Paul's blog

Archive for the ‘In the news’ Category

What’s this? Open season, or what? (all in this month)

Police shooting of elderly (88) woman

Police shooting of groom ‘unacceptable’

Police shoots 13-year-old boy who had toy gun

Police shoots unarmed man 81 times

Police shoots 19-year-old with mental disorder

 

A certain Laura Mallory, of Loganville, GA, is loudly campaigning to ban the Bible from class rooms an libraries. This young mother of four is horrified about the book’s content and fears that the book will cause children, who can’t think critically yet, to indulge in, and even attempt to experiment with, the super-natural. I’m with her on this. I also think we should ban books in which people drive cars. I mean, haven’t you read those stories where 9 year olds get into daddy’s car and cause all kinds of accidents? Comic books are probably the worst: can you imagine the horror when kids think they can do what Superman and Spiderman can do?

We should also keep them away from anything that has to do with politics: kids are so gullible, they may think that politicians actually mean what they say (although, I must admit, the chance that kids understand what politicians are saying is quite remote). In fact, we must ban any form of fiction, because it could be taken as reality, and we all know that fiction is the exact opposite of reality, and we don’t want our kids to get confused about which is which. In fact, it’s better that we don’t expose our kids to any of the craziness that’s going on out there: keep your kids in the house (which, needless to say, is TV and radio-free).

Way to go Laura Mallory! Ban that Bi… errrr hang on… I read that wrong, it’s not the Bible she wants banned, but Harry Potter books. Oh well… same thing. Evil evil evil.

Now, go take your meds.

 

(I guess no Halloween for the four Mallory kids either… can you imagine, oh horror, a night full of witchcraft?)

 

Wake up, Laura Mallory! This is the 21st century.

 

For the story, just google ‘Laura Mallory’. I lost the link to the article, but the most frightning thing about the whole story was, that there was a poll connected to the article: of over 68,000 people who took the poll, 11% agreed with her!

I live in a country where 11% of the people think Harry Potter books should be banned and are dangerous for kids to read. Maybe I am the one who needs to wake up… from a very very bad dream!

Why is it that people in uniforms or with a badge so often think they’re above the law and that you, in dealing with them, automatically lose all your constitutionally given rights?

We all (well, almost all) know that it is unwise to joke about carrying a bomb when you’re anywhere near an airport, and we sort of, reluctantly (don’t we all love bomb jokes?), go along with it. Even though the automatic detainment (and heavy penalty) for using the word ‘bomb’ is a bit silly: statiscally the odds of someone cracking a joke about a bomb actually carrying a bomb, is incredibly much smaller than the guy who doesn’t announce carrying a bomb, actually having one. In fact, it is a bit scarry that in the process of searching for bombs, officials would take anything said to them by the subject-under-investigation into account. Taking someone in custody for joking to have a bomb, is logically as silly as waving him through unsearched when he claims he does not have a bomb. Why all the over-reacting drama? Why not ask the joker “Really? Show me!” and pat him down. And if the bomb-jokes get a bit old, put up a big sign saying ‘Please, no bomb jokes. Heard them all. Not funny’. That would be far more effective than not puting up a sign and sending naive innocent people to jail for five years for making a joke.

 

But again, silly as it may be, I can live with it. It gets way different when the TSA starts detaining people at the gate for calmly and passively expressing non-threatening opinions, as in the case of Ryan Bird, who wrote the political protest statement ‘Kip Hawley is an idiot’ on his toiletry bag. (Kip Hawley is head of the TSA, and I’m not referring to the Tourette Syndrome Association here, although, one has to wonder). He was first told he couldn’t write those things (huh?), then the supervisor had the audacity to inform Ryan that, basically, in dealing with TSA-uniforms and badges, Ryan in essence lost all his constitutional rights (“you can express your opinions ‘out there’, but not ‘here’“), and then proceeded to have Ryan detained. I just checked the first amendment and couldn’t find any exclusion concerning TSA officials!

This is outside of outrageous. What is next? Getting detained for not smiling at some grumpy TSA nazi?

Again, ‘security theatre’, this time by the TSA, whose slogan, ironically, is “TSA … VIGILANT, EFFECTIVE, EFFICIENT” .. they were exactly the opposite in this case.

 

Link to article

In Turkey there is a law that makes it a crime to ‘insult Turkishness‘.

To criticize this law is considered an ‘attempt to influence the judiciary‘. Which is also a crime.

Turkish authors who have written about the brutal slaying of over one million Armenians during WW1 by the Turkish, have been charged with the crime of ‘insulting Turkishness’.

Turkey, who is seeking membership of the European Union, has been told, by that same European Union, that European Union members have a thing against putting writers in jail for expressing opinions. Something to do with that silly thing about freedom of press and speech.

During the trials of these ‘Turkishness insulting‘ writers, there were large protests by people waving European Union flags with Nazi swastika’s on ‘m and slogans referring to ‘EU Fascism’, thereby 

• expressing their opinions about the EU’s suggestion to not put people in jail for expressing their opinions
• supporting a law which, if the EU would adopt a similar one (criminalize insulting ‘European Unioness‘), they would go to jail for.

I’d say, let’s not make Turkey a member of the European Union just yet.

(btw, when was Turkey geographically moved to Europe? Last time I was there, it was still firmly planted in the Middle East)

(link to article)

Note: I hope I didn’t insult anyone’s ‘Turkishness‘ with this post. If so: I’m profoundly sorry for your reaction! (I learned this clever way of ‘apologizing‘ from the Pope!)

Usually, stories in which a person goes to jail, a woman is viciously attacked and another person dies, are very sad stories.

I guess the story I just read is a sad story, but I had to smile anway: the bad bastard went to jail, the dumb scumbag died, and the attacked woman came out on top.

Hiring your ex-custodian to kill your wife, because you don’t like the divorce proceedings? And then this tiny skinny brainiac goes to the wife’s house, uses the security codes he has been provided with by the almost-ex hubby while carrying a backpack with in it the first name of the ex husband and his cellphone number?

Following these smart moves, this same skinny ‘slight’ genius attacks the tall strong female nurse when she comes home.

If he had done some research, he probably would have realized that a ‘close combat’ weapon, like a claw hammer, shouldn’t have been the weapon of choice in this quite uneven match.

A hammer? This Einstein must have taken his boss’ suggestion to become a ‘hit’-man a little bit too literal.

Anyway, she took away his hammer and when the ‘assasin’ then tried to bite her to death (real pro!) she simply grabbed him by the throat and squeezed the life out of the varmint like a rotten banana.

I’m sure that’s not exactly how it was worded in the police report, nor how she experienced the whole ordeal, but that’s how I like to read it, and that IS what the outcome of it all was: Moron husband to jail, not likely to score high points in the divorce proceedings, the lady is safe AND got rid of the annoying husband for a LONG time, and the ‘hit man’ … out of the gene pool!

Yeah!

(read the article)

A KLM Boeing 747, flight 4805 taxied to the only runway at Los Rodeos airport and took position for takeoff. The weather was terrible, they could only see part of the runway. They also knew that there was another plane taxiing on that runway when they lined up for takeoff, but couldn’t see it. Probably due to language differences, the communication with the tower was not clear. There was some confusion between the captain and the first officer, but the captain decided the runway was clear and started the takeoff. After all, he had heard the tower order the other plane to take the nearest exit off of the runway … plus he was in a hurry. If he waited a bit longer, Dutch regulations would have required a change of crew: they would have been on duty for too long. That would mean hours, if not a day, delay. So he pushed for it.

All this happened on March 27, 1977 on the Canary Island of Tenerife. The other plane on the runway, which, coincidently, missed the exit they were supposed to take to clear the runway, was Pan Am flight 1736.

583 People died that day in the resulting collision of the two planes.

There were a few different incidents that led up to this accident, but the main one was, what is now called in the aviation world, “getthereitis” (get-there-itis .. get it? It simply means: being in such a hurry to get somewhere, that safety regulations are ignored: just GET there, no matter what.)

Guess which word went through my head when I read this today on CNN:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) — Caught in a scheduling squeeze, NASA decided to try to launch space shuttle Atlantis on Friday without replacing a troublesome electrical component.

Friday is the last launch day available before the U.S. space agency runs into a scheduling conflict with the Russian space agency.

On Thursday, NASA decided not to change out an electricity-generating fuel cell whose coolant pump had given erratic readings, causing a scrub a day earlier. Replacing the fuel cell could have delayed any launch attempt by several weeks.

I’m glad I’m not an astronaut: I mean, can you imagine being in that thing, while NASA is going to try to launch the damned thing with known faulty parts (and we’re not talking about a broken light over its license plate here!)?

See this article.

It’s always sad when someone dies, especially when it’s at a relatively young age and by a freak accident. But it’s extra sad when it’s someone you liked.

We used to make fun of Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter quite a bit, and would also mimick him (“isn’t she a beauty?” and “danger, danger”). When we would run into one of his programs while channel surfing, we would yell, OH NO, and pretend to run away, because, let’s face it, he was a little over the top. But we would watch his programs anyway, and we secretly loved the guy and his programs. His ‘drive’, enthusiasm and pure passion were inspiring.

We will miss him.

Just one word: Shit

If you believe in God and in miracles, I have a tip for you:

Leave the miracles to God

He’s a trained professional. Don’t try this at home!

If you really have to do that water-trick, then follow the bible: the correct order is:

first part the seas, then do your crossing.

 

I’m sorry, but this image of a nun laying in an MRI machine while having some kind of a religious orgasm .. is too much for me to take. I’m losing it.

The “ramped-up electrical activity in parts of the brain“ is the result of “feelings of profound joy and union with a higher being”? How about the result of feelings of extreme claustrophobia? Ever been in such a thing? Well I can almost envision anyone praying when you’re in one, but “feelings of profound joy” while every unpaired proton and neutron in your body is being spun around? You’ve got to be kidding me!