It’s on GooTube and, “It’s just insane, here,” says the voiceover.

“About 30 students stormed UCLA’s Campbell Hall and barricaded the doors with chains and bike locks early this morning to protest a student fee increase that is expected to be endorsed by the University of California’s Board of Regents today,” says the Los Angeles Times, going on »»»

[Updated at 8:39 a.m.: The UC Regents have started to meet, and hundreds of students have surrounded the building, protesting the proposed fee hike.]

Students who spent the night were sprawled outside Campbell Hall in sleeping bags. They carried posters and signs that read, “Don’t take our education away” and “Don’t privatize, democratize.” Many wore bandannas over their faces.

Dozens of other students spent the night camped out in tents on top of Parking Structure 4. Hundreds of other students are expected to join the protesters and demonstrate at the UC Regents meeting that will take place later today.

“The proposed two-step student fee increase would raise UC undergraduate education costs more than $2,500, or 32%.The annual cost of a UC education, not including campus-based fees would rise to $10,302. says the story.

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Los Angeles Times – Students storm UCLA building to protest expected UC system fee increase [Updated], November 19, 2009

“Denmark has unveiled official research showing that two-year-old children are at risk from a bewildering array of gender-bending chemicals in such everyday items as waterproof clothes, rubber boots, bed linen, food, sunscreen lotion, and moisturizing cream,” says a Slashdot post, going on »»»

A picture is emerging of ubiquitous chemical contamination driving down sperm counts and feminizing male children all over the developed world. Research at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University found that boys whose mothers were exposed to PCBs and dioxins were more likely to play with dolls and tea sets and dress up in female clothes. ‘The amounts that two-year-olds absorb from the [preservatives] parabens propylparaben and butylparaben can constitute a risk for oestrogen-like disruptions of the endocrine system,’ says the report. The contamination may also offer a clue to a mysterious shift in the sex of babies.

Normally 106 boys are born for every 100 girls,” says the piece, adding, “it is thought to be nature’s way of making up for the fact that men were more likely to be killed hunting or in conflict.”

A much earlier Telegraph item, quoted by Slashdot, cites a Canadian First Nations community on the eastern tip of Lake Huron, “hemmed in by one of the biggest agglomerations of chemical factories on earth”, as an example.

The band “gives birth to twice as many girls as boys,” says the story, adding, “It’s the same around Seveso in Italy, contaminated with dioxins from a notorious accident in the 1970s, and among Russian pesticide workers. And there’s more evidence from places as far apart as Israel and Taiwan, Brazil and the Arctic.

“Yet gender-benders are largely exempt from new EU regulations controlling hazardous chemicals. Britain, then under Tony Blair’s premiership, was largely responsible for this – restricting their inclusion in the first draft of the legislation, and then causing even what was included to be watered down.Confidential documents show that it did so after pressure from George W Bush’s administration, which protested that US exports ‘could be impacted’.

Now, “the Danish government is planning to lobby to have the rules toughened up. It is particularly concerned by other studies which show that gender-bending chemicals acting together have far worse effects than the expected sum of their individual impacts. It wants this to be reflected in the regulations, citing its discovery of the many sources to which the two-year-olds are exposed — modern slings and arrows, as it were, of outrageous fortune.”

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Slashdot – Environmental Chemicals Are Feminizing Boys, November 15, 2009
Telegraph – Why boys are turning into girls, October 23, 2009

It goes on:

“The directionality of the LRAD device reduces the risk of exposing nearby personnel or peripheral bystanders to harmful audio levels.”

LRAD is short for long-range hailing and warning, directed acoustic device.

Clearly,  “reduces the risk” of exposure to “to harmful audio levels” means the risk does exist.

The quotes come from the site of LRAD maker the American Technology Corporation and now it seems LRAD is coming to British Columbia and,  “Vancouver police won’t rule out using a new crowd-control device as a weapon capable of emitting loud, painful blasts of sound that are potentially damaging to hearing,” says the Vancouver Sun, continuing:

“But police spokesman Const. Lindsey Houghton insisted Tuesday that the Long Range Acoustical Device was bought principally to replace ‘antiquated hand-held megaphones’ as a tool to communicate in emergencies and for crowd control.

Asked whether police would ever use it for anything more than communication, Houghton said, “We can’t rule out anything.”

In another story, “Aside from what happened in Pittsburgh at the G-20 conference a month ago, it was only repressive regimes in the Third World that were making use of this,” the Canadian Press has Robert Holmes, president of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, saying.

It goes on, “The long-range acoustic device, or LRAD, emits sound waves strong enough to cause intense pain, damaged hearing and temporarily disrupted vision. There has been no safety testing of the weapon in Canada, Holmes said.”

And the story has Houghton protesting the LRAD is “nothing new since the force has long had access to noise-emitting devices that can subdue crowds”.

They’re “the sirens on our police cars,” he said.

With a Taser in one hand and an LRAD in the other …

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Vancouver Sun – New hailer is a loudspeaker, not a crowd-control device, police say, November 11, 2009
Canadian Press – Vancouver police’s new weapon could pose risk, November 11, 2009

“Starting Sunday, cash-strapped California will dig deeper into the pocketbooks of wage earners — holding back 10% more than it already does in state income taxes just as the biggest shopping season of the year kicks into gear,” says the Los Angeles Times, going on »»»

Technically, it’s not a tax increase, even though it may feel like one when your next paycheck arrives. As part of a bundle of budget patches adopted in the summer, the state is taking more money now in withholding, even though workers’ annual tax bills won’t change.

Think of it as a forced, interest-free loan: You’ll be repaid any extra withholding in April. Those who would receive a refund anyway will receive a larger one, and those who owe taxes will owe less.

But with rising gas costs, depressed home prices and double-digit unemployment, the state’s added reach into residents’ regular paycheck isn’t sitting well with many.

Doesn’t Superman live in California?

And even if he does, this can’t be for real —-

—- can it?

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Los Angeles Times – California to withhold a bigger chunk of paychecks, October 31

November, 2009

California to withhold a bigger chunk of paychecks

So says Nils Stenström of Sweden’s National Institute of Public Health (Statens folkhälsoinstitut), as quoted by The Local.

“New research indicates that even very modest use can cause a lot of damage,” it has him saying.

Marijuana use among Sweden’s young people “has been declining, but the downward trend in use may be coming to an end,” says the story.

“An increased use of cannabis has been reported among both students in grade nine as well as by students in their second year of high school,” Stenström says, going on:

“Cannabis can bring about the onset of latent psychiatric illnesses and the drug can cause serious psychiatric illnesses on its own,” and the view of cannabis as a “light” drug is “misleading”.

Several new studies also show that teenagers who only occasionally use marijuana can run into problems, he states.

Young people’s brain are “under development” and “especially vulnerable,” Stenström says in The Local, adding:

“It shows that cannabis can cause damage which can, among other things, reduce memory capacity and the ability to learn.”

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

The Local – Pot smoking can damage young brains: study, November 9, 2009

The quote is from a New York Times article slugged Can a Boy Wear a Skirt to School? and it comes in a Jenna McWilliams blog post sleeping alone and starting out early.

Way back, during the summer in Toronto, I used to wear a green sarong because it was cool and comfortable.  It took me a while to get the knot right, but these days they use velcro. And  here on Vancouver Island, you often see men wearing kilts – not the Scottish or Irish variety, but non-national pleated skirts made from broadcloth.

“Since I grew up in the Midwest, I thought I was prepared for the  transition back to ‘Midwestern values’ when I moved from Massachusetts  to Indiana for graduate school a few months ago,” Jennna told p2pnet.

“I couldn’t have been  more wrong. Culture shock got me thinking about identity, gender, and  societal norms, which got me thinking about how I got so sure that  everything I learned about gender performance was wrong.”

In, ’sleeping alone and starting out early’, “Because it helped to shape my earliest understanding of gender and rebellions, I remember with great clarity the day my high school classmate Justin C. wore a skirt to school,” she says, going on »»»

Actually, I never saw the skirt; I only heard about it from my friends (my high school, after all, had thousands of students spread over three buildings). I don’t know if Justin was sent home to change. I can’t remember if he got in trouble–this was what I now think of as the freewheeling early ’90s, a relative utopia compared to the post-Columbine, post-family values, post-culture wars high school of the ‘new’ century. It’s entirely possible Justin pulled the whole thing off without a suspension.

I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that somebody would wear such an obviously off-limits item of clothing. Then, suddenly, because someone had simply crossed what I thought was an inviolable border, I could believe it. And a boy wearing a skirt no longer seemed quite so off-limits.

Fifteen years later, opposition to sex-based dress codes has hit the big time with today’s New York Times article, “Can a boy wear a skirt to school?” By all rights, of course, the answer to that question should be of course. But there are real, significant reasons to approach this issue more thoughtfully, to answer that question with a resounding of course…except that….

The challenge of this issue goes far beyond the lame, I-don’t-understand-it-and-therefore-it’s-just-not-right stance embodied in the NYTimes article by Kay Hymowitz, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who argues that “It’s hard enough to get kids to concentrate on an algorithm — even without Jimmy sitting there in lipstick and fake eyelashes.” As the article explains, dress codes are as much about maintaining order as they are about keeping students safe. The most extreme recent illustration of this is the shooting death in February 2008 of Lawrence King, a middle school student who sometimes wore heels and makeup to school.

But harassment doesn’t have to erupt into violence to be devastating to the victim and the community, and the everyday cruelty of a school environment that enables difference-phobic attitudes contributes mightily to deeper personal and cultural attitudes toward gender. My classmate Justin was smart, confident, and mature, and I’m sure he was strong enough to reject any hateful reactions to his decision to wear the skirt. Another student may not have been. Any school dress-code policy must take this into account.

The problem, though, is that school policies, and by extension cultural attitudes, toward clothing choices tend to skip over the difference between sex, sexuality, and gender. In case you need a refresher, sex is biological and tied to genetic makeup, hormones, and sex-based traits. Sexuality is socio-biological, meaning that it’s a product of the interaction between biology and culture: It’s who you’re attracted to, and when, and why.

Gender, which is really what we’re talking about when we’re talking about clothing, is a social construct that’s linked to but different from sex and sexuality. Not all boys who wear skirts are gay, and not all girls who wear skirts are straight. Gender is about identity performance, is about presenting yourself to the world in a way that feels right given your sex, sexuality, and general perception of yourself in the world. Gender performance is always a dance between the individual and her culture, and it’s never fully clear who’s leading whom.

I first learned about the gender dance when Justin wore a skirt to school. Before that day, and for much of the time that has passed since, my approach to gender performance was more mechanical than intentional, more reflexive than reactionary. It’s good for all of us to be reminded from time to time that we’re all up on stage and that we have some say in the lines we read, the props we use, and the costumes we present ourselves in. When Justin wears a skirt to school, he gives us exactly this reminder.

What the world needs now, sings Cracker, is a new kind of tension / cause the old one just bores me to death.

Rigid dress codes of the sort identified in the New York Times piece make school flow more seamlessly, sure, but they do it at the expense of the kind of critical thinking that schools purport to value. Every time Justin wears a skirt to school, he lowers the risk, just a tiny bit, of another Lawrence King incident. He cracks open a window, props open a door, and invites us all to take a look at what’s outside.

“We all have to decide for ourselves whether to accept the invitation, but when schools, out of fear of or for their students, keep the doors and windows locked they not only fail their students but help to foster an environment where fear and hate can continue to rule the day,” Jenna adds.

JN

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

sleeping alone and starting out early – boys can wear skirts, girls can wear tuxes: let’s rethink school dress codes,  November 8, 2009

‘Butt’ is Royal Canadian Legion spokesman Bob Butt, and he’s quoted in a Toronto Sun story on how the Dutch Oven Bakery in Coburg, Ontario, crossed bayonets with the legion over, Yes, alleged copyright infringement.

It’d been “fulfilling the order of some poppy cookies for the family of a fallen Canadian soldier from the Afghanistan conflict,” says the story.

But, “That would be a violation of the trademark,” explained Butt.

He apparently said the legion understood people are “well meaning” when they use the poppy and unaware of the rules.

“But rules are rules.”

Butt “points out that the legion has the right to do with the poppy what it feels is in its best interest and that none of it has ever been for commercial use,” says the story.

Ah SO!

Poppyrights, anyone?

(Cheers, Marc)

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Toronto Sun – Bakery told to nix poppy tribute, November 6, 2009

Because it isn’t real.

At least, that’s what a Swedish scool principal reckons.

In the Spegeln newspaper in a Malmö suburb, “Gert Åkesson, principal of the Sundsgymnasiet high school in nearby Vellinge, opines about the way in which Sweden seems to create public agencies in response to media coverage of perceived problems in society,” says The Local, going on »»»

In making his case, the principal makes fun of a number of illnesses and handicaps by comparing them to made-up diseases featured in television comedy sketches.

“Sometimes it’s a mix of state, regional, and self-appointed agencies. Examples of the latter are associations and councils created for all of the handicaps and diseases invented after the 80s like allergies, Asperger’s, DAMP, ADHD, anorexia, dyslexia, dyscalculia, oral galvanism, anal magnetism … the limits can only be found in one’s imagination,” writes Åkesson.

In case you haven’t come across it before, “Anal magnetism is a made-up disease from a wildly popular Swedish television programme from the 1980s called Nöjesmassakern (’Fun Massacre’), featuring comedians Gösta Engström and Sven Melander,” The Local explains.

And Oral galvanism?

“Concern over the harmful effects of oral galvanism (electrical currents in the mouth resulting from the presence of metal), said to cause discomfort, has been great in Sweden, a country where excitement is, perhaps, hard to find,” it says, quoting the abstract from a 1990 article detailing questions about condition published in the Journal of the American Dental Association.

If you know what dyslexia is, “you would never express yourself like he does,”  the story has Sven Eklöf, chair of the 6,000-member Swedish Dyslexia Association (FMLS) telling the Sydsvenskan newspaper.

On anorexia, it has the highest mortality among psychiatric diseases,” declares Lauri Nevonen, from Capio Anorexicenter.
Meanwhile, “The chair of the schools’ committee in Vellinge, Carina Larsson, told newspaper Sydvenskan that Åkesson’s formulation was ‘unfortunate’ but refrained from commenting further on the article before having a chance to discuss it with the principal to learn more about what he was trying to say.”

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The Local – ‘Dyslexia and anorexia aren’t real’: educator, October 28, 2009

So am I coming down with the much-touted swine-flu pandemic, as it’s being designated by the World health Organization?

A pandemic is an epidemic over a large area.

And I say ‘touted’ because every time I turn on the radio there’s another announcement about it — how health protection shots are in short supply, or are being stockpiled, how hospital staff are being ordered to have anti-A-H1N1 injections whether they like it or not, how one more person has been reported mildly ill but is recovering, how another person has died, but there were other symptoms.

Dire warnings are issued every day about Swine Flu, aka A-H1N1, which appears to have started in Mexico, and British Colombia, where I live, is apparently a swine flu ‘hotspot’.

“British Columbia continues to monitor and respond to the ongoing spread of pandemic H1N1 2009 influenza virus (or human swine flu as it was earlier called),” says the BC Centre for disease control.  “The spread of this novel strain of H1N1 flu virus in humans prompted the World Health Organization to raise its global pandemic alert to phase 6, reflecting a full-fledged pandemic of influenza.”

In BC, as of 4:40 am today, there’d been a total of nine confirmed deaths.

Nine?

During the influenza pandemic of 1918-20, “It is estimated that anywhere from 20 to 100 million people were killed worldwide, or the approximate equivalent of one third of the population of Europe, more than double the number killed in World War I,” says the Wikipedia.

In May, US health officials “raised the number of confirmed U.S. swine-flu cases to 244 in 35 states“.

But I haven’t heard of millions of people dying in America, or anywhere else in the world.

Something seems to be going around and certainly people are being affected by it, some of them even dying.

But is it a pandemic? Or did health officials misread this seriousness of ’swine flu’ and are now having to justify the expenditure of hundreds millions of dollars and wasted healthcare resources by continuing to promote it rather than admit they made a mistake?

Just asking.

Meanwhile, I may have the beginnings of a cold, or something similar, but I don’t think  I’m about to become another in the handful (relatively speaking)  of people with swine flu.

I hope.

Cheers!

Jon Newton - p2pnet

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

October, 2009

He’s booked for the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, next summer, it says.

He’ll be a research chair.

“Perimeter Institute is a very exciting venture,” Hawking states.

“Its chosen scientific focus, quantum theory and space-time, is very close to my heart.”

A new Hawking wing is being built at a cost $30 million as part of the institute’s expansion campaign.

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Perimeter Institute - Expanding the Perimeter with The Stephen Hawking Centre PI, October 19, 2009

The pic on the right of Marge Simpson as Playboy’s November cover girl isn’t a joke.

In any sense of the word.

“Playboy released a picture of the cover shot on Friday featuring Marge artfully concealed behind a chair in the shape of the iconic Playboy Bunny logo,” says The Independent.

“The magazine promises a story inside on ‘The Devil in Marge Simpson,’ an interview and more pictures, including a centerfold pullout.”

Putting Marge on the cover is a ploy, “designed to attract younger readers,” says Times Live, also pointing out:

“For those who do collect the magazine — and they’re out there — the cover will bring to mind another first for the magazine that occurred in 1971 when a black woman appeared on the cover in exactly the same pose and, like Marge, smiling under an impressive head of hair.”

Scary.

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The Independent – Marge Simpson, Playboy cover girl, October 12, 2009
Times Live – Marge Simpson poses for Playboy cover, October 12, 2009

His death brings the number of employees who’ve killed themselves witin the past two years to 24.

The man, a 51-year-old father of two from Annecy in the French Alps, cited the unbearable “atmosphere” at France Telecom, says Sky News.

The string of deaths is being blamed on a, “barrage of emails from smartphones and personal computers” which are “stressing out employees,” said The Age recently.

Local union leader Patrice Diochet denounced work conditions at the Annecy branch as “unbearable,” saying the firm had, “failed to draw lessons” from the recent deahs, says the Telegraph.

Diochet, of the CFTC union, “said the worker in question was recently transferred from an after-sales division to the Annecy call centre, and had been singled out as emotionally fragile,”  according to Diochet who’s also quoted as declaring:

“It’s shameful. He worked in a service long known to be unbearable.

“There was a real indifference, no humanity, all they talked about was numbers and workers were treated like sausage meat.

(Cheers, Another)

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committed suicide – Did smartphones spark France Telecom suicides?, September 26, 2009
Sky News – French Phone Giant Is Hit By 24th Suicide, September 29, 2009
Telegraph – Another death in France Telecom ’suicide spiral’, September 29, 2009

A mind-boggling string of suicides at France Telecom is being blamed on a, “barrage of emails from smartphones and personal computers” which are “stressing out employees,” says The Age, attributing the Blackberry comment to France Telecom CFO Gervais Pellissier.

“France Telecom, which operates under the Orange brand, has come under public scrutiny after 22 workers committed suicide and another 13 attempted to kill themselves since the start of last year,” says the story, noting CEO Didier Lombard said the company was, “adding surveillance and counselling services as the pace of suicides among employees had picked up”.

The company argues the number is no higher than the national average, but trades unions are demanding a parliamentary inquiry into the deaths, “which they blame on stress linked to massive restructuring at the company, involving forced transfers and the introduction of new profit targets,” says the story, continuing »»»

Pellissier said some employees were clearly feeling a lot of pressure due to the privatisation of France Telecom, but he added that this was compounded by new technologies that cause work to encroach increasingly on personal lives.

“When you were an average employee in a big corporation 15 years ago, you had no mobile phone or no PC at home. When you were back home, work was out,” he said.

Research in Motion’s popular BlackBerry has been dubbed CrackBerry in the United States, where some users say they are addicted to checking emails.

Pellissier said such practices may be taking a bigger toll on workers than has been acknowledged by his company or others.

The French Government stepped in last weekend to press France Telecom to deal with the issue, “But union groups have called for greater scrutiny of the company,” says The Age, adding:

“The controversy over the spate of suicides took a macabre turn last week with the publication of a suicide letter sent by the latest employee to die.

“I’m going to become the 23rd staff member to commit suicide,” 32-year-old Stephanie emailed her father moments before she flung herself out of her fourth storey office window, says the post.

“When I called you this morning, you said I didn’t seem quite right,” said, according to the story. “You were right. My suicidal impulses are taking over again. I’ve decided to act upon them tonight.”

Minutes later, “Stephanie dropped from her office window in a French Telecom client services office in Paris.”

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The Age – Boss blames smartphones for stress as company suicide rate comes under scrutiny, September 25, 2009

Now the BC Coroners Service is warning people leaving laptop computers running on a soft surface, “could cause a fatal fire,” says the Victoria Times Colonist, going on:

“The public-safety bulletin comes six months after the Coroners Service began an investigation into a laptop fire that killed a 56-year-old Vancouver man. According to the coroner’s report, the man died in a house fire on Feb. 26 after his roommate came home, used a laptop computer, then went to bed, leaving the laptop on.

“The computer was plugged into a power outlet and left on an upholstered couch.”

Says the CBC:

“Since 2004 in B.C., four other laptops have either overheated or short-circuited when left plugged in, causing fires. The death earlier this year, however, was the first in B.C. blamed on a laptop fire, the coroner said in statement issued Wednesday morning.

“And there have been 15 other fires caused by short-circuiting or overheating in such equipment as personal computers, DVD players, and cellphone chargers.”

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Victoria Times Colonist – Laptop blamed for deadly fire, August 27, 2009
CBC – Laptop fire blamed for Vancouver death, August 26, 2009

China, however, has found a way to recycle used parts from executed prisoners.

China has, “launched its first national organ donation system in a bid to crack down on organ trafficking and create a source for transplants other than executed prisoners, who currently make up the majority of donors,” says China Daily, quoted by the Straits Times, from whence came the pic on the right.

A, “man shows the scar he has from the heart transplant he got from China,” says the caption.

“Executed criminals account for 65 per cent of organ donors,” says the story.

China’s Communist authorities have, “previously acknowledged that corneas, kidneys and other body parts from criminals have been transplanted,” says The Guardian, adding:

“But the new figure offers a startling insight into the scale of the country’s reliance on death-row inmates, despite laws supposed to curb the use of their organs.

“Officials hope the new scheme will tackle the thriving black market in body parts, and encourage voluntary donation, which remains far below demand. The state newspaper China Daily said that about one million people needed transplants each year – but only 1% received them.

“Transplants should not be a privilege for the rich,” it has Huang Jiefu, vice-minister for health, stating.

(Cheers, Lee and Marc)

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Straits Times – Organs from prisoners, August 26, 2009
The Guardian – Executed prisoners are main source of Chinese organ donations, August 26, 2009

At least, not until after Ramadan.

Her temporarily reprieve came after she was given the maximum penalty of a, “RM5,000 fine and six lashes of the rotan for drinking beer at a hotel,” says mysinchew.com.

Rotan means rattan cane, and the story has her saying she doesn’t plan to appeal: that she just wants to get it over with.

The shock over her decision, “elicited a media frenzy over how her punishment will be meted out,” says Muslim Media Watch, going on, “Malaysian newspapers analyzed in great detail the act of whipping, comparing the differences between criminal whipping and Shariah whipping, and even the dimensions of the ‘Shariah’ cane (it happens to be 1.22 m long and 1.25 cm thick, in case you’re wondering).

“One report even claims that Shariah whipping hardly inflicts any pain on the offender’s body, and that it is also much more merciful than civil corporal punishment, with the headline that reads, ‘A sentence not all it’s been whipped up to be’.”

Drinking alcohol is a religious offense for Malaysian Muslims, “who make up nearly two-thirds of the population,” says the Straits Times, adding:

“Offenders are prosecuted in Shariah courts, which handle cases mainly related to family and moral issues for Muslims. Most alcohol offenders are fined, but the law also provides for a three-year prison term and caning.

“Some politicians and women’s rights activists have criticised the religious court’s sentence, calling it too harsh.”

Caning is, “usually reserved for men in various crimes ranging from rape to bribery,” says the story, adding:

“But several Islamic lawyers have insisted that the penalty for Kartika is fair, saying she will be whipped with a thin rattan cane that does not cause severe pain.”

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mysinchew.com – Syariah court of appeal to revise Kartika’s sentence,  August 25, 2009
Muslim Media Watch – The Mother of All Sins: Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno’S Caning, July 20 9, 2009
Straits Times – M’sian woman accepts flogging, , July 23, 2009

The observation came from professor Wang Xiangnan, a behavioral psychologist and executive vice president of the Guangxi Behavioral Medicine Association, in a Shanghai Daily story which says local surfers are getting annoyed by, “huge spending by China’s nouveau riche on their children”.

The topic became hot online after, “revelations of a 200,000-yuan (US$29,300) 16th birthday party for a boy in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region,” says the story, continuing:

“Last month, a middle school student was reported to have used a private helicopter to go to school in Dongguan City in south China’s Guangdong Province due to traffic jams.

“Reaction on the Internet since Monday has been mixed as an article and pictures titled ‘China’s most luxurious birthday party’ were posted on major online forums.”

Adds Shanghai Daily:

“China has undergone fast economic development but along with that has come a widening income gap. Flaunting of wealth often leads to public criticism.”

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Shanghai Daily – Boy’s lavish birthday party criticized, August 22, 2009

Quoted by Agence France-Presse, the commission, Beijing’s economic planning agency, published the list, along with the top 15 energy users in the capital, which included the Beijing Benz-DaimlerChrysler plant,” says the story, going on:

China has set a goal of reducing average energy consumption by 20 percent from 2006 to 2010.

The 27 entities, ” will be subject to increased supervision and asked to submit plans to reduce energy use and pollution emissions, the commission said,” the story says, adding,  ” Beijing’s top energy users were the Capital Iron and Steel Corporation and the American chemical company Praxair.”

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Agence France-Presse – Coca-Cola, Pepsi on Beijing’s worst polluter list: govt, August 19, 2009

But what really made him stand out was the bright orange wig he wore, the black cheese-cutter hat which never left his head, and his strangely pale and blotchy skin.

His skin was ravaged and he’d lost all his hair because he’d served as a soldier during World War I when he became one of the millions of victims of mustard gas, a terrible weapon which left its wounded devastated.

“The sulfur mustards, of which mustard gas (1,5-dichloro-3-thiapentane) is [sic] a member, are a class of related cytotoxic, vesicant chemical warfare agents with the ability to form large blisters on exposed skin,” says the Wikipedia, from whence came the diagram on the right.

It goes on, “Pure sulfur mustards are colorless, viscous liquids at room temperature. However, when used in impure form as warfare agents they are usually yellow-brown in color and have an odor resembling mustard plants, garlic or horseradish, hence the name. Mustard gas was originally assigned the name LOST, after Lommel and Steinkopf, who first proposed the military use of sulfur mustard to the German Imperial General Staff.”

Now, residue in a vial found in a back yard in Northwest Washington has tested positive for the World War I blistering agent mustard, says the Washington Post.

Of course, land-mines, planted during various conflicts, are commonplace. And when the war is over, grass grows over them, or they’re covered in sand or otherwise hidden, and children playing where the bombs are buried have their legs blown off. If they’re lucky enough not to be killed.

But mustard gas in a back yard in Northwest Washington?

Yes, says the US Army Corps of Engineers, quoted in the story, going on:

“During World War I, the site of the discovery was a rural tract known as the American University Experiment Station, where the Army tested chemical weapons.

“The vacant property is now owned by the university.”

The, “small, dirt-encrusted vial, shaped like half of an hourglass, was about four inches tall,” says the Post. “Its seal was partially broken, and it was empty except for the residue, said Daniel Noble, project manager for the engineers’ cleanup of the area.”

The story adds:

“Noble said the cleanup at the site was halted after the vial was discovered, and the engineers are reassessing how and when work will continue. He said crews have been working at the property since 2007 and believed they were nearing the end of their efforts. Still, he said, finding the vial wasn’t entirely unexpected.

“In 2007 at the same site, workers found arsine, another chemical munition that Noble said never entered the arsenal; last year, a vomiting agent, called DA or Clark 1, was found. Experts have been scouring the neighborhood for buried munitions and chemicals since the 1990s.”

JN

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Washington Post – Vial Used for Chemical Agent Mustard Is Uncovered, August 13, 2009

GM to sell new cars, trucks on eBay
Agence France-Presse: General Motors and eBay announced Monday that the US automaker, which emerged from bankruptcy protection a month ago, will begin selling new …

With eBay partnership, GM lurches into the Internet age
Christian Science Monitor: Not in the mood to haul yourself to the local car dealership, and haggle over option packages and paint schemes? …

GM Sees eBay as a Way to Reach New Buyers
New York Times : General Motors will begin selling cars and trucks on the auction Web site eBay on Tuesday, one way that the automaker is trying to …

General Motors, eBay test selling cars online
Reuters:General Motors Co and eBay Inc are launching a test program in California that will allow …

GM, EBay team up to move new cars
San Francisco Chronicle: Consumers can now haggle over the price of new automobiles on EBay Inc., under a pilot program launching tomorrow that includes hundreds of General Motors …

Can eBay be your new car dealer and reduce GM’s inventory?
ZDNet: EBay’s grand experiment with General Motors Co. could be a novel answer to making the auto industry’s dealership networks more efficient. …

GM Sells Cars Through EBay in Bid to Return to Profit
Bloomberg: General Motors Co. will let customers buy cars and trucks online from some California dealers through …

No need to stay tuned.

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August, 2009