(April 1st): Shaquanda is now free. Read about it on her blog.
In Paris, Texas, a town once famous for public lynchings, a recent sentencing of a fourteen year old black girl to seven years in prison for pushing a teacher’s aid is making news all over the Internet. The girl had no previous arrest record, and the teacher’s aid wasn’t hurt. Three months earlier, the same judge sentenced a fourteen year old white girl, convicted of arson, to probation.
Shaquanda, the girl, had been targeted by school administrators before, due to her mother’s complaints of racism at the school. In this instance, the teacher’s aid did not let Shaquanda into the building to take her medicine, and according to Shaquanda the teacher’s aid actually pushed her first.
This case fits perfectly with the reputation for systemic racism in the Paris school system. In the past five years, there have been at least a dozen discrimination complaints filed by black parents against the school district.
Read more…
Posted by probabilityZero on 2007-03-31 | Filed under: Fucked up, News, Noteworthy | 30 responses
Variations of this have been floating around teh interwebs, so you’ve probably seen something like this before. I gathered some of my favorites here:
REPUBLICAN: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So what?
DEMOCRAT: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You vote people into office who tax your income from milk sales then take the tax money and buy a cow and give it to your neighbor.
DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your government.
CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.
BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk, then pours the milk down the drain.
FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.
PURE SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. You have to take care of all of the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.
BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and put them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as the regulations say you need.
FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them and sells you the milk.
PURE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.
RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.
CAMBODIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The government takes both of them and shoots you.
Read more…
Posted by probabilityZero on 2007-03-27 | Filed under: Other | 3 responses
Judge Claude Hilton issued a permanent injunction against Vonage with the purpose of disallowing their customers to make calls to standard phone lines. The argument is that Vonage is infringing on patents held by Verizon.
This could have permanent and serious consequences for VoIP, since nearly every VoIP service uses the technology that Verizon claims as their own (ie: VoIP to POTS).
IMO, this whole thing is baseless. Other companies were using the technology in question before Verizon patented it, and the whole case was just decided by which side had more money to throw at it. It’s just yet another case of a rich corporation crushing innovation in order to retain their relevance in an evolving market.
Posted by probabilityZero on 2007-03-23 | Filed under: Current events, Tech and games | one response
It’s official: Rep. Fortney “Pete” Stark, D-California, is the first atheistic congressmen. Well, first to admit it.
He made the announcement on March 12 (yeah I’m late, but I’ve been busy).
I look forward to working with the Secular Coalition to stop the promotion of narrow religious beliefs in science, marriage contracts, the military and the provision of social service
Posted by probabilityZero on 2007-03-20 | Filed under: Atheism, News | 2 responses
I found this online quiz with stumbleupon, and this is my result:
| You scored as Scientific Atheist. |
|
These guys rule. I’m not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future.
|
| Scientific Atheist |
|
92% |
| Apathetic Atheist |
|
83% |
| Militant Atheist |
|
67% |
| Agnostic |
|
50% |
| Spiritual Atheist |
|
42% |
| Angry Atheist |
|
42% |
| Theist |
|
8% |
|
What kind of atheist are you?
created with QuizFarm.com
Posted by probabilityZero on 2007-03-14 | Filed under: Atheism, Other | 6 responses
hy·poc·ri·sy (noun): a pretense of having a virtuous character, moral or religious beliefs or principles, etc., that one does not really possess.
Remember that whole thing with former President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky? And how former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich was leading the charge against him? Well, it turns out Gingrich was having his own affair at the time.
Yup, he was committing adultery just like Clinton, and at the same time.
Posted by probabilityZero on 2007-03-12 | Filed under: Current events, Fucked up, News | one response
Libby was found guilty on four out of five counts in the CIA leak case. Dick Cheney’s former aid lied to government investigators about what happened in the build-up to the war in Iraq.
In 2003, Ambassador Joseph Wilson revealed that the Bush administration had exaggerated the Iraq threat in his New York Times op-ed entitled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa,” referring to Iraq’s alleged purchase of Yellowcake from Niger. In retaliation, White House officials leaked the CIA identity of his wife to columnist and overall asshole Robert Novak.
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald led an investigation to determine who was involved in this leak, and the investigation has recently found that Libby was involved and deliberately lied about his part in the leak. The grand jury investigation is far from over, and by the end of this we may even see Cheney and Rove being brought up on charges…
Well, I can dream, can’t I?
Posted by probabilityZero on 2007-03-10 | Filed under: Current events, News | 3 responses
