Real Think Tank: 28.02.10

February 28, 2010

Wilmington Police investigate bizarre hit and run

WILMINGTON, NC (WECT)- The Wilmington Police Department is investigating a bizarre hit-and-run traffic incident that left a man critically injured. The call was dispatched at about 6:30 p.m. Sunday evening.

A witness reported that a man ran out of a house in 100 block N. 31 ^stStreet and jumped onto a moving minivan. The minivan struck two parked trucks, throwing the man off the moving vehicle. The minivan left the scene. The victim, who appears to be in his 20's, has not yet been identified. He was transported to the New Hanover Regional Medical Center where he is in the ICU at this hour.

The minivan was located later this evening in another part of the city. The investigation is continuing. Anyone with information about this case is asked to call the Wilmington Police Department at 910-343-3600 and leave a message for Officer J. D. Smith. Anonymous tips may be submitted through Text-A-Tip. Enter Tip708 and the message and send to CRIMES (274637).

Mystery of Australian nuclear scientist's 'bizarre' disappearance

THOMAS HUNTER

March 1, 2010 - 2:25PM

Search for missing Aussie scientist

Canadian police have run out of leads in the search for missing Australian scientist Lachlan Cranswick, says lead investigator Darin Faris.

‘‘No hat. No boots. No gloves. Nothing.’’

Canadian police are mystified by the disappearance of an Australian nuclear scientist from a remote research facility in the country’s south-east.

Melbourne man Lachlan Cranswick, 41, went missing from Deep River, Ontario, 190 kilometres north-west of Canada’s capital, Ottawa, about five weeks ago.

Lachlan Cranswick went missing from the town of Deep River.

'Bizarre' disappearance ... Australian nuclear scientist Lachlan Cranswick has vanished without trace in Canada.

Investigators admit they have no idea what happened to him or where he is.

‘‘Every bit of information that we have received has been followed up on. We’re at the stage now where we have no new information, we have no leads, no tips and no explanations whatsoever,’’ lead investigator Darin Faris, of the Deep River Police Service, said.

Mr Cranswick moved to Deep River, a town of 4200 people, to start work at the facility seven years ago.

The reactor, which was used in the Manhattan Project during World War II and is home to about 2700 employees, is both a research site and production centre for medical radioisotopes.

On the question of foul play, Officer Faris said a thorough search of Mr Cranswick’s computer records, storage devices, laptop and house uncovered ‘‘nothing that points to him either looking at suicide or anybody that would like to do harm to him’’.

‘‘This guy’s got more [gigabytes] of storage device than anybody I’ve ever seen and we found nothing ... [W]e’ve got no evidence that he wanted to take his own life or somebody wanted to take it for him,’’ he said.

‘‘If he went out in thick pair of boots, a heavy coat, fur hat and probably gloves and was hit by a car on the street and you wanted to take the body, would you be smart enough to think, ‘Oh my god, I’ve got to get him out of here’, and look for the hat that came off his head or the boots that came off his feet? It’s highly unlikely you’d look for the hat.

‘‘Or if you’re in the bush and the wolves and coyotes got to you and physically ate you, they’re not going to eat your coat or your boots.

‘‘We found nothing. We didn’t find a hat. We didn’t find a glove. We didn’t find boots. We found nothing. That’s the part that’s puzzling us.’’

Chris Knight, president of the Deep River Curling and Squash Club and the person who found Mr Cranswick was missing, said the scientist was a committed, long-term member of the club executive.

He said he and Mr Cranswick had been in close contact over many years and there was nothing in his recent behaviour or frame of mind that foreshadowed his disappearance.

‘‘That’s the part that really mystifies all of us who knew him well,’’ Mr Knight told The Age. ‘‘There were no signs that there was anything strange going on or that he wasn’t up to the tasks that he normally performed.’’

He said Mr Cranswick worked at a function at the curling club the weekend before his disappearance and emailed Mr Knight the following day to say everything went well.

He then deposited the money in the bank on Monday, but failed to show up for a curling meeting at the end of the week.

‘‘That’s when I went to the house to find it unlocked and nobody there. I then rang the police,’’ Mr Knight said.

‘‘I went out on a snowmobile on that first night to look along ski trails and there were just no signs. In fact, police brought in sniffer dogs to try and find the scent and they didn’t come up with anything either.’’

Rupert Cranswick, Lachlan’s Melbourne-based brother, spent two weeks in Deep River speaking to residents and claims police wasted time searching the surrounding forests and ski trails.

He said Mr Cranswick, who was last seen on Monday, January 18, after taking the company bus back into town and then walking home, would never have gone hiking at night during winter.

His car was still in the garage, his keys, wallet and passport had not been stolen, nor was his home disturbed.

"It just looks like he went to put out his bins and he vanished from there," Rupert said.

"I talked to lots of the locals there and they think something extraordinary happened to him.

"He loved his work. He lived for his work there. He loved it so much he didn’t want to come back to Australia.

‘‘It’s just such a strange thing. It’s like he’s been taken off the planet.’’

However, Mr Knight said it was not unusual for Mr Cranswick to be out of contact for a number of days, adding that the reactor where he worked was being repaired.

‘‘With the reactor down, it’s not unusual for those guys to take a few days off and do other things. I understand he had vacation leave and needed to use some up.’’

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was providing assistance to Canadian authorities.

Cop Walks Into a Bar And...Arrests You. For Having a Drink.

They say everything's bigger in Texas, and that includes absurdity in law enforcement. Most states and towns have public intoxication laws that allow peace officers to pick up the drunk and disorderly. But in the Lone Star State, the nation's broadest PI law lets cops go virtually anywhere and arrest anyone for drunkenness—even if they're quietly nursing a beer in a bar.

State courts have not only upheld the practice but expanded the definition of public intoxication to cover pretty much any situation, says Robert Guest, a criminal defense attorney in Dallas. "Having no standard allows the police to arrest whoever pisses them off and call it PI," he says, adding, "If you have a violent, homophobic, or just an asshole of a cop and you give him the arbitrary power to arrest anyone for PI, you can expect violent, homophobic, and asshole-ic behavior."

LATE ON A BALMY Saturday night last June, six Fort Worth cops and two officers from the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission went looking for trouble. They had just raided two Hispanic bars in an industrial stretch of town and nine detainees now sat in the paddy wagon (pdf), hands bound with plastic ties. The rest of the city's bars would soon shut down. It seemed like the night was over, except for the paperwork. Then Sergeant Richard Morris had an idea. "Hey," he said. "Let's go to the Rainbow Lounge."

A half-dozen police cruisers, an unmarked sedan, and the prisoner van slid to a stop in front of the Rainbow Lounge, Fort Worth's newest gay club, at about 1:30 a.m. on June 28, 2009—40 years, almost down to the minute, after New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn with billy clubs and bullhorns. Inside the bar, the officers fanned out, grabbing and arresting six patrons for public intoxication. Benjamin Guttery, a 24-year-old Army vet, says an officer told him to put down his drink, then "bulldozed" him through the crowd to the paddy wagon but then let him go. "I'm 6'8", 250 pounds, and I had just finished my second drink," Guttery told a local reporter. "I might have had enough to have a loose tongue, but not a loose walk or anything like that." Another man alleges that he was slammed against a wall, elbowed, and fell on the ground, landing him in intensive care for a week with bleeding in his brain. He was charged with public intoxication and assault.

Arrested for drinking in a bar? Sounds like the ultimate catch-22. Since 2006, when Texas overtook California as the state with the most drunk-driving fatalities, cops and a beefed-up task force from the state Alcoholic Beverage Commission have used a 1993 law as a pretext to enter any bar and arrest its patrons on the spot. The public intoxication standard, backed by theTexas-based Mothers Against Drunk Driving, is so broad that you can be arrested on just a police officer's hunch, without being given a Breathalyzer or field sobriety test. State courts have not only upheld the practice but expanded the definition of public intoxication to cover pretty much any situation, says Robert Guest, a criminal defense attorney in Dallas. "Having no standard allows the police to arrest whoever pisses them off and call it PI," he says, adding, "If you have a violent, homophobic, or just an asshole of a cop and you give him the arbitrary power to arrest anyone for PI, you can expect violent, homophobic, and asshole-ic behavior."

For some officers, PI has provided a ready-made reason for detaining minorities. A Houston defense attorney, who asks to be unnamed since he specializes in misdemeanors such as PI, puts it this way: "If you're brown and you're around—you're going down." Nick Novello, a 27-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department, blew the whistle on three colleagues who he claims filled their arrest quotas by picking up people, mostly minorities, for PI. "They were illegally arrested," Novello says. "It's an absolute perversion." (Two were removed from the force.)

According to a recent report by sociology and law professors at the University of California-Berkeley, the Dallas suburb of Irving has used "discretionary" public intoxication arrests to fish for undocumented immigrants. After partnering with federal immigration officials in 2006 to check local prisoners' residency status, Irving police increased the number of Latinos they nicked for PI and other Class C misdemeanors by 150 percent, while arrests of whites and African Americans for those offenses fell. The Mexican consul issued an advisory telling migrants to avoid Irving. "In this city, one has to be extra careful," he told a Spanish-language newspaper. "They were clearly choosing to bring more Hispanics into jail," says Aarti Kohli, coauthor of the Berkeley study. But the feds and local officials hailed the PI sweeps as a victory. Immigration "is expanding this program, saying, 'Isn't this great?'" Kohli says. "But the question they're not asking is: How are these people getting put into jail?"

After community activists took to the streets and airwaves, Irving's arrest rate for Hispanics plummeted. (Dallas and Irving are no longer part of the federal program.) In Fort Worth, protests over the Rainbow Lounge raid elicited a quick apology from the police chief and promises to review the PI policy. But the arrests have continued elsewhere, and no one is targeting the public intoxication law itself. Many people don't care, Novello says, "because they can't vicariously experience this injustice." The Houston attorney puts it more bluntly. "As long as police are going out there fucking with the blacks and the Mexicans, until it hits the people with the power, they won't care."

The teenage girl who is allergic to WATER

Teenager Ashleigh Morris can't go swimming, soak in a hot bath or enjoy a shower after a stressful day's work - she's allergic to water.

Even sweating brings the 19-year-old out in a painful rash.

Ashleigh, from Melbourne, Australia, is allergic to water of any temperature, a condition she's lived with since she was 14.

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ashleigh water

Ashleigh, 19, has been allergic to water for five years

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She suffers from an extremely rare skin disorder called Aquagenic Urticaria - so unusual that only a handful of cases are documented worldwide.

When Ashleigh gets wet her body explodes in sore, itchy red lumps that take about two hours to ease.

She has to wash. But showering is a painful experience and she can only do it for a minute at a time.

These brief showers are the only contact Ashleigh has with water. The one thing she doesn't miss is the washing up.

"People find it hard to believe, they say things like 'Oh my god, how do you wash.

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The rash Ashleigh gets after coming into contact with water is MORE painful than it looks

"That makes me feel dirty, but I consider myself a very clean person," she said.

Most of us take showering for granted but for Ashleigh it's a painful endurance that often reduces her to tears.

"Although my rash is unsightly, and often looks like I'm diseased, the feeling is so much worse than it looks," she said.

"I can't go anywhere for about two hours afterwards because it's so severe.

"There's been many occasions where I've been so itchy, I've made myself bleed from scratching."

Away from water pretty Ashleigh appears like any other healthy teenager.

She leads a busy life studying Journalism and Public Relations at university and working in an office.

But if she gets wet she attracts unwanted attention.

"People stare at me in the street," said Ashleigh who lives with her mum Louise Miller, 42.

"After a shower I stay at home until it goes away, that frees me of the burden of having to explain."

Ashleigh spends a lot of time explaining her condition because few people have heard of it. Most doctors and dermatologists have never seen a case of it. "Many people don't even believe me when I tell them," said Ashleigh, who hardly believed it herself at first.

She developed the condition five years ago after an acute case of tonsillitis. She was prescribed a heavy dose of penicillin that rid her of the tonsillitis but left her with another problem.

"I suddenly started getting a rash after I showered or swam," says Ashleigh who used to swim regularly and spend a lot of time at the beach.

"I tried to ignore it but it got progressively worse so I went to see a dermatologist."

Ashleigh's dermatologist, Professor Rodney Sinclair, told her the penicillin had altered the histamine levels in her body and caused the Aquagenic Urticaria to occur.

There is no cure and no successful treatment for the condition so the gravity of the situation began to dawn on the 14-year-old Ashleigh.

"I was in disbelief for a while, but I soon realised how serious it was.

"I cried for a few hours, then picked myself up, and kept going. I realised it was something I had to live with," she says.

So Ashleigh found ways to avoid water - she stopped doing sports and anything that made her sweat.

She makes sure she stays in air-conditioned places and always has an umbrella in her car. Her family and boyfriend of three years, Adam, 23, are very supportive but her condition makes intimate moments with her Adam a little difficult.

"We have to sleep with a sheet between us at night, and I can't go near him if he's sweaty," said Ashleigh.

Even the experts seem a little vague about Aquagenic Urticaria.

Dermatologists agree there's an association with elevated blood histamine levels, but there are other processes at work since antihistamine drugs often provide no relief at all.

Nina Goad of the British Association of Dermatologists says: "There isn't a wealth of information about Aquagenic Urticaria because it's extremely rare.

"We're not sure how many cases there are in the world and we do not yet fully understand the precise mechanisms that trigger the weals."

Cornwall's bizarre clifftop labyrinth A visit to the 'crop circle with a Celtic twist'

The 'mysterious sevenfold labyrinth'

The 'mysterious sevenfold labyrinth' Photograph: Emily Whitfield-Wicks / Western Morning News/Western Morning News / South West Media Group

The reward for any walker making the calf-busting climb up the coastal footpath from the popular Cornish fishing port of Looe to the village of Seaton is the view over to St George's Island, which, according to local legend, was a stopping point for Joseph of Arimathea and his nephew Jesus on their way to Glastonbury. (Not the festival, alas, but the site of the future abbey.) But now ramblers have a new attraction to give them a pause for reflection and a welcome chance to gather their breath – a "sevenfold labyrinth".

Caroline Petherick, a local landowner who describes herself as a "wordsmith", has spent the past year designing and constructing what the local press is calling a "crop circle with a Celtic twist". After being inspired by a similar design she'd seen at Tintagel on the north coast ofCornwall, Petherick decided to plant her spade on a patch of her land adjacent to the coastal footpath last summer and, with the help of some friends, dig out a 60ft-wide spiral pattern said to originate from Palaeolithic times. It took two days to move the 14 tonnes of soil and grass and has cost Petherick about £500 to build.

She doesn't ask for payment from the walkers visiting it, but has left a tip-box beside some laminated posters explaining the pattern's symbolism, history and ability to connect with the body's "seven major chakras".

Petherick, a keen dowser, says she found the exact location for the labyrinth's quartz-and-slate standing stone by using her rods to determine an intersection of two "energy lines". "I'd heard you should aim to plant a stone with 'positive intent'," she says. "I'd also heard that planting it demands a blood sacrifice. It just so happens that my dog killed a vole and dropped it into the hole we'd dug just as we were about to lower the stone into the ground."

Her main headache is going to be keeping it free of weeds without the use of any weedkiller. But perhaps the most obvious question asked by any unsuspecting walker stumbling across the labyrinth will be "why?".

"You can go and sit there and realise the earth isn't such a bad place after all," she says. "It's just a gentle pleasure for people to enjoy. I live in a phenomenally beautiful place and I wanted to share it somehow."

Alarming figures show the number of New Zealanders that died at the hands of a family member doubled in the last year.

Figures released by the Family Violence Death Review Committee show 41 people lost their lives to domestic violence last year, compared to the 19 deaths reported to police in 2008.

Sixteen of the 41 were children.

For the Sake of our Children chairman John Sax says the figures are appalling.

He says when we see children murdered it is the ugliest form of abuse because they are our future and the very people we should be protecting.

He says serious questions need to be asked about the direction of social policy, because domestic violence is so prevalent in our society

Sax says there needs to be a holistic approach to family violence, with a big focus on trying to keep children with their immediate family where possible.

No more labels except "human being"

via ExChristian.Net -- encouraging ex-Christians by noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) on 2/25/10

By Ex-paulist --
Yes, I am a recovering human being. Why do I say this? Simple, I was born into this world as a human being. Beyond that semantically driven statement lays the fact that all of us are merely mammals.

When I was a child, the church instilled fear and hatred in me. The world was a dark and terrible place! Jesus would be returning at any moment. The Devil and his minions lurked around every corner. “Mother, I thought the earth was young?” I would observe as the history channel explained that many people disagreed. “Do not ever question the Lord young man!” This was typical in my home and the church.
One day I realized something. My faith was sinful, vile, and dirty. My faith was nothing more than a reflection in the mirror. Legalistic Christian had a negative and damning view of god. The liberal Christians took a salad bar approach, and made scripture fit any situation. “What that about the speed of light from distant stars you ask?” Well son, Jesus caused the light to travel faster. I was kept in an abysmal state of ignorance.
I am a human being. I will say it again. I am a human being!! I am so happy to be free. I than began preaching this nonsense to all my friends, who I thought would be tortured endlessly. As I grew older something did not feel right. What was I doing to myself and the others around me!? Then a thought crept into my mind and shocked me. I learned how to talk by placing sounds to mental pictures! Does the term Christianity even mean anything? Are the sounds and vocalizations of the pastor’s valuable in any sense? I began to think and evaluate my delusion. As chance would have it, my friend lent me a copy of Quest for Fire. I was shocked. Early man did not have complex marriage ceremonies or ideas about gods. They were not worried about cutting the throats of animals and dripping blood into a fire so god could smell the delicious odor. Our earliest prehistoric ancestors had one motivation and driving force -- survival.
What struck me were the differences in what I had been taught. Far from being led by god, early man eked out a miserable and difficult existence. On the one hand, it was brutal to watch. Sticks, stones, and biting were weapons. But then it hit me. Is it more likely that we survived on our own? Did we evolve over time along with nature, the environment and learning? Or did god magically create us?
I than thought of my emotions. It made sense that anger, jealousy, and violence would help early man survive. I realized that these skills are why I am alive and typing. I kept these blasphemous ideas in my head for a couple of years. What a strange feeling to contemplate, that the god of the bible was a reflection of the hate, anger, and jealousy of those who wrote it.
Eventually, I decided that I would research human origins until I found the answers I was never told. Eventually, I came to realize that I am no different than the grass. I am part of nature, and that is it.
Now, labels seemed ridiculous and immature.
You see Christianity was the most convenient system of control ever devised in history. No matter how vile god acts, he is always right. No matter what science and research show, the Bible trumps it. If you dare question the Lord, than he has a place for you to go. This place is filled with more pain and suffering than Jesus could have ever suffered from that silly so-called sacrifice.

So here it is my friends -- this needs to be done.
I am a recovering human being that has dropped the labels we have been accustomed to. I am not an atheist or agnostic or non-theist. I am a human being, living a happy and productive life. When people ask me “What are you,” I simply smile and say that I am a human being. Religion has taken the beauty out of our humanness, nakedness, expression, sexuality, and turned it into a vile neurosis.
Like all drug addicts and alcoholics, part of the process is admitting your mistakes. Here is my confession to all of you reading this.
I am terribly sorry to all the gay and lesbian people who I so cruelly dismissed as sick and evil. It pains me to think that I actually was taught to look forward to these people going to hell. I want to apologize to all the people from my previous deluded state who I rejected as friends because they were not sharing my delusion. To all the people I routinely judged, please forgive my ignorance.
You see, the biggest lie of Christianity, is that it promotes love. Let’s think of the language used: Sinner, wicked, vile, abomination, hell, suffering, pain, pestilence, war, annihilate, utterly destroy, vomit you out of my mouth, weeping, grinding, and gnashing of teeth. I am so stunned and ashamed, that I actually viewed fellow human beings in this manner.
And what a cop-out my attitude was!! When I sinned, I was a fallible man in need of forgiveness. When non-believing humans supposedly sinned, they needed Jesus badly. They were lost. It is no wonder that unrestrained Christians in the Middle Ages inflicted so much pain and misery. I shudder to think what would happen if Christians had free range to rule this country. The tinder and poles would be erected and witch-burnings would continue. Yet, I had the audacity to judge and pretend that this so-called incomprehensible yet somehow knowable personal god was on my side, listened to my prayers, and would squash the wicked while I sat in heaven and watched. When the full weight of this crashed down on me, I hung my head in shame!
I am a human being. I will say it again. I am a human being!! I am so happy to be free. To all of you reading this: Screw labels! Let’s enjoy the time we are here, and make this planet a better place!

Posted via email from realthinktank's posterous

An Island Of Sick, Perverted Freaks

via hellinahandbasket.net by James R. Rummel on 2/24/10

Last year, I read about an incident in a water park in the United Kingdom.

A father took his kids to the park so they could frolic in the cool and refreshing waves. When the children said they wanted to hurl themselves down the water slide, the proud father decided that this would be a perfect opportunity for some action photos of the apples of his eye.

He positioned himself at the end of the slide, camera at the ready, only to face a muttering and hostile crowd that apparently wanted to lynch him then and there!

The justification for the violence was that he must be a pedophile. After all, what other reason would a grown man have of snapping shots of young children in swimwear? The explanation that he was only photographing his own progeny were rejected out of hand. What else would child molesters say to escape just punishment when the righteous crowd gets their blood up?

Lucky for all concerned, the police were notified by someone in the mob. A police officer arriving at the scene averted any ugly actions.

Unfortunately, I cannot now find the online article to prove to my readers in the United States that such a ridiculous incident actually occurred. It seems unbelievable, that such a climate of suspicion and paranoia can actually exist in Old Blighty. I wouldn’t blame you one bit if you thought that I was simply writing as fact a bad comedy I once viewed on cable TV, or some uncomfortable dream I once had where everyone around me turned into bizarre and violent zombies.

But such an environment of hatred and prejudice is all too prevalent in Great Britain, and simply scanning the online news article from that country proves it to be so with appalling regularity.

British Airways refuses to allow males to sit next to children they don’t know on their aircraft. Mom or Dad are seated on the other side of the child, less than one foot away and keeping an eye on their kids? Doesn’t matter, the potential child rapist must be moved. I suppose the idea is to remove any tempting prey from the reach of depraved scum. Depraved scum like a random man who just happens to be flying on a commercial flight where children are also traveling.

An 82-year-old woman was banned by authorities from photographing an empty kiddie wading pool. The reason given was that taking a picture of an empty concrete hole with water in it proved that she might be a pedophile! Because children have splashed around in the pool in the past, I suppose the idea is that it has a powerful pull to the sexual desires of sickos.

A man taking pictures of children at a public event was arrested by the police. They confiscated his camera, then contacted the police force in his home city so they could simultaneously break into his house and search his computer. The people in charge of the event are extremely pleased with themselves that they managed to have cops screw up some guy’s life for taking photos of clothed children, in public, with their parents nearby. They seem to think that they took part in averting a major crime!

The latest is this sorry tale of yet another father who was accused of burning with unbridled lust for his own children. When snapping a photo of his young son on a coin-operated ride, a security guard ordered the proud father to stop doing that. When the man, with son and wife in tow, tried to leave the mall, a police officer accosted him. Take any more pics of kids, even his own, and the cop would run the Dad in on some trumped up bullshit charge.

So why is it that the police and the public in Great Britain are so quick to condemn people who are taking pictures in public of children, or even empty places where children frequent? Why are the authorities, the very people who are trusted with the safety of the public, so enthusiastic about finding ways to punish people even though there is no evidence of anything even remotely untowards going on?

What is that ancient saying? “Where there is smoke, there is fire?” What does all of this look to someone who is outside of British society?

The only reasonable conclusion to be reached is that the British Isles must be infested with sexual deviants, just waiting to strike!

British Airways won’t let men sit next to children they don’t know, even if the parents are right there? There must have been several incidents of random males attacking and sexually assaulting children on their flights to do that! Sexual abuse right there in the center aisle, with hundreds of fellow passengers looking on! Why else take the risk of alienating one half of their customers?

The same must be true of the water parks in the UK. Sex crimes on the water slides! That must be why strangers standing in a crowd are quick to mete out mob justice to some guy with a camera, standing far out of reach of the children he is photographing. Rip him to shreds before the child comes down the chute, and he manages to get his pants off!

Octogenarian women must routinely take pictures of empty public places in the United Kingdom, the better to carefully plan their own vile crimes. Any old, frail woman with a camera is just aching to get their crone claws on a budding young child, and taking pictures is the first step!

And anyone taking pictures of clothed children in public, even though they are under adult supervision, must be investigated down to their pubic hair by the police! (”Grab him! Grab him! Get the camera for evidence!“) If he is taking pictures of people that are clearly visible in a public place then he has to be a pedophile! Thank goodness the police are willing to go the extra mile, and to keep digging until they find something they can use to charge this sicko with a crime!

And, of course, the police force in the United Kingdom must be complete morons and incompetents. After all, if so many people are sexually assaulting children in crowded public spaces then they aren’t doing their jobs. Why are these bastards allowed to roam the streets? The police are charged with protecting innocent people, which they obviously are not doing. Every male who owns a camera, every female pensioner, and every man who buys an airline ticket should be rounded up and jailed until the end of time!

Crime rates in the UK is worse than that found in the US. Besides exclusively recruiting police officers from idiots and the mentally disabled, there just also be something rotten in British culture. Something that makes otherwise law abiding people turn into slavering beasts when confronted with a child. After all, what other reasonable explanation can there possibly be for this sorry state of affairs?

(Hat tip to Glenn.)

Posted via email from realthinktank's posterous

Rhode Island High School Fires All 88 Teachers

via The Consumerist by Meg Marco on 2/24/10

Do you teach at Central Falls High? Not for long. You've all been fired. The school is one of the lowest performing in the state and apparently the teachers couldn't come to an agreement about how much they should be paid to do something about it.

From CNN:

Of the 800 students, 65 percent are Hispanic, and for most of them, English is a second language. Half of the students are failing every subject, with 55 percent skilled in reading and 7 percent proficient in math, officials said.

In a proposal based on federal guidelines, Gallo asked teachers to work a longer school day of seven hours and tutor students weekly for one hour outside of school time.

She also proposed teachers have lunch with students often, meet for 90 minutes every week to discuss education and set aside two weeks during summer break for paid professional development. The two sides couldn't agree on compensation so all the teachers were fired. Some may be rehired.

"When we had to move from the transformation model, the next best move was the turnaround model. And that requires us to remove the teachers and rehire, of those who reapply, up to 50 percent," [Frances Gallo, superintendent at Central Falls School District] said.

All teachers fired at Rhode Island school [CNN]

Posted via email from realthinktank's posterous

Jan Banning – Beureaucratics captured in photography

Jan Banning – Beureaucratics

via creativeroots by rod on 2/25/10

Jan Banning has been traveling through China, USA, Bolivia, Liberia, India, Yemen , Russia and France photographing Bureaucratics at work. It is great collection.

Posted via email from realthinktank's posterous

Lady GaGa just gave Guillermo del Toro a boner

via The Superficial - Because You're Ugly on 2/26/10

Here's Lady GaGa in London last night and screw her outfit. Check out the look on her bodyguard's face in each shot. There's a man who went straight home, told his daughter he loved her, then bought ten ponies... ...read full story

Posted via email from realthinktank's posterous

If Jesus loves me why hasn’t he called?

10 Modern Cases of Linguistic Genocide

via Listverse by jfrater on 2/25/10

Linguistic genocide has frequently been used throughout history to systematically eradicate languages for one reason or another. Sometimes it’s to assert the authority of a ruling power, sometimes it’s an attempt to assimilate an ethnic minority, and sometimes it’s to provide “linguistic unity.” In modern times (the past 200 years, for this list) it has been a major cause for the decline of a number of languages. This list does not focus on the decline or death or a language through actual genocide or death, but rather points in history in which a population’s language has suffered from attempts to eradicate or replace it.

Speak Mandarin Campaign

The government of Singapore launched the Speak Mandarin Campaign in 1979 to promote, as the name implies, the speaking of Mandarin amongst Chinese Singaporeans. This policy has come under heavy criticism, especially since the majority of Chinese Singaporeans are from southern China, where mostly non-Mandarin Chinese languages are spoken. As part of the campaign, the government banned non-Mandarin Chinese languages in local broadcast media, and foreign media in those languages is limited. The campaign has met with some success and has resulted in the increased usage of Mandarin and a decreased usage of the other Chinese languages, which has frequently caused problems in communication between the younger and older generations.

Hawaiian

The decline of the Hawaiian language started around the 1820s due to the influence of missionaries on the islands. The missionaries’ presence resulted in an increasing number of Hawaiians learning English, but at the expense of Hawaiian. Deliberate attacks on the language didn’t come until 1893, when the Provisional Government, put in place after the fall of the monarchy, attempted to assert the English language’s dominance over Hawaiian. This included the banning of Hawaiian in public schools in 1896 (although Hawaiian was not prohibited in other contexts), which continued well into the 20th century. Hawaiian’s secondary status can still be felt there today: there are only 2,000 native speakers, although efforts to promote the learning and teaching of Hawaiian are proving somewhat successful.

Ryukyuan languages

The decline of the Ryukyuan languages started when the Ryūkyū Kingdom lost its independence to Japan in the late 19th century. The languages were severely suppressed in education by the Japanese government. In Okinawa and other regions of Japan, students were punished for speaking anything other than Standard Japanese by wearing a “dialect card” around their neck. From World War II up to the present day, Japan has considered the Ryukyuan languages to have the degraded status of a “dialect” of Japanese, rather than a separate language. Today, efforts are made to preserve the languages, but the outlook is less than positive as the vast majority of Okinawan children are now monolingual Japanese speakers.

Korean

Korea was occupied by Japan from 1910 to 1945, and during that time suffered from a cultural genocide, which included the repression of the Korean language. In schools, Japanese was the language of instruction while Korean was offered merely as an elective, but later in this changed to an outright ban on Korean during school hours. Korean was also banned in the workplace. As part of their cultural assimilation policy, Japan introduced a system in which Koreans could “voluntarily” give up their Korean names and in their stead take a Japanese one, but many were frequently compelled or harassed into adopting a Japanese name against their will. The colonization ended with Japan’s surrender in World War II, but it continues to cast a shadow over the relationship between the countries.

Russification

“Russification” refers to the policies of both Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union to enforce the adoption of the Russian language. It was frequently used by Russian governments to impose their authority on the minorities they governed, often in order to quell separatism and the threat of rebellion. Particularly in the Ukraine and Finland, Russification was used as a means of asserting political domination.

One of the most prominent instances of Russification was in the 19th century when Ukrainian, Polish, Lithuanian, and Belarusian were suppressed. Use of the local languages in public places or schools was banned, and these policies intensified after several uprisings occurred.

Under the Soviet Union, the Arabic alphabet was eradicated and many languages were ultimately made to adopt variations of the Cyrillic alphabet. In the early years of the USSR minority languages were actually promoted, but this soon changed to a policy of Russian dominance over local languages. The result was that many people came to prefer Russian over their native language, and today Russian is still widely used in former Soviet states.

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The British Isles

England’s domination over Wales, Scotland, and Ireland introduced the English language to these regions, but with the devastating consequence of the downfall of the local languages. Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, and Irish (among others) were all prohibited in education at one time or another, which possibly contributed the most to the plummeting usage of the languages. In Wales, the Welsh Not (a piece of wood with the carved letters “WN” that was hung around the children’s necks) was used in the 1800s to punish students for speaking Welsh, and beating students for using non-English languages was common throughout all of the countries. Welsh, Scots Gaelic, and Irish had inferior status to English, whereas Scots wasn’t even recognized as a separate language, and all suffered as a result. It wasn’t until the 20th century that the British government started taking steps to protect these languages, which has been met with mixed success. In all of the countries the local languages are now spoken by a minority, and are still very much secondary to English.

La Vergonha

“La vergonha” (Occitan for “the shame”) refers to the policies of the French government regarding the treatment of minority languages in France. The speakers were frequently made to feel excluded or humiliated in school, society, or the media simply for speaking their language. In the late 18th century all non-French languages were banned in the administration and education, with the goal of “linguistically uniting” France. In the late 19th century, there was the widespread implementation of punishment in schools for speaking the regional languages. Students caught speaking a “patois,” as the French government referred to them to convey a sense of backwardness, were made to wear an object around their neck called a symbole. Discrimination against non-French languages continues to the present day, and remains a taboo topic. Current French president Nicolas Sarkozy has in recent years refused to ratify the European Charter for Regional or Minority languages, a treaty that aims to protect and promote regional languages.

Chinese in Indonesia

Indonesia’s ethnically Chinese population faced severe discrimination under President Suharto, who ruled Indonesia from 1967 until his resignation in 1998. Included in this was the harsh suppression of the Chinese languages, which were banned in nearly all aspects of life. All Chinese-language papers were forced to close except one, and all Chinese-language schools were shut. Chinese script was banned in public, and the police could openly abuse anyone found using the languages. Even their names weren’t safe from this cultural genocide, as they were forced to change them to more Indonesian-sounding ones. The severity of Suharto’s policies, combined with the social stigma associated with Chinese, was unfortunately effective, as many people of the younger generations lost the language of their parents. Following Suharto’s resignation, these bans on the Chinese languages were revoked by President Abdurrahman Wahid.

Francoist Spain

Under Franco’s rule from 1939 to 1975, regional and minority languages in Spain were discriminated against to assert the dominance of the Spanish language. Franco’s use of language politics was mainly to promote nationalism, and so Spanish was made the sole official language of the country. The public use of any other language was either banned or frowned upon, depending on the region and time period, and anything other than Spanish names were forbidden. The harshest policies emerged at the beginning of Franco’s rule in the 1940s and ‘50s, while they became comparatively tolerant in the last years of his regime. To further establish the lower status of the languages, they were often considered to be mere dialects of Spanish, implying that they weren’t real languages (this didn’t apply to Basque, which is far too different from Spanish).

The largest of these regional languages were Basque, Catalan, and Galician, although all languages were subjected to Franco’s policies. Catalan provides a good example of these laws: it was banned in government-run institutions and public events, advertising, and the media, but it was still used in some contexts. Publishing in Catalan continued throughout Franco’s dictatorship, and there was no prohibition on speaking it in public or in commerce. From the 1950s it was allowed in theater, and near the end of the regime certain celebrations in Catalan were tolerated.

Kurdish

The Kurds have frequently been discriminated against in multiple countries, and even when the Kurdish people are not the target of genocide, their language still is. Iraq is notable for being perhaps the most accepting of its Kurdish population; it is an official language there, and has been allowed in education, administration, and the media. This is unfortunately not always true in other countries.

Turkey attempted to assimilate non-Turkish speakers starting in the 1930s, when Kurdish language and culture was banned. The Kurds were seen as uncivilized and ignorant, and any expression of a separate identity was seen as a crime. This finally changed in 1991 when Turkey legalized the private use of spoken Kurdish. Since then, the restrictions have been becoming more and more relaxed: Kurdish in education in no longer illegal, and there are fewer limitations on television broadcasts. Discrimination against the language still very much exists in the country despite the recent improvements.

Something similar happened in Iran, where the government had a policy of “Persianization” in the first half of the 20th century. Speaking Kurdish was banned in schools and state institutions, and later, a total ban on the language was imposed. In other countries, this is still true: in Syria, Kurdish is banned in most contexts.