HAIGHT SPEECH

This lovely story comes to us from Minnesota:

A Belleville man accused of trying to kidnap a former girlfriend in Minneapolis laid out his plan in a notebook and a flow chart, outlining his goal to stun, Mace and “club her hard,” according to court documents. . .

According to the plan, Pentaleri was going to make contact with an ex-girlfriend with the initials of JML. Internet directions to the woman’s home were also inside the vehicle, according to the documents. Also found was a handwritten flow chart outlining his plan to “club her hard.”

The plan also listed two alternative plans on how to deal with her if she wasn’t alone, including a “lethal” option, the documents said.

Pentaleri, an Army officer, showed up at the airport wearing a long-haired wig, a fake mustache and beard when he was stopped and questioned near an airport carousel, according to police. . .

The duffel bag contained six condoms, a pillow case cut into strips, a camera, a turkey baster, KY oil, a bag of plastic gloves, two bags of zip ties, a package of Bic lighters, two-sided tape, shoe polish, a pair of nylon socks and Clorox disinfectant wipes.

Okay, so basically what we have here is your typical stalker freakjob. Bonus points that he’s an active Army officer. But this isn’t really what concerns me about this article. The part where I started getting confused was here:

Pentaleri was found carrying a stun gun, three chemical aerosol Mace cans, a folding pocket knife, a set of SUV keys and an expandable baton. He was issued a trespass notice and dropped off at an area hotel.

Wait, what?

This guy showed up at an airport wearing a disguise, carrying a stun gun, Mace, a knife, and a collapsible baton, and all they did was cite him for trespassing and take him to a hotel?

We’re talking about a US airport, right? The same place where they make me take off my shoes, my jacket, put my “3 oz. or less” shampoo and toothpaste in a Ziploc bag, confiscate my hair styling cream because it’s 5 oz., and forbid the presence of aerosol hairspray or deodorant? The same kind of airport where people waiting for arriving loved ones are not allowed past the security checkpoint anymore because they are not ticketed passengers? Where I have to show my damn ID about fifty times before getting on a plane and no one is allowed to bring a farking bottle of water on board unless it was bought inside the “sterile area”?

I note from the picture with the article that the man in question is white, not to mention active Army. Did either of those play a role in the decision to send him on his way rather than arresting him? Would this situation have played out differently if the man were of Middle-Eastern descent and was named Samir?

My cynical side says that if the guy had looked Middle-Eastern, we would still have sent him on his way, except we would have also given him a fruit basket and an apology for racial discrimination.

If it was because he was Army, why would that be a factor? Do we give a free pass to anyone in the military who acts like a kook or a murderer? Obviously not since we are prosecuting some Marines right now for killing unarmed prisoners, and sent the Abu Graib folks to prison.

I want to know who was responsible for that decision in Minnesota. That person or people need to be disciplined and retrained, or possibly criminally charged depending on the level of negligence involved. It’s outrageous that anyone could get away with being a genuine threat to an airport when ordinary folks are having their scissors confiscated.

I’m the manager of a self-storage facility in Santa Cruz, CA. We have an automatic gate here, a large one made of wrought iron and steel. The gate has this sign on it:

This morning I looked up out the window to see a child, about 8 years old, standing on the gate’s bottom beam and riding it open and closed. The mother was standing about 10 feet away, watching. I had to go out there and yell at both of them.

This gate weighs, I would guess, in the neighborhood of 3,000 lbs. It’s not like a garage door, where it stops if it hits something or encounters any resistance. The sensor is an infrared beam on one side of the gate, and only if something blocks that beam will the gate open again once it begins closing. It will cheerfully crush you against the opposite post if the sensor is unobstructed.

In the child’s case, I was waiting for her foot to get caught in the retractor chain that runs just underneath where she was standing. Having one’s foot torn off by a tension chain is not an ideal way to learn a lesson, but with parenting like this, it might be the kid’s only hope.

When did people get this stupid? Has it always been the case and I just never noticed before? The other thing I found disturbing was when I went outside to tell the kid to get off the gate, she just looked at me dumbly. She didn’t jump off like she’d been caught doing something wrong, or seem at all inclined to obey another adult. It was only when the mother told her to climb down that she moved.

Auto-Darwination eventually takes care of children like this, I am sure. Too bad it didn’t get the mom before she had a chance to breed.

Fark links this article today, which as far as I can tell is a legitimate news item:

A hard-line Pakistani parliamentarian and head of a religious political party on Wednesday demanded a “sir” title for Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, in retaliation for Britain knighting author Salman Rushdie.

“Muslims should confer the ’sir’ title and all other awards on bin Laden and Mullah Omar in reply to Britain’s shameful decision to knight Rushdie,” Sami ul Haq, leader of the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, said in a statement, referring also to the leader of the Taliban.

Does anyone else immediately get a mental image of an 8-year-old throwing a tantrum about a child getting a toy that he doesn’t have? This is seriously unreal. This Sami ul Haq person somehow thinks that they can just call people “sir” and it means something? I’m failing to grasp the honor involved in giving an enemy of Britain a title that can only be granted by the British monarch, and which only has meaning in Britain to British people.

Maybe it says something about the overarching influence of British culture on the world that even terrorists who have vowed to destroy them consider an honorific from that culture to be desirable. Or, perhaps it’s revealing of a basic need to be validated and respected by others. It’s already apparent that Islamist ideology is highly focused on the concept of being respected and feared. They take affronts to their masculinity pretty seriously, and bluster and swagger a great deal when making threats.

Such insecurity is at the root of a basic inferiority complex. It’s not too difficult to imagine that some Muslim countries might feel that way these days. They’re technologically backward, economically stunted, and the harder they try to please Allah by blowing up infidels, the worse it gets. Cause and effect, in the empirical sense, makes no impression on them, which I suppose is typical of religious fanaticism.

I really, really hope that Islam has its Enlightenment soon, or they will wind up as little more than large panes of glass in the Middle East and Asia.

My good pal Low-Tech Redneck on Ricecop today links a fascinating little item from North Carolina. Hosted on a blog called Jeff Kay’s West Virginia Surf Report, it purports to be an exchange between a resident and that neighborhood’s Homeowners Association. It concerns the presence of a gargoyle lawn ornament on the resident’s property:

We are a congregate group of good Christian and God fearing people. The display you have set up on the outer section of your lot has us a bit concerned as the statue appears to be a type of Pagan worshipping symbol, unlike the other lawn decorations in our neighborhood. Shirley Whitley, a neighbor of yours says that this is a Satanic being and that you may be involved in the Occult. We have all noticed strange goings on around the neighborhood. There are flashing lights in the sky and numerous dead animals in the road. We understand that you are a homeowner, but if you will read your declaration of restrictions, obscene or vulgar displays on your property are not allowed. We insist that you remove this questionable display at once. Our children are not to be influenced by Devil worship and deviant behavior.

Jeff Kay’s West Virginia Surf Report displays the following picture, which I presume is the pagan worship symbol in question:

To quote Reverend Lovejoy from The Simpsons, “And it goes on like this.” Now I don’t know whether this is true or not. Naturally one has to take a certain amount of humor on the internet with a grain of salt. But a number of the details do appear to be valid.

I did find a listing for someone named Ardna Rash in Boone, NC with a birthdate in 1958, which would make her about the right age for this kind of nosiness. Presumably Rash is her maiden (or formerly-married) name.

There is an airport in Boone, and as the resident indicates in his response, it is a very, very small one. It is not “Boone International Airport” as the HOA claims. It is, in fact, “Boone Airport, Inc.“, a privately owned airstrip. As the Watauga County website states:

The airport features a paved strip 40 feet wide and 2,650 feet long. The elevation is 3,120’. Advance notice is not required for use of the airport. Landing fees are modest $5.00 for single engine aircraft, $12.00 for twin-engine aircraft and overnight parking fees on the grass are $5.00.

That ain’t no international airport. That’s somebody’s backyard. I’m with the resident in expressing disdain for what anyone landing at that airstrip thinks of his Christmas lights. Personally I find a big Christmas light display in a rural area to be very cool and in the spirit of the season.

At any rate, my research on the “airport” mentioned in the letters is intended to show that the HOA representative in question, a certain Ardna Tyne, is a busybody who takes her role in the HOA much too seriously. The neighborhood is probably an otherwise sleepy place where no drama occurs with any regularity.

Gargoyle waterspouts on Notre Dame cathedral

Regarding the issue of a gargoyle as a Satanic symbol, this is just another example of how far removed from anything like “education” and “historical context” a lot of religious fanatics are. Gargoyles are prominent architectural features on a number of famous Catholic cathedrals throughout the world, including Notre Dame and the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford, England.

The word “gargoyle” derives from the Old French gargouille, which means “throat” (also the derivation of the word “gargle”). There is a legend about a dragon named La Gargouille that lived in the river Seine, who was tamed by a saint. The dragon’s firebreathing head and throat would not decay, so it was mounted on the town wall and thus became the model for future such “decorations”.

In architecture, gargoyles typically were designed as waterspouts for drainage on buildings, much the way gutters and downspouts work in modern construction. The term “gargoyle”, therefore, often refers specifically to this plumbing feature. The modern term for such constructs is “grotesques” if they serve only a decorative purpose.

Greek griffin

Gargoyles as fantastic monsters or animal-human hybrids, however, go back much farther than Christianity. Greek architecture often features griffins, which were the guardians of treasures and riches.

Ibis-headed Egyptian god Thoth

In Ancient Egypt, the gods themselves were depicted as animal-human hybrids. Thoth had the head of an ibis bird, Anubis the head of a jackal, Ra the head of a falcon, and so on. The corresponding animals were considered sacred aspects of the gods.

Of course, the “origin” of gargoyles is not known for certain, although one theory is that they were inspired by prehistoric fossils of dinosaurs and the like. It may be that it is simply one evolution of an ancient concept of monstrous creatures that serve as guardians of special places.

It is alleged in some circles that gargoyles do have a Pagan origin, or at least a Pagan shared ancestry. If so, it would make sense that the Church would absorb the symbol and incorporate it into Christian iconography in order to facilitate the conversion of Pagans to Christianity.

I suppose that someone sufficiently righteous could refer back to the symbol’s origin as an “evil” symbol, but that would be analogous to declaring a Christmas tree evil (it, too, is originally a heathen symbol that was incorporated into the Christian holiday).

As a native Tennessean, I always read about narrow-minded folks like this HOA woman with a desire to pimp-slap them for making Southerners look bad and perpetuating the stereotype of ignorant, nosy, Satan-obsessed, inbred freaks.

I’ll be curious to see how this plays out, and whether the HOA understands that this incident has the attention of people on the internet and therefore shuts her trap. I’m kind of doubting it, since people like this bask in the attention and never think they are in the wrong.

The determination of living things to survive is truly amazing. I’m the manager of a self storage facility in Santa Cruz, California. Today while doing my walk around of the lot, I discovered a couple of plants that had actually pushed up through the asphalt from underneath. These plants weren’t here 10 days ago, as that was around the last time I closely checked this corner of the lot. As you can see in the pictures below, the pavement they displaced is freshly disturbed, and still present. I was so awed by this that I had to take pictures.

And here’s one that’s about to come up but hasn’t pushed through yet:

A recent news item that has been receiving muted attention is the widespread contamination of dog and cat food that is currently unfolding in North America. The first identified source of the contaminated food was Menu Foods, which has initiated a massive product recall of dog and cat food under nearly 100 brand names, including house brands such as Food Lion, Winn Dixie, Publix, and Meijers, and prominent brands such as Iams, Eukanuba, Mighty Dog, and Nutro.

Menu Foods is not the only company to issue a food recall. Nestle Purina Pet Care Co. has just announced a recall of all sizes and varieties of Alpo Prime Cuts in Gravy in a certain date code range. Hill’s Pet Nutrition has also announced a recall on some of its Prescription Diet m/d Feline dry cat food after finding it is contaminated.

The pets that have become ill or died from eating this food have shown signs of renal failure, so whatever it is, it’s affecting the kidneys. Cats in particular are vulnerable to this.

Now I am thinking: Is this a dry run for a terrorist attack on our food supply? And if not, should we view this event as a cautionary?

There are two things about this event that have attracted my attention:

1) The contaminant has not been identified. The common element in all of these foods appears to be wheat gluten supplied by a particular company, Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. Ltd., in China. However, the only unusual ingredient detected in the wheat gluten is melamine, which is used in plastics manufacture and found in some pesticides. Contrary to earlier reports, the presence of aminopterin (rat poison) in the pet food has not been verified.

However, Pet Connection reports that so far, more than 2,900 pet deaths have been reported to them. They are self-reported cases, as Pet Connection points out, but I agree with them that it suggests that the real numbers are much, much higher than the official confirmed deaths. There is a Yahoo! Group, MenuFoodsClassAction, calling on people whose pets have been affected to organize into a class action lawsuit against the pet food manufacturers.

If we accept that melamine is not, in itself, toxic enough to cats and dogs to cause these deaths, then another scenario is suggested (Kyle posited this one):

Toxicologic Synergy: two or more chemicals that are not normally toxic by themselves combine to form a toxic effect on an organism.

The hypothetical scenario goes like this:

1) Chemical substance A1 is not toxic to cats and dogs by itself. But it does linger in the body for several months before being fully metabolized and flushed out. A1 is introduced into the pet food supply chain for a period of time, and then withdrawn, such that later testing will not reveal its presence.

2) Chemical substance B1 is not toxic to cats and dogs by itself. But when combined with A1 and metabolized in a cat or a dog, it becomes lethal for about 25% of the animals that ingest it, 70% become ill but do not die, and 5% show no ill effects.

So what if we are seeing the results of B1 being introduced into the pet food supply? A1 has already been introduced but is no longer detectable in the food because it has since been removed, but it lingers in the animals, waiting for a synergist to combine with it?

The above scenario is entirely hypothetical, and the numbers are merely examples, but this sort of strategy could be used to contaminate a food supply in a way that was not noticeable until many people (or cats and dogs) had died or become ill. Such an attack on the human food supply would not kill a lot of people, in terms of raw numbers, but as a terror weapon, it would be very effective and cause widespread panic.

Personally I think that the pet food contamination was probably accidental, although I will be interested to see if the actual contaminant responsible is identified. Melamine is known to form crystals in certain circumstances, and perhaps crystal formation in the kidney filtration system is responsible for the pet deaths. But this event should be scrutinized closely for what it may teach us about protecting our human food supply from similar contamination, whether accidental or deliberate.

I don’t know if I’m the last person to discover this, but a friend of mine found out that Google Maps appears to have a sense of humor. The following link is a set of directions on how to travel from NYC to Ireland. I direct the reader’s attention particularly to instructions #22-24:

Directions from New York City to Dublin, Ireland

I assume that this is Google Maps’ response to the phenomenon of people being directed to drive into train tracks, off cliffs, and into raging floodwaters by their on-board SatNav computer.

Today Fark links an article from WFTV.com about a kid waking up to discover he’s been shot.

What interests me about this article, however, is not the event itself, but this passage from the article’s text (emphasis added):

Despite taking a bullet to the stomach, the teenager was doing okay at Orlando Regional Medical Center after undergoing surgery early Wednesday morning.

Doing okay? Doing okay?? Is that the level of professional journalism these days? WFTV is not a small podunk news station, either. It is an ABC affiliate and considered the dominant news station in Central Florida, with a major lineup of programming.

I thought one of mainstream journalism’s primary criticisms of blogs was that blogs lack the multiple layers of quality control, including editing and fact-checking, that are characteristic of professional journalism. I don’t know about the facts in this article, but the editing appears to be either nonexistent, or performed by a 3rd grader.

Kyle adds this to his ongoing mental list of examples of the growing incompetence of the professional fields in our society. It is the direct result of bad education and poor parenting (probably more the former since the parents are likely to have suffered from it as well).

One of the things I was taught in English in school is that when writing a paper, words like “okay”, “nice”, and “very” were not acceptable unless they were direct quotes of people speaking. They are vague and unprofessional, and a sign of laziness. “Doing okay” does not tell me anything about the kid’s medical condition, and God knows hospitals have more specific terminology than that for someone’s condition.

Fark user carmody made the following comment about it:

Since when is the phrase “doing okay” acceptable in straight journalism? Shouldn’t that read, “…the teenager was in stable condition at…”?

It just keeps getting worse. In a few years that story will read: “So, like this kid woke up with a tummy ache like yesterday, right? And OMFG you won’t believe it: He had totally been shot with a bullet! I know! I know! But it’s cool. He’s doing okay in the hospital now. Be sure to leave a comment on his MySpace.”

I couldn’t have said it better.

I don’t know if this video is for real, or if it’s staged. But this is exactly how incidents like this should play out:

http://www.filecabi.net/video/billyscamera.html

And if it’s real, that guy is damn lucky he had a gun. Hope he enjoys the camera.

I just finished typing this up for a post on a House forum (summarized from my biology 40A notes from last quarter), and thought it might be of interest to the layman. This is a brief explanation of what cancer is for people who have no idea.

Fundamentally, cancer is uncontrolled mitosis of cells, i.e. the mitosis (replication) phase of cell activity is turned on and doesn’t turn off. This uncontrolled mitosis is the common element in all types of cancer. The type of cells involved and the manner of disease progression varies widely, and there are literally hundreds of different kinds of cancer. Specific cancers have certain progressive patterns, but these are not well understood.

CELL CYCLE
Genes control the cell cycle. A mutation occurs in a gene that regulates cell cycle, and the mitosis phase gets turned on permanently. This is a physical alteration of the DNA at the chemical level, and when the cell replicates, the new cells also have this mutation, and thus continue the uncontrolled mitosis.

Sources of these gene mutations are either inherited (a “proto-onco” gene, predisposed to breaking), environmental (chemicals, radiation, viruses), or a combination of the two. UV radiation, for example, breaks the hydrogen bonds between thymine amino acids, and so long term UV exposure can cause cancer.

BENIGN VS. MALIGNANT
This uncontrolled mitosis is what the tumor is — a big ball of cells that keep reproducing (tumor grows). If the tumor is confined to the type of tissue in which it originates, it is a “benign” tumor.

If the cell mitosis spreads to a different kind of surrounding tissue, that is a “malignant” tumor. It is possible for cancerous cells to break away from the original tumor and spread to other parts of the body via the blood or lymph vessels.

METASTASIS
If a new tumor beings somewhere else in the body, it is a “metastatic tumor” and the cancer is said to have “metastasized”. The original tumor is the “primary tumor”. Lung cancer with a metastasis in the brain is still lung cancer, not brain cancer.

Cancer that originates with epithelial tissue (coverings, linings of body cavities, ducts) is called a “carcinoma”. If it originates with the cells in red bone marrow, it is “leukemia”. Leukemia is not tumorous.

TREATMENTS
There are 4 treatment options for cancer:

1) Surgery – aka “debulking”, in which the tumor or some of the tumor is physically removed. This is not always possible, especially in vital organs. But debulking can be useful in relieving pressure on neighboring body structures.

2) Chemotherapy – systemic delivery of drugs that kill cells actively engaged in mitosis. This includes good cells as well as cancerous ones, although drugs can sometimes be targeted to certain kinds of cells. Cancer cells are always in mitosis, so this kills a lot of them. It is the destruction of healthy cells that leads to the side effects like hair loss, nausea, fatigue, etc.

3) Radiation – a high dose of radiation targeted and delivered directly to the cancerous tissue (tumor). A radioactive substances can also be implanted inside the tumor (it diffuses, so the location and amount of radioactive material used are carefully chosen). Precision is highly desirable with this kind of therapy.

4) Antiangiogenesis therapy – “angiogenesis” means “growth of new blood vessels”. Some kinds of tumors grow their own blood supply by inducing angiogenesis. Drugs are introduced that inhibit angiogenesis, depriving the tumor of nutrients. This treatment does not cure cancer, but can significantly slow its progress. Not all types of cancer induce angiogenesis, so this treatment isn’t always useful.