The Chicago Sun Time is reporting a fascinating case involving a police cadet who collapsed from heat stroke after just 10 days in the police academy when asked to run three miles. Donald E. Barnes Jr. never finished the “slow jogging exercise” or the academy but was put on medical disability . . . . 15 years ago. Barnes has collected $500,000 over the last 15 years but has never returned to the academy to complete training, let alone work as an officer.
Category: Society
Witnesses in Houston are contradicting police accounts of the fatal shooting of Rufino Lara. Officer J. McGowan arrived at the scene after reportedly being called by friends of Lara who said that he was being chased by men with a knife (he does not speak English). The friends of Lara insist that when McGowen arrived she told Lara to put his hand in the air and then shot the unarmed man. A friend started to film the scene as McGown allegedly ripped open his shirt in search of a weapon until McGown seized the camera and said that she is not allowed to film police officers.
By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
It’s hard to strike the right balance between respect and mirth in writing this story, but I will try. Faithful in West New York, New Jersey, have commenced pilgrimages to a tree at the intersection of 60th Street and Bergenline Avenue. The skinny tree stands in front of a music store. On it, they say, is a revelation showing an image of the Virgin Mary resembling the famous sighting at Guadalupe.
Candles, flowers, cards, and towns folk have gathered around the opening in the bark where the purported miracle is said to be. Catholic diocesan spokesman and aptly named, James Goodness, is not convinced of divine intervention saying the image is likely “just some discoloration” that resembles St. Mary. However, the churchman is not one to disabuse the faithful of their faith. “But if it helps people to be stronger in their faith, then it is a good thing,” Goodness said.
Or is it?
Source: NJ.com
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Amber Estes (left) has submitted an article to The University of Georgia student newspaper entitled “How to find that perfect husband in college.” Estes writes that the four years of college are “four years to find a husband” and provides six easy to follow steps.
Step 2: Spend your free time casually moseying around the law school.
Step 4: On your first date, STAY CLASSY. A man won’t get down on one knee for a woman who is overly willing to get down on both of hers.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
For many years in the late 60’s and through the 70’s a group of twenty five friends and co-workers would camp for a weekend on an island in the middle of Long Lake, in the Adirondack mountains. At the time these were the people who were closest to me, even more so than my family. The island we camped on in the middle of this magnificent lake was as beautiful and tranquil as you might imagine it to be. You could only reach it by boat and the isolation added to the feeling of peace that settled over us when we were there. An old mansion had once stood on a rise looking out at the Lake. All that remained of it was a huge fireplace and chimney. We would cook large dinners as twilight descended. As we ate our meals more wood was piled on the cooking fire until it was a large blazing bonfire and we would get high, talk, gaze into the fire’s ever changing shapes and play/sing music as night descended, sharing the communion and the warmth of our interrelationship.
As I recall those long weekends four decades past, I recognize that we were taking part in a ritual as old as the beginnings of human society. The sharing of a communal meal, the comfort of close companionship, primitive music and a roaring fire keeping away the terrors of the night. These earliest of human rituals developed the beginnings of that which we call society. Ritual as I define it is a combination of repetitive actions, rites and procedures performed by two or more individuals that provides comforting feeling and a sense of shared togetherness. The behaviors tap into the most universal of human archetypes and thus are easily recognized as reassuring by participants and by groups. I’m using my own definition here because if you Google “ritual defined” you will get a multiplicity of definitions, all with some precision, that in the end make the explanation of ritual more complex than it should be, hence my own hubris in creating my own definition.
As millennia passed the communal campfire developed into a complex mixture of ritual that bonded people together and like the earliest ones provide the comfort of safety in a fear ridden world. My generation of hipsters abjured the rituals we inherited, even as we created rituals of our own. It is a fact of humanity’s existence within society’s that communal rituals are needed to bond us together and that the breakdown of some of the binding rituals of American society, have separated us and have made our lives more chaotic and less personally meaningful. Let me explain what I perceive. Continue reading “A Meditation on Ritual”
By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Around the mid 19th Century, Southern separatists coined a name for the commodity that guaranteed their region’s prosperity and defiantly signaled their immunity from the control of the despised central government controlled by Northern industrialists – “King Cotton.” “King Cotton” became a reason and a battle cry, emboldening the separatists to strike out at Fort Sumter against perceived injustices. The slogan served as a wedge between two regions whose cooperation just two generations earlier had forged a new nation. King Cotton was deposed at Appomattox Courthouse in 1865 and the country was spared his influence for the time being.
A new king arose on those same Southern cotton fields, now perfectly re-invented as measured, marked, and manicured line-bound rectangles with iron posts commemorating each end. King Cotton was replaced in the Southern psyche with a sport borrowed from the ivy-covered walls of the Northeast colleges. In places like Tuscaloosa and Baton Rouge and Knoxville and Athens, a new king was born, and his open-air castles holding 75,000+ subjects spread through the “fly-over states,” into towns with funny names, and even to the tiny central Pennsylvania town of State College. King Football reigns supreme in the minds of many today — it’s the nation’s most popular and lucrative sport, if combined with the professional ranks, or merely in second place if you’re talking about the game played on the campuses.
During the recent coverage on the health care decision, I had repeated occasion to disagree with co-commentators who heralded the Roberts decision as a triumph for the Court in regaining credibility and getting beyond ideological divisions. That seems curious to me since the vote was still 5-4 and was fractured into multiple opinions. The Roberts opinion in my view was also fundamentally in conflict with itself and re-wrote the federal law in a new image. It appears that the opinion did not alter the opinion of the public, either. If anything the public’s view of the Court has worsened after the decision.
Continue reading “Poll: Supreme Court’s Standing Falls Further After Health Care Decision”
While both President Obama and his Republicans challengers continue to engage in faith-based politics, a recent poll shows Americans faith in organized religion at an all-time low. Nevertheless, attacks on atheists and agnostics and secularists appear at an all-time high in the West (here and here).
Ironically, while confidence in our politicians are also at an all time low, they have reached out to churches to help push the faithful to the polls.
Continue reading “Gallop: Faith In Organized Religion At All-Time Low”
We have been following the Penn State scandal and the school’s possible culpability in the matter. Now the long-awaited Freeh report has been issued (a copy is below). The report is a damning indictment of the school which is found to have failed to protect the children in order to protect the school from embarrassment. This included “striking lack of empathy for child abuse victims by the most senior leaders of the University.”
My friend Ralph Nader became famous with his study of “Unsafe At Any Speed,” showing the dangers of the Chevrolet Corvair. He may want to do a sequel based on this vehicle seized by the Minnesota State Patrol. You start with a Ford Pinto (notorious for blowing up in relatively low-speed collisions) and then add a few of these personal touches to make what may be the world’s most unsafe vehicle.
What is appropriate as a caffeinated drink at a funeral? A Frappuccino seems a bit festive but a Caramel Macchiato seems too loud for the occasion. Perhaps a specialty mortician mocha to give you that jolt you need to make it through the eulogy. That is the difficult choice that will face mourners at the Robinson Funeral Home in Easley, South Carolina where the fourth-generation family will be adding a Starbucks shop. It is not clear why a coffee machine with some Starbucks coffee would not suffice but mourners will soon be able to sign the deceased’s visitor book and move directly over to the baristas at the “Coffee Corner.”
While declaring the demise of the West, Russian President Vladimir Putin is close to enacting sweeping new powers to regulate the Web and block sites of his government’s choosing. He has received support from Natalya Kaspersky, chief executive of InfoWatch, who said that the Web could use some government control and that civil libertarians are exaggerating concerns about Putin’s control of speech on the Internet. For those people signing up with InfoWatch, it may come as a bit of a surprise that the company is aligned with a man who is rolling back on basic civil liberties for millions and working to limit speech on the Internet — a threat to his authoritarian agenda. Kaspersky actually heralds the possible benefits of a Russian blacklist controlled by Putin.
Islamic militants destroyed two of the historic tombs at the famous 14th century Djingareyber mosque in Timbuktu this week. The militants from the Ansar Dine group say the centuries-old shrines of the local Sufi version of Islam are idolatrous. In the meantime, some Egyptian Muslim extremists are following the victory by the Muslim Brotherhood with demands that the pyramids be destroyed for the same reason. Obviously these are extreme groups within the Muslim community. This later story is based on accounts coming from various sites but appear based on the same claimed translation of sites, though some have called it a hoax.
Continue reading “Islamic Militants Destroy Historic Sites In Timbuktu”
It was bad enough that Junior Yazzie, 54, was arrested for his seventh DWI this week. However, his latest victim could not be more worse — Aztec Magistrate Judge Carla Vescovi-Dial. Judge Vescovi-Dial is still recovering from the accident where she was a passenger. She is one of six magistrate judges in San Juan County and handles primarily . . . you guessed it . . . drunk driving cases.
Continue reading “New Mexico Man Arrested For Seventh DWI . . . After Hitting Local Judge”
The Rich couple is back in the news. If you recall, President Bill Clinton pardoned billionaire trader Marc Rich in one of the most unwarranted presidential acts under the pardon power — a pardon rightfully denounced as little more than a payback for a wealthy supporter by Clinton. Now, Rich’s wife, Denise, has given up her U.S. citizenship — reportedly to avoid taxes. Clinton should be doubly ashamed of his association and assistance to this couple.