October 24, 2014

At the gate to the slain Canadian soldier's house, his dogs wait:

@MollyatTheSpec:
Cirillo's dogs. Such a sad sight.


Sigh.......

October 23, 2014

5 orphaned fawns are released back into the wild: :):):)

http://vimeo.com/109651846

HAPPY! HAPPY! JOY! JOY!

October 22, 2014

Another leak about Michael Brown. This time from his toxicology report:

@GottaLaff: OFFS! RT @BuzzFeedAndrew: C’mon now 😑😐 h/t @JonathanDBrown

From WaPo

Hallucinations? Seriously?
Was he mainlining THC?

October 22, 2014

Video of gunfire exchange in the Canadian Parliament Building in Ottawa. Live shooter.

A soldier was shot outside the building.

@cbcsaltzman: #BREAKING :
confirmation one of the shooters shot dead in centre block

October 22, 2014

Coburn released his "Wastebook" of frivolous government spending. There's more to it.

I will not argue with anybody that there is not wasteful spending. A lot of it comes from Congresspeople and Senators themselves who want money for whatever back in their states.

The part that bothers me are his attacks on research. On the face of it, some studies do sound frivolous. However, before I label them as wasteful spending, I want to know exactly where the results of this research will lead. Many times it is one of the first building blocks of basic research that have to be done to lead to bigger breakthroughs.

People do not understand this or anything related to science and research. They seem to believe that many products and processes are spun out of whole cloth and appear after a short stint in labs by scientists, magicians or whoever. In fact, many of them are the results of years of work some of which would probably end up in his 'Wastebook.'

Please remember this when you hear about these studies. They may be waste, but they could very well be important to us or for those who come later.

October 19, 2014

Susan Smith: 20 years later, case still a shocker (She drove her kids into a lake)

Susan Smith: 20 years later, case still a shocker

Investigators were so determined 20 years ago to get a confession from South Carolina’s Susan Smith that they were willing to use anything, including deception, to get her to admit to drowning her two small children in an Upstate lake.

Then-SLED chief Robert Stewart said this month that investigators created a copy of a false newspaper article they were prepared to show Smith about a woman who had killed a family member. The fictional woman served her time in prison, got out, married a rich businessman and went on to lead a happy life. The plan: let Smith read the article and then speak with the woman. If the shame of killing her children didn’t persuade Smith to confess, agents reasoned, perhaps hope would – hope that her life could go on beyond prison.

Not only was the article false, the woman was an undercover State Law Enforcement Division agent. Fortunately, Stewart said, Smith did confess, and investigators never had to use the scheme.

Stewart described the plan, which he has never discussed publicly, as the 20th anniversary of the case approaches. Others looking back on the Oct. 25 anniversary recall the media convergence on the small city of Union. They remember the stresses – and scrutiny – of the sudden national attention and the decisions they had to make to get through it all.

Stewart knew that if the case hinged on using deception, it would be just another tool that law enforcement had in its arsenal of coaxing confessions from alleged murderers. SLED and the Union County Sheriff’s Office already were receiving help from seasoned behavioral scientists and a veteran interviewer and polygraph analyst from the FBI.
<snip>
Much more: http://www.thestate.com/2014/10/18/3753690/susan-smith-20-years-later-case.html

An article from the former SC Director of Prisons about Smith:
http://www.thestate.com/2014/10/18/3753666/former-sc-prisons-director-susan.html

I lived about an hour away from Union when this happened. Most of us never believed her story about the carjacking. I wasn't sure exactly what happened, but I told someone they needed to look for the car in one of the quarries fairly near there.
I had read a book about Diane Downs who shot her kids. I didn't put it past Smith having done something because I had read that.
It was and is one of the most horrible crimes ever.

October 18, 2014

If you seriously care about gaming, you better pay attention to #Gamergate and its damage.

Once it descended into threats and people having to leave their homes, it STOPPED being about ethics among gamers and journalists. Now it's about people in fear for their lives because somebody has a problem with their ethics?

Gamers can claim that the threats are from a minority. That may be, but now the whole lot of them are tarred with the poison from those groups.

Some posts are a great example. Not ONCE do they address the threats and very real problems created by this so-called ethical cleanup. People have had to leave their homes, but some are going to ignore that and insist it's about ethics and journalism. It has gone waaaay beyond that now and it's a question of the moral compass of gamers.

No matter how this started out, it's a brush fire of hate that every gamer better try to stop. I know of nothing in years that has damaged the gamer community this much in the public mind. Good luck convincing anybody that it's a harmless activity now.

Gamers better get off their asses and push back hard against the brutal mysogny and hate or you will never be taken seriously again.

I can't hear the gamers' complaints about ethics and journalism over the death threats and neither can a lot of other people.

October 16, 2014

Video of police stopping peaceful march in St.Louis County & trying to intimidate marchers:

Hear that noise of their batons beating their shields. That's the sound of the police state.
None have nametags and none will talk.

October 16, 2014

Republicans cannot get ebola.

@TinaDupuy:
So far every case of Ebola in this country got it by helping people. So relax, Republicans, you're in the clear.

Lol! That should leave a mark.

October 15, 2014

Keith Olbermann's beautiful remembrance of the best teacher he ever had:

Good on you Mr.Naething!
"Fair winds and following seas" to you.
RIP....