A happy, motivated environment (of electro-shock torture)

The whole story is horrific, but what really gets me is this [emphasis added]: [Link]

Today, Israel no longer runs the Rotenberg Center. He was forced to give up the position last year after being indicted in the same courthouse for obstructing justice. Those criminal charges stemmed from an unrelated incident dating back to 2007. One night that summer, a former student from New York had prank-called a Rotenberg residence at 2 a.m., pretending he was an employee in the monitoring department. He claimed to have seen three boys misbehaving earlier in the evening, and he ordered the workers to pull them out of bed and shock them. The employees complied. In the rec room, they tied two teenagers onto a restraint board and began shocking them.

Eventually the workers figured out the call was a hoax—but not before they shocked one boy 29 times and the other 77 times. Prosecutors later accused Israel of ordering his staff to destroy that night’s footage. Israel insisted he thought the investigation was complete, but as part of a deal with prosecutors, he agreed to step down. He never admitted any guilt, and after five years probation, the charges against him will be dismissed.

The Rotenberg Center is now run by his longtime assistant executive director. The school refused to answer any questions for this story. (This account is largely based on pretrial depositions, court records, and trial testimony.) Today, the Rotenberg Center has some 230 residents, and a little more than one third are approved to receive electric shocks—down from one half a few years ago. Most likely, the percent of students who receive shocks will continue to drop. Since 2009, the New York State Board of Regents has banned the use of the shock device on any new students from New York, and last fall Massachusetts prohibited the use of shocks for all new students.

In the meantime, the school continues to advertise for new employees. A recent posting on Craigslist describes an opening for a job with “excellent” benefits in “a happy, motivated environment” at a “fast-growing” program.

Sad Mountain Dew Batman

One beep for refreshment. [Link]

As you may already be aware, there's a movie about Batman called The Dark Knight Rises coming out this summer, and as is the case with any big-budget super-hero flick, that means we're going to get some product tie-ins. Who can forget how Dominos Pizza reflected the complex themes of morality and sacrifice in 2008's The Dark Knight by offering a pizza with double the pepperoni?! I assure you, my arteries will never forget.

This time around, it's Mountain Dew, and not only is there a new flavor that's allegedly inspired by Batman, there's also a website and, more importantly, an in-store display that looks like the Saddest Batman Ever.

When I see that, it makes me think of this:

Beep.

Creatures frozen for 32,000 years still alive

This is the plot of many horror films. Let's all be careful. [Link]

A new type of organism discovered in an Arctic tunnel came to life in the lab after being frozen for 32,000 years.

The deep-freeze bacteria could point to new methods of cryogenics, and they are the sort of biology scientists say might exist on Mars and other planets and moons.

"The existence of microorganisms in these harsh environments suggests — but does not promise -- that we might one day discover similar life forms in the glaciers or permafrost of Mars or in the ice crust and oceans of Jupiter’s moon Europa," said Richard Hoover, an astrobiologist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

Other microbes have been discovered in similar frigid environments, sometimes clinging to pockets of liquid water in ice packs. And some microbes survive in ice as spores, but they need to be cultured to bring them to life.

NASA described the newfound critter as "the first fully described, validated species ever found alive in ancient ice."

"They immediately started swimming when the ice melted," Hoover told LiveScience, adding that the cryopreserved bacteria were instantly ready to eat and multiply.

Elizabeth Moon on Penn State

It is amazing - and heartbreaking that this needs to be said. [Link]

And finally...one of the things emphasized in good military training is doing the right thing when you see it needs doing.  Initiative aimed in the right direction.   Ritual disclaimers about nobody and no system being perfect.  Bad apples in every warehouse.  Still...athletic training is often said to produce character.  But the evidence here is that it doesn't.   Instead, it inculcates hero-worship and reputation-worship.   Putting "the team" above everything means defending wrong if done by someone on the team.  Why did the young, fit, strong young man who saw Sandusky anally raping the boy "panic" instead of intervening?   Probably for the same reason given by a young sportscaster who, as a teenager, had known Sandusky as a Penn State coach and admired him--had stayed in touch with him, who revered him--a man who admitted he would have run away (but thinks he would have contacted the police later.)    How do you confront a legend, even when the legend has morphed into a horror?

First you have to have the moral understanding that what you're seeing is abuse and needs to be stopped.  Not just reported--stopped.  He's hurting a child.  You're the person who sees it.  It's up to you to stop it.   That's your mission: stop the rape, rescue the child.  From here it's all  straight out of training.   Fast tactical assessment: one adult raping one child.  No weapons.  Empty room.   Go for it.  You're not going to miss the target; he's not prepared to fight an adult; you've got advantage in surprise, commitment, being fully clothed, and (if you know anything at all) skill.  Chances are high that you'll be able to disable the rapist at least temporarily and get the child out and then to safety and medical attention and legal investigation.  Had that been done in 2000, the 2002 and 2008 attacks would not have occurred.  Had charges been filed in 1998, the next three (and possibly more, unknown) attacks would not have occurred.

The men who saw Sandusky abusing children--the two janitors and the graduate assistant, two different victims--all knew something bad was going on.   They understood it was sexual abuse of a child.  One of the janitors and the graduate assistant knew it should be reported.  But they didn't think of stopping it cold, right then.  And they did not commit to reporting it to the proper authorities themselves.  It may be that many young men (or older men) do not know what they should do or how to do it.   Maybe no one ever told them "If you see a rape in progress, stop it; if you can't stop it (many assailants), report it at once."   It's time we told them, from boyhood.  It's time that rapists--of children or adults--came to expect  that other men won't ignore, won't walk on by, won't panic...but will intervene to rescue the victim.  Will call the cops on them.   I know plenty of women who would have charged into that shower room and gotten those kids out if they'd been in the position of those janitors and that graduate student.  It's time for men to, as they say, man up.   

Sex With Animals Will Give You Penis Cancer

How did they find this out? They asked them. [Link]

I hope you didn't need the risk of death to convince you to not have sex with animals. But just in case, know this: bestiality will give you penis cancer.

Researchers studied 432 men between 18 and 80 years old in rural Brazil, 118 of whom had penile cancer. Of those with the disease, 35 percent reported that they had had sex with horses, cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals. And those are just the ones who admitted it.

The scientists, who published their work in the Oct. 24 issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, also asked the men if this was a habit or a one-time thing. "Zoopilia" was a regular indulgence for 59 percent of them, who had sex with animals over a period of between one and five years, while 21 percent did it for more than five years. Some did it daily, others monthly.

Stop reading now if you thought or wished desperately it couldn't get any more disturbing: Men who had sex with animals also had higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases, and the researchers think that might be because they're all having group sex. More than 30-percent practiced sex with animals in groups. This is not done alone in a remote stable—it's a party!

Now this is stuck in your brain too. Ugh.

Oslo killer REALLY Liked Microsoft Word

Really. [Link]

In his 1500-page manifesto—spammed to one thousand people more than one hour before the massacre—Norewegian killer Anders Breivik devoted pages and pages about how to read his deadly boring tome, including why he chose Microsoft Word:

I chose to send the compendium as a Word file for the following reason:

1. MS Word is one of the most common and popular software formats
2. Significantly easier to edit the document compared to PDF
3. A Word file is significantly smaller than a PDF file (3,5 MB vs 8-10 MB)
4. The quality of the images are conserved a lot better than in a PDF
5. Distribution: it is easier to avoid spam filters with a file smaller than 5 MB

Since I have chosen to send the document in Word format you can easily extract all information and the images from the Word file. I deliberately avoided locking the document for this reason.

Yeah. The nutcase actually prefaced his plans to kill a few dozen people in cold blood with some notes about why Word was perfect to distribute his condensed stupidity.

163 Million

I understand the need for abortion, but how do you justify this. [Link]

Mara Hvistendahl is worried about girls. Not in any political, moral or cultural sense but as an existential matter. She is right to be. In China, India and numerous other countries (both developing and developed), there are many more men than women, the result of systematic campaigns against baby girls. In "Unnatural Selection," Ms. Hvistendahl reports on this gender imbalance: what it is, how it came to be and what it means for the future.

In nature, 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. This ratio is biologically ironclad. Between 104 and 106 is the normal range, and that's as far as the natural window goes. Any other number is the result of unnatural events.

Yet today in India there are 112 boys born for every 100 girls. In China, the number is 121—though plenty of Chinese towns are over the 150 mark. China's and India's populations are mammoth enough that their outlying sex ratios have skewed the global average to a biologically impossible 107. But the imbalance is not only in Asia. Azerbaijan stands at 115, Georgia at 118 and Armenia at 120.

What is causing the skewed ratio: abortion. If the male number in the sex ratio is above 106, it means that couples are having abortions when they find out the mother is carrying a girl. By Ms. Hvistendahl's counting, there have been so many sex-selective abortions in the past three decades that 163 million girls, who by biological averages should have been born, are missing from the world. Moral horror aside, this is likely to be of very large consequence.

I find this disturbing.

Ms. Hvistendahl is particularly worried that the "right wing" or the "Christian right"—as she labels those whose politics differ from her own—will use sex-selective abortion as part of a wider war on abortion itself. She believes that something must be done about the purposeful aborting of female babies or it could lead to "feminists' worst nightmare: a ban on all abortions."

It is telling that Ms. Hvistendahl identifies a ban on abortion—and not the killing of tens of millions of unborn girls—as the "worst nightmare" of feminism. Even though 163 million girls have been denied life solely because of their gender, she can't help seeing the problem through the lens of an American political issue. Yet, while she is not willing to say that something has gone terribly wrong with the pro-abortion movement, she does recognize that two ideas are coming into conflict: "After decades of fighting for a woman's right to choose the outcome of her own pregnancy, it is difficult to turn around and point out that women are abusing that right."

As well as this.

Her desire to fault the West is so ingrained that she criticizes the British Empire's efforts to stamp out the practice of killing newborn girls in India because "they did so paternalistically, as tyrannical fathers."

Can't it be because killing babies is wrong?

California Commies

Just like Illinois Nazis. [Link]

A May Day rally in Los Angeles, co-sponsored by the SEIU and various communist groups, as well as other unions, reflected yet another step in the normalization of self-identified communist and socialist ideologies in the Obama era. Not only did the SEIU help to organize the rally in conjunction with communists, they marched side-by-side with communists, while union members carried communist flags, communists carried union signs, and altogether there was no real way to tell the two apart.

Southern California citizen journalist and photographer “Ringo” was on hand to record the day’s events, and posted a full-length photo essay on his site Ringo’s Pictures. To bring this important photo essay to a wider audience, I present here a small selection of Ringo’s May Day pictures; visit his site to see dozens more photos from the rally.

Just a reminder, the Communists killed anywhere from 2 to 4 times as many people as the Nazis did. [Link]

In the introduction, editor Stéphane Courtois asserts that "...Communist regimes...turned mass crime into a full-blown system of government". He cites a death toll which totals 94 million, not counting the "excess deaths" (decrease of the population due to lower than-expected birth rates). The breakdown of the number of deaths given by Courtois is as follows:

• 65 million in the People's Republic of China
• 20 million in the Soviet Union^[3]
• 2 million in Cambodia
• 2 million in North Korea
• 1.7 million in Africa
• 1.5 million in Afghanistan
• 1 million in the Communist states of Eastern Europe
• 1 million in Vietnam^[4]
• 150,000 in Latin America
• 10,000 deaths "resulting from actions of the international Communist movement and Communist parties not in power."(p. 4)

Courtois claims that Communist regimes are responsible for a greater number of deaths than any other political ideal or movement, including Nazism. The statistics of victims includes executions, intentional destruction of population by starvation, and deaths resulting from deportations, physical confinement, or through forced labor.

Irony

I'm sure she can taste it. [Link]

In this anonymous Facebook exchange, a young woman proudly shows off her new "VEGAN" inner-lip tattoo to her friends; they offer her a string of congratulations that comes to an abrupt end when one friend points out that black tattoo ink is made from burnt animal bones, and thus the VEGAN in question will forever have an animal product in her mouth

I have nothing against vegetarians, in fact I respect that commitment quite a bit, but this is right up there with getting a tattoo of Chinese characters that don't quite mean what you think they mean.

Cheerleader Told To Pay School She Sued After Being Kicked Off Squad For Refusing To Cheer Guy Who Assaulted Her

Horrible. [Link]

I'd been aware of an important (but unfortunate) free speech lawsuit involving a cheerleader who refused to cheer for a fellow student who had sexually assaulted her. The girl claimed that the boy had raped her when she was 16. The boy was arrested, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of assault, and was given various punishments (community service, a fine, probation and an anger management class), but was also allowed back on the basketball team. The girl remained on the cheerleading squad, but then refused to cheer for the boy. This being Texas, where they take high school sports significantly more seriously than much of the rest of the world, the superintendent of the school ordered her to leave the gym, and when she explained her reasons, she was expelled from the cheerleading squad. She then sued the school, claiming it was a violation of her First Amendment rights. The lower courts ruled against her, saying that being a cheerleader means accepting that you're a "mouthpiece" for the school, and thus are required to cheer for whomever the school says you should cheer for. Not only that, but adding insult to injury, the courts said that the lawsuit itself was frivolous and the girl had to pay the school $45,000. The reason the case is getting attention now is that the Supreme Court has declined to hear her appeal, meaning that her case is done, and she has to pay up. 

The Whisperer in Darkness

Looks pretty neat. Things like this belong in Black and White.

Mind Map of the History of Science Fiction

Click for full size

Amazingly detailed. Click for full size. [Link]

Does what it says on the tin… and does it gloriously, too. What a super piece of work! Can’t tell you much about it beyond that it’s signed by someone called Ward Shelley

When cats have thumbs

They'll come for us.

Giger Bar

Drink in a creepy bar. Very creepy. [Link]

Looking to quaff a drink in a watering hole that resembles a xenomorph's hive? Famed Alien designer H.R. Giger has designed several "Giger Bars" throughout his career, and you can still visit two of them in Switzerland.

The baby wall is watching me again!

Jonah Hex Trailer

Looks cool.



Josh Brolin seems to be channeling the Man With No Name and Adam Baldwin.

The darkness of Star Wars: The Clone Wars

If you think about, it is depressing. [Link]

he Clone Wars are not the epic struggle between good and evil the cartoon makes them out to be. They’re not even a real conflict. To the people fighting them, they’re real enough, but there aren’t even two sides; just a single commander, ordering his troops to attack each other. Imagine if Gargamel was secretly working for Papa Smurf.

Like I said, this is dark, dark stuff. But that’s not the half of it.

The Jedi lose the Clone Wars, bigtime. They not only don’t defeat the robot army, they are all killed. By theirOWN TROOPS. Consider that for a moment: this is a show for children about a war which will end with the good guys getting shot in the back by their own soldiers. The fact that a lot of the young fans might not know that doesn’t make it better; arguably, it makes it worse.

Once you know the disastrous conclusion of the Clone Wars, it’s hard to look at the TV show the same way. For instance, consider Ahsoka Tano, Anakin’s padawan apprentice. She calls him “Sky Guy,” he calls her “Snips.” She’s 14, and her plotlines are easy for the show’s young fans to identify with (she loses her lightsaber, and scrambles to get it back before Anakin finds out). All in all, not a bad role model for Star Wars-loving little girls, who finally have a female Jedi to root for. And she makes a cool Halloween costume!

Too bad she’ll be dead before she’s 16.

Man accused of beheading wife claims abuse

He's the victim. Right. Emphasis added. [Link]

Through his new lawyer, Muzzammil S. "Mo" Hassan claimed Friday that he was a "battered spouse" who was left emotionally out of control by the constant abuse his wife inflicted on him.

Hassan's lawyer, Frank M. Bogulski, called the legal defense the first of its kind in the country.

"The spouse was the dominant figure in this relationship," Bogulski told a reporter afterward. "He was the victim. She was verbally abusive. She had humiliated him."

The allegations prompted an immediate rebuke from the prosecution.

"He chopped her head off," District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III said of Hassan. "He chopped her head off. That's all I have to say about Mr. Hassan's apparent defense that he was a battered spouse."

Hassan, 45, is charged with second-degree murder in the Feb. 12 beheading of his wife, Aasiya Zubair Hassan, 37. The Pakistani-born couple were best known for Bridges TV, the station they formed in 2004 to counter negative Muslim stereotypes.

Stereotypes like beheading those you disagree with.

It's not a tumor

It isn't. It's a worm. [Link]

Rosemary Alvarez started experiencing numbness in her arm and blurred vision. She went to the emergency room twice and had acat scan, but everything came up clear, MyFOXPhoenix.com reported.

Click here for a video.

It wasn’t until doctors took a closer look at an MRI that they discovered something very disturbing.

“Once we saw the MRI we realized this is something not good,” neurosurgeon, Dr. Peter Nakaji told the news station. “It's something down in her brain stem which is as deep in the brain as you can be.”

Alvarez was wheeled into surgery where Nakaji and his colleagues were expecting to remove a tumor, but they uncovered a worm instead.

On a video of the surgery, Nakaji can be heard chuckling after he made the discovery.

“I'm sure this is a very strange response for the people in the operating room,” he told MyFOXPhoenix.com. “But because I was so pleased to know that it wasn't going to be something terrible.”

My head is itching just thinking about it.

Warhammer 40,000 Movie

I wondered when they were going to do one. When I first saw the trailer for Chronicles of Riddick, I thought it was a 40K movie. How disappointing. [Link]

The moment fans have been waiting for is finally here... for the first time, the Warhammer 40,000 universe will be realised in a feature-length movie on DVD.
Ultramarines is a 70-minute sci-fi thriller that will use CGI and state-of-the-art animation production techniques. Games Workshop is delighted to be working with UK-based production company Codex Pictures, who have the momentous task of bringing the Warhammer 40,000 universe to the screen.

No, please no

Ron Howard is having H.P. Lovecraft fight monsters, bringing The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft to the screen. Please no. Take 1d6 SAN loss. [Link]

Mega-producer Ron Howard sounds like he's realizing just how important the father of all eldritch awesomeness H.P. Lovecraft really is. But we're still suspicious of this Van Helsing-crossed-with-Shakespeare In Love film, in which Lovecraft unleashes and fights monsters.
Ron Howard revealed the first tiny details of his film to the LA Times. Howard called the whole project "challenging as it's the first time he's translated a graphic novel.

Ron Howard just doesn't seem like the right guy for this.