Current Affairs

[EvolutionHasBegun]

first in response to that last post...as if wisconsin didnt have enough diseases floating around already? am i right here people?

now for this article i found....

Alleged Burglar in Thong Leaves Video
From Associated Press
September 26, 2006 4:40 PM EDT
FORT MITCHELL, Ky. - A northern Kentucky man wearing only a thong and carrying a knife allegedly videotaped himself attempting a burglary, then left the tape behind, police said. That evidence ultimately led to his arrest, Fort Mitchell Police Chief Steve Hensley said.

Rodney McMillen, 36, of Covington was charged over the weekend with first-degree burglary.

"This is a very, very bizarre case, to say the least," Hensley said.

McMillen allegedly broke into a woman's apartment about 3 a.m. EDT on Sept. 20, clad in only thong underwear and carrying a knife, Hensley said. The woman fended off the attacker, who left the apartment and fled into a stand of trees near the apartment complex, Hensley said.

Investigating officers found a video camera the burglar left in the apartment, Hensley said, and found video of McMillen's family on the end of the tape, Hensley said.

Investigators were able to identify some of them and tracked down McMillen at his mother's house in Norwood, Ohio, Hensley said.

McMillen was lodged in the Hamilton County Justice Center in Cincinnati on $50,000 bond, awaiting extradition to Kentucky.

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Information from: The Cincinnati Post, http://www.cincypost.com


okay a few simple points here....first..is anyone really surprised this happened in Kentucky? second...SEE Rog men DO wear thongs...and third... do ya think this guy was related to the panty thief i mentioned in that other article earlier?

[Rogue Angel]

That is so fkn stupid... that i'm actually embarrassed for this guy... i can feel my face turning red.... [img]redface.gif[/img] what a dumbass.... LOL.

[Pickles]

Parents kidnaped bride-to-be

Associated Press

SALT LAKE CITY The parents of a bride-to-be told their daughter they were taking her on a shopping trip, but then drove to Colorado and kept her there until she missed the nuptials.

Lemuel and Julia Redd have been charged with second-degree felony kidnapping. Utah County Attorney Kay Bryson said Tuesday he met with the couples daughter, Julianna, and her now-husband Perry Myers before charging the parents.

Ive never had a case quite like this, Bryson said. It is strange that parents would go to that extent to keep an adult daughter from marrying the man that she had chosen to marry.

The Redds told their 21-year-old daughter they were taking her on a shopping trip Aug. 4 and then drove 240 miles from Provo to Grand Junction, Colo., according to Provo police Capt. Rick Healey.

Myers, 23, called police when his bride didnt attend a pre-wedding dinner with his parents that night.

The couple, both students at Brigham Young University, were married Aug. 8 in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Temple in Salt Lake City. They are expecting their first child in May.

The Redds didnt want their daughter to get married, but the bride has been reluctant to say what happened on the drive. Myers said he and his wife were not discussing details of the car ride but said her parents objections were not about him.

It really has nothing to do a lot with me. It really is some issues with the family, he said.

Bryson said after reviewing the police investigation it was clear a crime was committed. Charges were filed Friday.

Lemuel, 59, and Julia Redd, 56, are scheduled to make an initial court appearance Oct. 26. If convicted, the Redds could face one to 15 years in prison.

A call made to a listing for Lemuel H. Redd at the address in Monticello, Utah, listed in court documents went unanswered Tuesday. No attorney for the Redds is listed in court documents and it couldnt immediately be determined if they had legal representation.

[Rogue Angel]

damn... even MY parents aren't THAT bad... LOL...

Bomb threat shuts down Virginia school district

Staff, employees told to stay home; 7,000 students get day off

CULPEPER, Va. - A bomb threat shut down an entire Virginia school district Thursday, canceling classes for more than 7,000 students in eight public schools, as well as hundreds more in area religious schools and child care centers.

Culpeper County Schools spokeswoman Marla McKenna said she couldn?t discuss the content of the threat, which came on the heels of three deadly U.S. school attacks in the span of a week. Culpeper is about 60 miles southwest of Washington, D.C.

?You simply cant be too cautious,? said Superintendent David A. Cox. ?The safety of our students and our employees is our number one concern.?

Authorities were searching the closed school buildings Thursday for any dangerous materials, McKenna said.

Culpeper Sheriff Lee Hart said that the threat was called in around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday with no specific information about locations except that they involved schools. He declined to release further details.

[EvolutionHasBegun]

Wayward Emu Captured at W.Va. School
From Associated Press
October 06, 2006 1:49 PM EDT

St. ALBANS, W.Va. - No kids, that's not Big Bird from Sesame Street. It was an emu that wandered onto the Anne Bailey Elementary School grounds near St. Albans Thursday afternoon.

No one seems to know where the bird came from, but a Charleston doctor has agreed to take the bird to his farm and release it.

Kanawha County deputies came by and helped cage it after school officials called numerous agencies asking what to do about the bird.

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Information from: The Charleston Gazette, http://www.wvgazette.com
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[Rogue Angel]

LMFAO.... wtf is an emu? well, i guess it's a big, weird looking bird... are they indigenous to this area? cuz i've heard of them, but never in connection with WV... that's crazy, lol. *kicks all the people that still say W.Va*. Grr, every state has a two letter abbreviation.

[Rogue Angel]

*gives HB a kick to turn the page*.... i was in the mood to kick something else anyway.... *G*

[EvolutionHasBegun]

maybe it was from Bluefish?? [img]graemlins/hmmm.gif[/img]

[Rogue Angel]

ah, yes... the mystical city of Bluefish... that doesn't exist... LOL.... it's sort of like Atlantis, i think... look at the name, maybe they're neighboring cities.... [img]wink.gif[/img]

[Rogue Angel]

Having Climbed Out Onto a Limb That Cracks ?How should a newspaper crawl back?

This week, New York columnist Kurt Andersen adds another 2,000 words to the din of criticism savaging the New York Times for its coverage of the Duke rape case.

Andersen's sharply reasoned piece cites previous volleys launched by Stuart Taylor Jr. (April 29 [$] and May 20 in National Journal; Aug. 29 in Slate); two Times op-ed columnists, David Brooks (May 28 [$]) and Nicholas Kristof (June 11 [$]); and blogger KC Johnson.* In a nutshell, the critics rebuke the paper for its credulous coverage of District Attorney Mike Nifong's investigation and prosecution of three lacrosse players.

By my reckoning, the critics win the match, a judgment I believe most readers will also reach after reading the Times accounts (see its "Duke University" page) and the words of its detractors.

But I'm not here to re-review the Duke case. My topic is grander: Why is it so hard for newspapers that have climbed out onto a limb in reporting a story to turn back once they hear the wood cracking? Instead of announcing their errors in judgment, most newspapers reverse course by ignoring the flawed stories in their back pages and taking a new tack?as if those old stories had never been written. Inside the trade, correcting a previous story in a new story without acknowledging the past error is called row-back.

Part of the problem is practical?nobody outside a few press critics working online want today's newspaper to annotate yesterday's flawed news and add a few new facts. The news moves, and readers rightly expect newspapers to move with it. But when a newspaper is instrumental in shaping the press coverage of a news topic, and it turns out to have botched the story on several levels, an explicit course correction would benefit everybody.

So, why are newspapers so hesitant to acknowledge their flawed work? Among other things, no journalist ever got a raise for saying, "I got it wrong." The whole incentive structure encourages journalists to deny or otherwise obfuscate the mistakes and miscues they and their publications commit.

This is good for journalists, of course, but bad for readers. Last month, I berated the Washington Post for publishing a Page One story on widely held misconceptions about anthrax without mentioning that it had been a prime purveyor of those very misconceptions four years ago. This is like ringing your neighbor's doorbell and screaming that his house is on fire but neglecting to tell him you lit the flame.

Newspaper reporters, as opposed to opinion journalists writing in Slate and elsewhere, subscribe to the gospel of objectivity. In theory, objectivity is a terrific concept: By considering all the facts impartially and presenting them in a balanced and fair manner, you find the truth. But journalistic objectivity fractures when its practitioners get many important details right?as the Times reporters have in their Duke dispatches?but still manage to botch the essence of the story. As long as they satisfy themselves that they've been objective and accurate in the presentation of facts, newspapers have no elegant mechanism for saying, "Whoops!" and correcting course. Instead, newspapers tend to reinforce their mistakes in judgment or ignore them until the noise from critics forces them to confess to a kind of journalistic malpractice. This is how the Times finally extricated itself from its flawed Wen Ho Lee and WMD coverage.

What newspapers need is a tool larger than a correction but smaller than a voluminous editors' note. Ideally, it would fit inside the body of a news story?preferably close to the top?and economically and transparently signal that a paper's previous coverage of a story was flawed.

Say the Gazette had charted for its readers an ocean of damning evidence about Col. Mustard's apparent role in the murder of the Maid, but that the Gazette had overplayed his culpability. No need to put on the hair shirt and complain about being duped by county prosecutors. A simple explanation citing new evidence?or a fresh look at old evidence?would suffice, as long as it conveyed the elemental fact that the paper was turning 90 degrees on the murdered-Maid case. The first two paragraphs of the corrective story might read:

In March, District Attorney Clem Rightwrong repeatedly told scores of reporters that he possessed evidence that a Condiment family member had killed the Maid with a lead pipe in the Old Mansion's conservatory. Swinging the lead pipe in his hand for TV cameras, Rightwrong also cited DNA records that would show that a Condiment family member whose skin was of a yellowish hue, presumably Col. Mustard, had done the bludgeoning.

Rightwrong's claims received credence from the media, including this newspaper. But an impartial re-examination of the evidence and critiques by Col. Mustard's defense lawyers and others show that the district attorney misinformed the public.

Assigning new reporters to botched stories might also help clear the air. New reporters aren't as invested in maintaining a paper's earlier, flawed findings. But bringing in new reporters isn't essential. Newsweek proved that in its coverage of the Duke story. In its June 29 issue, it unambiguously states that its May 1 coverage was too credulous. Both stories were written by Evan Thomas and Susannah Meadows. In the fourth paragraph of the mea culpa-ing June 29 piece, they write:

The media coverage of the case has been enormous. Newsweek put the mug shots of two of the players?Reade Seligmann, 20, and Collin Finnerty, 19?on its cover the week after they were indicted. Some early accounts raised doubts about the guilt of the players, but the story more typically played as a morality tale of pampered jocks gone wild. Lately, as more evidence from police or medical reports have been filed or cited in court documents by defense lawyers, the national and local media have been raising questions about Nifong's conduct of the case and his motivations.

Credit Newsweek with appreciating that it matters less where you start on a story than where you end.