I saw the menu this man looked at when he ordered lemonade for his son.
It said:
Beer
Lemonade
Peanuts
If it had been all alcoholic beverages on the menu, I wouldn't buy the man's story that he made a mistake. But who would guess that there would be NO non-alcholic beverages on the menu?
From CLCIK ON DETROIT
Dad's Oversight Lands Son In Foster Care
April 28, 2008
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- An Ann Arbor couple's 7-year-old son ended up in foster care over Mike's Hard Lemonade.
Christopher Ratte, 47, a professor at University of Michigan, claims he accidentally gave his son, Leo, some of the alcoholic beverage at Comerica Park a few weeks ago. He said he didn't even know the alcoholic lemonade existed.
"I got a beer for myself and asked Leo if he wanted a lemonade because there is a sign that said, 'Mike's Lemonade,'" said Ratte.
He said he bought his son the drink at the beginning of the Tigers game and it wasn't until the ninth inning when a security guard noticed the bottle in Leo's hand.
The security guard asked Ratte if he knew it contained alcohol. He said he didn't and when he went to grab the bottle out of the child's hand, the security guard grabbed it first.
"It's just the simple fact that I didn’t know this brand and didn’t suspect some of the lemonade sold in ballparks are alcoholic."
A short time later, Ratte was being questioned by Detroit police at Children's Hospital, where the child was taken by ambulance.
The child said he was feeling a little nauseated, but showed no other symptoms of being intoxicated.
The security guard said the boy drank about 12 ounces of the hard lemonade, which is about 5 percent alcohol.
However, the child's bloodwork detected no trace of alcohol.
The child remained in foster care for two days before his mother, Claire Zimmerman, a U-M architecture professor, was able to take their son home as long as the father relocated to a hotel.
It was two more weeks before the father could move back home. The last hearing closed the case.
Ratte and his wife have filed a formal complaint with the Child Protective Services ombudsman's office stating they thought the treatment was excessive.
"Fine this guy bought this drink for his son. We need to look into it, but we don't need to take the most extreme measures," Ratte said in reference to Child Protective Services.
Ratte has apologized for his mistake.
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/16031059/detail.html
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Pillars of the community are sometimes worse than the delinquents
Dungeon case stuns Europe's media
BBC News
April 29, 2008
The events in the eastern Austrian town of Amstetten are front-page news across Europe. As well as disgust at the revelations surrounding the actions of Josef Fritzl, there is disbelief that he escaped the notice of the authorities - and the suggestion that he may have had outside help.
LE PARISIEN - FRANCE
Austria ran out of superlatives to describe the horror suffered by Natascha Kampusch, kidnapped and isolated in a dungeon by her captor for eight long years. Overwhelmed, Austrians will not find words strong enough to convey the monstrous and diabolic history which has played out in secret for three decades at Amstetten.
LIBERATION - FRANCE
The Austrians are asking themselves: Why didn't social services, who visited the family several times, notice anything unusual? How could the neighbours who all know each other in this part of town not have realised anything? How was Josef able to live a double life for almost a quarter of a century? And what did his wife, who according to the investigators "didn't ask questions", really know?
DIE ZEIT - GERMANY
What does this say about a community, in which an authority figure can go about breaking this private taboo without any great difficulty for almost a quarter of a century? Is this a society which is afraid to have to look into its own abyss?
DAILY MIRROR - UK
The World's Most Evil Dad... the brute whose word was absolute law, locked the door with a code only he knew and cruelly told Elisabeth and the children that it was booby-trapped with explosives.
DAILY MAIL - UK
Neighbours said the three [children] kept above ground were well-balanced and polite members of the police sports club and voluntary fire brigade. Their grandmother, according to many, was a pillar of the community, baking cakes for fetes and becoming an active member of the parent teachers' association at their private school.
DE STANDAARD - BELGIUM
How was it possible that Josef Fritzl regularly went on holiday to Thailand for two to three weeks without his prisoners starving in the cellar? Did he handle it completely by himself or did he have help from outside?
CORRIERE DELLA SERA - ITALY
You can see the birdcage from the pavement of Dammstrasse... When he wasn't playing the good husband with old Rosemarie, or wasn't too tired from being a good grandfather to the three son/grandsons that he ended up looking after, when he wasn't telling jokes in the bar, watering his lawn, going fishing or helping his neighbours fix their broken kettles, when he wasn't disappearing for hours into the cellar to work, when in reality he was opening up the secret bolt to feed his slaves, when his double face didn't have to divide itself between the normal and the horrific, he also found time for them - those small birds, poor little things.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7373462.stm
BBC News
April 29, 2008
The events in the eastern Austrian town of Amstetten are front-page news across Europe. As well as disgust at the revelations surrounding the actions of Josef Fritzl, there is disbelief that he escaped the notice of the authorities - and the suggestion that he may have had outside help.
LE PARISIEN - FRANCE
Austria ran out of superlatives to describe the horror suffered by Natascha Kampusch, kidnapped and isolated in a dungeon by her captor for eight long years. Overwhelmed, Austrians will not find words strong enough to convey the monstrous and diabolic history which has played out in secret for three decades at Amstetten.
LIBERATION - FRANCE
The Austrians are asking themselves: Why didn't social services, who visited the family several times, notice anything unusual? How could the neighbours who all know each other in this part of town not have realised anything? How was Josef able to live a double life for almost a quarter of a century? And what did his wife, who according to the investigators "didn't ask questions", really know?
DIE ZEIT - GERMANY
What does this say about a community, in which an authority figure can go about breaking this private taboo without any great difficulty for almost a quarter of a century? Is this a society which is afraid to have to look into its own abyss?
DAILY MIRROR - UK
The World's Most Evil Dad... the brute whose word was absolute law, locked the door with a code only he knew and cruelly told Elisabeth and the children that it was booby-trapped with explosives.
DAILY MAIL - UK
Neighbours said the three [children] kept above ground were well-balanced and polite members of the police sports club and voluntary fire brigade. Their grandmother, according to many, was a pillar of the community, baking cakes for fetes and becoming an active member of the parent teachers' association at their private school.
DE STANDAARD - BELGIUM
How was it possible that Josef Fritzl regularly went on holiday to Thailand for two to three weeks without his prisoners starving in the cellar? Did he handle it completely by himself or did he have help from outside?
CORRIERE DELLA SERA - ITALY
You can see the birdcage from the pavement of Dammstrasse... When he wasn't playing the good husband with old Rosemarie, or wasn't too tired from being a good grandfather to the three son/grandsons that he ended up looking after, when he wasn't telling jokes in the bar, watering his lawn, going fishing or helping his neighbours fix their broken kettles, when he wasn't disappearing for hours into the cellar to work, when in reality he was opening up the secret bolt to feed his slaves, when his double face didn't have to divide itself between the normal and the horrific, he also found time for them - those small birds, poor little things.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7373462.stm
Monday, April 21, 2008
April 20 birthdays include world's oldest person
Edna Parker of Shelbyville, Indiana turned 115 yesterday. She was born April 20, 1893. Scientists think she's lived so long because of genetics, environment, and not dwelling on stressful events.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Key scientist sure "God particle" will be found soon
Click here for original article
Key scientist sure "God particle" will be found soon
Mon Apr 7, 2008
By Robert Evans
GENEVA (Reuters) - British physicist Peter Higgs said on Monday it should soon be possible to prove the existence of a force which gives mass to the universe and makes life possible -- as he first argued 40 years ago.
Higgs said he believes a particle named the "Higgs boson", which originates from the force, will be found when a vast particle collider at the CERN research centre on the Franco-Swiss border begins operating fully early next year.
"The likelihood is that the particle will show up pretty quickly ... I'm more than 90 percent certain that it will," Higgs told journalists.
The 78-year-old's original efforts in the early 1960s to explain why the force, dubbed the Higgs field, must exist were dismissed at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
Today, the existence of the invisible field is widely accepted by scientists, who believe it came into being milliseconds after the Big Bang created the universe some 15 billion years ago.
Finding the Higgs boson would prove this theory right.
CERN's new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) aims to simulate conditions at the time of that primeval inferno by smashing particles together at near light-speed and so unlock many secrets of the universe.
Higgs was in Geneva to visit CERN for the first time in 13 years in advance of the launch...
Key scientist sure "God particle" will be found soon
Mon Apr 7, 2008
By Robert Evans
GENEVA (Reuters) - British physicist Peter Higgs said on Monday it should soon be possible to prove the existence of a force which gives mass to the universe and makes life possible -- as he first argued 40 years ago.
Higgs said he believes a particle named the "Higgs boson", which originates from the force, will be found when a vast particle collider at the CERN research centre on the Franco-Swiss border begins operating fully early next year.
"The likelihood is that the particle will show up pretty quickly ... I'm more than 90 percent certain that it will," Higgs told journalists.
The 78-year-old's original efforts in the early 1960s to explain why the force, dubbed the Higgs field, must exist were dismissed at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
Today, the existence of the invisible field is widely accepted by scientists, who believe it came into being milliseconds after the Big Bang created the universe some 15 billion years ago.
Finding the Higgs boson would prove this theory right.
CERN's new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) aims to simulate conditions at the time of that primeval inferno by smashing particles together at near light-speed and so unlock many secrets of the universe.
Higgs was in Geneva to visit CERN for the first time in 13 years in advance of the launch...
Friday, March 28, 2008
Neatness a sign of godliness — or compulsion?
Neatness a sign of godliness — or compulsion?
Spectrum of tidiness runs from merely orderly to life-hampering disorder
By Melissa Schorr
MSNBC contributor
March. 12, 2008
She has color-coded folders to organize her take-out menus and bills. Clear containers to stash her toddler’s toys. A fridge with condiments neatly in a row.
Welcome to the world of a compulsive neat freak.
“I do drive myself crazy,” confides Donna Sullivan, a mother of two and a part-time accountant in Scituate, Mass. “Sometimes I wish I wasn’t like this. But when I come in and everything is clean, I feel calmer. I think that’s why I do it.”
Call them neat freaks or clutter-phobes — the types who lament their house is a total mess if one coffee table book is slightly out of place. Experts say the desire for neatness runs along a spectrum, from finicky Felix Unger-types with a need for control to those with a truly life-hampering disorder, such as TV’s Adrian Monk, the obsessive-compulsive detective.
“It’s who I am,” says Perri Kersh, owner of Neat Freak Professional Organizing in Chapel Hill, N.C., who was dubbed “neatest” by her high school classmates and, at age 4, carried around an imaginary device for organizing ties. “I don’t think anyone who knew me would be surprised to know what I do for a living.”
Our attitude toward neatness is likely shaped during childhood, from parents who frown on messy rooms to picture books like “The Cat in the Hat,” with its implicit message against trashing the house.
Those who take it to the extreme as adults often have taken that message too far, associating neatness with a quality required to be a good person, says Amie Ragan, a clinical psychologist in Birmingham, Ala., who runs the blog Psychology of Clutter.
Clutter-phobia may also be programmed into certain people’s genes, since extreme cleanliness likely once conferred a survival advantage by warding off germs, disease and death.
"Anxiety has evolutionary value — it keeps us alert and vigilant,” says psychotherapist Tom Corboy, director of the OCD Center of Los Angeles. “The problem is people can develop this over-the-top anxiety to things that don’t deserve it, like knickknacks on a shelf.”
When it crosses the line into pathology, psychologists say, is when it begins to negatively affect your life. “It’s a problem when your need for constant order causes you extreme distress or problems in your relationship,” says Ragan.
Kersh says she hasn’t gone that far.
“I don’t think I’ve moved into the pathological side,” she laughs. “I’m not an obsessive hand-washer.” Instead, she sees hanging onto too many possessions as the true hang-up. “It’s just stuff, it’s not our memories, it’s not who we are. You’ve got to let go or you’ll be living in a storage unit.”
'It's not just putting up cool shelving'
In her quest for complete clutter control, Kersh and her family even underwent a “six-month experiment in buying nothing.” (Necessities excluded.) “We were so used to saying, `I want it, I’m going to go get it.’ Now, we’re very conscious of what we consume.” More news from MSN Health
Symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Overview of OCD
Are You a Clean Freak?
Support Groups for Messiness
Kersh believes anyone can rid their lives of clutter, but it requires commitment. “It’s not just putting up cool shelving,” she says. “It takes work.”
Erin Doland, editor-in-chief of the blog Unclutterer and a contributor to RealSimple.com, was once an amateur hoarder, saving everything from college T-shirts to ticket stubs, until her husband laid down the law. “I started purging, and it felt so good I kept going,” she recalls. “I went from one extreme to the other. Everything went.”
Today, she stacks her shoes in plastic tubs, has a firm re-gifting policy, and snaps digital pictures of sentimental items before tossing them in the trash.
Before her transformation, Doland says her clutter weighed on her. “I always felt like there was a cloud hanging over me,” she says. “Now, I can say, if something doesn’t have a purpose, why is it in my home? And I think that’s healthy.”
As she and her husband prepare to adopt a baby from China, they have already sat down the grandparents for a stern chat about limiting the influx of toys. “The kid’s not going to grow up in some minimalist bubble,” she says, “but we want to limit the insanity.”
After being on the receiving end of too many gifts that weren’t being used, Doland entered an agreement with her in-laws to re-gift any unwanted items with no hard feelings. “We started by talking about clothes that didn't fit and moved into other gifts that didn't necessarily ’fit’ either,” she says.
Kersh believes in taking a firm line against becoming a storage facility for your relatives’ castaways. That means not feeling obligated to inherit your grandmother’s set of china when you already have one. “You could host a dinner party for 60! Who’s going to do that?”
But when neat freaks and slobs must live under one roof, compromise is key. Kersh has inspired her once-messy husband to organize his dress shirts by color, while he has forced her to let the dirty dishes wait until after their Saturday morning stroll. “He’s helped me relax,” she admits.
Closer to God?
Still, conventional wisdom holds that neatness is the “morally superior” choice.
“Neat people are generally conscientious — they pay attention to order, think before they act. These are the people you want in the air traffic control tower,” explains Sam Gosling, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas in Austin and author of the upcoming book “Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You.”
But while most of us tend to think well of someone who is tidy, assuming that they are more considerate than their peers, that’s not necessarily the case. Gosling, who dubs this misperception the “Mr. Rogers factor,” did research that found neat people are no more likely to be kind or sympathetic than their messier counterparts.
David H. Freedman, co-author of the book, “A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder,” argues that extreme neatness does have some drawbacks.
One, he says, is the loss of creativity.
“If you make your environment very neat, you’re making everything predictable,” he says. “You will lock out bad things — you’re less likely to be late, things are less likely to spill or break — but you’re also locking out luck.”
That messy desk or kitchen is more conducive to making the random connection that could lead to a scientific breakthrough or a new recipe.
Another, surprisingly, is time.
True, messy people waste time rummaging for their keys. But, Freedman says, neat people spend all their time constantly putting things away throughout the day, while those who let things pile up and tackle them in one chunk save precious minutes in the long run.
“I’ve had hundreds of people tell me about neat freak habits, and not a single one has denied suspecting there is something a little wrong with them,” Freedman says. “People who are neat are helpless to be otherwise — they’re prisoners of it.”
Even the clutter-phobes admit their strategy can backfire. “I have one regret,” Kersh says. “Getting rid of this awesome pair of brown elk skin cowgirl boots.”
Melissa Schorr is a Boston-based freelancer who has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe Magazine, Reuters Health, Working Mother, Self, GQ and People. She is the author of the young adult novel "Goy Crazy."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23565682/
Spectrum of tidiness runs from merely orderly to life-hampering disorder
By Melissa Schorr
MSNBC contributor
March. 12, 2008
She has color-coded folders to organize her take-out menus and bills. Clear containers to stash her toddler’s toys. A fridge with condiments neatly in a row.
Welcome to the world of a compulsive neat freak.
“I do drive myself crazy,” confides Donna Sullivan, a mother of two and a part-time accountant in Scituate, Mass. “Sometimes I wish I wasn’t like this. But when I come in and everything is clean, I feel calmer. I think that’s why I do it.”
Call them neat freaks or clutter-phobes — the types who lament their house is a total mess if one coffee table book is slightly out of place. Experts say the desire for neatness runs along a spectrum, from finicky Felix Unger-types with a need for control to those with a truly life-hampering disorder, such as TV’s Adrian Monk, the obsessive-compulsive detective.
“It’s who I am,” says Perri Kersh, owner of Neat Freak Professional Organizing in Chapel Hill, N.C., who was dubbed “neatest” by her high school classmates and, at age 4, carried around an imaginary device for organizing ties. “I don’t think anyone who knew me would be surprised to know what I do for a living.”
Our attitude toward neatness is likely shaped during childhood, from parents who frown on messy rooms to picture books like “The Cat in the Hat,” with its implicit message against trashing the house.
Those who take it to the extreme as adults often have taken that message too far, associating neatness with a quality required to be a good person, says Amie Ragan, a clinical psychologist in Birmingham, Ala., who runs the blog Psychology of Clutter.
Clutter-phobia may also be programmed into certain people’s genes, since extreme cleanliness likely once conferred a survival advantage by warding off germs, disease and death.
"Anxiety has evolutionary value — it keeps us alert and vigilant,” says psychotherapist Tom Corboy, director of the OCD Center of Los Angeles. “The problem is people can develop this over-the-top anxiety to things that don’t deserve it, like knickknacks on a shelf.”
When it crosses the line into pathology, psychologists say, is when it begins to negatively affect your life. “It’s a problem when your need for constant order causes you extreme distress or problems in your relationship,” says Ragan.
Kersh says she hasn’t gone that far.
“I don’t think I’ve moved into the pathological side,” she laughs. “I’m not an obsessive hand-washer.” Instead, she sees hanging onto too many possessions as the true hang-up. “It’s just stuff, it’s not our memories, it’s not who we are. You’ve got to let go or you’ll be living in a storage unit.”
'It's not just putting up cool shelving'
In her quest for complete clutter control, Kersh and her family even underwent a “six-month experiment in buying nothing.” (Necessities excluded.) “We were so used to saying, `I want it, I’m going to go get it.’ Now, we’re very conscious of what we consume.” More news from MSN Health
Symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Overview of OCD
Are You a Clean Freak?
Support Groups for Messiness
Kersh believes anyone can rid their lives of clutter, but it requires commitment. “It’s not just putting up cool shelving,” she says. “It takes work.”
Erin Doland, editor-in-chief of the blog Unclutterer and a contributor to RealSimple.com, was once an amateur hoarder, saving everything from college T-shirts to ticket stubs, until her husband laid down the law. “I started purging, and it felt so good I kept going,” she recalls. “I went from one extreme to the other. Everything went.”
Today, she stacks her shoes in plastic tubs, has a firm re-gifting policy, and snaps digital pictures of sentimental items before tossing them in the trash.
Before her transformation, Doland says her clutter weighed on her. “I always felt like there was a cloud hanging over me,” she says. “Now, I can say, if something doesn’t have a purpose, why is it in my home? And I think that’s healthy.”
As she and her husband prepare to adopt a baby from China, they have already sat down the grandparents for a stern chat about limiting the influx of toys. “The kid’s not going to grow up in some minimalist bubble,” she says, “but we want to limit the insanity.”
After being on the receiving end of too many gifts that weren’t being used, Doland entered an agreement with her in-laws to re-gift any unwanted items with no hard feelings. “We started by talking about clothes that didn't fit and moved into other gifts that didn't necessarily ’fit’ either,” she says.
Kersh believes in taking a firm line against becoming a storage facility for your relatives’ castaways. That means not feeling obligated to inherit your grandmother’s set of china when you already have one. “You could host a dinner party for 60! Who’s going to do that?”
But when neat freaks and slobs must live under one roof, compromise is key. Kersh has inspired her once-messy husband to organize his dress shirts by color, while he has forced her to let the dirty dishes wait until after their Saturday morning stroll. “He’s helped me relax,” she admits.
Closer to God?
Still, conventional wisdom holds that neatness is the “morally superior” choice.
“Neat people are generally conscientious — they pay attention to order, think before they act. These are the people you want in the air traffic control tower,” explains Sam Gosling, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas in Austin and author of the upcoming book “Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You.”
But while most of us tend to think well of someone who is tidy, assuming that they are more considerate than their peers, that’s not necessarily the case. Gosling, who dubs this misperception the “Mr. Rogers factor,” did research that found neat people are no more likely to be kind or sympathetic than their messier counterparts.
David H. Freedman, co-author of the book, “A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder,” argues that extreme neatness does have some drawbacks.
One, he says, is the loss of creativity.
“If you make your environment very neat, you’re making everything predictable,” he says. “You will lock out bad things — you’re less likely to be late, things are less likely to spill or break — but you’re also locking out luck.”
That messy desk or kitchen is more conducive to making the random connection that could lead to a scientific breakthrough or a new recipe.
Another, surprisingly, is time.
True, messy people waste time rummaging for their keys. But, Freedman says, neat people spend all their time constantly putting things away throughout the day, while those who let things pile up and tackle them in one chunk save precious minutes in the long run.
“I’ve had hundreds of people tell me about neat freak habits, and not a single one has denied suspecting there is something a little wrong with them,” Freedman says. “People who are neat are helpless to be otherwise — they’re prisoners of it.”
Even the clutter-phobes admit their strategy can backfire. “I have one regret,” Kersh says. “Getting rid of this awesome pair of brown elk skin cowgirl boots.”
Melissa Schorr is a Boston-based freelancer who has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe Magazine, Reuters Health, Working Mother, Self, GQ and People. She is the author of the young adult novel "Goy Crazy."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23565682/
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Why children are falling through the cracks
Lots of children are failing, not just special ed kids. Most teachers can not handle teaching more than one level at the same time. They need to learn. I figured out how to do it, and it was fun, with kids of all levels working together and repecting each other. I would like to see the best teachers get paid more, and the worst teachers should be working under the supervision of good teachers.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
GreatSchools, Inc message board v. free speech
GreatSchools, Inc. has threatened me with legal action, saying that no one may quote content from their parent to parent message board without their permission.
I suspect that Katherine Kornas of GreatSchools, Inc. made her threat because attorney Dan Shinoff requested that she do so.
Why weren't Katherine Kornas and GreatSchools, Inc. concerned about education lawyers posing as parents in order to undermine parents who are trying to use the legal system to help their children?
I suspect that Katherine Kornas of GreatSchools, Inc. made her threat because attorney Dan Shinoff requested that she do so.
Why weren't Katherine Kornas and GreatSchools, Inc. concerned about education lawyers posing as parents in order to undermine parents who are trying to use the legal system to help their children?
Why can't people change their thinking?
Wall Street Culture Not Likely to Change
By JOE BEL BRUNO,AP
Posted: 2008-03-22 05:09:53
NEW YORK (AP) - Wall Street investment bankers got another lesson about the dangers of risk-taking this past week with the downfall of Bear Stearns Cos. The question now obviously is, how long will it last?
Those bankers, many of whom lived through market debacles like the dot-com bust at the start of this decade, turned out to have very short memories. And so analysts believe the sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase & Co. for a stunning $2 per share ultimately won't have that much of an impact on how Wall Street conducts business.
In fact, bankers and traders are under even more pressure to reap big returns because of the ongoing credit crisis, and risk is just part of the game.
"There's an old saying on Wall Street that, for traders and bankers, you'd have to take a normal 30 year career and distill it to 15 years," said Quincy Krosby, chief investment strategist for The Hartford. "This whole episode might change Wall Street for a little while."
Krosby believes that Bear Stearns' near-collapse, which followed the company's investing too heavily in risky mortgage-backed securities, might force some bankers to change their ways in the short term. But it won't be enough to temper the financial industry's relentless pursuit of money.
Indeed, the past decade has seen a number of investing fiascoes that Wall Street doesn't appear to have learned much from. Krosby noted the go-go Internet days - when untested high-tech companies reaped piles of cash in public offerings. The lesson then was, don't put a lot of money into a venture that isn't on fairly solid ground - but mortgages granted to people with poor credit are quite akin to high-tech firms that had never turned a profit. In both cases, investors gleefully looked past the risk.
Now investors are smarting from what happened to Bear Stearns. And traders are somewhat chastened, for now.
Erin Callan, the chief financial officer for Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., said her firm has certainly become more wary about the risks it takes amid the credit crisis. However, the market's gyrations also offer Lehman's army of traders an opportunity to make money.
"We just try to come in, and run the business the best way we can," she said. "But, you can't survive if you take no risks at all. All we can do is plan in this environment, making sure we do all the things to optimize running the firm."
It seems there's little that will change an industry and a lifestyle attached to Wall Street, which is thought of by Americans as more than just the center of free-market capitalism. Its culture attracts men and women with a swashbuckling mentality - smart, aggressive risk takers with the potential to become very rich.
And, their skills in trading and investment banking were proven this past week - even after news of Bear Stearns' buyout.
Chief executives at Morgan Stanley , Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Lehman Brothers pointed out that trading desks played a big part in offsetting massive mortgage-backed asset write-downs, which have ticked past $156 billion for global banks since last year.
As the three companies released first-quarter earnings data, Morgan Stanley said equity trading revenue surged 51 percent to $3.3 billion. Revenue at its fixed-income sales and trading group dropped 15 percent to $2.9 billion, but it was still the firm's second-highest performance ever despite having to write down $2.3 billion linked to subprime mortgages and leveraged loans.
And that pleased investors. Morgan Stanley had its largest gain in more than a decade on Wednesday, climbing 18.8 percent to $42.86. Rival investment banks also had their best week since 2001.
But, investors shouldn't get too comfortable - the investment banking industry, and Wall Street in general, still have a long way to go before they can be called healthy. It's not just the credit market problems that are an issue, it's also the struggling U.S. economy and its potential to hurt other countries.
"Until we feel more certain about the worldwide economies, we don't see things picking up dramatically," said Goldman Sachs CFO David Viniar. "We just need to keep plugging away."
http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/wall-street-culture-not-likely-to-change/n20080322050909990002
By JOE BEL BRUNO,AP
Posted: 2008-03-22 05:09:53
NEW YORK (AP) - Wall Street investment bankers got another lesson about the dangers of risk-taking this past week with the downfall of Bear Stearns Cos. The question now obviously is, how long will it last?
Those bankers, many of whom lived through market debacles like the dot-com bust at the start of this decade, turned out to have very short memories. And so analysts believe the sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase & Co. for a stunning $2 per share ultimately won't have that much of an impact on how Wall Street conducts business.
In fact, bankers and traders are under even more pressure to reap big returns because of the ongoing credit crisis, and risk is just part of the game.
"There's an old saying on Wall Street that, for traders and bankers, you'd have to take a normal 30 year career and distill it to 15 years," said Quincy Krosby, chief investment strategist for The Hartford. "This whole episode might change Wall Street for a little while."
Krosby believes that Bear Stearns' near-collapse, which followed the company's investing too heavily in risky mortgage-backed securities, might force some bankers to change their ways in the short term. But it won't be enough to temper the financial industry's relentless pursuit of money.
Indeed, the past decade has seen a number of investing fiascoes that Wall Street doesn't appear to have learned much from. Krosby noted the go-go Internet days - when untested high-tech companies reaped piles of cash in public offerings. The lesson then was, don't put a lot of money into a venture that isn't on fairly solid ground - but mortgages granted to people with poor credit are quite akin to high-tech firms that had never turned a profit. In both cases, investors gleefully looked past the risk.
Now investors are smarting from what happened to Bear Stearns. And traders are somewhat chastened, for now.
Erin Callan, the chief financial officer for Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., said her firm has certainly become more wary about the risks it takes amid the credit crisis. However, the market's gyrations also offer Lehman's army of traders an opportunity to make money.
"We just try to come in, and run the business the best way we can," she said. "But, you can't survive if you take no risks at all. All we can do is plan in this environment, making sure we do all the things to optimize running the firm."
It seems there's little that will change an industry and a lifestyle attached to Wall Street, which is thought of by Americans as more than just the center of free-market capitalism. Its culture attracts men and women with a swashbuckling mentality - smart, aggressive risk takers with the potential to become very rich.
And, their skills in trading and investment banking were proven this past week - even after news of Bear Stearns' buyout.
Chief executives at Morgan Stanley , Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Lehman Brothers pointed out that trading desks played a big part in offsetting massive mortgage-backed asset write-downs, which have ticked past $156 billion for global banks since last year.
As the three companies released first-quarter earnings data, Morgan Stanley said equity trading revenue surged 51 percent to $3.3 billion. Revenue at its fixed-income sales and trading group dropped 15 percent to $2.9 billion, but it was still the firm's second-highest performance ever despite having to write down $2.3 billion linked to subprime mortgages and leveraged loans.
And that pleased investors. Morgan Stanley had its largest gain in more than a decade on Wednesday, climbing 18.8 percent to $42.86. Rival investment banks also had their best week since 2001.
But, investors shouldn't get too comfortable - the investment banking industry, and Wall Street in general, still have a long way to go before they can be called healthy. It's not just the credit market problems that are an issue, it's also the struggling U.S. economy and its potential to hurt other countries.
"Until we feel more certain about the worldwide economies, we don't see things picking up dramatically," said Goldman Sachs CFO David Viniar. "We just need to keep plugging away."
http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/wall-street-culture-not-likely-to-change/n20080322050909990002
Monday, March 03, 2008
Going to church and being homeschooled doesn't mean a kid is on the right track
Yesterday, in the small town of Alba, Texas a 16-year-old girl killed her mother and two brothers, and tried to kill her father, because her family ordered her to break up with her boyfriend. The boyfriend and two other boys assisted in the murders.
Could this crime have been prevented?
Almost certainly.
The family clearly believed that evil comes from outside, and they were half-right in this case. Outsiders were definitely involved.
But there was also something destructive inside this girl that most likely came from her family, which provided both her environment and her heredity.
I suspect that the girl wasn't given the help she needed to deal with her anger, which may have been justified to some extent. It's quite possible she was abused by her family in some way.
People with rigid beliefs about right and wrong, who believe that they are very different from lesser mortals, often also believe in punishment as opposed to positive reinforcement to shape their children's behavior. They often think it is appropriate to use verbal abuse on a child, shaming her and frequently pointing out her spiritual unworthiness.
It probably would have been better to coach the girl on how to deal with the evil in the world, rather than merely trying to isolate her from the world.
Could this crime have been prevented?
Almost certainly.
The family clearly believed that evil comes from outside, and they were half-right in this case. Outsiders were definitely involved.
But there was also something destructive inside this girl that most likely came from her family, which provided both her environment and her heredity.
I suspect that the girl wasn't given the help she needed to deal with her anger, which may have been justified to some extent. It's quite possible she was abused by her family in some way.
People with rigid beliefs about right and wrong, who believe that they are very different from lesser mortals, often also believe in punishment as opposed to positive reinforcement to shape their children's behavior. They often think it is appropriate to use verbal abuse on a child, shaming her and frequently pointing out her spiritual unworthiness.
It probably would have been better to coach the girl on how to deal with the evil in the world, rather than merely trying to isolate her from the world.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Record-High Ratio of Americans in Prison
By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
February 28, 2008
More than one in 100 adult Americans is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year, in addition to more than $5 billion spent by the federal government, according to a report released today.
With more than 2.3 million people behind bars at the start of 2008, the United States leads the world in both the number and the percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving even far more populous China a distant second, noted the report by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.
The ballooning prison population is largely the result of tougher state and federal sentencing imposed since the mid-1980s. Minorities have been hit particularly hard: One in nine black men age 20 to 34 is behind bars. For black women age 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 white women in the same age group.
While studies generally find that imprisoning more offenders reduces crime, the effect is influenced by changes in the unemployment rate, wages, the ratio of police officers to residents, and the share of young people in the population.
In addition, when it comes to preventing repeat offenses by nonviolent criminals -- who make up about half of the incarcerated population -- alternative punishments such as community supervision and mandatory drug counseling that are far less expensive may prove just as or more effective than jail time.
Florida, which nearly doubled its prison population over the past 15 years, has experienced a smaller drop in crime than New York, which, after a brief increase, reduced its number of inmates to below the 1993 level.
"There is no question that putting violent and chronic offenders behind bars lowers the crime rate and provides punishment that is well deserved," said Adam Gelb, director of the Pew Center's Public Safety Performance Project and one of the study's authors. "On the other hand, there are large numbers of people behind bars who could be supervised in the community safely and effectively at a much lower cost -- while also paying taxes, paying restitution to their victims, and paying child support."
About 91 percent of incarcerated adults are under state or local jurisdiction, and the report documents the tradeoffs state governments have faced as they have devoted ever larger shares of their budgets to house them. For instance, over the past two decades, state spending on corrections (adjusted for inflation) increased by 127 percent, while spending on higher education rose by 21 percent. For every dollar Virginia spends on higher education, it now spends about 60 cents on corrections. Maryland spends 74 cents on corrections per higher-education dollar.
Despite reaching its latest milestone, the nation's incarcerated population has actually been growing far more slowly since 2000 than during the 1990s, when the spate of harsher sentencing laws began to take effect. These included a 1986 federal law mandating prison terms for crack cocaine offenses that were up to eight times as long as for those involving powder cocaine. In the early 1990s, states across the nation adopted "three-strikes-you're-out" laws and curtailed the discretion parole boards have in deciding when to release an inmate. As a result, between 1990 and 2000, the prison population swelled by about 80 percent, increasing by as much as 86,000 per year.
By contrast, from 2007 to 2008, the prison population increased by 25,000 -- a 2 percent rise. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has issued decisions giving judges more leeway under mandatory sentencing laws, and a number of states, including Texas, are seeking to reduce their incarcerated population by adopting alternative punishments.
"Some of these [measures] would have been unthinkable five years ago," noted Gelb. "But the bottom line is that states have to balance their budgets."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/28/AR2008022801704.html?hpid=topnews
Washington Post Staff Writer
February 28, 2008
More than one in 100 adult Americans is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year, in addition to more than $5 billion spent by the federal government, according to a report released today.
With more than 2.3 million people behind bars at the start of 2008, the United States leads the world in both the number and the percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving even far more populous China a distant second, noted the report by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.
The ballooning prison population is largely the result of tougher state and federal sentencing imposed since the mid-1980s. Minorities have been hit particularly hard: One in nine black men age 20 to 34 is behind bars. For black women age 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 white women in the same age group.
While studies generally find that imprisoning more offenders reduces crime, the effect is influenced by changes in the unemployment rate, wages, the ratio of police officers to residents, and the share of young people in the population.
In addition, when it comes to preventing repeat offenses by nonviolent criminals -- who make up about half of the incarcerated population -- alternative punishments such as community supervision and mandatory drug counseling that are far less expensive may prove just as or more effective than jail time.
Florida, which nearly doubled its prison population over the past 15 years, has experienced a smaller drop in crime than New York, which, after a brief increase, reduced its number of inmates to below the 1993 level.
"There is no question that putting violent and chronic offenders behind bars lowers the crime rate and provides punishment that is well deserved," said Adam Gelb, director of the Pew Center's Public Safety Performance Project and one of the study's authors. "On the other hand, there are large numbers of people behind bars who could be supervised in the community safely and effectively at a much lower cost -- while also paying taxes, paying restitution to their victims, and paying child support."
About 91 percent of incarcerated adults are under state or local jurisdiction, and the report documents the tradeoffs state governments have faced as they have devoted ever larger shares of their budgets to house them. For instance, over the past two decades, state spending on corrections (adjusted for inflation) increased by 127 percent, while spending on higher education rose by 21 percent. For every dollar Virginia spends on higher education, it now spends about 60 cents on corrections. Maryland spends 74 cents on corrections per higher-education dollar.
Despite reaching its latest milestone, the nation's incarcerated population has actually been growing far more slowly since 2000 than during the 1990s, when the spate of harsher sentencing laws began to take effect. These included a 1986 federal law mandating prison terms for crack cocaine offenses that were up to eight times as long as for those involving powder cocaine. In the early 1990s, states across the nation adopted "three-strikes-you're-out" laws and curtailed the discretion parole boards have in deciding when to release an inmate. As a result, between 1990 and 2000, the prison population swelled by about 80 percent, increasing by as much as 86,000 per year.
By contrast, from 2007 to 2008, the prison population increased by 25,000 -- a 2 percent rise. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has issued decisions giving judges more leeway under mandatory sentencing laws, and a number of states, including Texas, are seeking to reduce their incarcerated population by adopting alternative punishments.
"Some of these [measures] would have been unthinkable five years ago," noted Gelb. "But the bottom line is that states have to balance their budgets."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/28/AR2008022801704.html?hpid=topnews
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
How come nobody mentions that Obama has the same name as Ehud Barak?
Ehud Barak was the 10th prime minister of Israel.
Monday, February 25, 2008
10% of Americans are former Catholics, 25% are Catholics, 51% are Protestants
San Francisco Chronicle
Matthai Kuruvila
Chronicle Religion Writer
Monday, February 25, 2008
Study: 25% of us have left childhood religions
More than a quarter of American adults have left the faith in which they were raised, switching to another religion or no religion at all, according to a national survey of religious affiliation.
In addition, adults who claim no ties to any religious institution have grown into the fourth largest category of religious affiliation, a trend led by California and states in the West, according to a report by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
Researchers said the large number of immigrants who have come to California from Central America and Asia have had an effect on the question of religious affiliation in the state as well as the makeup of particular denominations, particularly Catholics. While 10 percent of U.S. adults have left the Catholic Church, an influx of Catholic immigrants has kept the church's population stable.
Because the numbers of the unaffiliated have grown, Protestants are on the verge of becoming a minority in the United States. Only 51 percent of American adults describe themselves as Protestant.
In addition to the 28 percent of Americans who have left their childhood faith entirely, 16 percent have switched from the Christian denomination of their childhood to another Christian denomination.
The fluidity of affiliation in the United States underscores the competitiveness of the religious market, in which groups are vying for members, said Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum. "If you're going to rest on your laurels, you're history."
The survey of more than 35,000 adults was distinctive in the number of respondents as well as the number of questions posed. It found that 78 percent of the 220 million adults in the United States are still Christian.
Among Protestants, evangelicals are the largest single group, representing 26.3 percent of the nation's adult population. Mainline Protestant denominations - including Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians - continue to see their numbers shrink, currently representing just 18.1 percent of the overall population. Historically black churches, which are increasingly taking on members of other ethnicities, represent 6.9 percent of the overall population.
Catholics are the second largest group of Christians, representing roughly 24 percent of the population - a relatively constant figure for the past 35 years.
But the constancy of that figure obscures the dramatic and unique way in which immigration patterns are reshaping America's religious identity, the survey found. Unlike in Europe, the majority of immigrants to the United States are Christian. And those immigrants are heavily Catholic, particularly those from Mexico.
Among immigrant adults, Catholics amount to 46 percent, while 24 percent are Protestants. But among U.S.-born adults, Protestants outnumber Catholics 55 to 21 percent.
The departures from the church mean that "roughly 10 percent of all Americans are former Catholics," the study found. While 31 percent of American adults were raised Catholic, only about 24 percent describe themselves as Catholic today.
These shifts are seen throughout the Bay Area, said George Wesolek, director of the Office of Public Police and Social Concerns within the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
St. Peter Church in the Mission District draws about 25,000 people every weekend, Wesolek said. The Catholic churches in East Palo Alto, the Bay Area's most heavily Latino city, hold most of their services in Spanish, he said.
The responsibilities of the parishes, the social mission of the church and the needs of the congregants are changing as a result.
"The Latino and immigrant base of the church is now making up the core, especially in California," said Wesolek, noting that Filipinos are a large portion of the archdiocese. "That has implications in almost every way." Priests must be multilingual, for example, and be able to meet the needs of different cultures.
The Western states have long been a destination for immigrants as well as the native-born, said John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum and a principal author of the study. That mobility and lack of deep roots also play a role in the region's higher rate of the religiously unaffiliated, Green said, referencing other studies.
"The West was settled relatively late," he said. "It didn't have the tradition of established religious institutions that you have in the East or the South. They didn't have that history to draw upon."
That is compounded by immigration, particularly from Asia, which has brought other religious traditions, and that makes Western states like California distinct, he said.
"The West has always been quite diverse in religious terms and is especially diverse these days," he said. "And that level of diversity has created a group of people who aren't as interested in organized religion. They have other options."
Roughly 16.1 percent of the U.S. population describes themselves as not affiliated with any religious organization or body, a category that includes those who believe in God. In California, the unaffiliated account for 21 percent. Researchers said the numbers of atheists and agnostics - roughly 1.6 and 2.4 percent of the U.S. adult population - have remained consistent over time.
Those who are raised unaffiliated change their beliefs, too: Roughly half of those who were raised without a religious tradition now claim one as adults, according to the survey.
Green said the impact of the unaffiliated has yet to be seen. But it needs to be watched.
"The large size of this unaffiliated group could have a profound affect on the character of American religion," he said.
Online resources
A copy of the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey is available at:
www.pewforum.org
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/25/MN18V8DHG.DTL
Matthai Kuruvila
Chronicle Religion Writer
Monday, February 25, 2008
Study: 25% of us have left childhood religions
More than a quarter of American adults have left the faith in which they were raised, switching to another religion or no religion at all, according to a national survey of religious affiliation.
In addition, adults who claim no ties to any religious institution have grown into the fourth largest category of religious affiliation, a trend led by California and states in the West, according to a report by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
Researchers said the large number of immigrants who have come to California from Central America and Asia have had an effect on the question of religious affiliation in the state as well as the makeup of particular denominations, particularly Catholics. While 10 percent of U.S. adults have left the Catholic Church, an influx of Catholic immigrants has kept the church's population stable.
Because the numbers of the unaffiliated have grown, Protestants are on the verge of becoming a minority in the United States. Only 51 percent of American adults describe themselves as Protestant.
In addition to the 28 percent of Americans who have left their childhood faith entirely, 16 percent have switched from the Christian denomination of their childhood to another Christian denomination.
The fluidity of affiliation in the United States underscores the competitiveness of the religious market, in which groups are vying for members, said Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum. "If you're going to rest on your laurels, you're history."
The survey of more than 35,000 adults was distinctive in the number of respondents as well as the number of questions posed. It found that 78 percent of the 220 million adults in the United States are still Christian.
Among Protestants, evangelicals are the largest single group, representing 26.3 percent of the nation's adult population. Mainline Protestant denominations - including Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians - continue to see their numbers shrink, currently representing just 18.1 percent of the overall population. Historically black churches, which are increasingly taking on members of other ethnicities, represent 6.9 percent of the overall population.
Catholics are the second largest group of Christians, representing roughly 24 percent of the population - a relatively constant figure for the past 35 years.
But the constancy of that figure obscures the dramatic and unique way in which immigration patterns are reshaping America's religious identity, the survey found. Unlike in Europe, the majority of immigrants to the United States are Christian. And those immigrants are heavily Catholic, particularly those from Mexico.
Among immigrant adults, Catholics amount to 46 percent, while 24 percent are Protestants. But among U.S.-born adults, Protestants outnumber Catholics 55 to 21 percent.
The departures from the church mean that "roughly 10 percent of all Americans are former Catholics," the study found. While 31 percent of American adults were raised Catholic, only about 24 percent describe themselves as Catholic today.
These shifts are seen throughout the Bay Area, said George Wesolek, director of the Office of Public Police and Social Concerns within the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
St. Peter Church in the Mission District draws about 25,000 people every weekend, Wesolek said. The Catholic churches in East Palo Alto, the Bay Area's most heavily Latino city, hold most of their services in Spanish, he said.
The responsibilities of the parishes, the social mission of the church and the needs of the congregants are changing as a result.
"The Latino and immigrant base of the church is now making up the core, especially in California," said Wesolek, noting that Filipinos are a large portion of the archdiocese. "That has implications in almost every way." Priests must be multilingual, for example, and be able to meet the needs of different cultures.
The Western states have long been a destination for immigrants as well as the native-born, said John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum and a principal author of the study. That mobility and lack of deep roots also play a role in the region's higher rate of the religiously unaffiliated, Green said, referencing other studies.
"The West was settled relatively late," he said. "It didn't have the tradition of established religious institutions that you have in the East or the South. They didn't have that history to draw upon."
That is compounded by immigration, particularly from Asia, which has brought other religious traditions, and that makes Western states like California distinct, he said.
"The West has always been quite diverse in religious terms and is especially diverse these days," he said. "And that level of diversity has created a group of people who aren't as interested in organized religion. They have other options."
Roughly 16.1 percent of the U.S. population describes themselves as not affiliated with any religious organization or body, a category that includes those who believe in God. In California, the unaffiliated account for 21 percent. Researchers said the numbers of atheists and agnostics - roughly 1.6 and 2.4 percent of the U.S. adult population - have remained consistent over time.
Those who are raised unaffiliated change their beliefs, too: Roughly half of those who were raised without a religious tradition now claim one as adults, according to the survey.
Green said the impact of the unaffiliated has yet to be seen. But it needs to be watched.
"The large size of this unaffiliated group could have a profound affect on the character of American religion," he said.
Online resources
A copy of the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey is available at:
www.pewforum.org
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/25/MN18V8DHG.DTL
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Gay Teen's Killing Labeled a Hate Crime
Gay Teen's Killing Labeled a Hate Crime
By REBECCA CATHCART
The New York Times
2008-02-23
OXNARD, Calif.
Hundreds of mourners gathered at a church here on Friday to remember an eighth-grade boy who was shot to death inside a junior high school computer lab by a fellow student in what prosecutors are calling a hate crime.
In recent weeks, the victim, Lawrence King, 15, had said publicly that he was gay, classmates said, enduring harassment from a group of schoolmates, including the 14-year-old boy charged in his death.
“God knit Larry together and made him wonderfully complex,” the Rev. Dan Birchfield of Westminster Presbyterian Church told the crowd as he stood in front of a large photograph of the victim. “Larry was a masterpiece.”
The shooting stunned residents of Oxnard, a laid-back middle-class beach community just north of Malibu. It also drew a strong reaction from gay and civil rights groups.
“We’ve never had school violence like this here before, never had a school shooting,” said David Keith, a spokesman for the Oxnard Police Department.
Les Winget, 44, whose daughter Nikki, 13, attends the school, called the crime “absolutely unbelievable.”
Jay Smith, executive director of the Ventura County Rainbow Alliance, where Lawrence took part in Friday night group activities for gay teenagers, said, “We’re all shocked that this would happen here.”
The gunman, identified by the police as Brandon McInerney, “is just as much a victim as Lawrence,” said Masen Davis, executive director of the Transgender Law Center. “He’s a victim of homophobia and hate.”
The law center is working with Equality California and the Gay-Straight Alliance to push for a legislative review of anti-bias policies and outreach efforts in California schools. According to the 2005 California Healthy Kids Survey, junior high school students in the state are 3 percent more likely to be harassed in school because of sexual orientation or gender identity than those in high school.
'He Was Always Smiling'
King's Friend Comments to MTV.com
That finding is representative of schools across the country, said Stephen Russell, a University of Arizona professor who studies the issues facing lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual youth.
Mr. Davis said “more and more kids are coming out in junior high school and expressing gender different identities at younger ages.”
“Unfortunately,” he added, “society has not matured at the same rate.”
Prosecutors charged Brandon as an adult with murder as a premeditated hate crime and gun possession. If convicted, he faces a sentence of 52 years to life in prison.
A senior deputy district attorney, Maeve Fox, would not say why the authorities added the hate crime to the murder charge.
In interviews, classmates of the two boys at E. O. Green Junior High School said Lawrence had started wearing mascara, lipstick and jewelry to school, prompting a group of male students to bully him.
“They teased him because he was different,” said Marissa Moreno, 13, also in the eighth grade. “But he wasn’t afraid to show himself.”
Lawrence wore his favorite high-heeled boots most days, riding the bus to school from Casa Pacifica, a center for abused and neglected children in the foster care system, where he began living last fall. Officials would not say anything about his family background other than that his parents, Greg and Dawn King, were living and that he had four siblings. Lawrence started attending E. O. Green last winter, said Steven Elson, the center’s chief executive. “He had made connections here,” Dr. Elson said. “It’s just a huge trauma here. It’s emotionally very charged.”
Since the shooting, hundreds of people have sent messages to a memorial Web site where photographs show Lawrence as a child with a gap in his front teeth, and older, holding a caterpillar in the palm of his hand.
“He had a character that was bubbly,” Marissa said. “We would just laugh together. He would smile, then I would smile and then we couldn’t stop.”
On the morning of Feb. 12, Lawrence was in the school’s computer lab with 24 other students, said Mr. Keith, the police spokesman. Brandon walked into the room with a gun and shot Lawrence in the head, the police said, then ran from the building. Police officers caught him a few blocks away.
Unconscious when he arrived at the hospital, Lawrence was declared brain dead the next day but kept on a ventilator to preserve his organs for donation, said the Ventura County medical examiner, Armando Chavez. He was taken off life support on Feb. 14.
Brandon is being held at a juvenile facility in Ventura on $770,000 bail, said his lawyer, Brian Vogel. He will enter a plea on March 21.
At a vigil for Lawrence last week in Ventura, 200 people carried glow sticks and candles in paper cups as they walked down a boardwalk at the beach and stood under the stars. Melissa Castillo, 13, recalled the last time she had seen Lawrence. “He was walking through the lunch room, wearing these awesome boots,” she said. “I ran over to him and said, ‘Your boots are so cute!’ He was like, ‘Yeah, I know.’ ”
She raised her chin and arched an eyebrow in imitation. “ ‘If you want cute boots,’ ” Lawrence had told her, “ ‘you have to buy the expensive kind.’ ” His boots had cost $30.
“So, for Lawrence,” Melissa said to five girls holding pink and green glow sticks, “we have to go get the expensive kind.”
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/boys-killing-labeled-a-hate-crime/20080223141909990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001
By REBECCA CATHCART
The New York Times
2008-02-23
OXNARD, Calif.
Hundreds of mourners gathered at a church here on Friday to remember an eighth-grade boy who was shot to death inside a junior high school computer lab by a fellow student in what prosecutors are calling a hate crime.
In recent weeks, the victim, Lawrence King, 15, had said publicly that he was gay, classmates said, enduring harassment from a group of schoolmates, including the 14-year-old boy charged in his death.
“God knit Larry together and made him wonderfully complex,” the Rev. Dan Birchfield of Westminster Presbyterian Church told the crowd as he stood in front of a large photograph of the victim. “Larry was a masterpiece.”
The shooting stunned residents of Oxnard, a laid-back middle-class beach community just north of Malibu. It also drew a strong reaction from gay and civil rights groups.
“We’ve never had school violence like this here before, never had a school shooting,” said David Keith, a spokesman for the Oxnard Police Department.
Les Winget, 44, whose daughter Nikki, 13, attends the school, called the crime “absolutely unbelievable.”
Jay Smith, executive director of the Ventura County Rainbow Alliance, where Lawrence took part in Friday night group activities for gay teenagers, said, “We’re all shocked that this would happen here.”
The gunman, identified by the police as Brandon McInerney, “is just as much a victim as Lawrence,” said Masen Davis, executive director of the Transgender Law Center. “He’s a victim of homophobia and hate.”
The law center is working with Equality California and the Gay-Straight Alliance to push for a legislative review of anti-bias policies and outreach efforts in California schools. According to the 2005 California Healthy Kids Survey, junior high school students in the state are 3 percent more likely to be harassed in school because of sexual orientation or gender identity than those in high school.
'He Was Always Smiling'
King's Friend Comments to MTV.com
That finding is representative of schools across the country, said Stephen Russell, a University of Arizona professor who studies the issues facing lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual youth.
Mr. Davis said “more and more kids are coming out in junior high school and expressing gender different identities at younger ages.”
“Unfortunately,” he added, “society has not matured at the same rate.”
Prosecutors charged Brandon as an adult with murder as a premeditated hate crime and gun possession. If convicted, he faces a sentence of 52 years to life in prison.
A senior deputy district attorney, Maeve Fox, would not say why the authorities added the hate crime to the murder charge.
In interviews, classmates of the two boys at E. O. Green Junior High School said Lawrence had started wearing mascara, lipstick and jewelry to school, prompting a group of male students to bully him.
“They teased him because he was different,” said Marissa Moreno, 13, also in the eighth grade. “But he wasn’t afraid to show himself.”
Lawrence wore his favorite high-heeled boots most days, riding the bus to school from Casa Pacifica, a center for abused and neglected children in the foster care system, where he began living last fall. Officials would not say anything about his family background other than that his parents, Greg and Dawn King, were living and that he had four siblings. Lawrence started attending E. O. Green last winter, said Steven Elson, the center’s chief executive. “He had made connections here,” Dr. Elson said. “It’s just a huge trauma here. It’s emotionally very charged.”
Since the shooting, hundreds of people have sent messages to a memorial Web site where photographs show Lawrence as a child with a gap in his front teeth, and older, holding a caterpillar in the palm of his hand.
“He had a character that was bubbly,” Marissa said. “We would just laugh together. He would smile, then I would smile and then we couldn’t stop.”
On the morning of Feb. 12, Lawrence was in the school’s computer lab with 24 other students, said Mr. Keith, the police spokesman. Brandon walked into the room with a gun and shot Lawrence in the head, the police said, then ran from the building. Police officers caught him a few blocks away.
Unconscious when he arrived at the hospital, Lawrence was declared brain dead the next day but kept on a ventilator to preserve his organs for donation, said the Ventura County medical examiner, Armando Chavez. He was taken off life support on Feb. 14.
Brandon is being held at a juvenile facility in Ventura on $770,000 bail, said his lawyer, Brian Vogel. He will enter a plea on March 21.
At a vigil for Lawrence last week in Ventura, 200 people carried glow sticks and candles in paper cups as they walked down a boardwalk at the beach and stood under the stars. Melissa Castillo, 13, recalled the last time she had seen Lawrence. “He was walking through the lunch room, wearing these awesome boots,” she said. “I ran over to him and said, ‘Your boots are so cute!’ He was like, ‘Yeah, I know.’ ”
She raised her chin and arched an eyebrow in imitation. “ ‘If you want cute boots,’ ” Lawrence had told her, “ ‘you have to buy the expensive kind.’ ” His boots had cost $30.
“So, for Lawrence,” Melissa said to five girls holding pink and green glow sticks, “we have to go get the expensive kind.”
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/boys-killing-labeled-a-hate-crime/20080223141909990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?
Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason.”
By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: February 14, 2008
A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the adorable platinum blonde from “American Idol,” appearing on the Fox game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography curriculum, the $25,000 question asked: “Budapest is the capital of what European country?”
Ms. Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. “I thought Europe was a country,” she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth graders: Hungary. “Hungry?” she said, eyes widening in disbelief. “That’s a country? I’ve heard of Turkey. But Hungry? I’ve never heard of it.”
Such, uh, lack of global awareness is the kind of thing that drives Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason,” up a wall. Ms. Jacoby is one of a number of writers with new books that bemoan the state of American culture.
Joining the circle of curmudgeons this season is Eric G. Wilson, whose “Against Happiness” warns that the “American obsession with happiness” could “well lead to a sudden extinction of the creative impulse, that could result in an extermination as horrible as those foreshadowed by global warming and environmental crisis and nuclear proliferation.”
Then there is Lee Siegel’s “Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob,” which inveighs against the Internet for encouraging solipsism, debased discourse and arrant commercialization. Mr. Siegel, one might remember, was suspended by The New Republic for using a fake online persona in order to trash critics of his blog (“you couldn’t tie Siegel’s shoelaces”) and to praise himself (“brave, brilliant”).
Ms. Jacoby, whose book came out on Tuesday, doesn’t zero in on a particular technology or emotion, but rather on what she feels is a generalized hostility to knowledge.
She is well aware that some may tag her a crank. “I expect to get bashed,” said Ms. Jacoby, 62, either as an older person who upbraids the young for plummeting standards and values, or as a secularist whose defense of scientific rationalism is a way to disparage religion.
Ms. Jacoby, however, is quick to point out that her indictment is not limited by age or ideology. Yes, she knows that eggheads, nerds, bookworms, longhairs, pointy heads, highbrows and know-it-alls have been mocked and dismissed throughout American history. And liberal and conservative writers, from Richard Hofstadter to Allan Bloom, have regularly analyzed the phenomenon and offered advice.
T. J. Jackson Lears, a cultural historian who edits the quarterly review Raritan, said, “The tendency to this sort of lamentation is perennial in American history,” adding that in periods “when political problems seem intractable or somehow frozen, there is a turn toward cultural issues.”
But now, Ms. Jacoby said, something different is happening: anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way.
Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.
She pointed to a 2006 National Geographic poll that found nearly half of 18- to 24-year-olds don’t think it is necessary or important to know where countries in the news are located. So more than three years into the Iraq war, only 23 percent of those with some college could locate Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel on a map.
Ms. Jacoby, dressed in a bright red turtleneck with lipstick to match, was sitting, appropriately, in that temple of knowledge, the New York Public Library’s majestic Beaux Arts building on Fifth Avenue. The author of seven other books, she was a fellow at the library when she first got the idea for this book back in 2001, on 9/11.
Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:
“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.
The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”
“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.
At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.”
Ms. Jacoby doesn’t expect to revolutionize the nation’s educational system or cause millions of Americans to switch off “American Idol” and pick up Schopenhauer. But she would like to start a conversation about why the United States seems particularly vulnerable to such a virulent strain of anti-intellectualism. After all, “the empire of infotainment doesn’t stop at the American border,” she said, yet students in many other countries consistently outperform American students in science, math and reading on comparative tests.
In part, she lays the blame on a failing educational system. “Although people are going to school more and more years, there’s no evidence that they know more,” she said.
Ms. Jacoby also blames religious fundamentalism’s antipathy toward science, as she grieves over surveys that show that nearly two-thirds of Americans want creationism to be taught along with evolution.
Ms. Jacoby doesn’t leave liberals out of her analysis, mentioning the New Left’s attacks on universities in the 1960s, the decision to consign African-American and women’s studies to an “academic ghetto” instead of integrating them into the core curriculum, ponderous musings on rock music and pop culture courses on everything from sitcoms to fat that trivialize college-level learning.
Avoiding the liberal or conservative label in this particular argument, she prefers to call herself a “cultural conservationist.”
The rest of the article is at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/books/14dumb.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: February 14, 2008
A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the adorable platinum blonde from “American Idol,” appearing on the Fox game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography curriculum, the $25,000 question asked: “Budapest is the capital of what European country?”
Ms. Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. “I thought Europe was a country,” she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth graders: Hungary. “Hungry?” she said, eyes widening in disbelief. “That’s a country? I’ve heard of Turkey. But Hungry? I’ve never heard of it.”
Such, uh, lack of global awareness is the kind of thing that drives Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason,” up a wall. Ms. Jacoby is one of a number of writers with new books that bemoan the state of American culture.
Joining the circle of curmudgeons this season is Eric G. Wilson, whose “Against Happiness” warns that the “American obsession with happiness” could “well lead to a sudden extinction of the creative impulse, that could result in an extermination as horrible as those foreshadowed by global warming and environmental crisis and nuclear proliferation.”
Then there is Lee Siegel’s “Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob,” which inveighs against the Internet for encouraging solipsism, debased discourse and arrant commercialization. Mr. Siegel, one might remember, was suspended by The New Republic for using a fake online persona in order to trash critics of his blog (“you couldn’t tie Siegel’s shoelaces”) and to praise himself (“brave, brilliant”).
Ms. Jacoby, whose book came out on Tuesday, doesn’t zero in on a particular technology or emotion, but rather on what she feels is a generalized hostility to knowledge.
She is well aware that some may tag her a crank. “I expect to get bashed,” said Ms. Jacoby, 62, either as an older person who upbraids the young for plummeting standards and values, or as a secularist whose defense of scientific rationalism is a way to disparage religion.
Ms. Jacoby, however, is quick to point out that her indictment is not limited by age or ideology. Yes, she knows that eggheads, nerds, bookworms, longhairs, pointy heads, highbrows and know-it-alls have been mocked and dismissed throughout American history. And liberal and conservative writers, from Richard Hofstadter to Allan Bloom, have regularly analyzed the phenomenon and offered advice.
T. J. Jackson Lears, a cultural historian who edits the quarterly review Raritan, said, “The tendency to this sort of lamentation is perennial in American history,” adding that in periods “when political problems seem intractable or somehow frozen, there is a turn toward cultural issues.”
But now, Ms. Jacoby said, something different is happening: anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way.
Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.
She pointed to a 2006 National Geographic poll that found nearly half of 18- to 24-year-olds don’t think it is necessary or important to know where countries in the news are located. So more than three years into the Iraq war, only 23 percent of those with some college could locate Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel on a map.
Ms. Jacoby, dressed in a bright red turtleneck with lipstick to match, was sitting, appropriately, in that temple of knowledge, the New York Public Library’s majestic Beaux Arts building on Fifth Avenue. The author of seven other books, she was a fellow at the library when she first got the idea for this book back in 2001, on 9/11.
Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:
“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.
The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”
“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.
At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.”
Ms. Jacoby doesn’t expect to revolutionize the nation’s educational system or cause millions of Americans to switch off “American Idol” and pick up Schopenhauer. But she would like to start a conversation about why the United States seems particularly vulnerable to such a virulent strain of anti-intellectualism. After all, “the empire of infotainment doesn’t stop at the American border,” she said, yet students in many other countries consistently outperform American students in science, math and reading on comparative tests.
In part, she lays the blame on a failing educational system. “Although people are going to school more and more years, there’s no evidence that they know more,” she said.
Ms. Jacoby also blames religious fundamentalism’s antipathy toward science, as she grieves over surveys that show that nearly two-thirds of Americans want creationism to be taught along with evolution.
Ms. Jacoby doesn’t leave liberals out of her analysis, mentioning the New Left’s attacks on universities in the 1960s, the decision to consign African-American and women’s studies to an “academic ghetto” instead of integrating them into the core curriculum, ponderous musings on rock music and pop culture courses on everything from sitcoms to fat that trivialize college-level learning.
Avoiding the liberal or conservative label in this particular argument, she prefers to call herself a “cultural conservationist.”
The rest of the article is at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/books/14dumb.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
13-year-old killed his favorite teacher
Teen guilty of second-degree murder in teacher killing
May 16, 2001
Nathaniel Brazill is convicted of second-degree murder, and now faces a sentence between 25 years and life.
CNN's Mark Potter reports
WEST PALM BEACH, Florida (CNN) -- A jury Wednesday found 14-year-old Nathaniel Brazill guilty of second-degree murder for killing his middle school English teacher last May.
The verdict was a lesser charge than first-degree murder, which was sought by the prosecution and would have carried a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The jury of nine women and three men, many of them parents, had deliberated since Monday afternoon.
Brazill's attorneys conceded that he shot and killed Barry Grunow, a popular language arts teacher, on May 26 last year, but they insisted it was an accident. Brazill was 13 years old at the time of the shooting.
The teen had a quizzical look on his face when the verdict was read in the hushed courtroom. His attorney, Robert Udell, placed his head on Brazill's left shoulder and closed his eyes.
Udell said his client turned to him and said, "Not too bad," after the verdict was read.
A second-degree murder charge -- which means jurors believed the shooting was spur of the moment and not premeditated -- carries a minimum 25-year prison term up to life in prison. Brazill was also found guilty of aggravated assault for pointing the gun at another teacher as he fled the scene.
But Kurt Grunow, the slain teacher's brother, said he was "very disappointed" with Brazill's conviction on the reduced charge.
"If you want to say you're not going convict him because of his age, that's one thing. But it's clearly first-degree murder," Grunow said. "He said he was going to do it, and he went back and did it."
A sentencing hearing was scheduled for June 29 at 8:30 a.m. EDT.
Brazill's attorneys said that the judge has a lot of discretion in deciding the teen's sentence.
"I think the judge has leeway from zero time in prison to life," Udell said.
Udell said he had mixed emotions because he felt a manslaughter verdict was merited. But he was pleased a first-degree verdict was not returned.
"Apparently, (the jury) believed Nathaniel that he didn't go to school with the intent to assault and/or kill Mr. Grunow," he said. "We won a little battle today."
"I agree that it was a fair verdict. Let's see if we get a fair sentence," Udell said.
Prosecutors said the jury did a good job and delivered a "just verdict."
During the trial, the teen testified that he pointed the gun at Grunow because he would not let him speak to two girls in his class. Brazill, who was sent home earlier that day for a water balloon fight, testified that he cocked the .25 caliber pistol because he wanted Grunow to take him seriously, and the weapon went off. He said he thought the safety was on.
Prosecutors argued that Brazill brought the gun to school because he was angry about being suspended by another teacher for throwing water balloons. They said he was also upset because he was failing Grunow's class.
In his closing argument, assistant State Attorney Marc Shiner repeated his opening statement that a "storm was brewing" inside Nathaniel Brazill the day of the shooting last year.
Kurt Grunow said he was "very disappointed" with Brazill's conviction on the reduced charge
"This is first-degree murder anyway you look at it," he said. "You don't point a gun at someone and when it goes off ... call it an accident."
Prosecutors called a number of students who saw the shooting and a girl who said he made death threats just hours before the shooting. The most dramatic testimony came from Brazill himself during two days on the stand last week.
At one point, he clutched the handgun used in the shooting, showed jurors how he cocked the weapon and put a bullet in the chamber.
Brazill showed little emotion during his testimony, but shed tears when asked if Grunow took him seriously "after you shot him."
Brazill said he pulled the slide back on the gun to cock it and told the teacher to get out of his way.
"I was aiming at his head."
"Where did you hit him?" Shiner asked.
"In the head."
"Did he take you seriously after you shot him?"
Brazill did not respond.
"What did Mr. Grunow do when he fell to the ground?"
After a long pause and with tears welling up in his eyes, Brazill said, "What do you think he did?"
Udell, Brazill's defense attorney, told the jury during his closing arguments that Brazill was morally responsible for the shooting.
"We never said and I will not tell you that Nathaniel is not responsible for what happened here. His parents aren't at fault, the school is not at fault, the gun is not at fault. Nathaniel is at fault and only Nathaniel is at fault," Udell said in his summary statements.
He said Grunow was Brazill's favorite teacher, and that the teen did not intend to hurt him.
Udell urged the jury to consider Brazill's age.
"Any of you who have dealt with 13 year olds, or have one, know that they get stupid on us," Udell said.
One of the key pieces of evidence in the case was a videotape of the shooting from the school's security system.
The tape shows Brazill pointing the handgun at Grunow for about 11 seconds before cocking the weapon and then shooting the teacher. The tape also showed Brazill pointing the gun at another teacher as he ran away.
Jurors also saw Brazill make a videotaped confession to police after he was arrested.
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/LAW/05/16/teacher.shooting.04/index.html
May 16, 2001
Nathaniel Brazill is convicted of second-degree murder, and now faces a sentence between 25 years and life.
CNN's Mark Potter reports
WEST PALM BEACH, Florida (CNN) -- A jury Wednesday found 14-year-old Nathaniel Brazill guilty of second-degree murder for killing his middle school English teacher last May.
The verdict was a lesser charge than first-degree murder, which was sought by the prosecution and would have carried a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The jury of nine women and three men, many of them parents, had deliberated since Monday afternoon.
Brazill's attorneys conceded that he shot and killed Barry Grunow, a popular language arts teacher, on May 26 last year, but they insisted it was an accident. Brazill was 13 years old at the time of the shooting.
The teen had a quizzical look on his face when the verdict was read in the hushed courtroom. His attorney, Robert Udell, placed his head on Brazill's left shoulder and closed his eyes.
Udell said his client turned to him and said, "Not too bad," after the verdict was read.
A second-degree murder charge -- which means jurors believed the shooting was spur of the moment and not premeditated -- carries a minimum 25-year prison term up to life in prison. Brazill was also found guilty of aggravated assault for pointing the gun at another teacher as he fled the scene.
But Kurt Grunow, the slain teacher's brother, said he was "very disappointed" with Brazill's conviction on the reduced charge.
"If you want to say you're not going convict him because of his age, that's one thing. But it's clearly first-degree murder," Grunow said. "He said he was going to do it, and he went back and did it."
A sentencing hearing was scheduled for June 29 at 8:30 a.m. EDT.
Brazill's attorneys said that the judge has a lot of discretion in deciding the teen's sentence.
"I think the judge has leeway from zero time in prison to life," Udell said.
Udell said he had mixed emotions because he felt a manslaughter verdict was merited. But he was pleased a first-degree verdict was not returned.
"Apparently, (the jury) believed Nathaniel that he didn't go to school with the intent to assault and/or kill Mr. Grunow," he said. "We won a little battle today."
"I agree that it was a fair verdict. Let's see if we get a fair sentence," Udell said.
Prosecutors said the jury did a good job and delivered a "just verdict."
During the trial, the teen testified that he pointed the gun at Grunow because he would not let him speak to two girls in his class. Brazill, who was sent home earlier that day for a water balloon fight, testified that he cocked the .25 caliber pistol because he wanted Grunow to take him seriously, and the weapon went off. He said he thought the safety was on.
Prosecutors argued that Brazill brought the gun to school because he was angry about being suspended by another teacher for throwing water balloons. They said he was also upset because he was failing Grunow's class.
In his closing argument, assistant State Attorney Marc Shiner repeated his opening statement that a "storm was brewing" inside Nathaniel Brazill the day of the shooting last year.
Kurt Grunow said he was "very disappointed" with Brazill's conviction on the reduced charge
"This is first-degree murder anyway you look at it," he said. "You don't point a gun at someone and when it goes off ... call it an accident."
Prosecutors called a number of students who saw the shooting and a girl who said he made death threats just hours before the shooting. The most dramatic testimony came from Brazill himself during two days on the stand last week.
At one point, he clutched the handgun used in the shooting, showed jurors how he cocked the weapon and put a bullet in the chamber.
Brazill showed little emotion during his testimony, but shed tears when asked if Grunow took him seriously "after you shot him."
Brazill said he pulled the slide back on the gun to cock it and told the teacher to get out of his way.
"I was aiming at his head."
"Where did you hit him?" Shiner asked.
"In the head."
"Did he take you seriously after you shot him?"
Brazill did not respond.
"What did Mr. Grunow do when he fell to the ground?"
After a long pause and with tears welling up in his eyes, Brazill said, "What do you think he did?"
Udell, Brazill's defense attorney, told the jury during his closing arguments that Brazill was morally responsible for the shooting.
"We never said and I will not tell you that Nathaniel is not responsible for what happened here. His parents aren't at fault, the school is not at fault, the gun is not at fault. Nathaniel is at fault and only Nathaniel is at fault," Udell said in his summary statements.
He said Grunow was Brazill's favorite teacher, and that the teen did not intend to hurt him.
Udell urged the jury to consider Brazill's age.
"Any of you who have dealt with 13 year olds, or have one, know that they get stupid on us," Udell said.
One of the key pieces of evidence in the case was a videotape of the shooting from the school's security system.
The tape shows Brazill pointing the handgun at Grunow for about 11 seconds before cocking the weapon and then shooting the teacher. The tape also showed Brazill pointing the gun at another teacher as he ran away.
Jurors also saw Brazill make a videotaped confession to police after he was arrested.
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/LAW/05/16/teacher.shooting.04/index.html
Parent drinking influences teenagers
Parents' drinking influences teenagers
Feb 12, 2008
07 Dec 2007
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSKUA25603920080212
By Amy Norton
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - When it comes to alcohol, many teenagers may take a cue from their parents, new research suggests.
In a study of more than 4,700 teenagers, researchers found that parents' drinking habits appeared to influence their children in both direct and indirect ways.
In the first case, teenagers seemed to simply follow the example of a parent who drank excessively, the study found. In the second case, many teens seemed to view parents' drinking as a sign of lax parenting, and this, in turn, affected their likelihood of drinking.
Past studies have found that parents can be a strong influence on their children's odds of drinking. The current findings shed light on how this plays out, according to the researchers, led by Dr. Shawn J. Latendresse, of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.
"I think that this is an important finding for parents in that it raises an awareness of their multifaceted influence on the drinking behaviors of their adolescents," Latendresse told Reuters Health.
Knowing how they influence their kids, he noted, may encourage parents to seek help for their own drinking problems, or in improving their parenting skills.
Latendresse and his colleagues report the findings in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
The study included 4,731 Finnish teenagers and their parents; all were part of an ongoing health study of twins born between 1983 and 1987. Parents were asked about their past and present drinking habits, as well as any alcohol problems. Their children were asked about any drinking at the ages of 14 and 17, and about their views of their home life.
That included whether they thought their parents were "warm and caring," "indifferent" or "unjust." They also described their parents' tendency to monitor or punish them.
Overall, the researchers found, parents' drinking levels correlated with those of their teenagers. But it was more than a matter of the teenagers simply copying their parents.
Instead, the link was partially explained by the teens' perceptions of their parents as monitors and disciplinarians. Parents who drank heavily tended to be lax in monitoring their children's comings and goings, but tended to punish them more often. Those tendencies seemed to influence their teenagers' odds of drinking and getting drunk, particularly at the age of 14, the researchers found.
The findings, according to Latendresse, suggest that parents who monitor their children may lower their odds of drinking. On the other hand, he added, excessive discipline might have the unintended effect of pushing teenagers to drink.
SOURCE: Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, February 2008.
Feb 12, 2008
07 Dec 2007
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSKUA25603920080212
By Amy Norton
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - When it comes to alcohol, many teenagers may take a cue from their parents, new research suggests.
In a study of more than 4,700 teenagers, researchers found that parents' drinking habits appeared to influence their children in both direct and indirect ways.
In the first case, teenagers seemed to simply follow the example of a parent who drank excessively, the study found. In the second case, many teens seemed to view parents' drinking as a sign of lax parenting, and this, in turn, affected their likelihood of drinking.
Past studies have found that parents can be a strong influence on their children's odds of drinking. The current findings shed light on how this plays out, according to the researchers, led by Dr. Shawn J. Latendresse, of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.
"I think that this is an important finding for parents in that it raises an awareness of their multifaceted influence on the drinking behaviors of their adolescents," Latendresse told Reuters Health.
Knowing how they influence their kids, he noted, may encourage parents to seek help for their own drinking problems, or in improving their parenting skills.
Latendresse and his colleagues report the findings in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
The study included 4,731 Finnish teenagers and their parents; all were part of an ongoing health study of twins born between 1983 and 1987. Parents were asked about their past and present drinking habits, as well as any alcohol problems. Their children were asked about any drinking at the ages of 14 and 17, and about their views of their home life.
That included whether they thought their parents were "warm and caring," "indifferent" or "unjust." They also described their parents' tendency to monitor or punish them.
Overall, the researchers found, parents' drinking levels correlated with those of their teenagers. But it was more than a matter of the teenagers simply copying their parents.
Instead, the link was partially explained by the teens' perceptions of their parents as monitors and disciplinarians. Parents who drank heavily tended to be lax in monitoring their children's comings and goings, but tended to punish them more often. Those tendencies seemed to influence their teenagers' odds of drinking and getting drunk, particularly at the age of 14, the researchers found.
The findings, according to Latendresse, suggest that parents who monitor their children may lower their odds of drinking. On the other hand, he added, excessive discipline might have the unintended effect of pushing teenagers to drink.
SOURCE: Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, February 2008.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Does "creative chaos" mean that Richart is in control of the destruction?
The "creative chaos" that former MiraCosta president Victoria Richart approved of seems to mean is in control of the destructionut if someone attacks Richart, she calls it "terrorism."
Here's an article about the two concepts by Logan Jenkins of the San Diego Union:
"Richart, who has espoused chaos as a “creative force,” fought back tears Tuesday as she accused the faculty and other critics of conducting a campaign of “terrorism at its worst."
Let's get the devil expelled from college
by Logan Jenkins
UNION-TRIBUNE
June 7, 2007
Click HERE for original article.
MiraCosta can't be saved by practical legal advice, something it's sorely lacked in the past year.
The coastal community college is too far over the top for psychological counseling to restore its sanity.
As it stands, the campus afflictions are beyond the scope of familiar remedies.
If it's to return to normalcy, MiraCosta must adopt radical means to flush out the demons occupying, and torturing, its psyche.
In short, MiraCosta needs an . . . exorcist.
What not long ago was North County's model of academic collegiality has descended into a head-spinning projectile-vomiting horror show.
Where's Father Damien when you need him?
OK, I'm kidding. Sort of.
Advertisement Call it gallows humor, a protective reflex when faced with Silly String hate crimes, the specter of Ku Klux Klansmen hunting for green-braceleted dissidents on campus, and loaded guns under long coats in Oceanside.
The Tuesday meeting of the MiraCosta board was, as local government goes, a veritable Grand Guignol, a venom-letting featuring death threats to college President Victoria Muñoz Richart, lesser threats to a trustee, and the hateful letters “KKK” written on the home of Charles Adams, the black president of the board.
Ugly, scary stuff.
No joke, Richart and the board's four-member majority have been, figuratively speaking, beaten up over their politically and financially disastrous Palmgate investigation. In the wake of lunatic threats, however, Richart and Adams are framing themselves as victims, not of demented crimes but of a campus culture of “hate.”
Richart, who has espoused chaos as a “creative force,” fought back tears Tuesday as she accused the faculty and other critics of conducting a campaign of “terrorism at its worst.”
As for Adams, he translated his rightful anger at an unidentified racist vandal(s) into a livid indictment of anyone wearing a green rubber wristband, a symbol of anti-Richart solidarity inscribed with the words, “Restore Our MiraCosta.”
Adams' tongue-lashing, unlike anything I've heard from an elected official, is worth quoting at length:
“My world was shattered Friday morning when my wife walked in the door and said someone has put 'KKK' on the front of my house. . . . This is considered a hate crime. (Investigators) asked me who did I think. I immediately named you, you (he pointed at Classified Senate President Abdy Afzali and Academic Senate President Jonathan Cole).
“Because I named the Academic Senate with their hate-filled propaganda, their green bracelets that they're wearing here, the letter that was sent to the president and to my fellow board member Carolyn Batiste, and I said to them, 'anybody did this, that's who did it.'
“It's ironic that my neighborhood hangs together. I've got 30 people walking around my block. Some of these people are retired Marines. They're wearing long coats. Understand something. Those long coats aren't to keep them warm. . . . You woke up a blood-sucking angry dog. . . .
“Guess what? The Ku Klux Klan called my house – would you believe that? – to tell me, 'We did not touch your house,' that it was someone else. Now I don't know if you know the Ku Klux Klan, but those who are from the East, we know them. They do not appreciate you messing in their name or putting their letters on there. They're going to be looking for you, yes, sir, they're going to be looking at you. I told them who I think. That's my prerogative. You make innuendos, I'm going to make mine. I told them about green armbands. You want to know who they are, walk on campus, they've got green armbands. Those are the ones promoting hate.
“I'm tired. You woke up a sleeping dog. . . . I unlocked my gun cabinet and that's what I'm carrying. Not now. But if you come to my neighborhood, that's what you're going to walk into. I'm not threatening anybody. African-Americans do not threaten; we prophesy. Come into my neighborhood with your crap and they're going to to carry you out. Trust me. . . . This is the animal you have unleashed. Repercussions are about to come down. Had you not brought this hate to this campus and this community, you wouldn't be having the problem you're going to be having.”
MiraCosta, the North County college that once had it all, has turned, literally it seems, into armed camps.
Unfortunately, air-clearing elections aren't scheduled until 2008.
In an ideal world, which MiraCosta's clearly is not, moral bankruptcy would be declared today. President Richart, a radioactive lightning rod, would quit as an altruistic gesture. The board would resign en masse, all seven of them. All the active faculty reps would resign to focus on teaching. A clean sweep. An interim board would serve until the next election.
Of course, egos being what they are, that won't happen. Adams, for one, doesn't sound like he's about to give in to his tormentors. As for Richart, she has self-serving leverage. Before skipping out on the chaos she's helped create, Richart could demand a 24-carat golden parachute or, if she's fired without a plush severance, she could sue for damages to her standing as a college administrator.
Meanwhile, the faculty, supported by a cadre of former faculty and trustees, will keep up the political pressure to oust Richart and, over time, change the board's balance of power.
Without Father Damien giving it the old college try, it's going to be one long, hot, tense summer at MiraCosta.
Here's an article about the two concepts by Logan Jenkins of the San Diego Union:
"Richart, who has espoused chaos as a “creative force,” fought back tears Tuesday as she accused the faculty and other critics of conducting a campaign of “terrorism at its worst."
Let's get the devil expelled from college
by Logan Jenkins
UNION-TRIBUNE
June 7, 2007
Click HERE for original article.
MiraCosta can't be saved by practical legal advice, something it's sorely lacked in the past year.
The coastal community college is too far over the top for psychological counseling to restore its sanity.
As it stands, the campus afflictions are beyond the scope of familiar remedies.
If it's to return to normalcy, MiraCosta must adopt radical means to flush out the demons occupying, and torturing, its psyche.
In short, MiraCosta needs an . . . exorcist.
What not long ago was North County's model of academic collegiality has descended into a head-spinning projectile-vomiting horror show.
Where's Father Damien when you need him?
OK, I'm kidding. Sort of.
Advertisement Call it gallows humor, a protective reflex when faced with Silly String hate crimes, the specter of Ku Klux Klansmen hunting for green-braceleted dissidents on campus, and loaded guns under long coats in Oceanside.
The Tuesday meeting of the MiraCosta board was, as local government goes, a veritable Grand Guignol, a venom-letting featuring death threats to college President Victoria Muñoz Richart, lesser threats to a trustee, and the hateful letters “KKK” written on the home of Charles Adams, the black president of the board.
Ugly, scary stuff.
No joke, Richart and the board's four-member majority have been, figuratively speaking, beaten up over their politically and financially disastrous Palmgate investigation. In the wake of lunatic threats, however, Richart and Adams are framing themselves as victims, not of demented crimes but of a campus culture of “hate.”
Richart, who has espoused chaos as a “creative force,” fought back tears Tuesday as she accused the faculty and other critics of conducting a campaign of “terrorism at its worst.”
As for Adams, he translated his rightful anger at an unidentified racist vandal(s) into a livid indictment of anyone wearing a green rubber wristband, a symbol of anti-Richart solidarity inscribed with the words, “Restore Our MiraCosta.”
Adams' tongue-lashing, unlike anything I've heard from an elected official, is worth quoting at length:
“My world was shattered Friday morning when my wife walked in the door and said someone has put 'KKK' on the front of my house. . . . This is considered a hate crime. (Investigators) asked me who did I think. I immediately named you, you (he pointed at Classified Senate President Abdy Afzali and Academic Senate President Jonathan Cole).
“Because I named the Academic Senate with their hate-filled propaganda, their green bracelets that they're wearing here, the letter that was sent to the president and to my fellow board member Carolyn Batiste, and I said to them, 'anybody did this, that's who did it.'
“It's ironic that my neighborhood hangs together. I've got 30 people walking around my block. Some of these people are retired Marines. They're wearing long coats. Understand something. Those long coats aren't to keep them warm. . . . You woke up a blood-sucking angry dog. . . .
“Guess what? The Ku Klux Klan called my house – would you believe that? – to tell me, 'We did not touch your house,' that it was someone else. Now I don't know if you know the Ku Klux Klan, but those who are from the East, we know them. They do not appreciate you messing in their name or putting their letters on there. They're going to be looking for you, yes, sir, they're going to be looking at you. I told them who I think. That's my prerogative. You make innuendos, I'm going to make mine. I told them about green armbands. You want to know who they are, walk on campus, they've got green armbands. Those are the ones promoting hate.
“I'm tired. You woke up a sleeping dog. . . . I unlocked my gun cabinet and that's what I'm carrying. Not now. But if you come to my neighborhood, that's what you're going to walk into. I'm not threatening anybody. African-Americans do not threaten; we prophesy. Come into my neighborhood with your crap and they're going to to carry you out. Trust me. . . . This is the animal you have unleashed. Repercussions are about to come down. Had you not brought this hate to this campus and this community, you wouldn't be having the problem you're going to be having.”
MiraCosta, the North County college that once had it all, has turned, literally it seems, into armed camps.
Unfortunately, air-clearing elections aren't scheduled until 2008.
In an ideal world, which MiraCosta's clearly is not, moral bankruptcy would be declared today. President Richart, a radioactive lightning rod, would quit as an altruistic gesture. The board would resign en masse, all seven of them. All the active faculty reps would resign to focus on teaching. A clean sweep. An interim board would serve until the next election.
Of course, egos being what they are, that won't happen. Adams, for one, doesn't sound like he's about to give in to his tormentors. As for Richart, she has self-serving leverage. Before skipping out on the chaos she's helped create, Richart could demand a 24-carat golden parachute or, if she's fired without a plush severance, she could sue for damages to her standing as a college administrator.
Meanwhile, the faculty, supported by a cadre of former faculty and trustees, will keep up the political pressure to oust Richart and, over time, change the board's balance of power.
Without Father Damien giving it the old college try, it's going to be one long, hot, tense summer at MiraCosta.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Hate crimes in San Diego
Hate Crime Spikes, According to Latest Figures
By WILL CARLESS Voice Staff Writer
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BLINKLISTMonday, Jan. 21, 2008 | The number of hate crime offenses reported in San Diego County increased by 23 percent from 2005 to 2006, according to figures from the California Attorney General's Office, which tallies hate crime statistics in the state.
AUDIO: Talking Hate Crime
The statistics, the most recent figures available, also showed that the number of hate crime offenses reported against Hispanics in San Diego County tripled from 2005 to 2006, and that more hate crimes were reported against Hispanics in 2006 than in any of the last five years. In California, the number of hate crimes committed against Hispanics also jumped 16 percent from 2005 to 2006.
The statistics have led some local experts on hate crime to conclude that San Diego crime surge could be tied to an increasingly intense immigration debate raging in the region. The immigration debate, which reignited with a force in early 2006, could have increased both the number of crimes being committed and the awareness of hate crime issues for citizens and law enforcement officers alike.
"When you read some of the terms that are being used by otherwise legitimate spokespeople which categorize undocumented individuals as vermin, the bringers of disease, pedophiles, thieves, it dehumanizes them," said Morris Casuto, regional director of the San Diego Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit group that promotes civil rights.
"The increase in hate crimes against Latino and Hispanic community suggests that this type of dehumanization is having an impact on other people that are prepared to take the law into their own hands," Casuto added.
Hate crimes are distinguishable from other property or violent crimes because they are motivated by bias against a certain social group. Most hate crimes in San Diego are committed on the basis of a victim's ethnicity or race.
Related Links
A Year of Legal Woes for Minutemen (March 30, 2007)
The Forbidden City (April 2006)
In Videos, Minutemen Shown Damaging Migrant Camp (Aug. 11, 2007)
Oscar Garcia, a deputy district attorney with the county's Special Operations Division, said that to be classified as a hate crime, the act has to be motivated by the bias itself. Hate crimes are offenses that strike fear into a certain segment of the community, he said, and prosecutors can potentially double an offender's sentence if they can prove hate of a certain group is the nexus for the crime.
Hate crime had been dipping in San Diego County for the early part of the decade. From 2002 to 2004, the total number of hate crimes reported fell almost 50 percent -- from 214 to 138 -- before staying almost level between 2004 and 2005. In 2006, the number increased to 181, still lower than 2002.
And hate crimes reported against Hispanics had remained fairly level between 2002 and 2004. Offences reported against Hispanics dropped sharply in 2005 before rising to a level far higher than any of the previous four years in 2006.
But because the overall number of hate crimes reported is relatively low, experts pointed out that any trends must be analyzed with caution. Overall, the 23 percent rise in hate crimes reported from 2005 to 2006 represented an increase of 42 crimes in a county with a population of almost 3 million.
Andrew Black, supervisory special agent in charge of the San Diego FBI Civil Rights Program, which aids local law enforcement in fighting hate crime, said the increasingly heated and public debate between anti-illegal immigration groups and immigrant rights activists could be one factor that's contributed to the crime spike from 2005 to 2006.
But Black said the increase could also partly be due to increased awareness of law enforcement officers to the existence of hate crime legislation. Outreach by local law enforcement agencies and effective training of officers in the use of hate crime laws means crimes that years ago wouldn't have been classified as hate-driven are now properly identified for what they are.
Timothy Cabal would disagree.
Cabal is currently incarcerated in the George Bailey Detention Facility in Otay Mesa. He recently pleaded guilty to two separate hate crimes that occurred about a year apart. Both involved altercations at bars in East County and both involved Cabal allegedly attacking victims and sending them to the hospital.
One of the victims was black, another, prosecutors argued, was attacked because Cabal thought the victim was gay.
Cabal, who will be sentenced to 17 years in prison, said his case was wrongly classified as a hate crime. Though prosecutors found a money clip at his home that bore an embossed image of a Ku Klux Klan figure and Cabal sports a tattoo of an iron cross, a symbol that is sometimes associated with the neo-Nazi movement, Cabal maintained his innocence during an interview at the jail.
"I'm not a racist. I have black friends. I'm an honest, church-going man and I didn't mean that to happen to that guy," Cabal said.
But the Cabal case has been held up by the County District Attorney's Office as an example of another dangerous trend in hate crimes within San Diego. Extremist white supremacist groups in East County have become increasingly violent in recent years, said Garcia of the District Attorney's Office.
"California is the center of the neo-Nazi movement in the United States and Southern California is the hotbed of that movement," Garcia said.
And as the immigration debate continues to boil, the number of hate crimes reported in the county is likely to continue to climb, said Stuart Henry, a professor of criminal justice and director of the School of Public Affairs at San Diego State University.
Whether that increase in reported crimes is because of a true rise in the number of crimes committed or is the result of heightened sensitivity of the latest politically charged issue -- in this case immigration -- is anyone's guess, Henry said.
With the immigration debate high on everyone in law enforcement's radar, there's a greater likelihood not only that more cases of racial bias arise, but also that more cases are identified as hate crimes, Henry said.
"Are they real hate crimes, or are they just seen as hate crimes because of the ongoing immigration debate?" Henry said. "I think there's got to be some degree of amplification just because this debate exists."
http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2008/01/21/news/01hatecrime012108.txt
By WILL CARLESS Voice Staff Writer
PRINT E-MAIL STORY SHARE
NEWSVINE DIGG
DEL.ICIO.US
BLINKLISTMonday, Jan. 21, 2008 | The number of hate crime offenses reported in San Diego County increased by 23 percent from 2005 to 2006, according to figures from the California Attorney General's Office, which tallies hate crime statistics in the state.
AUDIO: Talking Hate Crime
The statistics, the most recent figures available, also showed that the number of hate crime offenses reported against Hispanics in San Diego County tripled from 2005 to 2006, and that more hate crimes were reported against Hispanics in 2006 than in any of the last five years. In California, the number of hate crimes committed against Hispanics also jumped 16 percent from 2005 to 2006.
The statistics have led some local experts on hate crime to conclude that San Diego crime surge could be tied to an increasingly intense immigration debate raging in the region. The immigration debate, which reignited with a force in early 2006, could have increased both the number of crimes being committed and the awareness of hate crime issues for citizens and law enforcement officers alike.
"When you read some of the terms that are being used by otherwise legitimate spokespeople which categorize undocumented individuals as vermin, the bringers of disease, pedophiles, thieves, it dehumanizes them," said Morris Casuto, regional director of the San Diego Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit group that promotes civil rights.
"The increase in hate crimes against Latino and Hispanic community suggests that this type of dehumanization is having an impact on other people that are prepared to take the law into their own hands," Casuto added.
Hate crimes are distinguishable from other property or violent crimes because they are motivated by bias against a certain social group. Most hate crimes in San Diego are committed on the basis of a victim's ethnicity or race.
Related Links
A Year of Legal Woes for Minutemen (March 30, 2007)
The Forbidden City (April 2006)
In Videos, Minutemen Shown Damaging Migrant Camp (Aug. 11, 2007)
Oscar Garcia, a deputy district attorney with the county's Special Operations Division, said that to be classified as a hate crime, the act has to be motivated by the bias itself. Hate crimes are offenses that strike fear into a certain segment of the community, he said, and prosecutors can potentially double an offender's sentence if they can prove hate of a certain group is the nexus for the crime.
Hate crime had been dipping in San Diego County for the early part of the decade. From 2002 to 2004, the total number of hate crimes reported fell almost 50 percent -- from 214 to 138 -- before staying almost level between 2004 and 2005. In 2006, the number increased to 181, still lower than 2002.
And hate crimes reported against Hispanics had remained fairly level between 2002 and 2004. Offences reported against Hispanics dropped sharply in 2005 before rising to a level far higher than any of the previous four years in 2006.
But because the overall number of hate crimes reported is relatively low, experts pointed out that any trends must be analyzed with caution. Overall, the 23 percent rise in hate crimes reported from 2005 to 2006 represented an increase of 42 crimes in a county with a population of almost 3 million.
Andrew Black, supervisory special agent in charge of the San Diego FBI Civil Rights Program, which aids local law enforcement in fighting hate crime, said the increasingly heated and public debate between anti-illegal immigration groups and immigrant rights activists could be one factor that's contributed to the crime spike from 2005 to 2006.
But Black said the increase could also partly be due to increased awareness of law enforcement officers to the existence of hate crime legislation. Outreach by local law enforcement agencies and effective training of officers in the use of hate crime laws means crimes that years ago wouldn't have been classified as hate-driven are now properly identified for what they are.
Timothy Cabal would disagree.
Cabal is currently incarcerated in the George Bailey Detention Facility in Otay Mesa. He recently pleaded guilty to two separate hate crimes that occurred about a year apart. Both involved altercations at bars in East County and both involved Cabal allegedly attacking victims and sending them to the hospital.
One of the victims was black, another, prosecutors argued, was attacked because Cabal thought the victim was gay.
Cabal, who will be sentenced to 17 years in prison, said his case was wrongly classified as a hate crime. Though prosecutors found a money clip at his home that bore an embossed image of a Ku Klux Klan figure and Cabal sports a tattoo of an iron cross, a symbol that is sometimes associated with the neo-Nazi movement, Cabal maintained his innocence during an interview at the jail.
"I'm not a racist. I have black friends. I'm an honest, church-going man and I didn't mean that to happen to that guy," Cabal said.
But the Cabal case has been held up by the County District Attorney's Office as an example of another dangerous trend in hate crimes within San Diego. Extremist white supremacist groups in East County have become increasingly violent in recent years, said Garcia of the District Attorney's Office.
"California is the center of the neo-Nazi movement in the United States and Southern California is the hotbed of that movement," Garcia said.
And as the immigration debate continues to boil, the number of hate crimes reported in the county is likely to continue to climb, said Stuart Henry, a professor of criminal justice and director of the School of Public Affairs at San Diego State University.
Whether that increase in reported crimes is because of a true rise in the number of crimes committed or is the result of heightened sensitivity of the latest politically charged issue -- in this case immigration -- is anyone's guess, Henry said.
With the immigration debate high on everyone in law enforcement's radar, there's a greater likelihood not only that more cases of racial bias arise, but also that more cases are identified as hate crimes, Henry said.
"Are they real hate crimes, or are they just seen as hate crimes because of the ongoing immigration debate?" Henry said. "I think there's got to be some degree of amplification just because this debate exists."
http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2008/01/21/news/01hatecrime012108.txt
Thursday, January 17, 2008
John Dransfield, Royal Botanic Gardens/AP
Scientists Discover Self-Destructing Tree
By JONNY HOGG,AP
2008-01-17
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar (Jan. 17) - A self-destructing palm tree that flowers once every 100 years and then dies has been discovered on the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar, botanists said Thursday.
Scientists say they have found a new species of palm tree on the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar. It's no wonder it went undiscovered for so long: The tree flowers once every 100 years and then dies.
The name of the giant palm and its remarkable life cycle will be detailed in a study by Kew Gardens scientists in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society published Thursday.
"It's spectacular. It does not flower for maybe 100 years and when it's like this it can be mistaken for other types of palm," said Mijoro Rakotoarinivo, who works for the London botanical gardens in Madagascar.
"But then a large shoot, a bit like an asparagus, grows out of the top of the tree and starts to spread. You get something that looks a bit like a Christmas tree growing out of the top of the palm," he said.
The branches of this shoot then become covered in hundreds of tiny white flowers that ooze with nectar, attracting insects and birds.
But the effort of flowering and fruiting depletes the tree so much that within a few months it collapses and dies, said botanist Dr. John Dransfield, author of the study.
Dransfield noted that "even for Madagascar this is a stupendous palm and an astonishing discovery."
The world's fourth largest island, Madagascar is renowned for its unusual flora and fauna, including 12,000 species of plant found nowhere else in the world. Indeed 90 percent of its plant species are endemic.
The palm tree, which grows to 66 feet in height and has about 16-foot leaves, is only found in an extremely remote region in the northwest of the country, some four days by road from the capital. Local villagers have known about it for years although none had seen it in flower until last year.
The bizarre flowering ritual was first spotted by Frenchman Xavier Metz, who runs a cashew plantation nearby. After seeing it he notified Kew Gardens.
Puzzling Dransfield is how botanists had missed such a "whopping palm" until now. According to him it is the largest palm species in the country but there appear to be only about 100 in existence.
He also questions how the palm got to Madagascar. The tree has similarities to Chuniophoeniceae palms, however these are only found in Asia, more than 3,700 miles away.
Dransfield suggests the plant has been quietly living and dramatically dying in Madagascar since the island split with mainland India 80 million years ago.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2008-01-17 09:12:50
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/scientists-discover-self-destructing/20080117091209990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
A vast cloud of antimatter lurks in space
AOL NEWS
Source of Mysterious Antimatter Found
Posted: 2008-01-16 16:45:01
Filed Under: Science News
Click HERE to see the original article.
Antimatter, which annihilates matter upon contact, seems to be rare in the universe. Still, for decades, scientists had clues that a vast cloud of antimatter lurked in space, but they did not know where it came from.
The mysterious source of this antimatter has now been discovered — stars getting ripped apart by neutron stars and black holes.
Photo Gallery
NASA/JPL Out-of-This-World
Space Photos1 of 25 For years, astronomers have been baffled by the source of antimatter. Now, researchers say the matter-annihilating material is generated when stars get ripped apart by black holes or neutron stars. In this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, thousands of stars swirl around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
While antimatter propulsion systems are so far the stuff of science fiction, antimatter is very real.
What It Is
All elementary particles, such as protons and electrons, have antimatter counterparts with the same mass but the opposite charge. For instance, the antimatter opposite of an electron, known as a positron, is positively charged.
When a particle meets its antiparticle, they destroy each other, releasing a burst of energy such as gamma rays. In 1978, gamma ray detectors flown on balloons detected a type of gamma ray emerging from space that is known to be emitted when electrons collide with positrons — meaning there was antimatter in space.
"It was quite a surprise back then to discover part of the universe was made of antimatter," researcher Gerry Skinner, an astrophysicist at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told SPACE.com.
These gamma rays apparently came from a cloud of antimatter roughly 10,000 light-years across surrounding our galaxy's core. This giant cloud shines brightly with gamma rays, with about the energy of 10,000 suns.
What exactly generated the antimatter was a mystery for the following decades. Suspects have included everything from exploding stars to dark matter.
Now, an international research team looking over four years of data from the European Space Agency's International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) satellite has pinpointed the apparent culprits. Their new findings suggest these positrons originate mainly from stars getting devoured by black holes and neutron stars.
As a black hole or neutron star destroys a star, tremendous amounts of radiation are released. Just as electrons and positrons emit the tell-tale gamma rays upon annihilation, so too can gamma rays combine to form electrons and positrons, providing the mechanism for the creation of the antimatter cloud, scientists think.
Billions and Billions
The researchers calculate that a relatively ordinary star getting torn apart by a black hole or neutron star orbiting around it — a so-called "low mass X-ray binary" — could spew on the order of one hundred thousand billion billion billion billion positrons (a 1 followed by 41 zeroes) per second. These could account for a great deal of the antimatter that scientists have inferred, reducing or potentially eliminating the need for exotic explanations such as ones involving dark matter.
"Simple estimates suggest that about half and possibly all the antimatter is coming from X-ray binaries," said researcher Georg Weidenspointner of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany.
Now that they have witnessed the death of antimatter, the scientists hope to see its birth.
"It would be interesting if black holes produced more matter than neutron stars, or vice versa, although it's too early to say one way or the other right now," Skinner explained. "It can be surprisingly hard to tell the difference between an X-ray binaries that hold black holes and neutron stars."
Weidenspointner, Skinner and their colleagues, detailed their findings in the Jan. 10 issue of the journal Nature.
2008-01-16
Source of Mysterious Antimatter Found
Posted: 2008-01-16 16:45:01
Filed Under: Science News
Click HERE to see the original article.
Antimatter, which annihilates matter upon contact, seems to be rare in the universe. Still, for decades, scientists had clues that a vast cloud of antimatter lurked in space, but they did not know where it came from.
The mysterious source of this antimatter has now been discovered — stars getting ripped apart by neutron stars and black holes.
Photo Gallery
NASA/JPL Out-of-This-World
Space Photos1 of 25 For years, astronomers have been baffled by the source of antimatter. Now, researchers say the matter-annihilating material is generated when stars get ripped apart by black holes or neutron stars. In this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, thousands of stars swirl around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
While antimatter propulsion systems are so far the stuff of science fiction, antimatter is very real.
What It Is
All elementary particles, such as protons and electrons, have antimatter counterparts with the same mass but the opposite charge. For instance, the antimatter opposite of an electron, known as a positron, is positively charged.
When a particle meets its antiparticle, they destroy each other, releasing a burst of energy such as gamma rays. In 1978, gamma ray detectors flown on balloons detected a type of gamma ray emerging from space that is known to be emitted when electrons collide with positrons — meaning there was antimatter in space.
"It was quite a surprise back then to discover part of the universe was made of antimatter," researcher Gerry Skinner, an astrophysicist at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told SPACE.com.
These gamma rays apparently came from a cloud of antimatter roughly 10,000 light-years across surrounding our galaxy's core. This giant cloud shines brightly with gamma rays, with about the energy of 10,000 suns.
What exactly generated the antimatter was a mystery for the following decades. Suspects have included everything from exploding stars to dark matter.
Now, an international research team looking over four years of data from the European Space Agency's International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) satellite has pinpointed the apparent culprits. Their new findings suggest these positrons originate mainly from stars getting devoured by black holes and neutron stars.
As a black hole or neutron star destroys a star, tremendous amounts of radiation are released. Just as electrons and positrons emit the tell-tale gamma rays upon annihilation, so too can gamma rays combine to form electrons and positrons, providing the mechanism for the creation of the antimatter cloud, scientists think.
Billions and Billions
The researchers calculate that a relatively ordinary star getting torn apart by a black hole or neutron star orbiting around it — a so-called "low mass X-ray binary" — could spew on the order of one hundred thousand billion billion billion billion positrons (a 1 followed by 41 zeroes) per second. These could account for a great deal of the antimatter that scientists have inferred, reducing or potentially eliminating the need for exotic explanations such as ones involving dark matter.
"Simple estimates suggest that about half and possibly all the antimatter is coming from X-ray binaries," said researcher Georg Weidenspointner of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany.
Now that they have witnessed the death of antimatter, the scientists hope to see its birth.
"It would be interesting if black holes produced more matter than neutron stars, or vice versa, although it's too early to say one way or the other right now," Skinner explained. "It can be surprisingly hard to tell the difference between an X-ray binaries that hold black holes and neutron stars."
Weidenspointner, Skinner and their colleagues, detailed their findings in the Jan. 10 issue of the journal Nature.
2008-01-16
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