Aszilvasy

Hi Readers — Here’s a story from this scary, scary Easter season that I’m reprinting in full from NBCPhiladelphia.com, (with some commentary): 

WOMAN TRIES TO GIVE CANDY TO KID: POLICE

Police are on the search for a woman who tried to give candy to a child Friday evening along a quiet residential road. [HOW DARE SHE?]

A neighbor on Berkshire Road in Erial, N.J. approached the woman after she offered candy to a 7-year-old boy around 6:30 pm., according to Gloucester Township Police. [WHAT A PERVERT! OR...WHAT A NICE LADY. BUT STILL.]

The neighbor told the kid to go home and then approached the woman behind the wheel of a late 1990s Chevrolet Suburban with New Jersey plates. [JERSEY! I SHOULDA KNOWN!]

The driver, a woman in her late 40s, told the neighbor that she meant no harm and was just trying to get rid of leftover candy from a church event, according to police. [A LIKELY STORY. WHAT MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN DOESN'T WANT GOBS OF CANDY SITTING AROUND THE HOUSE?]

The neighbor told police that there was some candy on the passenger seat. [JUST LIKE DRUG PARAPHERNALIA. ONLY LEGAL.]

By the time police arrived the woman in the Suburban was gone. [THOSE SUBURBANS -- THE GET-AWAY VEHICLE OF CHOICE.] Police say the vehicle has chrome rims and silver trim around the doors. It also has a large gold-colored Chevy emblem on the rear door. [THAT CERTAIN NARROWS IT DOWN!]

Police want to talk to the woman and hope someone recognizes the car description. [MAYBE 2/3 OF THE COUNTRY?] Anyone with information should contact the Gloucester Township Police at 856-228-4500 or submit an anonymous tip at 856-842-5560 or by texting “GLOTWP” and the tip to 847411. [HURRY!!! CHANCES ARE THIS WOMAN IS STILL OUT THERE, MAYBE ON HER WAY TO BOOK CLUB OR BRUNCH WITH FRIENDS! HOW CAN FOLKS ENJOY A "HAPPY EASTER" KNOWING THIS WOMAN IS ON THE LOOSE?]

 Watch out for the middle-aged chick!

CAIRO (AP) -- Egypt's state prosecutors issued an arrest warrant Saturday for a popular television satirist for allegedly insulting Islam and the country's president, in the latest legal action to take aim at a critic of the nation's Islamist leader.

The warrant against Bassem Youssef is also the latest in a series of legal actions against the comedian, who has come to be known as Egypt's Jon Stewart. Youssef's widely-watched weekly show, "ElBernameg" or The Program, has become a platform for lampooning the government, opposition, media and clerics.

The fast-paced show has attracted a wide viewership, but has also earned itself its fair share of detractors. Youssef has been a frequent target of lawsuits, most of them brought by Islamist lawyers who have accused him of "corrupting morals" or violating "religious principles."

The comedian has faced several court cases in the past, also accusing him of insulting President Mohammed Morsi. One of Youssef's attorneys, Gamal Eid, said this is the first time an arrest warrant has been issued for the comedian.

In a post on his official Twitter account, Youssef said he will hand himself in to the prosecutor's office Sunday. He then added, with his typical sarcasm: "Unless they kindly send a police van today and save me the transportation hassle."

Eid said the warrant fits into a widening campaign against government critics, media personalities, and activists.

"The prosecution has become a tool to go after the regime's opposition and intimidate it," Eid said.

A call to a top aide to the country's chief prosecutor, Hassan Yassin, for comment went unanswered.

Opposition figures have expressed concerns about freedom of expression and assembly for what they call a crackdown on dissent at a time of deep polarization in Egypt's politics.

The political standoff pits Morsi, a Brotherhood veteran, and his Islamist allies in one camp against a mostly secular and liberal opposition backed by moderate Muslims, minority Christians and a large segment of women in the other.

The opposition charges that Morsi and the Brotherhood have failed to tackle any of the nation's most pressing problems and are trying to monopolize power, and breaking promises of inclusiveness. Morsi blames the country's woes on nearly three decades of corruption under his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, and accuses the opposition of stoking unrest for political gain.

On Monday, Egypt's top state prosecutor, Talaat Abdullah, issued arrest warrants for five of Egypt's most prominent democracy advocates and activists over allegations that they instigated violence last week near the Brotherhood's headquarters in Cairo.

It was one of the worst bouts of violence in months, where nearly 200 people were injured in clashes between anti-government protesters and supporters of the Brotherhood, from which Morsi hails.

Morsi harshly criticized his opponents, calling them hired thugs out to derail Egypt's democracy. The Brotherhood also blamed privately-owned media for fanning the violence.

The criticism was followed by a two-day protest by dozens of Islamists outside the studios of TV networks critical of Morsi. The Islamist protesters pelted police and prevented some talk show hosts and guests from going in and out of the complex west of Cairo.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said the escalation of anti-press "rhetoric" by Morsi and his supporters and the sit-in outside the media city were "deeply troubling."

The series of prosecutions and arrest warrants come amid a legal challenge to the general prosecutor, whose appointment by Morsi last year was declared void by a court ruling earlier this week.

On Saturday, Egypt's chief prosecutor Talaat Abdullah said he will appeal the court ruling, saying it is "in violation of the constitution and the law," Egypt's state news agency reported. The decision signals a protracted legal battle is likely to ensue, further confusing the legal scene in Egypt.

Already some, including members of the journalist union, have declared they no longer recognize the legitimacy of the prosecutor's decision.

Also on Saturday, an Egyptian rights group said police detained 13 people, including five lawyers, and accused them of assaulting police in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, Egypt's second-largest city.

The arrests inside the police station mark a rare instance in which lawyers face potential criminal charges.

The Haqanya Center for Rights said the 13 are accused of insulting security officials, attempting to free other detainees held at the police station, and illegal assembly.

The arrests prompted an angry response from lawyers at Cairo's Bar Association, who demanded an apology from the police.

Mohammed Abdel-Aziz, an attorney, said the lawyers and activists were beaten and assaulted at the station, where they had been since Friday to represent three opposition members reportedly arrested by members of a political party affiliated with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood who handed them to the police.

How one female reader interprets the controversy surrounding Adria Richards:

Basically, she overheard some pretty innocuous, vaguely sexual joking and decided the best course of action would be to post about the guys on the Internets. Then one of them got fired. Then the Internet freaked out and all sorts of REALLY inappropriate abuse was heaped on her and she got fired. Everyone was in the wrong and everyone loses. But that she’s sticking by her behavior as remotely appropriate – these guys weren’t catcalling, they were making nerdy techy jokes that didn’t even involve profanity – is really annoying. Should the guys have been making sex jokes at a conference? Probably not. But making a big deal out of it makes it harder for women in the tech industry to complain when there’s actual harassment.

Another highlights the crux of the offense:

There is undoubtably a lot of sexism in Silicon Valley and it’s a problem that we should fix. However this incident was not an example. From the New York article that you linked to:

But this year, on March 17th, two employees of PlayHaven, a company that develops tools for video-game marketing, made a couple of jokes while sitting in the tenth row of a “lightning talk.” One of the jokes was about “big dongles.”

This was a private joke that Ms Richards overheard and she tweeted a complaint to her 6000 followers along with a photo of the offenders, one of whom was fired for it. You might say that jokes about dongles are silly and have no place at a professional conference and I might agree. But I’d have to confess that I have snickered over a dongle joke or two in my term. The very word dongle is silly. It’s almost as though the coiner of the term wanted to make people snicker. I’d wager that the vast majority of software developers – male and female both – including most of the people at PyCon have snickered over a dongle joke despite their better judgment.

Perhaps everyone who ever snickered over a dongle joke is a sexist who should be fired but if it’s officially no longer permissible to laugh about dongles in Silicon Valley because someone might get offended and cause me to be fired, I don’t want to work here any more.

For the record, a dongle “is a small piece of hardware that attaches to computer, TV, or other electronic device and enables additional functions such as copy protection, audio, video, games, data, or other services that are only available when it is attached.” Example seen above, from Flickr user txGeek. Another reader goes into much more detail on the foofaraw:

Adria Richards gave a statement recently. (And here is another article voicing support of her, and another.)  Her situation is frustrating to me because I feel and agree that there is a problem with sexism in the tech industry (and others for that matter). But I thought your post glossed over important details of this situation.

My frustration stems from I agree that there is a problem, but the way Adria Richards dealt with it was wrong. You don’t post complaints to Twitter to encourage a teaching moment. And now her MO is changing. Recently she wrote “I don’t think anyone who was part of what happened at PyCon that day could possibly have imagined how this issue would have exploded into the public consciousness the way it has.” That is inconsistent with her previous blog post soon after Pycon: “I realized I had to do something or she would never have the chance to learn and love programming because the ass clowns behind me would make it impossible for her to do so,” and “Yesterday the future of programming was on the line and I made myself heard.” (The grandiose self-importance of that blog post is interesting in itself)  The two posts completely conflict, if in her eyes “the future of programming” was on the line, then one would indeed want this exploding into the public.

Everyone is making this a complex issue, but appears to be a simple textbook situation out of ‘The Office’ (US version) where Adria is Angela Martin, and the guys were Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute. Angela has a point most of the time, but goes about dealing with it in such a way that even if you agree with her, you don’t want to be on her side. Michael Scott says ‘That’s what she said’ and makes bad puns. Dwight doesn’t know how to interact with women and voices outdated opinions on gender roles.

The point is a majority of men and women like ‘That’s what she said’ jokes, however they also know not to tell them in front of Angela. Why? She will make your life difficult by complaining to the Toby in HR instead of talking to you, or maybe even go straight to corporate.

Adria said that the puns of dongle and forking made her uncomfortable. And if her uncomfortable feeling is deemed reasonable, it makes the offending party lose by default. If someone is uncomfortable, a hostile workplace has been created. And whoever creates a hostile workplace is at fault. It is a great strategy because right and wrong no longer matters in what makes someone uncomfortable.

There is a degree to which being uncomfortable is the individuals’ own problem though. A PETA member might be uncomfortable by overhearing hunters’ conversations. A woman who had an abortion might be uncomfortable to hear a pro-life conversation. A ‘traditional’ marriage person might be uncomfortable overhearing a same-sex marriage conversation. And vice versa for all the above situations. Those situations might even be worse in terms of uncomfortableness compared to Adria’s. However, if one of them complained they were uncomfortable from individuals having those conversations, they are told ‘Well those individuals are entitled to their opinions.’ Then there are situations with racists, homophobes, and misogynists who have conversations that make others uncomfortable. Their conversations are deemed in the wrong, and if someone complains they will most likely either be fired, given sensitivity training, or written up. So there is a line of when someone’s uncomfortable feeling is their own problem, and when it becomes the offender’s problem.

I think bad puns of a sexual nature do not deserve the same treatment for sexist, racist, and homophobic remarks. And if they are inappropriate, there are certainly more professional ways of addressing it instead doing it in the most public way possible by putting it on Twitter. I’m sure that the certain bloggers who make a living off of making hay out of nothing or are overzealous will come to her defense (you aren’t either, so that gave me pause and I delved into it even more to see the whole situation), but I doubt working women in tech circles are praising Adria for now making bad puns a firing offense in the workplace. Odds are they are annoyed because this is not a battle that needed to be fought, unlike other worthy fights like being denied a promotion, or discriminatory hiring practices, or promoting women going into tech.

A software developer sympathetic to Richards nevertheless points to this tweet and writes, “I’ve made jokes like that in the past, most of my friends have, and Adria herself makes dick jokes.” One more reader:

As a guy in the tech industry, I feel like it’s my responsibility to make the industry less “brogrammer” and more inclusive, and part of that is listening to the women in tech to see how we can do better as men. Your link to the post by a Google developer was enlightening. The sly sexism, the constant feeling of being under a microscope – these are things that we can and should address as a subculture.

That said, Adria Richards also participates in a different culture: social justice culture. And among the ideas encouraged by the online social justice movement is the idea that “calling out” bad behavior as often and publicly as possible is always a smart idea. This piece captured it well, but there are plenty of examples out there.

On the one hand, heck yes. If you’re a woman who is consistently hollered at, ihollaback.com supports your dismay. If you’re a man who surreptitiously takes photos of women in public without their consent, expect to be publicly shamed. If you say something racist, sexist, or homophobic on a popular website, don’t be surprised when that website’s favorite bogeyman paints a target on your back.

Most of the examples above are pretty cut-and-dry, but the Adria Richards drama highlights what happens when there’s honest disagreement about the behavior in question. Let’s be honest with ourselves, men: it’s pretty easy not to make forking and dongle jokes at a conference, right? We can agree that it’s not exactly professional behavior, right? Good!

Does making that kind of joke rise to the level of, “I should tweet their pictures and write a blog post explaining why these guys are the problem that keeps women out of the tech sector”? Well, maybe, but it’s not nearly as black-and-white as “don’t holler at women on the street.” And in the absence of near-universal revulsion at the behavior being called out, you end up with the same old people making the same old complaints about social justice: she’s “overreacting.” She’s being “oversensitive.” In its most misogynistic form, she is the exemplar of “women causing drama in the workplace.”

The saddest part is that she says she tweeted her complaint because she “didn’t want to be heckled or have [her] experience denied,” and that is precisely what has happened.

On Thursday morning, Thomas Menino, who has been the mayor of Boston since 1993, told reporters that he will not seek a sixth term this fall. Menino is seventy, and has spent recent months recovering from a series of ailments, including blood clots, a respiratory infection, a fractured vertebra, and diabetes. He will make a formal announcement of his decision Thursday afternoon.

Menino, the first Italian-American to lead the city, has served as Boston’s mayor for longer than any other man. He has won five elections to the post, having never received less than fifty-seven per cent of the vote. In the process, he built a durable, and seemingly unbreakable, coalition of support among the city’s wide range of ethnic and interest groups, and long ago it became clear that the job of mayor was his as long as he wanted it. Yet among his many accomplishments, perhaps his most singular has been maintaining power and popularity in a sports-crazed city while displaying a profound, and often comical, ignorance about its sports teams and most popular players.

...read more

BOSTON (AP) -- Boston's longest-serving mayor, Thomas Menino, says he does not plan to seek re-election for an unprecedented sixth term.

The popular Democratic mayor planned a formal announcement at 4 p.m. EDT Thursday at Boston's historic Faneuil Hall.

"This was the toughest decision I have made in my whole life," Menino told WBZ-FM on Thursday.

Menino was hospitalized for eight weeks in the fall after a respiratory infection and a blood clot that was complicated by a spinal fracture and diabetes, but he told the Boston Herald health issues played a "small portion" in his decision.

"I feel better now than I did a year ago. That's a fact," he told the Herald.

The 70-year-old Menino promises to go "full tilt" until his last day in office.

His decision not to run again is expected to trigger a political scramble to replace him as a new generation of political figures eye the mayor's office.

City Councilor John Connolly announced his mayoral intentions last month, regardless of Menino's decision. But Menino had been considered a heavy favorite had he opted to run.

As recently as January, Menino delivered an upbeat assessment of the city during his annual state of the city address.

Menino used a cane to walk to the podium and spoke vigorously about his plans for Boston. At the time, Menino gave no indication of whether he'd decided to seek a sixth term this year.

"Our progress is real. Our future is bright. The state of our city is striking, sound and strong," he said in prepared remarks that cited progress on economic development and crime reduction.

On Tuesday, Menino appeared at a rally at Boston City Hall plaza to urge the U.S. Supreme Court to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The previous day, he delivered a speech to the Boston Municipal Research Bureau in which he said he had never been more confident about the city and announced several new development projects and initiatives.

Menino became acting mayor after his predecessor, Raymond Flynn, left office in 1993 after being named ambassador to the Vatican. Menino, then president of the City Council, was automatically elevated to the mayor's job.

The circumstances prompted some critics to label him the "accidental mayor," a charge the sometimes-thin-skinned Menino was quick to reject. But he was elected mayor in his own right in November 1993 and won re-election by wide margins in 1997, 2001, 2005 and 2009.

The city's previous longest serving mayor, the late Kevin White, was in office for four terms, from 1968 to 1984.

Menino's longevity also exceeded the legendary Mayor James Michael Curley, who also served four terms, but not consecutively.

Menino built his reputation by focusing on the unglamorous nuts and bolts of running a major metropolitan city -- fixing potholes, cleaning streets, even curbing the practice of saving a shoveled-out parking space by putting folding chairs or trash cans along the curb.

It's everyday commitments like those that earned him the nickname of the "Urban Mechanic."

The 2004 Democratic National Convention put Menino's political and negotiating skills to the test when the city's main police union threatened to picket over an unresolved contract.

It was only with the last minute help of other politicians, including Republican Gov. Mitt Romney, that a contract was reached in the early morning hours the day before the convention opened in the city.

During his years in office, Menino also became a vigorous national voice in favor of stricter gun control measures.

He co-founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and criticized the National Rifle Association's call for more armed guards at schools after the Connecticut school shooting in December.

"That is crazy," Menino said. "Every victim of gun violence and their families knows that's crazy."

Menino also built a reputation for creating an impressive political machine that handily defeated challengers.

Last year, Menino also played a crucial role in helping elect U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, campaigning with her at stops across the city.

___

Associated Press writer Bob Salsberg contributed to this report.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

I totally agree with this Gawker commenter's response to a group of Russians climbing the Great Pyramid and taking photos:

 

Contrary to statements from a Miami-Dade Transit spokesperson, passengers were not complaining about an elderly woman singing gospel music before she was tossed off the Metrorail by a 50 State security guard last month.

In fact, the guard who threw her off, Christian Llinas, did not enter the rail car until the Vizcaya Station before he tossed her off at the Brickell Station, which is the very next stop.

According to Michael Remy, the man who video recorded the encounter, 82-year-old Emma Anderson had been sitting on the train singing since the Dadeland North station, which is five stops south of the Vizcaya Station.

Remy began video recording her because he found her interesting. She wasn’t exactly entertaining nor disturbing. Just another character encountered on Miami-Dade’s transit system, hardly the first passenger to break out in song.

“No one was complaining, she was just doing her thing,” he said in a telephone interview with Photography is Not a Crime.  “Everybody was just ignoring her.”

When Llinas entered the train, the guard walked up to her and ordered her to stop singing and banging her newspaper but she continued.

Seconds later, as the train pulled into the Brickell Station, he grabbed her suitcase and pulled it off the train with her grasping onto the other end.

“You’re going to get off here, let’s go, ma’am,” he said as she fell onto the platform, her body laying halfway inside the train car.

“Ah, hell no!” exclaimed Remy as he stood up from his seat and demanded to know the guard’s name.

The incident caused the train to remain motionless for several minutes as Llinas radioed for help from other security guards.

Paramedics eventually arrived and tended to Anderson while Remy and two other witnesses remained on the Brickell Station platform to give statements to police whom they were told were en route.

But after an hour of waiting, Remy began to doubt that 50 State ever called police and decided to call Miami-Dade police, who preside over all Metrorail stations, and learned that nobody had called them.

Also, when he tried to talk to Anderson to let her know he had video recorded the incident, several 50 State guards crowded around her, ordering him away.

“I was trying to talk to her and give her my information but they wouldn’t let me communicate with her,” he said.

50 State guards eventually escorted Anderson back onto the train to allow her to reach her destination, which was the Brownsville Station. Anderson had called her son who was waiting for her at the station.

Remy had followed along and met with her son to tell him he had the video. Remy’s friend then emailed the video to several news stations in Miami where they eventually aired it more than a week later.

The story quickly became national news and Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez was forced to issue Anderson a public apology.

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez

 

But the one issue that hasn’t been addressed by the mayor, media and county flacks is the glaring lack of professionalism and training within 50 State Security, a company that reportedly has an $88 million contract with the county that is set to expire in October.

This lack of training not only places commuters in danger as we saw in Anderson’s case or in my recent incident when I was attacked for taking photos or in my 2010 incidents where security guards assaulted me or my friends for using cameras near the stations – all which prompted my lawsuit against the company – but it places the guards at risk as well, according to a former 50 State security guard.

Low Morale

The fact that the company is charging the county $27.94-an-hour per guard but starting the guards at $14.35-an-hour has created low morale with the security guards, who have to pay an additional $135 per pay period for health insurance.

“They are stealing money from the guards,” Livan Diaz, who worked for 50 State from July 2012 to October 2012 before quitting and enrolling in an aviation educational program where he will be certified by the FAA to work on commercial airlines, a skill he acquired in the military.

The company will no doubt argue that it is using the remainder of allotted salary per guard to go towards training and other expenses, but if that were the case, then we should expect better trained guards.

And that’s just not the case.

“All they give you is an eight-hour crash course on how to use your baton and put handcuffs on people,” Diaz said.

“They also give you a four-hour course on legal matters,” he said, explaining that it’s mainly a Power Point Presentation that includes a segment that trains guards to approach photographers with large cameras and demand to see a permit.

“They trained us to make sure the photographers have a permit, that they are not shooting for commercial purposes,” he said. “But they don’t explain the difference between commercial and what is not commercial.”

50 State has a policy where it only hires former police officers or military veterans to become armed guards, providing them guns, batons, handcuffs and hollow-point bullets, which are more lethal than full metal jackets.

The lackluster training coupled with the tools and power to abuse their authority can create a recipe for disaster when they encounter a passenger who is not abiding by their demands.

“The ones who are ex-police officers might be trained to deal with this,” he said. “But the guys who are ex-military only know one way to react and that is with full force.”

He also added that many of the former cops who get hired by 50 State were fired from their police jobs and many of the veterans suffer from PTSD.

Diaz said the lack of training along with faulty bulletproof vests also places guards at risk when they encounter violent criminals (instead of stubborn photographers or singing grandmothers).

“I have been to the combat zone in both Iraq and Afghanistan six times and I felt safer there than working for this firm,” he said.

Diaz also said there is an extremely high turnover rate with security guards frequently quitting or getting fired. He was still on his 90-day probation when he was ordered to train a former Miami-Dade cop as a guard.

“That’s when I knew somebody eventually get killed or hurt,” he said. “They’re supposed to have a booklet with all the guidelines and procedures at all the stations but I only found that at a handful of stations,” he said.

Diaz believes that the only reason 50 State has been able to maintain the county contract for this long despite lackluster performance is because former Miami-Dade Police Director Fred Taylor is a top executive at the company and has maintained close contacts with the county.

Taylor is so revered in the county that they renamed the Miami-Dade Police headquarters after him.

“That’s their safety net,” he said. “Without him, they are nothing.”

 

50 State Project Manager Fred Taylor is a former Miami-Dade Police Director

 

Attacking Photographers

Diaz remembers one incident in which two Miami-Dade College students were ordered to stop video recording at the Bayfront Park Metromover Station.

“Both had their cameras confiscated and one was physically assaulted,” he said.

“In another incident, two tourists were told to leave the Metromover station after having taken pictures of the tracks and the vehicles.”

Diaz said the incident with the students took place in August 2012 but the guards neglected to write a report, indicating that perhaps those guards out-right stole their cameras.

“One student almost fell to the tracks after having been pushed and punched,” he explained. “I helped him up and I apologized for their conduct but he could had died had he fallen onto the tracks.”

Incidents like this can only be blamed on lack of training, an inadequate screening process and a lackluster oversight from Miami-Dade Transit, the county department that overseas the company.

But lack of oversight from Miami-Dade Transit is nothing new.

For years, the department allowed Wackenhut, the previous security company contracted to guard the Metrorail, to allegedly overbill the county for unrendered services before the county brought on 50 State in late 2009.

A pair of Wackenhut executives were even brought up on racketeering charges, a case that fell apart when the main witness against the company, a Miami-Dade police officer named Juan Aviles, was gunned down in Puerto Rico in 2011.

According to CBS Miami:

Racketeering charges have been dropped against two high level Wackenhut employees accused of overbilling the county for Metrorail security.

Prosecutors said Thursday they couldn’t move forward with their case against Rene Pedrayes and Eduardo Esquivel.

One reason the case fell apart was because one of the state’s key witnesses, Miami-Dade police officer Juan Aviles, was gunned down in May while on vacation in Puerto Rico.

No arrests were ever made in the murder of Aviles and his sister but it was immediately clear that robbery was not the motive. Envelopes of cocaine were also found on the two victims and Puerto Rican police speculated the murder may have been committed by sister’s jealous ex-boyfriend.

Even though Wackenhut officials emerged from the financial scandal without criminal consequences, the company ended up paying a $7.5 million settlement to Miami-Dade County for the money it was accused of bilking taxpayers for nearly two decades.

 

Miami-Dade police officer Juan Aviles, who was gunned down in Puerto Rico before he was set to testify against Wackenhut.

 

Adding to the scandal, the Federal Transit Administration cut federal funding to Miami-Dade Transit in 2010 over allegations of financial mismanagement, which further confirmed what locals have suspected for decades – that county officials were likely pocketing the money that was meant for Metrorail expansion.

According to CBS Miami:

Assistant County Manager Ysela Llort revealed Tuesday that a transit agency employee made an unauthorized withdrawal of approximately $14 million dollars from the federal grant fund about two hours after the feds had pulled the plug on the funding. Llort said word of the funding suspension had apparently not “worked its way down the agency” when the withdrawal was made. She said the money has since been repaid, but the gaffe apparently served to add to the FTA’s displeasure with the county.

The continuous scandals ended up forcing Miami-Dade Transit Harpal Kapoor to step down from his $243,000-a-year position in 2011.

Replacing Kapoor was Yselia Llort, who was appointed by Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez who referred to the county’s transit department as a “train wreck” during his 2011 campaign in which he was elected after voters ousted the previous mayor.

But it was Miami-Dade Transit’s spokesperson, Karla Damien, who jumped to the defense of 50 State security after its guard dragged off the singing grandmother last month, insisting that Emma Anderson needed to have a commercial permit in order to sing gospel hymns, attempting to whitewash the incident by claiming the guard only “escorted” her off the train.

“Miami-Dade Transit has a responsibility to all its passengers to provide a safe and comfortable travel experience. The elderly passenger, Ms. Anderson, who was escorted from a Metrorail train, was initially asked by a security guard to refrain from singing loudly and playing an instrument while on the train.

She refused to comply. County rules associated with transit use prohibit anyone from singing, dancing or playing a musical instrument unless a commercial permit is issued by MDT. Further, Ms. Anderson’s singing was causing a disturbance to other passengers and impeding important train announcements from being heard.

We regret that Ms. Anderson had to eventually be escorted out, but regardless of age, all passengers need to abide by the rules associated with using transit.”

A week before his public apology to Anderson, Gimenez vowed in his State of the Union Address to continue striving to create a “world-class transit system” for the county.

But this is a transit system in which I have no desire to set foot in again out of fear that I might get dragged down an escalator in a chokehold because I snapped a photo from the platform.

This is a transit system in which 82-year-old Emma Anderson is afraid to set foot in out of fear she will be dragged off a train for singing gospel music.

And this is a transit system in which Michael Remy, the 28-year-old man who video recorded the Anderson incident, doesn’t want to step foot in again.

“I used to ride it everyday but since that day, I have stopped riding it because I don’t feel safe with those guys,” he said.

A transit system in which its own residents are afraid to ride is anything but a world-class transit system.

NEETZAN ZIMMERMAN | Gawker

Parents in Dietrich, Idaho, aren't very happy with the way science teacher Tim McDaniel is teaching their children human anatomy.

That is to say, they're unhappy that he is teaching them human anatomy at all.

In a formal complaint made against the 18-year Dietrich School veteran by at least four parents, McDaniel is chided for using the word "vagina" during a tenth-grade biology class on the human reproductive system.

Among other complaints submitted to the school: McDaniel explained the biology of an orgasm, taught students about STDs and birth control, and showed a clip from An Inconvenient Truth, which led to a discussion about climate change.

"I teach straight out of the textbook, I don't include anything that the textbook doesn't mention," McDaniel told the Twin Falls Times-News. "But I give every student the option not attend this class when I teach on the reproductive system if they don't feel comfortable with the material."

No student has ever opted out, McDaniel said.

The parents made other allegations against McDaniel, including that he "shared confidential student files with an individual other than their parents," and "told inappropriate jokes in class."

But The Raw Story reports that some students who are rallying around McDaniel believe those who complained about the teacher's methods may be motivated by religion.

Per the most recent statistics, nearly 66% of all Lincoln County adherents are affiliated with the Mormon Church, which specifically requires parents to "ensure that the [sex education] instructions given to their children are consistent with sound moral and ethical values."

Though the Idaho State Department of Education is currently investigating the complaint, Dietrich Superintendent Neil Hollingshead told the Times-News he doesn't expect the review to result in McDaniel's dismissal.

"Maybe a letter of reprimand from the school board," he said.

[H/T: The Atlantic Wire, photo via Shutterstock]

Gawker dishes the nation's most current and cutting gossip across media, entertainment, technology, and business. Founded in 2002 and namechecked frequently in mainstream publications, the site is essential reading for those who want big media hypocrisy debunked and faux-sincerity exposed, all with a healthy dose of snark.

Jeff Bryant decries the phony bipartisan consensus surrounding education “reform.”

He wonders where are the progressives.

He compares the bipartisan consensus around education reform to the bipartisan consensus that prevailed before the war in Iraq, when dissenters were marginalized and ignored.

But he sees hope in the growing rebellion against high-stakes testing.

More and more parents and students understand that what is happening does not work, will not improve education, and will inflict grievous wounds to public education.

How long can our policymakers continue to demonize teachers and expect that “better” or “great” teachers will magically appear to take the places of those who left in disgust?

I share his view that the current reign of toxic policies will not last forever. Not a one of them has any evidence behind them, and not a one of them works to improve the quality of education.

Failure cannot survive indefinitely. The American people will indeed awaken to the great hoax called education “reform” and reclaim their schools.

A bold prediction from Mr. Silver, but one that thrills marriage equality supporters (like me!) who think the best path forward is via the ballot box:

ADRIAN CHEN | Gawker

Last month Esquire reporter Phil Bronstein scored a major scoop: An exclusive story about the "man who shot and killed bin Laden." The piece was a powerfully written profile of the anonymous member of SEAL Team 6, now retired and struggling to make ends meet while dealing with the psychological and physical scars of war. But problems with the story's claim that "The Shooter" had no access to health care arose almost immediately. Now it seems the core of the story is wrong as well.

CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen reports that a member of SEAL Team 6 disputes The Shooter's account of the raid, as reported by Bronstein. The shooter exaggerated his own role and heroism, according to the SEAL. Others are alleging the Shooter is profiting off his bogus story.

The dramatic story of Osama bin Laden's last moments that the Shooter told Esquire went like this: The Shooter was right behind the "point man" as the two climbed the stairs to the top floor of Osama bin Laden's compound that night. Bin Laden poked his head out of the bedroom at the top of the stairs. The point man shot and either missed or lightly wounded bin Laden. Then the point man peeled off to tackle a couple of women in the hallway whom he believed were armed with suicide vests. So the Shooter ran alone into the bedroom where he found bin Laden standing behind one of his wives, perhaps using her as a human shield, with a gun within reach. The shooter then shot him twice in the forehead and killed him.

But that story is "complete B.S." a member of SEAL Team 6 also on the raid told CNN. The real story, according to the SEAL was this: The point man successfully shot bin Laden in the head when he poked his head out, gravely wounding him, then tackled the women. When the other SEALs came into the bedroom, bin Laden was already on the ground, basically dead, and the SEALS finished him off with shots to the chest. He was not within reach of a gun, because the guns were only found in the bedroom after extensive searching. So the shooter certainly could have shot bin Laden, but if he did, he was already lying on the ground and completely harmless. It's a less heroic scenario, as CNN points out, and matches up with the account of Matt Bissonette, the third SEAL to reach the top floor of the compound. Bissonette recounted the raid in a bestselling first-hand account No Easy Day using the pseudonym Mark Owen.

Rumors had already been swirling that Esquire had been had. CNN's story comes a few days after the military blogger and former Navy SEAL Brandon Webb said Esquire had been duped by The Shooter in a post on his blog, The Special Operations Forces Situation Report (SOFREP). Citing anonymous SEAL operators, Webb wrote "Sorry to rain on your parade, Phil, but your guy is not the actual shooter."

But in addition to alleging the details of the raid was false, Webb also raises the intriguing possibility that The Shooter has been benefiting financially off his self-anointed, and apparently false, role as OBL's assassin.

Phil Bronstein, who heads the Center for Investigative Reporting, portrayed The Shooter in Esquire as a humble and struggling warrior. Unlike Mark Bissonette, The Shooter wasn't out to cash in on the raid. "There is commerce attached to the mission, and people are capitalizing," wrote Bronstein. "Just not the triggerman."

But according to SOFREP's sources, the Shooter has not completely exempted himself from a payday. He's "off cashing large checks from unsuspecting donors who bought the Esquire pity piece." How he might have connected with those donors is unclear. But the Shooter is also "very active on the public speaking circuit," despite the concerns for his personal safety voiced in the Esquire piece, according to SOFREP. Both SOFREP and CNN say that The Shooter was booted off an exclusive SEAL Team for bragging at bars that he was the guy who killed bin Laden.

SOFREP offers no proof, but they are a generally reliable source and many of the details floated in their post appear to be confirmed by CNN's reporting. So is the heroic but humble Shooter of Bronstein's piece actually an opportunistic liar? We'll see, but for now the Esquire story appears to have been too good to be true.

Update: Esquire says in a statement that they stand by their story.

The Esquire article, The Shooter: The Man Who Killed Osama Bin Laden, in the March 2013 issue, is based on information  from numerous sources, including members of Seal Team 6 and the Shooter himself, as well as detailed descriptions of mission debriefs.  We stand by our story.

Gawker dishes the nation's most current and cutting gossip across media, entertainment, technology, and business. Founded in 2002 and namechecked frequently in mainstream publications, the site is essential reading for those who want big media hypocrisy debunked and faux-sincerity exposed, all with a healthy dose of snark.

Clare, who runs a blog called Projectophile, with a brilliant post on how mid-century modern homes are basically designed to kill young children. My five favorites below:

“Alcohol-Dependent Presidents!”

“Two Hundred Thousand Dollars Later (An English Degree and I’m a Waiter)”

“Zippity Zap, Do the Income Gap!”

“I Got a Feelin’ That We’ll Raise the Debt Ceilin’”

“Let’s Rank the States from Best to Worst!”

“Roe Roe Roe Your Boat v. Wade”

“Seventy-Seven Cents Per Dollar (Why Women’s Paychecks Are Often Smaller)”

“Greece is Declining, Germany is Whining”

“I’m Just a Bill (Maher)”

“Don’t You Fret, We All Have Debt!”

“Aren’t You Glad You Don’t Make iPads?’

Readers — Below is an excerpt from a 2011 interview with University of Toronto criminologist Scot Wortley (just sent to me), whom I now consider a genius. He is so clear and smart about why, despite Canada’s homicide rate hitting a 44-year low, most people feel LESS safe, a discrepancy that daily constantly confounds me. The interviewer is Jenny Hall:  

Why does it feel like it’s less safe than ever out there?

This is one of the interesting things that we as criminologists are often asked to explain. We just recently did a survey in Toronto. We asked “do you think crime has increased or decreased in the last 10 years? The vast majority of Toronto residents—in the 80 to 90 per cent range—believe that crime is much worse now than it was 10 years ago.

There are probably a number of factors that contribute to that perception, but I believe it’s primarily the impact of the media. Compared to 20 or 30 years ago, coverage of crime is a much larger proportion of all news coverage.

We live in the age of the remote control, when people can change the channel quickly when a news program loses their interest. If you do crime stories, that will capture the audience. If your news is dominated with political, economic or human interest stories, you’re going to lose viewership.

This means we hear about the crimes that do take place in much more detail. We receive much more sensationalistic coverage. We receive the gory details.

We did a study of newspaper coverage a few years ago and found that there was a new homicide reported every single day in the Toronto newspaper. That was interesting because that year there were only 68 homicides in Toronto. So how can a new one appear every day?

The answer is that if there wasn’t a local homicide to report, they went outside the city. We found that 40 per cent of the homicides reported were American. This gives the impression to someone who is getting all of their information about crime from the newspaper, or from the TV news, that crime is everywhere.

Are there other factors contributing to this perception?

I also think there are a couple of players that benefit a great deal from fear of crime. The private security industry is a multi-billion dollar industry in North America. They want us to feel insecure because then we’re going to spend more money securing our homes and vehicles.

Law enforcement also benefits from fear of crime. We’ve seen police budgets and budgets for the public safety agenda increase dramatically over the last 20 years in this city and in other cities. I find it interesting that the Toronto Police Service remains largely silent in commenting on the drop in the crime rate. It’s interesting that when crime appears to be going up—when we have a rash of shootings or gang-related activity—the police are front and centre assuring the public that they are going to do all they can to fight the scourge of crime. But they’re very reluctant to deliver good news. They’re very reluctant to come out and say, “You’re safe on the streets, the crime rate is down.” I wonder if that reluctance is somehow linked to a concern that if the public becomes complacent about crime, if the public argues that their money should be spent elsewhere, that their economic power would be eroded.

Crime has also become a very prevalent issue in modern politics. If you followed the last federal election, you saw the Conservative government champion themselves as the promoters of public safety and as the party that was going to bring criminals to justice. When that kind of rhetoric is so prevalent among our community leaders, it does have an impact on public perception. [MORE HERE!]

Boogeyman crimes are up 179% in the last 10 years.

Right now there seems to be two poles of debate about the injection of technology into higher education. On the one hand there are the MOOCthusiasts who think Internet-based learning will disrupt the traditional college paradigm. On the other hand, there are the MOOC-fearful who worry that Internet-based learning will disrupt the traditional college paradigm. I'd consider myself on a third axis—skeptical that we really understand all that much about why people go to college or what it is exactly that videos on the Internet could possibly substitute for.

It's always helpful, I think, to step back from the question of education and just think about learning. Suppose you're curious about something. Like maybe articles about the recent banking crisis in Cyprus have made you curious about the island's history. The best first step, by far, is to go to the "History of Cyprus" Wikipedia page and read it. If you're still interested, maybe follow up with a book or two. Watching a person stand up and talk about Cyprus is pretty far down the list, whether you're watching the person live or on a video. It's true that if you want to learn how to tie a bowtie or to properly flip a Spanish tortilla, you may want to watch a video. The visual information is very helpful when you're talking about demonstrating a physical action. But to convey information? Reading is faster than listening, and buying a book—or checking one out from a library—has always been cheaper than paying college tuition, in part because when you go to college you still have to buy all these books.

Or, rather, book-buying has long been cheaper than college. College lectures arose at a time when books were very expensive and having some stand in front of a room and read a book so students could copy it down was a cost-effective way of conveying their contents. From a certain point of view it seems as if the printing press should have been the disruptive technology that put universities out of business. Surviving universities would reconfigure themselves as libraries staffed by people who are good at helping you find the right book. Then the relevance of the Internet would be that it makes the dissemination of text even faster and easier, letting us replace physical stockpiles of books with digital catalogs and search algorithms.

Obviously that's not the world we live in. But the question you have to ask about all this online coursework is why is it better than reading? I tried to prod Evan Soltas—who's an undergraduate at Princeton but could clearly get a professional writing gig in 15 minutes if he wanted to drop out—why he thinks people go to college since he, personally, clearly doesn't need it for either signaling or human capital purposes. The answer he came up with is that it's largely cultural, which I guess is right, but "culture" often serves as a kind of phlogiston in various discussions. I think the "weirdo factor" counts for a lot here, and it's not obvious to me how you would overcome it.

Edwin Torres Photography/Flickr

There isn't anything wrong with living a political life, Sonny Bunch argues in The Washington Free Beacon. "Politics is important; political decisions have consequences; and passionately arguing for your preferred political outcomes is nothing to be ashamed of," he writes. "A politicized life is a different beast, however. It treats politics as a zero-sum game or a form of total warfare in which the other side must be obliterated. It alters every aspect of your being: where you shop; what you watch on TV; what sort of music you listen to; who you associate with. If you're not with the politicized being, you're against him -- and if you're against him, he is well within his rights to ruin you personally and economically. You, the political other, are a leper to be shunned."

His lament really resonates with me.

"I don't worry too much about growing partisan gridlock," Bunch goes on, "but I do worry somewhat about an America in which each half of the country hates the other so viscerally that they won't even interact." I agree that there is cause for concern. But I also think it's a mistake to conceive of the problem as halves of the country pitted against one another, because I think and hope that many more Americans are uncomfortable with the attitude Bunch describes than embrace it. 

The biggest advantage the politicized being has is that no one wants to vocally disagree with someone who seems to have no compunction about trying to destroy everyone who disagrees with them. How many academics stand up to the one politicized member of the tenure committee? Who needs to make an enemy of the least ethical person on a small faculty where you'll spend the next decade? How many bureaucrats call out the politicized appointee running their agency?

The conservative movement certainly won more victories prior to the politicization of its media: The Reagan Revolution was over before the Limbaugh revolution began.

The incentives just don't add up.

If you're a political journalist, and you hear Keith Olbermann or Bill O'Reilly or Lawrence O'Donnell or Mark Levin offend against basic human decency in an attempt to destroy an ideological adversaries, calling them out, especially if you're seen as "on their side." is going to make you the target of angry, profane attacks from their fans. Lackey bloggers are likely to publish blog posts that stop just short of actionable libel. You'll never be invited on the pundits' shows or possibly even their network when you've got a book to sell. And for your trouble, all you've accomplished is speaking up about behavior that people you care to reach already know to be wrongheaded. I have idiosyncratic ideas about the importance of a certain kind of public discourse, no ambition to work for an ideological movement, a social circle composed of friends who don't give a damn who I criticize, and an employer with the motto "of no party or clique."

And even I often find it an unpleasant hassle to make these criticisms.

I persist because I believe it's within the power of a silent majority to change the incentive system. Bullying often turns out to be easier to stop than expected once the bully is sufficiently confronted. There are, however, ten thousand deserving projects out there.

Do I blame liberals who spent their time during the Bush Administration calling out policies they found deeply wrongheaded and ignoring Olbermann's excesses? No, I totally understand their priorities.

Almost no one at National Review today approaches politics in the way that Michael Walsh recommends:

Don't make nice with them, don't play fair with them, don't reach across the aisle and above all, treat them and their ideas with exactly the same amount of respect with which they treat yours: none. Contempt is the only language they understand. Remember that, thanks to Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Alinsky Left, the personal is now political, so get personal; all's fair in love and war, and politics isn't love. As Pat Caddell just reminded the GOP, his team plays to win, and doesn't really much care how it does it -- 'by any means necessary' is their motto. If you're not using their own rules against them, you're not playing the game." [emphasis in original]

But you don't start working for a magazine like National Review so you can spend your time arguing with the dumbest things fellow conservatives say -- you're more interested in warning about an immigration amnesty or editorializing against pending tax legislation or even calling for the drinking age to return to 18. Politicization attracts a hardcore constituency to individuals and publications. Criticizing that faction has an unusually high cost, and so politicization persists, despite the fact that most people observe it, shake their heads in disgust, and turn on American Idol*.

That is to say, politicization doesn't just incentivize people in politics who dislike it to keep quiet -- it also incentivizes those who dislike it to leave politics entirely out of disgust. What happens as a result? Politicized people are much more common in politics than they are in the general population.

Another factor that makes everything politicized is the perception that it works. Sometimes it does, but politicized people are constantly claiming that their side would win more if only they operated as ruthlessly as the other side, despite the dearth of evidence that ruthlessness wins elections. The conservative movement certainly won more victories prior to the politicization of its media: The Reagan Revolution was over before the Limbaugh revolution began.

In my experience, politicized people on the right and left don't behave in precisely equivalent ways. On the right, they're more often like Andrew Breitbart: His professional identity was as politicized as imaginable, he had no problem when innocents were hurt as collateral damage in his ideological crusading, yet he was unfailingly kind in his personal life to his many liberal friends. Whereas on the left, Olbermann types are comparatively rare, but it's more common for individuals to behave as if the political is personal. Did you know April is Don't Have Sex With Republicans Month? Or take this post, in which a writer abandons a childhood hero upon discovering that, in addition to being a renowned neurosurgeon, he is an outspoken conservative.

Of course, that's only my experience from a life spent living in California, New York, and Washington, D.C. If I was from Amarillo, Texas, I might associate politicized conservatives with the Christians who mounted a sustained campaign of extra-legal harassment to terrorize local swingers. Don't take my experience as representative, save in this one way: Like Bunch, who muses on all the liberal artists and entertainers who've enriched his life, my life has been enriched by so many friends whose politics I find wrongheaded, and so many others whose avowed political identity doesn't even reliably predict how much I agree with their politics, let alone their values. If you're a politicized person, whatever your politics, you're missing out.

__

*Or else disgustedly shake their heads and perversely decide that since their side is getting attacked unfairly, the proper course is to persecute others as they perceive themselves to be persecuted.

A study presented recently at the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (PDF) shows (with somewhat confusing language) that the vast majority of the recent rise in income inequality is "permanent" rather than a result of increased year-to-year instability in earnings. Ned Resnikoff did a blog post linking these findings to recent political talk about opportunity and suggested on Twitter that these findings illustrate that America isn't really a meritocracy.

"Meritocracy" is a hazy subject, but as Tim Noah explained in a great Slate piece more than a decade ago, all this really goes to show is that the idea of meritocracy is overrated. If you take some field of endeavor where the concept of "merit" is pretty well-defined—professional golf, for example—what you see is an enormously inegalitarian distribution of income. Golfing ability is distributed very unevenly. The total set of people who golf is quite large, and most of them do it for negative wages. A tiny minority of people actually earn money golfing, and a much tinier subset of really good golfers dominate the tournament earnings. It's both very meritocratic and very inegalitarian. What's also true is that even as golf is a meritocracy where the best golfers win, it features major structural barriers to opportunity. Lots of kids don't have a chance to golf growing up. That could be because their parents don't have the money, or it could just be because their parents hate golf.

But if you removed those barriers to opportunity—by implementing, say, a well-funded universal golf education program—the end result would be even more inequality in earnings since the golfing market would only become more cutthroat and efficient.

The fact remains that if you tax rich golfers' income and give the money to poor people, you increase the sum total of felicity in the world. If you find a way to collect the same amount of money from rich golfers but do it primarily by taxing rich golfers' consumption, then you do an even better job. When you think about physical disabilities this becomes particularly clear. We try to help out people who are blind or who lost a leg in Iraq or who are born with a congenital heart weakness not because providing such assistance accords with a principle of merit, but precisely because people who lack "merit" in the field of seeing or walking or not dying as a child due to heart failure are the people who need help. But lots of people suffer from less visible problems, be it a genetic weakness for alcoholism or the below-average intelligence that afflicts exactly 50 percent of the population. Those people should have great lives, too. But a very egalitarian society in which everyone enjoys a high standard of living is almost certainly going to have become that way precisely because it doesn't strive to turn the remorseless meritocracy of the PGA tour into a model for society.

Creator of Literal Genesis Trial believes people who argue in favor of evolution are at a scientific disadvantage

A California creationist is offering a $10,000 challenge to anyone who can prove in front of a judge that science contradicts the literal interpretation of the book of Genesis.

Dr Joseph Mastropaolo, who says he has set up the contest, the Literal Genesis Trial, in the hope of improving the quality of arguments between creationists and evolutionists, has pledged to put $10,000 of his own money into an escrow account before the debate. His competitor would be expected to do the same. The winner would take the $20,000 balance.

The argument would not be made in a formal court, but under an alternative dispute resolution model known as a minitrial. Mastropaolo said he would present the argument in favor of a literal interpretation of the creation story once he had found a willing scientist to argue that a non-literal interpretation of Genesis is more scientific.

"They [evolutionists] are not stupid people, they are bright, but they are bright enough to know there is no scientific evidence they can give in a minitrial," Mastropaolo said.

A minitrial differs from a regular trial because it does not need to be held in a courthouse and does not require the presence of traditional court figures. Mastropaolo plans to have a bailiff and court reporter in attendance, along with the judge. Contest rules state that evidence must be scientific, which means it is "objective, valid, reliable and calibrated".

Mastropaolo believes that evolution cannot be proved scientifically. "It turns out that there is nothing in the universe [that] is evolving, everything is devolving, everything is going in the opposite direction," he said.

Mastropaolo started making public arguments in favor of creationism about 13 years ago, after reading an article about evolution in the newspaper. He has a PhD in kinesiology and taught biomechanics and physiology at a California university for more than 25 years. He is now a contributing writer at the Creation Science Hall of Fame, which is collaborating with him for the minitrial. The Creation Science Hall of Fame is a website, launched in February 2012, that honors those who have made contributions to creation science.

A majority of scientists disavow creationism, but a June 2012 Gallup poll showed that 46% of Americans believed in a literal interpretation of the biblical version of creation. Legislation to allow students to be taught religious versions of the creation of life is currently being considered in four states.

The Literal Genesis Trial contest would be held in a courthouse in Santa Ana, California and Mastropaolo has said he will create a list of potential superior court judges to decide the case. The participants would have to agree on a judge. Mastropaolo said that he hopes the trials can improve future debates between evolutionists and creationists by addressing the issue in a legal and scientific way.

"The evolutionists thereafter could read that transcript and make their case a bit stronger on the next one they contend against and we can do the same," Mastropaolo said. "We can read the transcript and not have have to go through the same process over and over and over again without any let up, without any resolution."

• Creationism
• Evolution
• Science and scepticism
• Biology
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• The Bible
• United States
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Amanda Holpuch
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In a letter dated 1858, Charles Dickens guessed George Eliot’s true identity:

I have observed what seem to me to be such womanly touches, in those moving fictions, that the assurance on the title-page is insufficient to satisfy me, even now. If they originated with no woman, I believe that no man ever before had the art of making himself, mentally, so like a woman, since the world began.

You will not suppose that I have any vulgar wish to fathom your secret. I mention the point as one of great interest to me—not of mere curiosity. If it should ever suit your convenience and inclination, to shew me the face of the man or woman who has written so charmingly, it will be a very memorable occasion to me.

Connecticut's two senators wrote a letter on Monday to the National Rifle Association demanding that the group "immediately stop" robo-calling families and friends of the Newtown, Conn., elementary school shooting victims to promote its agenda.

"In a community that's still very much in crisis, to be making these calls opens a wound that these families are still trying hard to heal," wrote Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) to NRA chief Wayne LaPierre. "Put yourself in the shoes of a victim's family member who gets a call at dinnertime asking them to support more assault weapons in our schools and on our streets."

The senators said their constituents were upset about getting automated calls from the NRA supporting the right to carry assault weapons and urging opposition to gun control measures.

Excoriating the NRA's actions as "inappropriate," "incredibly insensitive," and "absolutely beyond the pale," Blumenthal and Murphy called it "just another example in a long line of offensive steps your organization has taken in the wake of this tragic shooting."

"With these robocalls, the NRA has stooped to a new low in the debate over how to best protect our kids and our communities," they wrote. "Again, we call on you to show some basic decency and cease and desist these calls."

Well, it’s finally happened. They leaked the video of a secret meeting between the atheists, feminists, gays, and evolutionists:

(via SMBC Theater)

MUMBAI, India (AP) -- The Indian unit of Ford Motor Co. has apologized for advertisements decried as demeaning to women, including one depicting Italy's former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi with a trio of bound women in the trunk of a car.

A Ford India spokeswoman said Monday that the company is investigating whether anyone at the automaker ever saw the print ads, which were never used commercially but appeared over the weekend on a website showcasing creative advertising.

The ads caused an uproar online and came just after India passed a new law on violence against women following a fatal gang rape of a student on a bus that prompted mass protests and spotlighted the status of women in India.

Featuring Ford's logo, one ad showed three women bound and gagged in the trunk of an Indian-made compact, the Ford Figo, with Berlusconi smiling from the driver's seat alongside the slogan "Leave your worries behind with the Figo's extra-large boot."

Similar ads featured Paris Hilton apparently kidnapping reality television rivals the Kardashian sisters -- all three sisters tied up and one in a bikini -- and Formula One driver Michael Schumacher abducting his male racing competition.

Ford said Monday that it regrets the incident, calling the images "contrary to the standards of professionalism and decency within Ford."

The ads were created at advertising agency JWT India and appeared on the website adsoftheworld.com late Friday.

"Ford India Needs to Fire Its Advertising Execs," read a headline on a slate.com blog while Indians on Twitter reacted with posts like "Disgusting!" and "SHAME."

It was unclear Monday whether anyone at Ford India had approved or seen the ads.

"We take this very seriously and are reviewing approval and oversight processes, and taking necessary steps to ensure nothing like this ever happens again," Ford spokeswoman Sethi Deepti said by email.

JWT advertising's parent company, the British advertising and public relations giant WPP Group, also condemned the ads.

"We deeply regret the publishing of posters that were distasteful and contrary to the standards of professionalism and decency within WPP Group," a company statement said.

"These were never intended for paid publication and should never have been created, let alone uploaded to the internet. This was the result of individuals acting without proper oversight and appropriate actions have been taken within the agency where they work to deal with the situation."

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

The video for The Beach Boys' I Get Around gets leaked with its pre-Auto-Tune audio.


Chaîne de massbetelnut | via

Somebody is doing this to kill time at work.

Nic Cage's Face On All 151 1st Generation Pokemon

Also: Benedict Cumberbatch as Pokémons

via

Last May, Sarasota County, Florida Dep. Dominic Fornal claimed he could smell marijuana coming from the inside of a car he was following at 35 miles per hour. That's why he stopped the car, then performed a thorough search. Four searches, in fact. He even ripped the upholstery out of the car.

Despite Dep. Fornal's exaggerated confidence in his own olfactory senses, he didn't find any marijuana in the car. Well, at least not after those first several searches. After about 90 minutes, Fornal turned off the microphone on his uniform. Another deputy then miraculously found a burnt marijuana cigarette. Fornal then arrested the driver on DUI charges, even though the driver's BAC was half the legal limit.

A state attorney later dismissed the charges, but Fornal's supervisor told a local paper that the deputy "operated entirely within department policy." No discipline. The only change the department made was to remove Dep. Fornal's dash camera. Which of course would make him even less accountable.

Ten months later, Fornal is back in the news.

At the accident scene that cost him his job, former Deputy Dominic Fornal allegedly poured a bottle of liquor into a woman's purse and then dumped the remainder of the bottle onto the floorboards of her van.

Minutes later, Fornal allegedly described one of his coworkers, Deputy James Kathman, as a "dumb ass" to a state trooper.

Confronted with these and other allegations contained in an internal affairs investigation, Fornal opted to resign Wednesday from the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office rather than answer to the charges.

"I hereby resign effective immediately for personal reasons," he wrote in his one-sentence resignation letter to Sarasota County Sheriff Tom Knight.

The internal affairs report, only partially completed since Fornal was never interviewed about some of the allegations, is now being scrutinized by defense attorneys who are scrambling to use it to discredit Fornal if the State Attorney's Office calls him as a civilian witness.

So ten months after the initial magical pot-sniffing incident, internal affairs hadn't yet even bothered to interview Fornal about it. Nor had they interviewed him about the string of incidents since. It's certainly a positive thing that the mere prospect of an investigation persuaded the Fornal to resign, but if I were forced to hazard a guess, I'd guess the decision to investigate him was instigated more by his comments about his colleagues than about his policing methods. The decision to let Fornal resign also means that he'll probably be able to find another job with another Florida law enforcement agency. (As seems to frequently happen with bad cops in Florida.)

Why would I be so cynical? Well as it turns out, there are still dozens of open cases for which Fornal is the state's main witness. You'd think a prosecutor interested in justice would just drop any case that turns on the word of a cop who even fellow cops have deemed to be a liar.

And you'd be wrong.

Prosecutors are showing no signs of offering any deals in cases involving Fornal.

They sent out at least one Motion in Limine Friday -- a legal maneuver that asks the court to bar defense attorneys from raising Fornal's past stops or from introducing newspaper accounts of his activities. While the motions for Fornal have been somewhat formulaic, the new version seeks to bar attorneys from mentioning "former officers."

So not only is the office of State's Attorney Ed Brodsky not arresting Fornal for lying in sworn statements, not only is his office not dropping the cases in which the charges hinge on Fornal's sworn statements, but his office is actually seeking to bar jurors deciding the guilt of people charged with crimes from even knowing that Fornal resigned from the sheriff's department in the face of an investigation into allegations that he has lied about prior arrests.

John Cassidy says the David and Goliath story of Cyprus versus Germany has just one problem—the Germans are basically right.

I think that's true. The basic German view that the German taxpayer should bear less than 100% of the burden of rescuing the Cypriot banking system, and the creditors of the Cypriot banking system should bear more than 0% of the burden is very sensible. The decision of the Cyprus' president to organize a version of that principle that involved haircutting small depositors in order to protect the interests of Russian tax dodgers was perverse, but that's on him. If the Germans made a mistake here it was by being too deferential to President Anastasiades horribly flawed judgment. The Cypriots have been flailing aorund trying to find a solution that allows them to keep operating as an offshore banking sector, but the German government is correct to but zero (or even negative) weight on this as a policy priority.

The reason it's sometimes difficult to see that the Germans are right about Cyprus is that their political consensus is so wrong about Europe. Having the European Central Bank run an excessively German-focused monetary policy (indeed one that's arguably even too tight for Germany) is greatly exacerbating all these fiscal problems. Then Germany, as the party with the fiscal capacity, needs to pay some of the price at which point German voters lash out at peripheral citizens whose economies have been put in a situation where failure is inevitable. Indeed, contemplating the question of why Germany let a tiny offshore banking hub that had already lost de facto control over 40 percent of its small landmass into the eurozone in the first place underscores the generally low quality of thinking about how this whole operation is supposed to work.

But on Cyprus, they've got it right.

Early yesterday I mentioned that while Google's new Keep application, a nascent all-purpose notetaker, looked very interesting, I wasn't going to waste time getting used to it. That is because of the company's now-established track record of killing off products that prove to have niche rather than sufficiently mass appeal.

This could be a sane business strategy for Google -- network TV, for instance, is also in the mass rather than niche business. But since my own software tastes often lead in the early-adopter niche direction, I've decided I should stick with companies whose business model is aimed at users like me. When it comes to TV, this means that I watch a lot more things on cable than on the main networks (except sports). When it comes to note-taking software, it means sticking with Evernote, rather than risking that what Google did to Reader, Notebook, Desktop, Health, and other services I used and liked it would eventually do to Keep.

I raise the point again because, since the time I wrote that item (and after I spent all day today in transit), I have seen a quite surprising critical mass of comments in a similar vein. For instance:

• Ezra Klein in the Washington Post, on the dawning awareness that niche enthusiasts like him (and me) have tastes that really don't match Google's business model, as we're now coming to understand it. Eg, "Together, the Gmail experience, the death of Google Reader, and the closure of Picnik all have me questioning whether I want to keep investing time and energy in 'free' Google products or whether I need to start looking for paid services that are explicitly making money off the thing I am paying them to do."
  
  
• Kevin Drum, in Mother Jones, on why the inability to rely on Google services is more disruptive than the familiar pre-cloud experience of having favorite programs get orphaned. My example is Lotus Agenda: it has officially been dead for nearly 20 years, but I can still use it (if I want, in a DOS session under the VMware Fusion Windows emulator on my Macs. Talk about layered legacy systems!). When a cloud program goes away, as Google Reader has done, it's gone. There is no way you can keep using your own "legacy" copy, as you could with previous orphaned software.
  
  
• An Economist item that offers an even harsher judgment. Eg, "Translated into economese, Google has failed to consider the Lucas Critique: adoption behaviour for newly offered services will change in response to Google's observed penchant for cancelling beloved products.... If a particular Google experiment isn't cutting it in that category, then Google may feel justified in axing it.
  
  "But that makes it increasingly difficult for Google to have success with new services. Why commit to using and coming to rely on something new if it might be yanked away at some future date? This is especially problematic for 'social' apps that rely on network effects."
  
  
• A note from Brian Glucroft, a veteran of UX (user experience) work at Microsoft and elsewhere:
  "I've been pondering about broader UX implications and whether Google has hurt its reputation as 'organizer of all the worlds information.' The latter is part of what I have found so appealing about Google. But, I think the shutdown of Google Reader changes it to 'organizer of all the world's information, if it can be sufficiently profitable".
  
  "Of course Google is a business, but I think people expected it to 'error' in terms of being the best organizer even if it might make a tiny cut in profits. If nothing else, that rep of being the ultimate organizer has a value. And it's been hurt.
  
  "I feel bad for the folks on the Google Keep team. That's life and all, but geez, I'd be banging my head against the wall."
  
  
• A statistical analysis from the Guardian, estimating (half-seriously) that based on past performance we can expect Google Keep to survive until 2017.
  

I am about as pro-Google a person as you're going to find in the media. I've had friends at all levels of the company since its founding, and still do now. I've admired what Google has done in China; I live my info-life within the Gmail / Google Drive universe; and I am predisposed to take Google's side in most controversies, whether against Microsoft or the French. Including when it comes to its influence on the battered journalistic business model it has helped to overturn! But even I think it has done something brand-damaging.

Now, two notes on the positive side -- each of which is a reminder of what we have liked about Google.

1) Google has often orphaned services, but it has never "disappeared" data. (I am using "to disappear" in the transitive-verb sense familiar from Latin American politics.) It has been a leader in making sure you could make your own copies, or extract, any of your info that was in its part of the cloud. A reader writes:

One bit of the risk analysis of using Keep or any other new Google product is their commitment to letting you get back your data. As you know, the Google Data Liberation Front is dedicated to helping people get their data out of Google in a standard format. Over time, it's been clear that this is an initiative Google takes seriously.

So while it's a bummer that Reader is closing down, I can export my list of feeds in a standard format and use any of a hundred other RSS products. The same is true of all the other Google products I use.

Like you, I'm cautiously evaluating Keep. Whether I continue using it will depend on what the Drive integration looks like, specifically how easily I can export my Keep notes. [JF note: Also, whether there would be an iOS version, so I could sync it to my iPad. A plus of Evernote is that you can use it on just about any device or system.]

This is a key component of trusting cloud services, Google gets it at a ever deep level, and it's worth a mention.

2) I have relentlessly beat the drum for Google's "two-step" authentication systems for Gmail and other services, which radically reduce the likelihood that your account can be hacked from afar. Apple is only now playing catch-up with this feature.

To wrap this up: I am intrigued by Keep but unfortunately am not going to risk trying it. I admire and rely on Google and hope this recent stretch ultimately proves to have been a chastening rough patch rather than what we look back on as the beginning of a trend.

James Alan Fox pans zero tolerance policies in schools:

Just weeks ago, a 7-year-old Maryland boy was suspended after he nibbled away at his breakfast pastry until it was left shaped like a gun. A Colorado girl, who mistakenly grabbed her mother’s lunch bag from the kitchen counter while rushing off to school, was punished after she learned of her error and volunteered the small paring knife that her mother had packed for slicing an apple. Ignorance was no excuse.

He claims that “no evidence exists that the zero tolerance approach has made schools any safer” and that, if anything, “school climate has been harmed, not helped, by this excessively rigid and punitive approach to school safety.”

HELENA, Mont. (AP) -- Elk, deer, antelope and moose: If Montana residents can scrape it up, they can eat it.

State lawmakers are poised to say just that after the Senate gave its initial backing Wednesday to a bill that would allow people to salvage roadkill for food. The measure is now a final vote from heading to Gov. Steve Bullock.

It makes no sense to let the carcasses of big-game go to waste on Montana's roadways, supporters said.

"It really is a sin to waste a good meat," said state Sen. Larry Jent, D-Bozeman.

The measure calls for law-enforcement officers to issue permits to individuals who would be allowed to remove the carcasses of elk, deer, antelope and moose off the state's roadways. An earlier version would have allowed fur-bearing animals, upland game birds and migratory game birds to be scraped up, too, but it got canned.

Opponents question whether the meat would be safe and whether it would create liability issues for food banks that accept it. Sen. Kendall Van Dyk, D-Billings, said law-enforcement officers are not qualified to decide whether roadkill is safe to eat.

"Despite it's good intention, it doesn't pass the smell test for me," Van Dyke said.

Cattle ranchers like Sen. Jim Peterson, R-of Buffalo, questioned how roadkill could be harvested for food when the cattle industry must follow strict federal regulations.

Montana is not alone in considering the usefulness of roadkill. Illinois allows people with a furbearing permit to remove roadkill for pelts and also allows for the salvaging of meat.

Alaska Fish and Wildlife Protection Troopers run a program that divvies approximately 820 moose carcasses to charitable organizations, like churches and nonprofit organizations, who cook up moose meat for needy people.

The Montana measure would defer to the state's Fish, Wildlife and Parks agency to regulate how the roadkill is actually salvaged.

But as to whether the measure would create a new weapon for hunters -- the car -- Jent said he doesn't see that as plausible.

"We don't have very many suicidal drivers," Jent said.

The Senate voted 33-15 in favor of the measure. A final vote could be scheduled as early as Thursday.

Bullock didn't have an immediate comment on the bill.