guardian. The matter is further complicated by the suspected victim, who is very frightened of being placed in a group living facility (the suspected abuser involved has filled this individual's head with tales of how everyone in group homes is abused or tortured) and is thus unwilling to let my colleagues and I secure proper documentation of the injuries. Though I've had similar experiences before, each time something like this comes up and it seems as if the legal machinery fails to do its job I find myself very put off and disillusioned.
Although I never thought it could happen, this week I just haven't been able to get in the mood to be snarky. Hopefully I'll be back on my game in a few days.
*I've also been brought face to face with the fact that approximately 15% of my movies fit under the "cannibal zombie" sub-genre.
Your pal Skippy has spent the entire week engaged in two different pursuits, one tedious, the other maddening. Firstly, I decided over the weekend that I was going to make a Microsoft Works database of all my DVDs. I should have known that this was a fool's errand because the only thing I own that's bigger than my book collection is my movie collection, but I'm very, very bad at estimating numbers. Anything indistinct grouping of objects that seems to be more than 10 or so gets counted in my mind as "around 20". My girlfriend and I own 9 narrow floor shelves full of DVDs, so I was banking on around 180 entries in my database. Little did I suspect that each of those shelves actually holds about 75 DVDs, and I also didn't take into account how many of those DVDs have more than one movie on them. (Hint: Lots.) I can prune out a lot of my girlfriend's movies that I don't really care about (Not planning on watching the Dungeons and Dragons movie any time soon...) and some of those shelves have a number of old VHS tapes on them that I needn't count, but I still probably have around 250 films left to key in even after having worked on this since Saturday evening. I guess there's a sense in which it's obscene to complain about having too much awesome stuff, but I think I may have written a check that my data entry skills can't cash.*
Secondly, and much more seriously, I've been dealing with a potential abuse case at work. HIPAA regulations prevent me from discussing anything specific on here, but suffice to say that trying to activate the Adult Protective System in Indiana is a task of unparalleled frustration. I'd compare it to trying to use a teddy bear to hammer a piece of cooked spaghetti through a rock. Indiana has a branch of bureaucracy called the Bureau of Quality Improvement Services, which sounds like a PR organization but which actually is in charge of investigation abuse reports filed by state-affiliated social services agencies. The problem is that BQIS is understaffed and is geared more towards dealing with things like deaths and sexual abuse cases than issues of unexplained bruising. A report filed to them for anything less than a bloody, on-camera decapitation will just get lost in a the flotsam and jetsam of paperwork.
Indiana Adult Protective Services on the other hand is willing to work on lower key sorts of cases, so a report is being filed with them as well. The problem with APS, however, is that they are unwilling to remove any individual from a home against their will unless there's an imminent danger of death. The occasional smacking around doesn't cut it as grounds for forcibly removing an individual who is their own guardian from a threatening home situation, and in Indiana you could be a severed twitching foot hooked up to a car battery and still be considered your own guardian. The matter is further complicated by the suspected victim, who is very frightened of being placed in a group living facility (the suspected abuser involved has filled this individual's head with tales of how everyone in group homes is abused or tortured) and is thus unwilling to let my colleagues and I secure proper documentation of the injuries. Though I've had similar experiences before, each time something like this comes up and it seems as if the legal machinery fails to do its job I find myself very put off and disillusioned.
Although I never thought it could happen, this week I just haven't been able to get in the mood to be snarky. Hopefully I'll be back on my game in a few days.
*I've also been brought face to face with the fact that approximately 15% of my movies fit under the "cannibal zombie" sub-genre.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Slow news day in Japan...
Well, it's good to know that the Japanese really do have a plan for dealing with aliens and Godzilla. Giant monsters and zombies are two subjects that have spawned more elaborate planning from myself and my friends than almost anything else, and it's good, in kind of a sad way, to know that foreign heads of government have similar concerns.
FYI, the reason there's any question at all as to whether or not the Japanese could preemptively fire upon Godzilla is the good ol' postwar MacArthur Constitution, which abolished Japan's military and replaced it with a "self-defense force". (That's why when you watch Godzilla movies all the tanks say JSDF on them.) War is, in all seriousness, unconstitutional in Japan, and the country is prohibited from taking aggressive action on the battlefield. Even Japanese forces deployed in foreign lands as part of UN peacekeeping groups can only fight to protect themselves, allied forces, civilians, and Red Cross personnel. However, this could be circumvented in the case of Godzilla by declaring him to be a "natural disaster", as Minister of Defense Shigeru Ishida explained to, I assume, a dumbstruck crowd of journalists over the weekend. If Godzilla were, to borrow a phrase, classified as an "enemy combatant", it would technically be illegal for the Japanese to attack him should he be, for example, simply hanging offshore near the nation's coastline but not actually attempting to come ashore or eat ships full of Red Cross volunteers.
There's actually been some talk in the Japanese Parliament lately about getting rid of the JSDF and replacing it with a proper army, mostly in response to concerns about North Koreas's nuclear ambitions. It remains to be seen if the Japanese have a contingency plan prepared in case Godzilla should attack the Korean Peninsula in search of radioactive fuel to power his nuclear metabolism.
FYI, the reason there's any question at all as to whether or not the Japanese could preemptively fire upon Godzilla is the good ol' postwar MacArthur Constitution, which abolished Japan's military and replaced it with a "self-defense force". (That's why when you watch Godzilla movies all the tanks say JSDF on them.) War is, in all seriousness, unconstitutional in Japan, and the country is prohibited from taking aggressive action on the battlefield. Even Japanese forces deployed in foreign lands as part of UN peacekeeping groups can only fight to protect themselves, allied forces, civilians, and Red Cross personnel. However, this could be circumvented in the case of Godzilla by declaring him to be a "natural disaster", as Minister of Defense Shigeru Ishida explained to, I assume, a dumbstruck crowd of journalists over the weekend. If Godzilla were, to borrow a phrase, classified as an "enemy combatant", it would technically be illegal for the Japanese to attack him should he be, for example, simply hanging offshore near the nation's coastline but not actually attempting to come ashore or eat ships full of Red Cross volunteers.
There's actually been some talk in the Japanese Parliament lately about getting rid of the JSDF and replacing it with a proper army, mostly in response to concerns about North Koreas's nuclear ambitions. It remains to be seen if the Japanese have a contingency plan prepared in case Godzilla should attack the Korean Peninsula in search of radioactive fuel to power his nuclear metabolism.
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