Month: January 2005

Another Boing! Boing! -ism

Another typical Boing! Boing!-ism, this time trying to sarcastically dismiss the risks of shining laser pointers at commercial aircraft,

Sky and Telescope article on laser-pointer etiquette

Marc Laidlaw points out this article from Sky and Telescope that has good information about the deadly laser pointers that terrorists have been using to knock aircraft filled with women and children right out of the sky. Oh, when will the horror end?

According to engineer Samuel M. Goldwasser, who maintains an extensive Web site about lasers called Sam’s Laser FAQ, if you were to look directly into a laser-pointer beam from a mile away, it would appear as bright as a 100-watt bulb seen at a distance of less than 100 feet. Most people would find such a bright light very uncomfortable and would instinctively blink and/or turn away.

Link

Sky and Telescope, which is the source of the quote, is not nearly as cavalier as Mark Frauenfelder is . Just two paragraphs later, Sky and Telescope notes the very real dangers posed even by the sort of laser pointers used by amateur astronomers,

Direct viewing of a laser-pointer beam, even briefly and at a distance of a kilometer or two, has the potential to cause temporary flashblindness — the same effect you get right after a flash photo is taken — or afterimages. These effects last anywhere from seconds to minutes. Glare, which is a reduction or loss of central vision, lasts only as long as exposure to the beam. All these effects could be disastrous if they struck a person operating machinery, driving a car or truck, or flying a plane. Fortunately, there have been no reports of laser-related accidents of this type so far.

The danger here is, in other word, very real despite what Fraunfelder would apparently like his readers to believe.

Source:

Some Pointers on the Use of Laser Pointers. Richard Tresch Fienberg, Sky and Telescope, Undated.

Death By Cellphone?

Last October, a student at the university I work at was struck and killed by a car as she was attempting to cross a four-lane highway that separates the campus from a student apartment complex. Today, the newspaper reports that although the local police forwarded on the case to the prosecutor for possible negligent homicide charges, this appears to have been a routine matter because there was a death involved and the prosecutor promptly denied the request to charge the driver.

The area where the student was killed is not very well lit, it was at 8 p.m. so it would have been relatively dark, and the student was wearing dark clothing. The driver wasn’t drinking or driving excessively fast.

There’s another detail that came out about the accident shortly after the student’s death — she was talking to her roommate (who was in the apartment across the street) while she was trying to cross the street. The roommate was quoted as saying that she was talking to the woman at the time she was hit.

A professor wrote a letter to the student newspaper shortly after the accident urging students to use more caution on cell phones, especially on campus, but its good advice for anyone. My wife and I came just inches from killing a young man who was on a cell phone and stepped out into our lane of traffic without first bothering to look in our direction to see if there were any cars coming.

Death by cellphone would just be an incredibly stupid way to die, so please take care when talking on a cell phone and attempting to do other activities, such as driving or walking in heavily trafficked areas.

Ian O’Connor — Hold Coaches to Same Standards as Athletes

USA Today sports columnist Ian O’Connor hit the ball out of the park in a column this week about the rank hypocrisy that surrounds the National Collegiate Athletics Associations policies that screw players at every opportunity for doing what other students — and even coaches — routinely are able to do without penalty.

The specific complaint that O’Connor had was the set of circumstances that kept USC wide receiver Mike Wiliams from playing in Tuesday’s Orange Bowl.

After Maurice Clarrett won a preliminary legal victory allowing him to enter the NFL despite that league’s rule that players had to be at least three years out of high school, Williams also declared his intention to go pro. When Clarrett lost his legal efforts to enter the NFL, O’Connor writes,

. . . Williams moved to de-professionalize himself by losing his agent, returning gifts and endorsement income and enrolling in summer school.

The NCAA could have cared less — it stripped him of all of his collegiate eligibility. So Williams was left unable to play football either professionally or at the collegiate level this year.

But, as O’Connor notes, there are no such restrictions on coaches and the other shameless hypocrites who exploit collegiate athletes,

If [freshment players Adrian] Peterson and [Dwayne] Jarrett want to turn pro this spring rather than risk injury on the room, board and books plan, they should be free to turn pro. Just as free as NFL GMs to use their first-round picks on other prospects. Instead the freshmen remain tethered to the goals of college administrators who want to protect their lucrative product, and NFL owners who are more interested in preserving a free farm system than they are in saving some 19-year-old from a Ray Lewis blitz.

But that’s how the game is played at the major college level. While coaches can shamelessly break contracts and promises and conferences can shamelessly steal schools from each other, the players are held to a higher stander. Urban Meyer won’t have to sit out a year at Florida; no, he gets to earn his $14 million right away. Any Ute who wants to follow Meyer to Gainseville, or any Cowboy who wants to follow Les Miles to LSU, had better be prepared to spend some quality time — in streeth clothes — on the bench.

Coaches don’t need a release from their national letters of intent. Dennis Franchione lied to everyone before bolting Alabama for Texas A&M two years back, and he’s already up for a raise on his $1.7 million deal. . . .

. . .

. . . in football, the players are told to stay put. You transfer, you sit. You try to turn pro before we want you to, we give you a healthy dose of the BCS, minus the C.

Source:

Too bad coaches aren’t held to same standards as players. Ian O’Connor, USA Today, January 4, 2005.

Stupid Tsunami Quote or Ignorant Bloggers on the Attack?

The United Nations is taking a lot of grief on some web sites and blogs for this press release which includes this widely misinterpreted paragraph on its efforts in Sri Lanka (emphasis added),

Sri Lanka: UNFPA is carrying out reproductive health assessments. UNICEF continues to help ferry the wounded and dead to area hospitals while providing 10,000 bed sheets, towels, drinking water bottles, cooking utensils sets and mats to assist the displaced and stranded. UNHCR has been distributing non-food items.

Rather than stop and think about it, a lot of sites are just imputing ridiculous interpretations of this, as if the UNFPA is in Sri Lanka studying how the tsunami will affect infertility treatments in that country. For example, Chrenkoff snarkily opines,

The assessment will conclude that dead people can’t reproduce. An international conference will be called to deal with the problem. A permanent commission will be established.

This sort of nonsensical interpretation arises, IMO, from American’s appalling lack of information about other countries, especially the developing world.

So for sites like Chrenkoff who need a clue, here it is — before the tsunami hit, Sri Lanka achieved one of the lowest rates of maternal mortality in the developing world by building up its health care infrastructure. Much of that infrastructure was wiped out, leaving pregnant women and their infants particularly vulnerable. The UNFPA’s assessment on reproductive health is almost certainly aimed at preventing a short-term return to high maternal mortality levels and ensuring that pregnant women have access to as much pre-natal care, etc., as possible to ensure their infants don’t become additional victims of the tsunami.

All Chrenkoff or anyone else needed to do to confirm this was visit the UNFPA’s web site, which has a press release outlining exactly this sort of role,

Among the 5 million people directly affected in the region, there are at least 150,000 women who are currently pregnant or who may be facing complications of pregnancy, including trauma-induced miscarriage, and need urgent medical and nutritional support. Over 50,000 women within the affected communities will give birth in the next three months; the damage to health facilities and loss of basic delivery care supplies has jeopardized their chances to deliver under clean and safe circumstances. Many of the midwives who traditionally provide home-based delivery support have been displaced and no longer have even basic supplies. Women who experience obstructed labor or other birthing complications (15 per cent of pregnancies, even under normal conditions) will require urgent assistance to ensure their health and the survival of their babies.

. . .

UNFPA is working closely with the Ministry of Health to provide basic supplies needed for maternity care and to establish early support for community based trauma treatment. The UNFPA office in Colombo has procured supplies locally and produced and distributed 25,000 hygiene kits for women and girls and is appealing to donors to support the provision of an additional 100,000 of these to meet current needs. An assessment team is currently reviewing the needs for health facility resupply and rehabilitation for the resumption of reproductive health services in the affected areas.

That is exactly the sort of mission that the UNFPA is best equipped for, and it is embarrassing to see Americans people ignorantly deride its efforts. There are a lot of justifiable reasons to criticize the UNFPA, but its efforts to assess what needs to be done to prevent disease and death in pregnant Sri Lankans, and their babies, is surely not one of them.

Update: In this case, I can’t blame ignorant Americans — Chrenkoff is an Australian blog.

Sources:

Tsunami quotes: back with a vengeance. January 8, 2005.

UN Response To Tsunami Focuses On Large And Small. United Nations, Press Release, January 1, 2005.

Women Survivors of Indian Ocean Disaster Face Urgent Needs, Warns UNFPA. Press Release, UNFPA, December 31, 2004.

Further Eroding Parents Rights in Michigan

Our Republican-dominated legislature here in Michigan passed, and our Democratic Governor signed, a ridiculous law which forces parents who do not want their children to receive visits from their grandparents to defend such decisions in court.

The law is a bit complex. If two fit parents sign an affidavit opposing grandparent visitation, then a judge is required to abide by that decision — but parents shouldn’t have to go through such a silly process, and what if the parent is a single mother or father, or there is a divorce and the non-custodial and custodial parents disagree about grandparent visitation?

Then it all goes to court where the threshhold is pretty low. Basically the grandparents have to demonstrate the child would suffer mental, physical or emotional harm if deprived of regular visits with their grandchildren. Unless the parents can counter that the visits would not be in the best interests of the child, the court can order visitation against the wishes of the custodial parent.

Now my wife and I have very good relationships with my children’s grandparents, but I can imagine a lot of situations where this wouldn’t obtain. One of my grandmothers was a real piece of work whom I wouldn’t let anywhere near my kids. On the other thand, I’m not sure I could put together a case that it wasn’t in the best interests of the child to see such an individual.

Consider the following case — suppose one of my daughter’s grandparents was a vile racist, and my wife and I both agreed that we’d prefer he not have contact with my daughter. Under Michigan law, we could do that today, but we’d have to go both sign an affidavit and get lawyers involved. We can still do it, but its going to cost us.

Imagine a slightly different scenario. We have almost no contact with the grandparent, until he resurfaces after my wife dies an untimely death. In this scenario, I have to go to court and a judge has to weigh the emotional needs of the child to know her grandfather compared to my desire not to have this person associated with my child.

Under the law, this would be pretty straightforward — I’d win every time. But he can refile very two years, and I have to keep hiring attorneys and dealing with this crap on a regular basis.

And what if the example isn’t so straightforward. What if, for example, I convert to a religion that doesn’t believe in contact with people who are not members of my faith? What if I become a right wing religious nut and I no longer want my child to have contact with one of my parent who happens to be a homosexual?

The point is not that any of these reasons are very good or very bad, but that courts should not be making these decisions at all.

A judge ruled unconstitutional Michigan’s previous grandparents visitation law in 2003. Hopefully they’ll do the same thing to this one.

Sources:

ENROLLED SENATE BILL No. 727. Michigan Legislature, January 3, 2005.

Highlights of the past week’s action at the Capitol. Associated Press, January 8, 2005.

State Senate approves grandparent visitation law. Associated Press, December 8, 2004.

The Muslim Fred Phelps

The other day I noted that religious nutcase Fred Phelps was thanking God for the tsunami that hit Indonesia and other Asian nations. Apparently Phelps is joined in this assessment by a number of Muslim extremists.

According to MEMRI, Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris gave a sermon televised on Palestinian Authority Television claiming,

The oppression and corruption caused by America and the Jews have increased. Have you heard of these beaches that are called ‘tourists’ paradise?’ You have all probably heard of Bangkok. We read about it, and knew it as the center of corruption on the face of this earth. Over there, there are Zionist and American investments. Over there they bring Muslims and others to prostitution. Over there, there are beaches, which they dubbed ‘tourists’ paradise,’ while only a few meters away, the locals live in hell on earth. They cannot make ends meet, while a few meters away there is a paradise, ‘tourists’ paradise.’

Do you want the earth to turn a blind eye to the corrupt oppressors? Do you want the seaÂ… Do you want the sea to lower its waves in the face of corruption that it sees with its own eyes?! No, the zero hour has come.

While Mudeiris thinks this was God punishing the Jews, Saudi Arabian professor Sheikh Fawzan Al-Fawzan hits the Phelps theme that God hates homosexuals — and banks,

hese great tragedies and collective punishments that are wiping out villages, towns, cities, and even entire countries, are Allah’s punishments of the people of these countries, even if they are Muslims.

Some of our forefathers said that if there is usury and fornication in a certain village, Allah permits its destruction. We know that at these resorts, which unfortunately exist in Islamic and other countries in South Asia, and especially at Christmas, fornication and sexual perversion of all kinds are rampant. The fact that it happened at this particular time is a sign from Allah. It happened at Christmas, when fornicators and corrupt people from all over the world come to commit fornication and sexual perversion. That’s when this tragedy took place, striking them all and destroyed everything. It turned the land into wasteland, where only the cries of the ravens are heard. I say this is a great sign and punishment on which Muslims should reflect.

All that’s left for us to do is to ask for forgiveness. We must atone for our sins, and for the acts of the stupid people among us and improve our condition. We must fight fornication, homosexuality, usury, fight the corruption on the face of the earth, and the disregard of the lives of protected people

Saudi cleric Muhammad Al-Munajjid blames the tsunamis on Christmas and New Year revelers,

The problem is that the [Christian] holidays are accompanied by forbidden things, by immorality, abomination, adultery, alcohol, drunken dancing, and Â… and revelry. A belly dancer costs 2500 pounds per minute and a singer costs 50,000 pounds per hour, and they hop from one hotel to another from night to dawn. Then he spends the entire night defying Allah.

Haven’t they learned the lesson from what Allah wreaked upon the coast of Asia, during the celebration of these forbidden? At the height of immorality, Allah took vengeance on these criminals.

Those celebrating spent what they call ‘New Year’s Eve’ in vacation resorts, pubs, and hotels. Allah struck them with an earthquake. He finished off the Richter scale. All nine levels gone. Tens of thousands dead.

It was said that they were tourists on New Year’s vacation who went to the crowded coral islands for the holiday period, and then they were struck by this earthquake, caused by the Almighty Lord of the worlds. He showed them His wrath and His strength. He showed them His vengeance. Is there anyone learning the lesson? Is it impossible that we will be struck like them? Why do we go their way? Why do we want to be like them, with their holidays, their forbidden things, and their heresy?

Religious extremism — it is the other universal language right after English.

Source:

Conspiracy Theories Surrounding the Tsunami: It was a Punishment from Allah for Celebrating Christmas and Other Sins; It was Caused by the U.S., Israel, India. Middle East Media Research Institute, January 7, 2005.