Core Dump

"It's hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we'll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature," district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus told the paper.

Labels: society, The Crazy Years

• A TSA agent planted a baggie of white powder in a passenger's luggage ... as a joke.
• A soldier has been charged with receiving kiddie porn after his mom sent him pictures of kids playing in her yard
• A U.S. Airways jet was diverted to Philadelphia International Airport Thursday after a praying Jewish man’s religious item was mistaken for a bomb.

Labels: The Crazy Years

A San Diego school vice-principal saw an 11-year-old's home science project (a motion detector made out of an empty Gatorade bottle and some electronics), decided it was a bomb, wet himself, put the school on lockdown, had the bomb-squad come out to destroy X-ray the student's invention and search his parents' home, and then magnanimously decided not to discipline the kid (though he did recommend that the child and his parents get counselling to help them overcome their anti-social science behavior).

Labels: society, The Crazy Years

Berkeley High School is considering a controversial proposal to eliminate science labs and the five science teachers who teach them to free up more resources to help struggling students.

The proposal to put the science-lab cuts on the table was approved recently by Berkeley High's School Governance Council, a body of teachers, parents, and students who oversee a plan to change the structure of the high school to address Berkeley's dismal racial achievement gap, where white students are doing far better than the state average while black and Latino students are doing worse.

Paul Gibson, an alternate parent representative on the School Governance Council, said that information presented at council meetings suggests that the science labs were largely classes for white students. He said the decision to consider cutting the labs in order to redirect resources to underperforming students was virtually unanimous.

Labels: science, society, The Crazy Years

A council notice to parents explains that: "Safeguarding the children and young people who use the site is one of our top priorities.

"Due to Ofsted regulations we have a responsibility to ensure that every authorised adult who enters our site is properly vetted and given a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check by Watford Borough Council."

Labels: society, The Crazy Years

The agents who spent half a day ransacking Mrs. Norris' longtime home in Spring, Texas, answered no questions while they emptied file cabinets, pulled books off shelves, rifled through drawers and closets, and threw the contents on the floor.

The six agents, wearing SWAT gear and carrying weapons, were with - get this- the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Kathy and George Norris lived under the specter of a covert government investigation for almost six months before the government unsealed a secret indictment and revealed why the Fish and Wildlife Service had treated their family home as if it were a training base for suspected terrorists. Orchids.

Labels: politics, The Crazy Years

The Bank of America in Tampa, Florida has a no-exceptions policy requiring a thumbprint when cashing a check. And they do mean no exceptions: the bank refused to cash a check for a man with no arms because he couldn't provide a fingerprint.

Labels: The Crazy Years

Just look at that list of all the things libraries do for our communities, all the ways they help the least among us, the vulnerable, the children, the elderly. Think of every wonderful thing that happened to you among the shelves of a library. Think of the millions of lifelong love-affairs with literacy sparked in the collections of those libraries. Think of every person whose life was forever changed for the better in those buildings.

Think of the nobility of libraries and librarianship, the great scar that the Burning of Alexandria gouged in human history. Think of the archivists who barricaded themselves in the Hermitage during the Siege of Leningrad, slowly starving and freezing to death but refusing to desert their posts for fear that the collections they guarded would become firewood.

Think of the librarians who took a stand during the darkest years of the PATRIOT Act and refused to turn over patron records. Think of the moral unimpeachability of those whose trade is universal access to all human knowledge.

Picture an entire city, a modern, wealthy place, in the richest country in the world, in which the vital services provided by libraries are withdrawn due to political brinksmanship and an unwillingness to spare one banker's bonus worth of tax-dollars to sustain an entire region's connection with human culture and knowledge and community.

Think of it and ask yourself what the hell has happened to us.

Labels: politics, society, The Crazy Years

As a Las Vegas statute puts it, “An indigent person is a person whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive” public assistance.

That could be me before the blow-drying and eyeliner, and it’s definitely Al Szekely at any time of day. A grizzled 62-year-old, he inhabits a wheelchair and is often found on G Street in Washington — the city that is ultimately responsible for the bullet he took in the spine in Fu Bai, Vietnam, in 1972. He had been enjoying the luxury of an indoor bed until last December, when the police swept through the shelter in the middle of the night looking for men with outstanding warrants.

It turned out that Mr. Szekely, who is an ordained minister and does not drink, do drugs or curse in front of ladies, did indeed have a warrant — for not appearing in court to face a charge of “criminal trespassing” (for sleeping on a sidewalk in a Washington suburb). So he was dragged out of the shelter and put in jail. “Can you imagine?” asked Eric Sheptock, the homeless advocate (himself a shelter resident) who introduced me to Mr. Szekely. “They arrested a homeless man in a shelter for being homeless.”

Labels: society, The Crazy Years

ONE day in 1996 the lights went off in a classroom in Georgia so that the students could watch a video. Wendy Whitaker, a 17-year-old pupil at the time, was sitting near the back. The boy next to her suggested that, since it was dark, she could perform oral sex on him without anyone noticing. She obliged. And that single teenage fumble wrecked her life.

Her classmate was three weeks shy of his 16th birthday. That made Ms Whitaker a criminal. She was arrested and charged with sodomy, which in Georgia can refer to oral sex. She met her court-appointed lawyer five minutes before the hearing. He told her to plead guilty. She did not really understand what was going on, so she did as she was told.

She was sentenced to five years on probation. Not being the most organised of people, she failed to meet all the conditions, such as checking in regularly with her probation officer. For a series of technical violations, she was incarcerated for more than a year, in the county jail, the state women’s prison and a boot camp. “I was in there with people who killed people. It’s crazy,” she says.

She finished her probation in 2002. But her ordeal continues. Georgia puts sex offenders on a public registry. Ms Whitaker’s name, photograph and address are easily accessible online, along with the information that she was convicted of “sodomy”. The website does not explain what she actually did. But since it describes itself as a list of people who have “been convicted of a criminal offence against a victim who is a minor or any dangerous sexual offence”, it makes it sound as if she did something terrible to a helpless child. She sees people whispering, and parents pulling their children indoors when she walks by.

Labels: politics, society, The Crazy Years

Twelve years ago, when Wendy Whitaker was barely 17, she performed oral sex on a high school classmate who was about to turn 16. The state of Georgia convicted her of a sex crime and she was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

As a registered sex offender, Whitaker's freedom is severely restricted. She and her husband bought a house within 1000 feet of an unadvertised church daycare service, and a judge has decreed that she has to vacate by Thanksgiving.

Labels: society, The Crazy Years

A man vowed to keep a glowing garden gnome on display today in defiance of a police notice. Gordon MacKillop even faces possible prosecution over the offending ornament.

He was woken in the night by two police officers who warned him that the solar-powered gnome, dressed in full police uniform, was offensive to his neighbours.

They served him with a notice under the Protection From Harassment Act 1997 for "placing a garden gnome with intent to cause harassment to Mr John McLean".

The notice, issued on August 30, also accuses Mr MacKillop of intimidating potential buyers of former policeman Mr McLean's £209,000 cottage in Treovis, near Liskeard, Cornwall. It warns the 46-year-old that he could be arrested and prosecuted.

Labels: The Crazy Years

The 23-year-old is said to have dreamt there was a bomb on board the accommodation platform where she was sleeping. That led to the alarm being raised and efforts made to airlift nearly 650 people to safety.

At the height of the drama, a total of 14 civilian and military helicopters, along with two other RAF aircraft, had been scrambled or were involved in the incident.

It is thought the evacuation operation, the biggest in the history of the North Sea, cost up to £4 million, including an estimated £3 million of losses suffered by the oil company Britannia, which was forced to suspend production.

Labels: The Crazy Years

Firefighters from Quebec said they were held up at the Rouses Point border crossing while trying to provide mutual aid to firefighters battling flames at the Anchorage Inn Sunday.
Lacolle and St. Paul fire officials said several members of their squad didn't have proper photo identification and were held up for close to 15 minutes while trying to reach the fire. Fire officials also said border agents inspected some of the fire trucks.

Clinton County fire officials said they called Customs and Border Protection to let them know firefighters would be crossing from Canada, but the crews were still held up.

Labels: security, The Crazy Years

District Superintendent Sam McGowen said that he thinks the penalty is fair and that administrators in the school east of St. Louis were following policy in the student handbook.

It states: “Displays of affection should not occur on the school campus at any time. It is in poor taste, reflects poor judgment, and brings discredit to the school and to the persons involved.”

Labels: The Crazy Years

"It was tragic to watch,” police spokesman Gordon Bassham said Tuesday. “The fact that people were more interested in taking a picture with a cell phone and shopping for snacks rather than helping this innocent young woman is, frankly, revolting.”

The woman was stabbed during an altercation that was not part of a robbery, Bassham said. It took about two minutes for someone to call 911, he said.

Labels: The Crazy Years

In a 23-page finding of fact, Bartnoff wrote: "A reasonable consumer would not interpret 'Satisfaction Guaranteed' to mean that a merchant is required to satisfy a customer's unreasonable demands or accede to demands that the merchant has reasonable grounds to dispute."

Pearson had "not met his burden of proving that the pants the defendants attempted to return to him were not the pants he brought in for alteration," the judge concluded.

Bartnoff awarded court costs to the Chungs, who have spent tens of thousands of dollars on the case. They are attempting to have their attorney's fees paid by Pearson.

Labels: The Crazy Years

The incident started when Monica was stopped while going through airport security because there was water in her son's sippy cup. The sippy cup was seized by TSA. Monica wanted the cup back because the sippy cup was the only way her son would drink -- and it was a long flight between Washington, DC and Reno, Nevada where she was going for a family reunion. If you've ever had a toddler you understand about sippy cups.

Labels: politics, security, The Crazy Years

The odd-looking — but harmless — "poppy coin" was so unfamiliar to suspicious U.S. Army contractors travelling in Canada that they filed confidential espionage accounts about them. The worried contractors described the coins as "anomalous" and "filled with something man-made that looked like nano-technology," according to once-classified U.S. government reports and e-mails obtained by the AP.

Labels: The Crazy Years

When the neighborhood dry cleaner misplaced Roy Pearson's pants, he took action. He complained. He demanded compensation. And then he sued. Man, did he sue.

Two years, thousands of pages of legal documents and many hundreds of hours of investigative work later, Pearson is seeking to make Custom Cleaners pay -- would you believe more than the payroll of the entire Washington Nationals roster?He says he deserves millions for the damages he suffered by not getting his pants back, for his litigation costs, for "mental suffering, inconvenience and discomfort," for the value of the time he has spent on the lawsuit, for leasing a car every weekend for 10 years and for a replacement suit, according to court papers.

Pearson is demanding $65,462,500. The original alteration work on the pants cost $10.50.

Labels: The Crazy Years

Labels: funny, The Crazy Years

On his personal website, he posted pictures of a small group installing the figures -- little square-shaped men frowning and making an obscene gesture -- on the exterior wall of a hospital, on the awning of a Cambridge bar, at an Urban Outfitters, and a bridge.

On another website, he describes himself as adroit at painting, animation, video and sound design, sculpting and installation art.

Labels: The Crazy Years

In perhaps a well-intentioned, but pernicious example of political correctness, the Michigan Department of Education is attempting to ban the "America" and "American" from our public schools. Even though the word "America" appears in the department's own civics and government benchmarks, the department's style protocol for the Michigan Education Assessment Program requires that "America" and "Americans" be expunged from our testing and grade level expectations. Last week, the department ordered that our hard-working teachers not utter the words.

We're all 'North Americans'

The Department of Education asserts that "Americans" includes Mexicans, Canadians and others in the Western Hemisphere, so referring to U.S. residents as Americans is inappropriate. In the department's view, "America" happens to include South, Central and North America. Accordingly, when referring to the colonial period, the state bureaucracy requires teachers to refer to "the colonies of North America" or "North Americans." After the American Revolution, the nation is called the United States (not of America).

Labels: The Crazy Years

Labels: The Crazy Years

Labels: The Crazy Years