mosker

What's wrong with this picture?

From the Daily Mail

The blame game

Within hours of the news that a tiger had killed a zoo visitor and injured two others, representatives of the San Francisco Zoo began an aggressive media campaign to convince the public that the men had brought the attack upon themselves by taunting the animal.

Recent reports appear to confirm that the men taunted the animal, but the zoo's apparent stance that they got what they deserved sounds much like blaming a rape victim for being assaulted by insisting that her skirt was too short. Taunting a caged animal is abhorrent behavior which should have resulted in the visitors' expulsion from the facility, not death or mauling. The zoo seems to only be concerned about minimizing their liability in the face of their own failure to provide adequate facilities for the animals on exhibit. While teasing and taunting animals is inappropriate, it is by no means behavior that couldn't have been predicted, and I have to imagine that a wailing two-year old might seem pretty enticing to an irritated animal of prey. If Tatiana had leapt over the too-short fence and snacked on a noisy class of kindergarten students, would we be blaming the children for having agitated the beast?

The zoo would have been better served by remaining silent about the alleged behavior prior to the attack, particularly in the wake of their repeated mis-statements about the height of the enclosure, and allowed the police to issue a report. I am all for personal responsibility, but the ongoing effort to suggest that tiger's victims were solely at fault for the incident just makes the zoo look sleazy and irresponsible.

Obviously, a good education is not the same thing as good taste

In an appalling display of bad taste and bad judgment, students at Pennsylvania State University went to a Halloween party dressed as shooting victims from Virginia Tech. They donned VA Tech apparel, added a few fake bloody bullet holes and caroused with their friends.

Of course the pictures eventually made it to Facebook (don't they always) and were picked up by that national media. (These images come via the Drudge Report.) Officials at Pennsylvania State have apologized to Virginia Tech, but although the students involved have been identified, they cannot be punished without violating their free speech rights.

A local television station that reported on the incident suggested that the photos were posted for their shock value--obviously successful. I wonder if their parents are proud to see that their offspring made the news?

Pet food recall

The pet food recall has been expanded again.

Love/Hate relationship

I am an admitted news-junkie, so when there is a big news event, particularly a school shooting, I basically just mainline the news coverage. I don't like to be disconnected from my source. But the wall-to-wall coverage also reminds me that while I need the media, it doesn't mean I like them. Watching Paula Zahn made me cringe, particularly as she asked each and every student whom she interviewed to say they were angry with the campus police for failing to lock down the campus. Since when does interviewing mean putting words in people's mouths? Zahn is irritating and strident, so I couldn't help the malicious pleasure I felt when each of the interviewees thwarted her by saying they were angry at only the gunman and they were just focusing on helping their fellow students.

The news media has seemingly interviewed everyone they could grab off the street, some of them multiple times, but now that they are running out of witness statements, they appear to be filling in the time with speculation. We don't know why the campus police decided not to lock down the campus after the first shooting in the dormitory, but the news hounds telling everyone that it was the wrong decision isn't particularly helpful. We will undoubtedly learn more later and make our own judgment about it. I haven't even heard anything that indicates the campus has any mechanism for such a move. I work and study at an urban campus of a state university, and I seriously doubt there is an effective way to transmit a lock down order to all of the disparate offices, classrooms, and libraries in a timely matter. And that presumes faculty and staff know what to do if, which we don't. I realize they have to speculate in order to fill the air time for folks like me to continue to watch the coverage, but it's getting hard to take them seriously.

And while I'm complaining about the news coverage that gives me my fix, I will also make a suggestion: Stop talking about how this is the worst mass shooting in United States history. You might as well be waving a red cape at the bull. Some kook out there is going to see that statement as a challenge and will try to outdo the nut that outdid the clock tower shooter. This is a not a record we want to ever be broken.

What next?

You know how they put Sudafed behind the counter because it can be used to make meth? Apparently a lawmaker in St. Louis has proposed locking up another product, this one used in the production of crack cocaine: baking soda. Yes, baking soda. That innocent product in almost every household that we use for baking and cleaning and upset stomachs. I'm no expert in drug eradication efforts, but as a consumer, this sounds like one of the more ridiculous proposals I've ever heard. Seriously, do you want to visit the pharmacy counter to purchase baking soda? What if you want to buy more than one box at the same time? Will you have to explain to a police officer that yes, you want to deodorize the refrigerator and bake a cake? Will there be a list of baking soda purchasers just as there is for Sudafed? Maybe he should just provide us with a list of what he thinks is safe for us to have without his supervision.

That's just not right!

There are just some things that should not be messed with. Like my morning routine. It's not that I'm inflexible. Not completely anyway. It's just that having a morning routine is important. Without it I will never get to work on time, and goodness knows it's pretty darned easy to get me off track in the morning as it is.

Every morning I watch CNN's American Morning. I get my necessary news fix to start my day and I like Soledad O'Brien and Miles O'Brien. They're both smart, funny, and neither are irritating. I like that Miles is a geek and knows lots of useless information and that despite being smart, beautiful, and successful, Soledad seems like someone you'd actually enjoy meeting. The show skips most of the banter and all of the cooking segments, leaving plenty of time for, uh, news.

Except CNN is going to ruin it for me. They are replacing O'Brien and O'Brien with John Roberts and Kiran Chetry. I like Roberts well enough, but he's always struck me as being more of a traditional anchor type. Maybe that's just his CBS background. I have no idea who Chetry is, other than she had a falling out with her  former Fox News Channel bosses.

I know it's all about the ratings, but I am disappointed nonetheless. Maybe if I change my morning routine completely I won't notice that there are no good morning news shows anymore.

Mind-boggling

Sometimes there are news stories that are so mind-boggling that it seems impossible they could be real. For example, in Pennsylvania a man has been charged with leaving his 2-year-old daughter out in the cold to freeze. He reports he found her playing in the hallway during the early hours of the morning, and angry that she would not go back to bed, he knocked her unconscious. That apparently wasn't punishment enough, because then he wrapped her up in a blanket and left her outside in single-digit temperatures. Authorities spent nearly two days searching for the child until they found her frozen body. How does that happen?

And not to be outdone, a New Orleans woman will not be winning any Mother-of-the-Year awards. Ever. After learning that her 17-year-old son had been bested in a fight with another 17-year-old, she gave her son a gun and told him to get revenge for the defeat. He obediently set about searching for the other teen, then shot and killed him. The mother was arrested and charged with being a principal to second-degree murder; police are still searching for her son.

I think they're serious

Everyone will surely be relieved to learn that legislators in New Jersey have finally tackled a critical traffic safety issue in the their state: cyclists who talk on their cell phones while riding their bicycles. This must be an enormous problem in New Jersey for them to devote their energies to creating a new law to address the problem, but I have to admit that I've never seen it happen here in the Midwest. The NJ Senate has yet to address the issue, but the House version includes fines ranging from $100-$250 for each violation. As with cars, cyclists would be permitted to chat away if they use a hands-free device.

Not to worry though--the Garden State will still permit you to cycle while intoxicated.

Unconnected bits

Vacation, or lack thereof

eWeek.com reports that workers are not taking vacations:

• 37% don't think they will take all of their available vacation this year
• 14% report having taken nothing more than a long weekend
• 24% said they hadn't taken even one vacation day all year

And even among those who do manage to duck out of the office, 72% report they check in with the office while they're out. Sadly, almost 40% say they don't manage to relax while they are away because they're worried about the work they missed.

I admit that I am guilty of some of these. I do check my email when I'm out. I justify this by arguing that I need to be sure I don't miss any important messages from my academic adviser, and as it is a shared email system (I work at the institution where I study), I can hardly ignore the other messages once I've scanned them. The truth, of course, is I worry I'll let something slip.

And I don't take all of my available vacation every year, but where I work you can roll time over to the next year, so it's not as though I lose any of it. I don't like the idea of not having any time saved, just in case. There have been more times than I'd like to admit when I've burned vacation time to finish a research paper or prep for an exam. It makes more sense than pulling an all-nighter.

When we return from the winter holiday (it's a public institution--we don't call it Christmas Break) I'll be down to about 200 hours of vacation. I'm a little worried about running so low.

Fingerprinting

Police in Britain are testing a handheld biometric scanner that allows them to collect fingerprints from subjects in the field, and compare them to a database of 6.5 million prints. Currently, when an officer suspects a subject has provided a false name, (something that reportedly happens in 60% of vehicle stops) the officer has to arrest the subject and collect prints during booking, a process that can take three hours. Screening in the field cuts the time down to about 15 minutes.

Field screening is voluntary, and police officials insist the prints are not retained by the system. Both index fingers are scanned, then the data is encrypted and sent wirelessly to the national ID system. After cross-referencing with the fingerprint database, the results are returned to the officer.

Not surprisingly, privacy advocates have expressed concern about the program.

Child Support

A German doctor has been ordered to pay child support for a child he did not father.

The gynecologist surgically implanted a contraceptive device into one of his patients. Although the device is meant to protect against pregnancy for up to three years, six months later it could not be found in her body. The woman left her teaching job to care for her newborn, and sued her physician. He has been ordered to pay 600 euros a month until the child reaches the age of 18.

The father of the child, who is no longer romantically involved with the mother, will be also be compensated for the support he is paying.

Let's hope the kid develops a sense of humor early. I don't know how I would have taken it if my mom had been so upset about my conception that she felt she needed to sue over "the mistake."