Month: December 2001

Gun Control and 9/11

The best line about gun control and the 9/11 attacks comes courtsey of the New York Times‘ John Tierney in an article about war-related toys,

American males’ fascination with guns doesn’t seem so misplaced now that they’re attacking Al Qaeda’s fortress. No one is suggesting a Million Mom March on Tora Bora.

Second-best gun related quote comes from a piece by Lisa Snell talking about her 5-year-old’s reaction to seeing the 9/11 attack on television,

My mother-in-law called from Baltimore before 7:00 AM [Pacific] to tell us to turn on our television. My five year old saw the live coverage of the second plane crashing into the WTC. He immediately went and found his Spiderman t-shirt and told me that he and Gavin would not be at school when I picked them up because they were going with the Power Rangers to save the world. He urgently wanted to get to school to call a meeting with Gavin and Tanner, his five-year-old compadres, to decide what to do—a typical reaction from a boy who lives and breathes bad guys versus good guys. People are always talking about how bad television is for children and they seldom talk about how bad their schools are for children. Yet, I would rather be on a highjacked airplane with someone inoculated by Power Rangers than someone who believes the message of every school institution: that weapons are bad and that the authorities and the government will solve all problems and protect you.

Amen. At the moment, my daughter alternates between Power Rangers and Batman (we watch the extremely violent Justice League cartoon together). Someday, when I have nothing better to do, I’ll write up a summary of psychological studies of children and mock violent play (it ain’t necessarily a bad thing).

Number of Human Victims of Mad Cow Disease May Be Small

At one time, estimates were that upwards of 100,000 people in Great Britain might die from Mad Cow Disease — the first time I ever heard of the disease was in a speech given by Howard Lyman in which he claimed the disease would prove worse than AIDS. These estimates have been steadily revised downward, and a recent study by French scientists suggests that the disease may peak at a couple hundred deaths.

The current research is based on a computer model of the disease that incorporates new assumptions about the disease.

One of the striking things about the variant CJD that is believed to originate as a result of Mad Cow Disease is that young people seem especially susceptible to it, as compared to the non-variant CJD — which is unconnected with Mad Cow Disease — which generally afflicts people over the age of 50.

The average age at death of victims of vCJD is only 28, while 93 percent of people who die from CJD are over the age of 50. This leads some researchers to conclude that for some reason, young people are especially susceptible to vCJD, and that as time goes by this will result in a fall-off of the number of cases and deaths.

The study, published in Science, says, “Our prediction of the epidemic of vCJD lies in the ‘optimistic’ end of the ranges of previously published figures, and this low value is in favor of a large species barrier between cattle and humans.”

Add to that, the fact that susceptibility to the disease seems to affect only a specific genetic subpopulation of individuals, and it may turn out that only a tiny number of people ever exposed to Mad Cow Disease ever have a chance to contract vCJD.

The study suggests that the total number of vCJD deaths is likely to be somewhere between 205 and 403, although these estimates are highly dependent on current information about vCJD and could change with new information.

Still, it is encouraging that the worst scenarios seem extremely unlikely at this point, and vCJD is unlikely to become a massive epidemic in Great Britain.

Sources:

CJD deaths ‘may have peaked’. The BBC, November 23, 2001.

Worst of Mad Cow May Be Over. Paul Recer, Associated Press, November 22, 2001.

Spanish Court Rewards Rapist for Being Drunk

In what it Women’s eNews right calls its “Outrage of the Week,” Spain’s Supreme Court recently reduced the sentence of a man convicted of raping a mentally retarded girl. The sentence for the 18-year-old rapist was reduced from 13.5 years to 8 years on the grounds that the man was drunk at the time. Two co-defendants who helped pin the girl down also had their sentences reduced. The Supreme Court ruled,

Having ingested alcoholic beverages throughout the night, the three accused manifested an intellectual capacity that was slightly below average. Taken together, these may be considered to have keenly affected their volitional faculties.

Since the men were drunk, they had a limited capacity to choose not to commit rape! This is absurd. The only thing these men have a limited capacity for is living within the rules of society. What a stupid decision.

Source:

Spanish Rapist’s Sentence Reduced: He Was Drunk. Women’s eNews, December 15, 2001.

Federal Officials Tried to Fake Lynx Data

An ongoing point of controversy in the western part of the United States is the protection of lynx habitat. Environmentalists claim that lynx habitat is endangered and want new restrictions on private and public lands, while developers and others argue that lynx habitat is not endangered and new regulations are not needed. In the midst of this controversy comes word that federal employees of the U.S. Forest Service and The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service apparently tried to plant evidence indicating lynx were present in a federal forest that is currently part of a three-year study of the species.

The research in question was a three-year study authorized by the Clinton administration to study the habitat of the lynx population in and around the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and the Wenatchee National Forest in Washington state. The study used rubbing posts in the forests which were then examined for the presence of lynx hair.

But at least seven government officials were disciplined for planting at least three samples of lynx hair on the posts. When the DNA of the lynx hair was analyzed, two of the samples matched a lynx living in an animal preserve, and the third sample match that of a lynx that had been held by the government until its owner reclaimed it. The government officials had taken hair from those animals, and affixed it to the rubbing posts to make it appear as if lynx had been in the area.

Had the ruse succeeded, this could have led to restrictions on human activity within the two parks.

When caught, the three Forest Service employees, two U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials, and two Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife employees claimed they were simply trying to “test” the lab’s DNA expertise. Those who participated in the scheme have been banned from any further participation in the survey, although the government will not release their names citing privacy issues.

Source:

Rare lynx hairs found in forests exposed as hoax. Audrey Hudson, The Washington Times, December 17, 2001.

Britney Spears Wants to Work with an Animal Rights Group that Does Not "Distort the Truth" (Good Luck!)

The on again, off again relationship between Britney Spears and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is once again off as the entertainer’s spokeswoman accused PETA of falsely claiming that Spears would pose nude for a PETA promotional effort.

This whole episode began when PETA threatened to protest Spears over her use of live animals onstage. Spears agreed to stop using the live animals in her act and also agreed to lend her image to a PETA poster.

Then media reports surfaced claiming that Spears would pose naked for PETA’s “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur Campaign.” Spears’ publicist Lisa Kasteler told the BBC that the singer only agreed to provide a photograph of herself, fully clothed, for a PETA poster at a New York night club that excludes people who wear fur.

Kasteler accused PETA of falsely spreading the rumor that Spears would appear in the nude, and told the BBC, “Notwithstanding the meaningful work that PETA does, we cannot be involved with an organization that would distort the truth.”

Kasteler said Spears is still very interested in animal rights, but I suspect she’ll likely run through her 15 minutes of fame long before she is able to find an animal rights group that doesn’t distort the truth.

The best part of the controversy, though, was seeing PETA’s Dan Mathews (the same Mathews who admires serial killer Andrew Cunanan) telling the BBC that, “We’ve never distorted anything. We simply confirmed that we planned on doing a poster with her — we never said anything about nudity.”

PETA? Distort something? How could the press even think such a thing, given PETA’s track record? Oh yeah, right. Scratch that.

Source:

Fur flies over Britney posters. The BBC, December 14, 2001.