Zero Tolerance requires zero brains

"... officials at Safford Middle School in Safford, Arizona forced eighth-grader Savana Redding to prove she was not concealing drugs in her crotch or cleavage... Savana, an honors student with no history of disciplinary trouble or drug problems, said she didn't know anything about the pills and agreed to a search of her backpack, which turned up nothing incriminating. Wilson nevertheless instructed a female secretary to strip-search Savana under the school nurse's supervision, without even bothering to contact the girl's mother. The secretary had Savana take off all her clothing except her underwear. Then she told her to "pull her bra out and to the side and shake it, exposing her breasts," and "pull her underwear out at the crotch and shake it, exposing her pelvic area."

And the drug they were searching for? ---- Ibuprofen (Advil)

"Savana, who was closely supervised after Wilson approached her, did not have an opportunity to stash contraband. As the American Civil Liberties Union puts it, "There was no reason to suspect that a thirteen-year-old honor-roll student with a clean disciplinary record had adopted drug-smuggling practices associated with international narcotrafficking, or to suppose that other middle-school students would willingly consume ibuprofen that was stored in another student's crotch."

The invasiveness of the search also has to be weighed against the evil it was aimed at preventing. "Remember," the school district's lawyer recently told ABC News by way of justification, "this was prescription-strength ibuprofen." It's a good thing the school took swift action, before anyone got unauthorized relief from menstrual cramps.

Jesse Ventura Redux

Jesse Ventura was, successively, a professional wrestler, a Hollywood actor (notably in "Predator"), mayor of a small suburb of the Twin Cities, and then - to everyone's amazement - was elected governor of Minnesota in 1998. Running for the Reform Party, he defeated seasoned politicians in the Republican and Democratic parties, then served a generally successful term as governor. The biography on Wikipedia is comprehensive and accurate.
He's back in the public eye now as the author of a new book, and was recently interviewed on Larry King Live. This Huffington Post link has six minutes of the interview and a trenchant summary of his current views: "he thinks it's time for a revolution in the United States, that we are a nation of "lemmings," and that the only difference between the two major political parties and street gangs are that the politicians wear Brooks Brothers suits. After blasting the two-party "dictatorship" in America, he gave his opinion of the three presidential candidates (hint: it wasn't very favorable). And he reserved special judgment for the "chickenhawks" who he said marched the country into war in Iraq."
These are interesting comments coming from a decorated Navy Seal who did active duty in Vietnam. This is the same old Jesse Ventura I remember - fearlessly outspoken and unafraid to swim against the tide of political correctness. If you liked him before, the interview in the link above will reinforce your opinion of him (and if you didn't like him before, the interview will reinforce that opinion as well).

New British coins to be minted

The designs are quite remarkable and seemingly quixotic, until one realizes that each depicts a portion of the Royal Arms -

The Royal Arms is divided into four parts: England being represented by the three lions passant guardant in the first and fourth quarters, the Scottish lion rampant in the second and the harp of Ireland in the third, with all four quarters spread over the six coins from the 1p to the 50p. Completing the new range of coins is the £1 coin featuring the shield of the Royal Arms in its entirety, uniting the six fragmented elements into one design.

When the six smaller coins are arranged as shown below, the pattern of the shield is revealed. Much more information about the forthcoming coins, as well as previous coin designs, decimalization etc., is available at the Royal Mint website.

My WTF meter just exploded

WAYCROSS, Ga. - A group of third-graders plotted to attack their teacher, bringing a broken steak knife [above], handcuffs, duct tape and other items for the job and assigning children tasks including covering the windows and cleaning up afterward, police said Tuesday... The plot by as many as nine boys and girls at Center Elementary School in south Georgia was a serious threat, Waycross Police Chief Tony Tanner said... The children, ages 8 and 9, were apparently mad at the teacher because she had scolded one of them for standing on a chair, Tanner said. A prosecutor said they are too young to be charged with a crime under Georgia law...

The purported target is a veteran educator who teaches third-grade students with learning disabilities including attention deficit disorder, delayed development and hyperactivity, friends and parents said.

The scheme involved a division of roles, Tanner said. One child's job was to cover windows so no one could see outside, he said. Another was supposed to clean up after the attack.

This story was on NPR while I was driving around for errands today, is all over the 'net and will likely be dominant on network news tonight. Almost as depressing as the original story is the nature of the comments written on the various websites, as for example -

"maybe these kids are just the starting of thugs when they get older, if i was there parents they get the hell beat out of them the old fashion waybelt or a swich broken off a fern bush! thrid graders ant that young not to punish the hell out of em."

"Darwin fish" replacing "Jesus fish"?

"Traditionally, the fish pictogram conjures the miracle of the loaves and fishes as well as the Greek word IXOYE, which not only means fish but serves as an acronym, in Greek, for "Jesus Christ the Son of God [Is] Savior." Christians persecuted by the Romans used to draw the Jesus fish in the dirt with a stick or a finger as a way to tip off fellow Christians that they weren't alone.

In America, the easiest place to find this ancient symbol is on the back of cars. Recently, however, it seems as if Jesus fish have become outnumbered by Darwin fish. No doubt you've seen these too. The fish symbol is "updated" with little feet coming off the bottom, and "IXOYE" or "Jesus" is replaced with either "Darwin" or "Evolve.""

Credit to the J-Walk blog.

The Earth at Night

I describe a lot of the images in this blog as "amazing" or "awesome," but that's because I'm selecting out the most impressive things I find in the ocean of mundane items on the web. Of all the images I've seen in the past few weeks, NASA's depiction of our planet at night is arguably the most jaw-dropping.

The photo embedded above is a small portion of the complete image, which was stitched together from hundreds of individual photos. To see the entire earth at night, go to THIS LINK.

Notice how the population of Egypt concentrates along the banks of the Nile, or the Canadians at the southern border of their country. You can see where the Trans-Siberian RR crosses the interior of Asia. North Korea is black, while South Korea is incandescent. Fishing boat fleets are shown in blue, and gas flares (presumably at oilfields and refineries) are evident off the coast of Nigeria, in the Gulf, and in central Russia. The photo legend describes the red color as "wildfires," which presumably includes also cooking fires, the concentration of which in the tropical forests of the world is striking (and saddening).

Lots of information, beautifully depicted.

Impressively painted hands

These have been around the 'net for a while; I unfortunately do not have the original source, and don't know whether they represent painted hands per se or Photoshop creations, but the ingenuity is still admirable. For those interested, Popgive has a collection of these.

Clarification re "Minnesotastan"

When I created this blog, I did so under the username "Minnesotastan" which is obviously an amalgamation of my home state and my first name; I've used this "nick" for perhaps 20 years on a variety of forums and websites.

"-stan" is also a suffix in the Persian language, and means "place of." So, in central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, there are lots of places that end in -stan. The well-known ones are Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Kurdistan. Wiki lists about 30 more.

Tonight I Googled "Minnesotastan" to find something I had written years ago, and got 400 hits, but discovered to my dismay that Minnesotastan also has some markedly negative connotations. Apparently the term has been independently generated and popularized in the upper Midwest by xenophobics who disapprove of an increasing Muslim presence in the state. The term "Minnesotastan" is thus used as a derogatory term for Minnesota, reflecting the changing ethnic makeup in the Twin Cities area.

So, if anyone happens to encounter "Minnesotastan" on a gardening forum, or a Ron Paul political discussion, or a real estate or archaeology or hobby bulletin board, it will probably be me. But if you see "Minnesotastan" used in the context of a screed involving Islamophobia, that is for sure not in any way associated with me.

The Ninth Circle of Hell...

...in Dante's Divine Comedy, was the lowest level (right next to Satan) and dedicated to traitors to their kindred. I hope it's not full - that there's still room for these guys:

Internet griefers descended on an epilepsy support message board last weekend and used JavaScript code and flashing computer animation to trigger migraine headaches and seizures in some users. The nonprofit Epilepsy Foundation, which runs the forum, briefly closed the site Sunday to purge the offending messages and to boost security... [the malefactors were] injecting JavaScript into some posts that redirected users' browsers to a page with a more complex image designed to trigger seizures in both photosensitive and pattern-sensitive epileptics...

RyAnne Fultz, a 33-year-old woman who suffers from pattern-sensitive epilepsy, says she clicked on a forum post with a legitimate-sounding title on Sunday. Her browser window resized to fill her screen, which was then taken over by a pattern of squares rapidly flashing in different colors.
Fultz says she "locked up.

"I don't fall over and convulse, but it hurts," says Fultz, an IT worker in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. "I was on the phone when it happened, and I couldn't move and couldn't speak." After about 10 seconds, Fultz's 11-year-old son came over and drew her gaze away from the computer, then killed the browser process, she says.

"Everyone who logged on, it affected to some extent, whether by causing headaches or seizures," says Browen Mead, a 24-year-old epilepsy patient in Maine who says she suffered a daylong migraine after examining several of the offending posts. She'd lingered too long on the pages trying to determine who was responsible.

Rube Goldberg apparatus exemplified...

...in this 2-minute-long 1993 Honda Accord advertisement (all the components of the apparatus appear to be automotive parts). Reportedly filmed without trick photography or computer graphics, which makes it all the more impressive. (Credit to Neatorama).

Plagiarism in the Internet era

"The Associated Press reports that a group of students at the University of Texas at San Antonio were tasked with coming up with a code of academic integrity in order to combat plagiarism. Now these students are being investigated for plagiarising their code from that of Brigham Young University."

Credit to Neatorama, with original story at MSNBC.

Spring is definitely here

Time to start planting those flowerboxes...

The Minnesota Twins won their season opener

I bet the fans had a lot of fun at that game...

Aerial photos of Turkey

For anyone with even a passing interest in geology, topography, landforms, or just natural history in general, there's something fascinating about aerial photographs. THIS LINK goes to an impressive array of photos of Turkey. It will be of particular interest to those fortunate enough to have visited the country.

How many elements can you name?

A challenging test. 15 minutes to type the names of as many elements as you can remember (no need to place them in the table - when you type "sodium" it will be placed in the appropriate spot). I remembered 52, but a lot have been added since I was in school. Your turn.

The test is at THIS LINK.

There are additional quizzes here for groups of countries, presidents, movies, etc.