Tom shoots Carlos

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Michael

Four times.

A pistol-packing jogger in Florida won’t be charged for shooting and killing a teenager who attacked him during a midnight run.

Prosecutors said Tuesday they are convinced Thomas Baker acted in self defense when he fired eight shots at 18-year-old Carlos Mustelier near Tampa in November .

Prosecutors say Florida’s “stand-your-ground” law was a factor in their decision. The law, passed in 2005, gives people the right to use deadly force as long as they “reasonably believe” it is necessary to stop another person from hurting them.

Baker told police he reached for his gun when the teen punched him in the face. Baker has a concealed weapons permit.

The teen was hit four times in the chest, back and buttocks. He died at the scene.

Ignoring Florida’s shoot-first-ask-questions-later law, one has to wonder if it was a Carlos who shot a Tom if the law would be applied in the same way – especially if it was an older Tom shooting a younger Carlos. Since there were four gunshots involved, I’m guessing the law would be viewed just a little differently.

Filed under: News | Tagged: , , , , | 5 Comments »

Richard “Dick” Winters dies at 92

Posted on January 11, 2011 by Michael

Major Richard “Dick” Winters, best known for his heroism in WW2, has died.

Winters began his career in the Army shortly before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, and he volunteered to become a paratrooper, according to his wartime memoirs “Beyond Band of Brothers.”

He was assigned to E Company, more commonly known as Easy Company, of the 2nd Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division.

After months of training in the new tactic of soldiers dropping by parachute behind enemy lines, Winters and the men of Easy Company parachuted into Normandy hours before the first troops hit Omaha and Utah beaches on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

When he landed he discovered he’d lost his “leg bag,” the satchel carrying all his weapons, when he jumped out of the plane.

He was behind enemy lines on the most decisive day of World War II with nothing but a knife.

“I later discovered that in our small contingent from Easy Company, we all lost our leg bags and ended up using whatever weapons he could scrounge,” Winters wrote in his memoirs. “This was a hell of a way to begin a war.”

Still, within hours he organized a small group of troopers to attack a German artillery position. They took out nearly two dozen Nazi soldiers and four large cannons which had been firing on American troops landing on the beaches.

I find it upsetting that I am just finding this news. Winters, recently portrayed in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, is a notable figure and his death on January 2nd should have been more widely reported. (Another war hero, Ray Holmes, had his death reported seemingly more promptly.)

I could have gone on quoting the article to show all the tremendous feats Winters accomplished, but then I would just be re-publishing virtually every bit of it. Do read the whole thing yourself. Find out about this man.

Filed under: News | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Congratulations, Palin

Posted on January 8, 2011 by Michael

I’m sure the nation is grateful for your efforts.

The sheriff blamed the vitriolic political rhetoric that has consumed the country, much of it occurring in Arizona.

“When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous,” he said. “And unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”

Giffords expressed similar concern, even before the shooting. In an interview after her office was vandalized, she referred to the animosity against her by conservatives, including Sarah Palin’s decision to list Giffords’ seat as one of the top “targets” in the midterm elections.

“For example, we’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list, but the thing is, that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they have to realize that there are consequences to that action,” Giffords said in an interview with MSNBC.

Filed under: News | Tagged: , , , | 12 Comments »

An elaborate fraud

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Michael

Andrew Wakefield is the disgraced research who claimed to have found a link between vaccines and autism in a 1998 study. This resulted in many deaths, increased illness, and his removal from the medical register in the U.K. Now a little investigative journalism has found that Wakefield outright made up a lot of his data.

A new examination found, by comparing the reported diagnoses in the paper to hospital records, that Wakefield and colleagues altered facts about patients in their study.

The analysis, by British journalist Brian Deer, found that despite the claim in Wakefield’s paper that the 12 children studied were normal until they had the MMR shot, five had previously documented developmental problems. Deer also found that all the cases were somehow misrepresented when he compared data from medical records and the children’s parents.

And then children died because of Andrew Wakefield. I wonder when the public will get an apology from the media for promoting this pure horseshit? I’m not holding my breath.

In an accompanying editorial, BMJ editor Fiona Godlee and colleagues called Wakefield’s study “an elaborate fraud.” They said Wakefield’s work in other journals should be examined to see if it should be retracted.

I only include this because I had a different original source, so I hadn’t read this part of the article when I made the title to this post. I guess it’s just the most accurate way of describing the work of Andrew Wakefield.

Update: via PZ, watch Anderson Cooper engage in some responsible journalism by not letting Wakefield off the hook.

Filed under: News, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

One of Baldacci’s last acts: Morally outstanding

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Michael

One of now former Maine Governor John Baldacci’s final acts was one I cannot help but admire so much.

In one of his final acts as governor, John Baldacci signed an order Wednesday pardoning a Portland man [Touch Rin Svay] who faced deportation to Cambodia because of a drunken-driving crash that killed his sister [Sary Svay] 10 years ago.

…

Although he had lived in the United States since he was 4, he faced likely deportation because he was born to Cambodian parents in a refugee camp on the Thai border. He does not speak Cambodian and has no ties to that country.

The sentencing judge said deporting Svay would be “a horrible and unjust resolution.” Svay’s immigration attorney, Beth Stickney, said Svay’s only way to stay in the country was a pardon, a rarely used power the governor has to forgive crimes.

Baldacci said in a prepared statement that he issued the pardon largely because of Sary Svay’s two children and Touch Rin Svay’s role in supporting them.

“He has complied with the terms of his sentence, and has turned his life around,” Baldacci said. “But, in my mind, he continues to have an obligation to his sister’s two children — his niece and nephew — to be involved in their lives and to explain to them his actions. He is actively involved in their lives, and his debt cannot be fully repaid unless he maintains that supporting role.”

The article continues that Svay was due a pardon in 2004, but he admitted to minor transgressions of his parole and that caused a delay (as well as another 5 months in prison). Other than that, however, Svay has been a model citizen since completing his original sentence and subsequent probation violation, holding a steady job and helping to care for his niece and nephew. I greatly admire Gov. Baldacci for his decision. Svay has no connection to Cambodia; deporting him would be nothing short of inhumane. The right call was made today.

(Gov. Baldacci also pardoned a second man who had served a morally trivial but legally significant conviction from 18 years ago. That man, who was not named in the article, faced a similar situation, with all his family ties existing in Maine.)

Filed under: News, Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , , , | 4 Comments »

“A judicial slap…”

Posted on January 5, 2011 by Michael

A federal court has found that a cross in San Diego marking a war memorial is unconstitutional.

The three-judge panel concluded in its 47-page opinion that the U.S. “district court erred in declaring the memorial to be primarily nonsectarian and granting summary judgment in favor of the government and the memorial’s supporters.”

A group that filed a brief on behalf of 25 members of Congress supporting the Mount Soledad Veterans Memorial, the American Center for Law and Justice, condemned the appeals court ruling as “a judicial slap in the face to our military veterans.”

And they’re right. This ruling is a total slap in the face of military veterans…

unless they’re Jewish.

or Muslim.

or atheist.

or agnostic.

or Buddhist.

or any non-Christian religion.

or supporters of the First Amendment.

But for everyone else? Total slappage.

Filed under: News, Religions | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »

Real medical professionals: Flu season is picking up

Posted on January 2, 2011 by Michael

So get vaccinated.

Flu season appears to be picking up.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says five states had widespread reports of flu last week, up from zero two weeks earlier.

A CDC report released Thursday says four of the states were in the South — Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Virginia. The other was New York.

The report also says that tests of about 120 virus samples show the circulating flu strains seem to be well-matched to this season’s flu vaccine.

Health officials say an estimated 23,600 flu-related deaths occur each year.

(Emphasis mine.)

I think we can add a few to that number thanks to the irresponsibility of the anti-vax crowd.

Filed under: News, Science | Tagged: , , , | 11 Comments »

Religion continues to kill Nigerians

Posted on January 1, 2011 by Michael

I’ve long been following the crisis in Nigeria. People have been murdering each other for quite some time there, with part of the basis being fertile farm land, part of it being poverty, part of it being government corruption, but the biggest part being religion. The most recent attacks reflect that.

Nigerian authorities on Friday arrested 92 people allegedly affiliated with a militant Islamist group that the government says is responsible for a string of recent killings in the country’s northeast.

…

Three men were arrested with bombs in their possession in the vicinity of Jos on Christmas Day, authorities said

The Jos region lies on a faith-based fault line between Muslim-dominated northern Nigeria and the mainly Christian south.

At least four people were killed and another 13 wounded Friday in a bomb blast at an army barracks in Abuja [on New Year’s eve], the deputy police commissioner said.

I would prefer not to have the perfect example to illustrate the point that religion causes divide and fosters violence, but it is what it is. Without Christianity and without Islam dividing the city of Jos, Nigerians would either be able to more easily resolve issues over farm land or they wouldn’t have any violence in the first place. (These most recent attacks are driven by extremists, but it remains that many of the other attacks have been over non-religious issues which are heightened and worsened by the presence of religion.)

Filed under: News, Religions | Tagged: , , , , , , | 28 Comments »

Twins who have different fathers

Posted on December 29, 2010 by Michael

I wasn’t aware this really happened.

A pair of twins born in Poland have different fathers, Polish media reported Monday — in apparently only the seventh such case in the world.

The twins’ mother became pregnant while she was having relations with her husband and also having an affair, reported broadcaster TVN 24.

The woman, whose name was not given, filed for a divorce after giving birth to the twins, one male and one female.

The woman later conducted tests to prove her husband was not the father of either child.

The tests showed, however, that the husband was the father of the baby boy, while the other man was the baby girl’s father.

Such rare cases are possible when a woman produces two eggs and has sex with another partner while she’s ovulating, local media reported.

Filed under: News | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

President Obama praises Michael Vick

Posted on December 27, 2010 by Michael

And I love it.

NBC’s Peter King reports that Barack Obama called Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie earlier this week to congratulate him for giving Vick a second chance after his release from prison. According to King, the president said that released prisoners rarely receive a level playing field and that Vick’s story could begin to change that.

The reason I like this so much isn’t that I’m a big fan of Michael Vick as a player – though I am – and it isn’t that I’m a big fan of the Eagles – I’m definitely not; every team that has ever been anywhere near Pennsylvania, and especially those in Philly, can go to hell. It’s that people are irrationally harsh towards released convicts. We have this whole system set up where we say, “Okay, you did these wrong things, so we need to fix the situation”, and the way we fix things is to come up with sentences of certain periods. If anyone thought for a damn minute about what we’re doing, they would realize that by agreeing to the very idea of releasing people after certain periods of time, we’re saying, “Okay, we can call the situation fixed after X days/weeks/months/years.” We may not considere it entirely fixed (hence probation), but we are, as an obvious matter of fact, considering the bulk of the situation resolved. But emotion gets in the way.

From sports shows to articles to conversations, I have heard people say again and again that Vick ought to be banned from ever playing in the NFL again. All that does is ignore everything we’re saying as a society about the very idea of prison sentences that result in release. He has served his time. Even though prison should not be about punishment (because that’s plainly petty), the pro-revenge/punishment crowd ought to be satisfied by the fact that Vick has completed his sentence. More so, for reasonable people (who aren’t usually American), the fact that Vick’s time in prison has made it virtually certain he will never again abuse animals ought to be satisfying. In this case, we can say he went to a correction facility – and we’ll be honest when we say it.

So I am very happy to read the President’s words on Vick. If we’re just out to make the lives of people terrible because they did a terrible thing, we’re just hypocrites. And more importantly, we aren’t improving anything. I would think with such a large Christian population that we might do a little more turning of the cheek. (Unless people are just picking and choosing their morality from their religion…) I cannot say I am overly hopeful that Obama’s praise of Vick is going to radically change things for the better, but it is a step in the right direction.

Filed under: News, Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , | 13 Comments »

« Previous Page — Next Page »