| Kangaroo emulates Sarah Palin, "goes rogue." |
[Nov. 23rd, 2009|12:38 pm] |
(Note: This "Victorian Man" isn't any "time traveler," but is just a resident of Victoria, a state in Australia whose capital is Melbourne.)
(Melbourne) Herald Sun Nov. 24, 2009 (It's already tomorrow, in Australia.) Weather: Melbourne 11°C - 25°C., Mostly sunny.
"Rogue roo tries to drown dog," By Grant McArthur
From: Herald Sun November 23, 2009 4:45PM
A VICTORIAN man was almost drowned by a kangaroo after he dived into his farm dam to save his pet dog.
Chris Rickard, 49, of Arthurs Creek, is being assessed by Austin Hospital surgeons after being mauled by the 1.5m roo at 9am (AEDT).
He only managed to end the attack when he elbowed the kangaroo in the throat as it tried to hold him under water, The Herald Sun reported.
More:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/startled-roo-tries-to-drown-man-dog/story-e6frf7l6-1225802152546 |
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| Re: A book review, on the web site of "The Nation," |
[Nov. 17th, 2009|11:15 am] |
I found the article, a review of the book,"In The Land Of Invented Languages," by a Google search for "John Weilgart." I knew the late John W. Weilgart, a Professor at Luther College, Decorah, Iowa, up to his death around 1983.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090914/mlinko
I thought of his "Language of Space," today, when reading about all the hate speech that occurs on radio and TV. He designed his logical language in a way that makes inflammatory speech difficult to express.
One of his sayings was, "Love divides, hate unites." He traces that phenomenon to natural selection, where two lovers of the same person, motivated by the reproductive drive, fight each other.
One declared purpose of his language is for attempted communication with beings in outer space. They might not understand linguistic forms influenced by Darwinian evolution, here on earth.
In anthropoids other than man, the hands are associated with logical thoughts, and the voice is associated with alarms, threats and the like. So, in humans, the voice becomes a means of exhorting people to hate and to fight against something, whether it's a wild beast or another group of people.
Hypothetical beings in outer space might find incomprehensible a harangue by someone such as Rush Limbaugh. Dr. Weilgart hoped that his language might make people more peaceful.
Dr. Weilgart escaped from Austria in 1939, the year after the Anschluss. He'd
just gotten his Doctorate in Psycholinguistics from the University of Vienna, and he came to America.
His daughter Lindy, a professor at Dalhousie University, in Nova Scotia, studies the language of whales.
http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Weilgart_Linda_10598852.aspx
(Also, see my Nov. 14 post, "Words and gestures are both associated with the same part of the brain, which shows the relationship of rational thought to gestures, especially by the hand, but also in other bodily ways, rather than to the voice.) |
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| President Truman, bowing to the Emperor of Japan. |
[Nov. 16th, 2009|01:47 pm] |
Somewhere, I read, perhaps in John Gunther's 1967 book "Inside South America," about an incident that occurred when the Japanese signed formal WW2 surrender documents at a ceremony on September 2, 1945, aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
It seems that President Truman, when he was approaching the Emperor Hirohito, dropped his pen, accidentally or otherwise, onto the deck of the ship, and reached down to retrieve it.
A photo of that incident, published in a newspaper that served a large Japanese immigrant colony in Brazil, had the editorial explanation, "President Truman, bowing to the Emperor of Japan."
The web site below seems to have an allusion to that incident, but the author of the comment says:
"No the dropped pen incident that I am alluding to is just a few months old. If you think back to when President Obama bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, Press Sec Gates said that President Obama had just dropped his pen."
http://www.chandlerswatch.com/2009/11/16/ooops-i-dropped-my-pen-again/ |
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| Our nation's leaders express worry about their troop supply, for future wars. |
[Nov. 15th, 2009|06:30 pm] |
Report says 75 percent of young Americans are unfit to serve in military
By RICK MONTGOMERY
The Kansas City Star
An alarming 75 percent of Americans ages 17 to 24 would not qualify for military service today because they are physically unfit, failed to finish high school or have criminal records. So says a new report from an organization of education and military leaders calling for immediate action on the early-education front.
While some experts voiced doubt that obesity and other societal ills would keep three out of four young adults out of the ranks, the report titled “Ready, Willing and Unable to Serve” was endorsed by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, former NATO commander Gen. Wesley Clark and top retired admirals and generals.
“The armed services are meeting recruitment targets in 2009, but those of us who have served in command roles are worried about the trends we see,” retired Rear Adm. James Barnett said. “Our national security in the year 2030 is absolutely dependent on what’s going on in kindergarten today.”
More:
http://www.kansascity.com/news/nation/story/1564367.html
Notes:
1. See also, "Preparing kids for the next conflict," which I posted November 14, (yesterday).
2. Another article on this subject was published on Page A4, of today's "Register." |
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| An editorial, in today's "Des Moines Register." |
[Nov. 15th, 2009|10:22 am] |
"Wenn ich vom Geiste recht erleuchtet bin,
Geschrieben steht: Im Anfang war der Sinn!"
..."Faust," by Johann Wolfgang Goethe
A year shattered by sex abuse allegations
The Register's editorial • November 15, 2009
Greg Geist of Carroll says the Iowa Department of Human Services wrongly placed him on the state's child abuse registry. And an administrative law judge with the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals agrees. In a ruling this summer, the judge reversed and "found to be incorrect" a social worker's finding that Geist sexually abused a 15-year-old boy.
His name was removed from the abuse registry. But not before he spent 393 days on it.
Not before he lost his job in human services. Not before he lost his license to be a foster parent. Not before he cashed out his retirement savings and declared bankruptcy. Though the 31-year-old Iowan had spent his adult life working with kids - in shelters and residential treatment facilities and as a school liaison officer - being on the registry prevented him from getting another job working in these fields.
After Geist won his appeal, his name was cleared. He started a new job in South Dakota last week at a psychiatric facility as a youth counselor. After spending a year fighting the system, he's relieved to leave Iowa behind.
But the questions uncovered by his story remain. There are 60,000 Iowans on this state's child abuse registry and lawmakers should make sure:
It's not too easy to place someone on the registry.
State child abuse investigators are "well schooled in the art of separating fact from fiction" and only the most serious cases are placed on the registry, according to DHS spokesperson Roger Munns. However, two state senators familiar with the Geist case raise questions about what they perceive as a lack of due process before someone is placed on the registry.
More:
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20091115/OPINION03/911150317/1035/OPINION/A-year-shattered-by-sex-abuse-allegations |
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| My comments to the "Register," on the Greg Geist case. |
[Nov. 15th, 2009|10:20 am] |
Re the Nov. 15 editorial concerning the Greg Geist case, I'd like to call your attention to an internet article about somewhat similar abuses by government.
It shows how our "Justice" system blithely sends people to prison for receiving spam on their computers.
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20091108/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_a_virus_framed_me
This letter of mine was published in the "Northern Iowan," of October 14, 1988,
http://www.library.uni.edu/gateway/indexuni/pager1.php?url=http://www.lib.uni.edu/gateway/indexuni/ni/1988/00000250.jpg
At the time I wrote that, I was aware of the harm that had been done, by laws that criminalized the "possession" of marijuana and other drugs. Once the rascals in our government got away with
that, they could move on, to criminalizing the "possession" of other things, as well, and sending
people to prison, for "possessing" things that they had no idea even existed. |
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| Words and gestures are both associated with the same part of the brain. |
[Nov. 14th, 2009|08:41 pm] |
Words, Gestures Are Translated by Same Brain Regions, Says New Research: Findings May Further Our Understanding of How Language Evolved
Your ability to make sense of Groucho's words and Harpo's pantomimes in an old Marx Brothers movie takes place in the same regions of your brain, says new research funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), one of the National Institutes of Health.
In a study published in this week's Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers have shown that the brain regions that have long been recognized as a center in which spoken or written words are decoded are also important in interpreting wordless gestures. The findings suggest that these brain regions may play a much broader role in the interpretation of symbols than researchers have thought and, for this reason, could be the evolutionary starting point from which language originated.
"In babies, the ability to communicate through gestures precedes spoken language, and you can predict a child's language skills based on the repertoire of his or her gestures during those early months," said James F. Battey, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., director of the NIDCD. "These findings not only provide compelling evidence regarding where language may have come from, they help explain the interplay that exists between language and gesture as children develop their language skills."
More:
http://www.nih.gov/news/health/nov2009/nidcd-09.htm
Note: I often tell a joke I made up, on this subject. Since the German word for "bear" is "Bär," and the German word for "gesture" is "Gebärde," I suggest that, since bears can't talk, they have to communicate by gestures. |
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| Letter of mine, in today's Register |
[Nov. 14th, 2009|08:37 pm] |
Preparing kids for the next conflict?
Des Moines Register, November 14, 2009
Bonnie Baldus wrote that, according to the Healthy Kids Act of 2009, children and their parents must now sign "contracts" with schools, guaranteeing that those children shall perform "physical-fitness" exercises specified by the state (Nov. 5 letter).
Such governmental fiats could interfere with U.S. students' academic achievement, which, as measured by standardized tests, ranks behind that of students in many other countries.
In 1942, when I was in the fifth grade, the first chapter of our health book was "Fitness for Sports and for War."
War, of course, is not healthy. In retrospect, however, it seems that we, at age 10, were being prepared for the Korean War.
In 1919, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the federal government had the prerogative, in 1917, of criminalizing speech that opposed the conscription of young citizens for military deployment in the European war. Its verdict contained the expression "clear and present danger."
I believe the real "clear and present danger" was that confronting those young citizens, upon whose lives the government had staked its claim of ownership.
Perhaps a long-range goal of the Healthy Kids Act is no conscript left behind.
- Gerald Baker, Cedar Falls
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20091114/OPINION04/911140312/1038/OPINION/Preparing-kids-for-the-next-conflict?
(Note: Also see my post of November 15, of an article, titled, "Report says 75 percent of young Americans are unfit to serve in military.) |
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| This is the war manufacturing plant, where I once worked, in R&D. |
[Nov. 13th, 2009|02:07 pm] |
WCF Courier, Friday, November 13, 2009
EPA: Chamberlain manufacturing site can't be cleaned up
Story by JOHN MOLSEED, john.molseed@wcfcourier.com
WATERLOO - Underground soil contamination from the former Chamberlain Manufacturing Corp. plant is too deep and too old to clean up, environmental officials say.
The contamination has spread under surrounding homes, according to samples taken by officials from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Representatives from the EPA joined city officials for a public meeting Thursday night to discuss the contamination. Stephanie Doolan, of the EPA Region 7 office in Kansas City, Kan., said officials from the agency are still testing to see how many homes are affected and whether vapor contamination has seeped into homes near the Chamberlain site at 550 Esther St.
Previous testing revealed concentrations of heavy metals and other hazardous compounds, including the carcinogen trichloroethylene, known as TCE, on the site. TCE vapor can seep from the contaminated groundwater into homes, Doolan said.
Tests show that homes to the south and west of the site had TCE vapor in the soil beneath their basement floors. Air samples were not taken from those homes. Doolan said the EPA would like to gather air samples to see if the vapor is inside some of the homes. Doolan said the agency would like to determine if the levels drop within a block or two of the site and by how much.
Some residents at the meeting said testing for the vapor isn't enough.
"They need to clean it up and get rid of it," said Terry Stevens. "This place has been contaminating the area for a long time."
More:
http://wcfcourier.com/news/local/article_91ec1a3c-d070-11de-a551-001cc4c002e0.html |
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| A kind of compulsory bigamy: Recent Australian law treats mistress as a second wife. |
[Nov. 10th, 2009|10:22 am] |
$100k payout for jilted mistress in Victoria
By Sue Hewitt
Sunday Herald Sun, November 07, 2009
A CHEATING husband has paid his former lover more than $100,000 under Australia's new "mistress laws".
In the first known case of its kind in Victoria, the Melbourne businessman was sued under changes to the Family Law Act - which gives rights to people in de facto relationships and same-sex marriages.
Legal experts say the case, prompted by the end of an affair of more than 20 years, will strike fear into the hearts of philanderers nationwide.
The woman, who has not been named for legal reasons, said not only did she deserve the money, but others should follow her lead.
"I gave him the best years of my life," she said.
"He always told me he would look after me, then he left me...
More:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26319862-1243,00.html |
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| A letter of mine, that was in today's Courier. |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|07:50 pm] |
WCF Courier, Sunday, Nov. 8, 2009.
Kehoe should have been acquitted.
GERALD BAKER
CEDAR FALLS - I think the verdict of the Michelle Kehoe trial should be "acquittal by reason of insanity." However, I think she couldn't trust the psychiatrists enough, to tell them her worst fears. Those professionals, who believe they treat "diseases," rather than people, regarded her shyness as evasiveness.
In some situations women have had good reasons for killing their children, especially where those children were in clear and present danger of enslavement. Such a situation existed in 101 B.C., for the Cimbri, a nation from the Jutland Peninsula of present-day Denmark. They had migrated southward, trying to find a different place to live, but, after several battles, were defeated by a Roman army at Vercellae. In such situations, the people of defeated invading nations usually became slaves.
Historical commentaries attest that the Cimbrian women first killed their children, to deliver them from slavery, and then killed themselves. Johannes V. Jensen, a Danish Nobel Prize winner, mentioned these events in a novel of his epic cycle, "The Long Journey."
The Friesians, who inhabit the North Sea coasts of Germany, The Netherlands, and adjacent islands, have the motto "Better dead than slave." That is, "Lewer duad üs slaw," in Danish Friesian.
http://wcfcourier.com/news/opinion/mailbag/article_e758283e-caf9-11de-a6c6-001cc4c002e0.html
(A slightly different version of that letter was in the November 7 issue of the Cedar Falls Times.) |
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| Anyone can get framed. by a computer virus. |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|04:01 pm] |
AP IMPACT: Framed for child porn — by a PC virus
By JORDAN ROBERTSON, AP Technology Writer - Sun Nov 8, 2009 12:17PM EST
AP IMPACT: Framed for child porn by a PC virus (AP)
Of all the sinister things that Internet viruses do, this might be the worst: They can make you an unsuspecting collector of child pornography.
Heinous pictures and videos can be deposited on computers by viruses — the malicious programs better known for swiping your credit card numbers. In this twist, it's your reputation that's stolen.
Pedophiles can exploit virus-infected PCs to remotely store and view their stash without fear they'll get caught. Pranksters or someone trying to frame you can tap viruses to make it appear that you surf illegal Web sites.
Whatever the motivation, you get child porn on your computer — and might not realize it until police knock at your door.
An Associated Press investigation found cases in which innocent people have been branded as pedophiles after their co-workers or loved ones stumbled upon child porn placed on a PC through a virus. It can cost victims hundreds of thousands of dollars to prove their innocence.
Their situations are complicated by the fact that actual pedophiles often blame viruses — a defense rightfully viewed with skepticism by law enforcement.
"It's an example of the old `dog ate my homework' excuse," says Phil Malone, director of the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. "The problem is, sometimes the dog does eat your homework."
The AP's investigation included interviewing people who had been found with child porn on their computers. The AP reviewed court records and spoke to prosecutors, police and computer examiners.
One case involved Michael Fiola, a former investigator with the Massachusetts agency that oversees workers' compensation.
In 2007, Fiola's bosses became suspicious after the Internet bill for his state-issued laptop showed that he used 4 1/2 times more data than his colleagues. A technician found child porn in the PC folder that stores images viewed online.
Fiola was fired and charged with possession of child pornography, which carries up to five years in prison. He endured death threats, his car tires were slashed and he was shunned by friends.
Fiola and his wife fought the case, spending $250,000 on legal fees. They liquidated their savings, took a second mortgage and sold their car.
An inspection for his defense revealed the laptop was severely infected. It was programmed to visit as many as 40 child porn sites per minute — an inhuman feat. While Fiola and his wife were out to dinner one night, someone logged on to the computer and porn flowed in for an hour and a half.
Prosecutors performed another test and confirmed the defense findings. The charge was dropped — 11 months after it was filed.
The Fiolas say they have health problems from the stress of the case. They say they've talked to dozens of lawyers but can't get one to sue the state, because of a cap on the amount they can recover.
"It ruined my life, my wife's life and my family's life," he says.
The Massachusetts attorney general's office, which charged Fiola, declined interview requests.
At any moment, about 20 million of the estimated 1 billion Internet-connected PCs worldwide are infected with viruses that could give hackers full control, according to security software maker F-Secure Corp. Computers often get infected when people open e-mail attachments from unknown sources or visit a malicious Web page.
Pedophiles can tap viruses in several ways. The simplest is to force someone else's computer to surf child porn sites, collecting images along the way. Or a computer can be made into a warehouse for pictures and videos that can be viewed remotely when the PC is online.
"They're kind of like locusts that descend on a cornfield: They eat up everything in sight and they move on to the next cornfield," says Eric Goldman, academic director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University. Goldman has represented Web companies that discovered child pornographers were abusing their legitimate services.
But pedophiles need not be involved: Child porn can land on a computer in a sick prank or an attempt to frame the PC's owner.
In the first publicly known cases of individuals being victimized, two men in the United Kingdom were cleared in 2003 after viruses were shown to have been responsible for the child porn on their PCs.
In one case, an infected e-mail or pop-up ad poisoned a defense contractor's PC and downloaded the offensive pictures.
In the other, a virus changed the home page on a man's Web browser to display child porn, a discovery made by his 7-year-old daughter. The man spent more than a week in jail and three months in a halfway house, and lost custody of his daughter.
Chris Watts, a computer examiner in Britain, says he helped clear a hotel manager whose co-workers found child porn on the PC they shared with him.
Watts found that while surfing the Internet for ways to play computer games without paying for them, the manager had visited a site for pirated software. It redirected visitors to child porn sites if they were inactive for a certain period.
In all these cases, the central evidence wasn't in dispute: Pornography was on a computer. But proving how it got there was difficult.
Tami Loehrs, who inspected Fiola's computer, recalls a case in Arizona in which a computer was so "extensively infected" that it would be "virtually impossible" to prove what an indictment alleged: that a 16-year-old who used the PC had uploaded child pornography to a Yahoo group.
Prosecutors dropped the charge and let the boy plead guilty to a separate crime that kept him out of jail, though they say they did it only because of his age and lack of a criminal record.
Many prosecutors say blaming a computer virus for child porn is a new version of an old ploy.
"We call it the SODDI defense: Some Other Dude Did It," says James Anderson, a federal prosecutor in Wyoming.
However, forensic examiners say it would be hard for a pedophile to get away with his crime by using a bogus virus defense.
"I personally would feel more comfortable investing my retirement in the lottery before trying to defend myself with that," says forensics specialist Jeff Fischbach.
Even careful child porn collectors tend to leave incriminating e-mails, DVDs or other clues. Virus defenses are no match for such evidence, says Damon King, trial attorney for the U.S. Justice Department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.
But while the virus defense does not appear to be letting real pedophiles out of trouble, there have been cases in which forensic examiners insist that legitimate claims did not get completely aired.
Loehrs points to Ned Solon of Casper, Wyo., who is serving six years for child porn found in a folder used by a file-sharing program on his computer.
Solon admits he used the program to download video games and adult porn — but not child porn. So what could explain that material?
Loehrs testified that Solon's antivirus software wasn't working properly and appeared to have shut off for long stretches, a sign of an infection. She found no evidence the five child porn videos on Solon's computer had been viewed or downloaded fully. The porn was in a folder the file-sharing program labeled as "incomplete" because the downloads were canceled or generated an error.
This defense was curtailed, however, when Loehrs ended her investigation in a dispute with the judge over her fees. Computer exams can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Defendants can ask the courts to pay, but sometimes judges balk at the price. Although Loehrs stopped working for Solon, she argues he is innocent.
"I don't think it was him, I really don't," Loehrs says. "There was too much evidence that it wasn't him."
The prosecution's forensics expert, Randy Huff, maintains that Solon's antivirus software was working properly. And he says he ran other antivirus programs on the computer and didn't find an infection — although security experts say antivirus scans frequently miss things.
"He actually had a very clean computer compared to some of the other cases I do," Huff says.
The jury took two hours to convict Solon.
"Everybody feels they're innocent in prison. Nobody believes me because that's what everybody says," says Solon, whose case is being appealed. "All I know is I did not do it. I never put the stuff on there. I never saw the stuff on there. I can only hope that someday the truth will come out."
But can it? It can be impossible to tell with certainty how a file got onto a PC.
"Computers are not to be trusted," says Jeremiah Grossman, founder of WhiteHat Security Inc. He describes it as "painfully simple" to get a computer to download something the owner doesn't want — whether it's a program that displays ads or one that stores illegal pictures.
It's possible, Grossman says, that more illicit material is waiting to be discovered.
"Just because it's there doesn't mean the person intended for it to be there — whatever it is, child porn included."
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20091108/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_a_virus_framed_me |
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| I wrote about the danger of pornography "possession" laws, 21 years ago. |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|03:50 pm] |
This letter of mine was in the Northern Iowan, of October 14, 1988
http://www.library.uni.edu/gateway/indexuni/pager1.php?url=http://www.lib.uni.edu/gateway/indexuni/ni/1988/00000250.jpg
At the time I wrote this, I was aware of the harm that had been done, by laws that criminalized the "possession" of marijuana and other drugs. Once the shysters in our government got away with
that, they could move on, to criminalizing the "possession" of other things, as well, and sending
people to prison, for "possessing" things that they had no idea even existed. |
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| "Holy Water." |
[Oct. 30th, 2009|11:40 am] |
Since ancient times, there have been "Holy Rivers" and "Holy Wells." Famous "Holy Rivers" include the River Jordan, in Palestine, where I think John The Baptist baptized people. Another is the Ganges, in India, where Hindus go to get sacred baths.
The Tiber, at Rome, seems to be a sacred river. The word "pontifex," a synonym for "pope," literally means "bridge-builder."
A google search for "Sacred Wells," gives many links, one of which is this one.
http://www.irishcultureandcustoms.com/ALandmks/HolyWells.html
I got to thinking about that, when my last letter, about genealogy, was published in the WCF Courier, two days ago. It mentioned the River Selz, and "Seltzer Water." Maybe the Selz, whose Latin name is "Saletio," if I remember right, was once regarded as a "sacred river."
These are the letters in the Oct. 28 Courier:
http://wcfcourier.com/news/opinion/mailbag/article_a90629b8-edd2-5582-a50b-bb26bac31386.html |
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