Jerseyville to prosecute Alton teens after assault by Super Soaker
Closed Published April 18th, 2006 Tags: Jerseyville, super soaker water guns, teenagers5 Alton teens charged in water gun escapade at school
Five Alton teenagers face criminal charges after four of them, armed with plastic water guns, climbed through a window at Jersey High School and doused students taking a history exam.Alton High was out of school for a holiday break Thursday, and students at Jersey Community High School were wrapping up a shortened day when the four young men, dressed in black with bandannas covering their faces, slid through a first-floor window into a classroom, sprayed the classroom with Super Soaker water guns, then sprinted down the hallway, said Jerseyville police Sgt. Roger Kirby.
A fifth teen was waiting outside in the getaway car. A neighborhood resident had already called police because the car was parked in her driveway and she was suspicious because the car had duct tape over its license plate, Kirby said.
You’ve got to be kidding me. A Class B and two Class C misdemeanors for assault by Super Soaker? Suspend them from school, sure. Maybe even a single criminal count so you can impose some probation and community service, but this is a bit extreme. As is the reaction of Jerseyville Police Sgt. Roger Kirby:
“They said they didn’t know why we were making such a big deal out of this, that it was just a joke,” Kirby said. “They invaded our school, concealed their identity. … We didn’t take it as a joke,” especially considering the time of year, he said, referring to the anniversary this week of the Columbine school shootings in Colorado.
They didn’t “invade” your school. They sprayed a bunch of kids with Super Soakers, and they should be punished for it. But let’s leave the Columbine references on the sideline and not try to put these teenagers in adult lockup for six months.
Jerseyville, super soaker water guns, teenagers
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Pujols goes yard in fourth straight AB
Closed Published April 18th, 2006 Tags: albert pujols, baseball, cardinals
Another day, another Albert Pujols game-winning homer. At this rate, he’ll hit 112 home runs. Pujols and Chris Shelton have each hit 9 HR in their first 13 games, 2nd best in major league history behind Mike Schmidt, who hit 11 in the first 13 games of 1976 (he actually was homerless in game 13 on 4/27/76, so it was 11 in his first 12 including a four homer, 8 RBI game). Schmidt ended up cooling off in 1976, and hit .262 with 38 HR and 95 RBI.
Pujols’ game-winning dinger came in the top of the first, as Jason Marquis made the lead hold up through eight strong innings. That means Pujols hit homers in four straight plate appearances, the first Cardinal to do so (Stan Musial hit HRs in four straight at-bats, but there were walks in between official at bats). He hit game-winning homers in two straight plate appearances. The four homers in four straight plate appearances marked the 20th time the feat had been accomplished.
Pujols’ long ball drove in So Taguchi, who filled the #2 hole in the order, allowing Juan Encarnacion to take the 5 hole vacated by Jim Edmonds. Taguchi was 2-5, an improvement over Encarnacion’s recent performance in that role. Hector Luna got the start at 2B, and went 2-4, keeping his average at .500 on the season. This offense continues to be carried by Pujols, Scott Rolen and the combination of Luna and Aaron Miles, while Edmonds, Encarnacion and Yadier Molina wait to get on track.
Jason Marquis had another strong outing, giving up a single run on three hits over eight innings. Two of those hits came in the eighth, as a pinch hit single by Nate McLouth drove in Jose Castillo, who had doubled. Marquis got out of the eighth with no further damage, and Jason Isringhausen pitched around a leadoff double in the ninth to get the save, finishing with two strikeouts and a grounder to second. Hopefully, this means Izzy, who had served up game-winning HRs in 2 of his last 3 appearances, has turned a corner.
The Cards play game 2 of a three-game set with the Pirates at PNC Tuesday. Jeff Suppan (0-1, 4.09) faces the Bucs’ Oliver Perez (0-2, 8.10).
albert pujols, baseball, cardinals
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Kevin Underwood is a scumbag from Purcell, OK who abducted and murdered his upstairs neighbor, 10-year-old Jamie Rose Bolin. According to police, Underwood had a longstanding plan to abduct, rape, kill, devour and dismember someone. If you really want the details, see this article in the Norman Transcript.
Underwood was also a blogger with a blog on Blogspot. Kevin at Wizbang notes Underwood’s Blogger profile:
About MeSingle, bored, and lonely, but other than that, pretty happy.
If you were a cannibal, what would you wear to dinner?
The skin of last night’s main course.
Amazon has removed Underwood’s wishlist, which included Meat is Murder!: An Illustrated Guide to Cannibal Culture.
Most interesting to me was Underwood’s entry from September 8, 2005, where he appeared to recognize that he had mental problems:
Then, it all came to a head at once. The strain of all these problems, especially the social phobia, was too much to bear. I was in danger of having a mental breakdown at any moment. So I finally decided that I would have to drop out of college. I went to my mom, and told her for the first time, about my depression and social phobia, I’d never told anyone before, not even my best friend Chris. I told my mom, and told her about my social anxiety problem, and that I was going to drop out of college and start going to a psychiatrist. She didn’t really understand my problem, and still doesn’t (whenever I try to talk about how shy I am around people, her answer is, “Just stop, don’t be that way.”), but she was supportive anyway. So I dropped out of college, this was in early November. I never did see a psychiatrist, because as soon as I dropped out, I started feeling a little better, and I hated the idea of going to one because I knew all they’d do is give me pills.
This was in November 1998. Had this guy seen that psychiatrist, would Jamie be alive today? Maybe not - there’s no pill for evil. So Underwood doesn’t see the doctor, and then the coworker at Carl’s Jr. for whom he had an unrequited thing and her boyfriend are in a car accident. The boyfriend dies, but unrequited love interest pulls through:
I went to Tim’s funeral, and I also went to see Genie in the hospital every day. She did make it through, but she was in the hospital until December 18, the day before my birthday. I went and saw her every day, and I would sit there for hours. Even the days she was unconscious, or so doped up on morphine she barely even knew who she was. Even when she was conscious, she’d still be so doped up I had to help her eat. Most days I was the only visitor she had, her family hardly ever even came to see her. Partly because it was about an hour’s drive to even get to the hospital she was at. But I drove it every day, and sat with her every day.
I felt like a horrible person. Because in the back of my mind, a voice kept telling me, “Hey, she’s single now, just give her a couple of months to get over the loss of Tim, and then make your move.” I’d tell that voice to shut up, and stop thinking things like that, but it kept coming back.
Is this the event that turned Underwood from pathologically shy loner to psychopath? Because it can be a seemingly benign, if traumatic, moment that pushes one over the edge. In any event, Underwood was suicidal after that, though he never acted on the impulses. Eventually he returned to his life of Carl’s Jr. and video games, only to deteriorate again:
Over time I started getting a little better, but I battled depression for a couple of years. I still have the social phobia, and very occasionally small bouts of depression, but I’m much better than I was then, at least when it comes to the depression.
But still, over the last year or so I find myself becoming more and more detached from the world. I almost never leave the apartment except to go to work or my parents’ house, and when I do leave the apartment, I walk around like a zombie, with a blank expression on my face, not looking at anything or anyone. In fact, the last couple of months, I’ve noticed that my eyesight is going, probably because my eyes are getting weak. Whenever I’m out of the house, I never focus on anything, I stare blankly ahead, operating on a sort of fuzzy peripheral vision. The only things I ever really focus on and look at are books or computer screens for hours on end, which strains my eyes further. When I’m not safe in my apartment, I am silent and expressionless, looking at nothing. I have no personality. If someone says hi to me, I either ignore them, or grunt out a small “hi,” or “ok,” if they ask me how I’m doing. It gets worse every day, I withdraw farther and farther into myself with each passing week.
My spirit has been totally crushed. Anyone who looks into my eyes can see this.
I wish I could be like I used to be. I wish I could be like Melissa.
I wish I could be human.
This guy is an evil scumbag. He killed a ten year old and planned to decapitate her and eat her. But either he recognized that there was something wrong with him, which means that other people could have, too, or he’s a total sociopath who made the whole thing up. It makes the whole story more tragic - could something have been done in 1998 or 2005 to keep him from acting on his evil impulses?
crime, Kevin Underwood, murder, psychiatry
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Nuggets of Inanity
Closed Published April 17th, 2006 Tags: food, McDonalds, nanny state, trans fat, WalmartWhat happens when the NY Times gets an “author who is writing a book about fats” to write an op-ed about trans fats? You get a load of tripe like Nuggets of Death.
The F.D.A. should set a limit of 5 percent here. Opponents of such a cap have argued that it is not worth the trouble, because the average American consumes so little trans fat. But the Danish study clearly shows that some — especially the sizable population eating fast foods — consume trans fats in dangerous doses.Others have argued that the government should let consumers choose for themselves. But consumers can’t make informed choices when so much of their food isn’t labeled. And given that we are expected to monitor salt, high-fructose corn syrup, peanut traces and other potential dangers, a trip through the supermarket is already beginning to resemble taking the SAT.
None of this is much of a surprise, of course. Nina Teicholz has been sounding the trans fat alarm for years, including a Gourmet magazine piece in 2004. She also pounds on every proponent of the nanny state’s favorite enemy, Wal Mart, bemoaning the retail giant’s entry into foodstuffs by writing in Gourmet in 2005 that “we will increasingly be eating according to mass-market tastes, shopping in massive Supercenters and living in the world that Wal-Mart built.” Can’t have the common folk eating what they want when they have good ol’ Nina telling them what they should eat, at least if they subscribe to Gourmet.
And what of personal responsibility? No, we need the government, because it’s just too hard to pay attention to what one sticks in one’s gullet. Why, it took a Danish study to determine that McDonald’s products have so many trans fats, right? Not exactly. No one disputes that too many fats of all kinds are bad for you. Current science indicates that too many trans fats are particularly bad. But the answer is not to get the government into the food content regulating business. It’s for people to take responsibility. But that’s something people like Nina Teicholz will never accept - if people have to accept the consequences for what they do, where’s the market for scolding journalism from people like Nina Teicholz.
And like all food scolds, Teicholz can’t be bothered with little things like facts when there’s an agenda at stake. Ed Cone notes that Teicholz claims that “Trans fats are also easily manipulated, able to give a Goldfish cracker its crunch, for instance,” while Pepperidge Farms’ product actually contains no trans fats.
food, McDonalds, nanny state, trans fat, Walmart
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Meryl Yourish on the suicide bombing in Tel Aviv
Once more, for those who claim that the palestinian murderers use suicide bombing attacks because they don’t have tanks or other military weapons, I should like to point out that Tel Aviv has never been a part of the occupied territories.The bombing took place in Tel Aviv. Six people dead so far, 52 wounded, two critically. The wounded, of course, carry nails and shrapnel in their bodies, as well as rat poison in many cases. The murderers put it in to cause more bleeding, in the hopes of killing more people. These are the bombs used in “self-defense.â€
Islamic Jihad and Fatah — I’m sorry, Al-Aqsa — are claiming the bombing. Hamas says it was self-defense.
Sure. Self-defense. In Tel Aviv. At a bus station. At a falafel shop. Those are dangerous people, falafel-eaters.
No, they carry out these terrorist attacks because they are murderous thugs who like to kill Jews. They kill people like Philip Balahsan, who was at the site of the bombing with his two children. Hamas are terrorists, and any government led by Hamas is a terror government. This attack, coming a mere two weeks after Hamas took over the PA, should heighten the resolve of all western governments to eliminate funding to the Palestinians. They voted for terrorists, so now they must reap what they sowed.
Hamas, politics, terrorism
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Missouri legislators are considering a bill designed to limit a form of corporate welfare, tax increment financing, which allows developers to use the future property taxes, sales taxes and other taxes that their projects will generate. But critics of the bill say it doesn’t go far enough.
Since the law was passed in 1982, cities across the state have set up hundreds of TIF districts that have diverted hundreds of millions of dollars to developers. County governments, school districts, library boards and ambulance districts are among the entities that forgo revenue.After hours of debate over several days, the Senate decided to leave intact the vague definition of “blight” that has allowed the program to spread. Areas can be declared blighted based on factors such as defective street layout and obsolete platting.
But under the bill, vacant fields or farmland in the St. Louis region would no longer qualify. The region is defined as the city of St. Louis and St. Louis, St. Charles, Jefferson and Franklin counties.
Statewide, undeveloped or vacant land would be ineligible if the project consisted solely of homes or apartments. The idea is, schools can’t afford to lose property taxes from new subdivisions full of children who need educating.
TIF and its necessary partner, eminent domain, have created huge problems in St. Louis County. Local municipalities have created hundreds of TIF districts, exempting the regions from taxation. Meanwhile, a fragmented sales tax system has left many municipalities dependent upon economic development projects to fund local government, so the municipalities heavily recruit developers, which requires even more TIF districts and eminent domain abuse. It’s a vicious cycle that will only be circumvented if the government limits (or, better yet, eliminates) TIF.
This bill certainly doesn’t go far enough. Developers, as always, have the upper hand, claiming that the projects will go to Illinois or Kansas instead. But does anyone really believe that Home Depot would shun Missouri if TIF was not available? Should taxpayers really be subsidizing this development? No and no.
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As a parent, I respect the motivation begind sex offender registries, and I consult them in deciding where to live. But they are overinclusive, and their rigidity can lead to unnecessary hardship not easily reconciled. One Missouri “sex offender” found a way off the registry by getting a judge to throw out his guilty plea.
Sylvester Adaway, now 30, had sex with a 13-year-old girl twleve years ago (when he was 18). She told authorities that she had consented and had not disclosed her age. Adaway agreed to plead guilty to statutory rape in exchange for a suspended imposition of sentence, serving two years of probation in return for having no felony conviction on his record. An untold number of registered sex offenders in Missouri got there in similar fashion, pleading guilty in return for a suspended sentence and no felony record.
Since his conviction, Adaway was charged in Michigan for failing to register as a sex offender, causing him to lose his job as a police officer, his wife to lose her license as an in-home day care provider, and forcing him onto the Arkansas sex offender registry (where he now lives). So Adaway turned to the judge from his 1993 guilty pleas for help.
[Adaway] asked the judge in his 1993 rape case to throw out his guilty plea and dismiss the case.
Judge Stephen R. Sharp did so - and gladly.
Sharp, the presiding judge in Dunklin County, in the Missouri Bootheel, said he had not intended for Adaway’s guilty plea to brand him for life as a rapist.
“My hopes for him are that he can go ahead now without being stigmatized as some sort of threat to his neighbors and people in the neighborhood, which I don’t believe he is or ever was,” Sharp said.
Sex offender registries serve a useful purpose, and their privacy implications can probably be justified under the circumstances. But the law needs to limit what types of offenders must register, and should allow offenders to petition for removal from the registry. Missouri currently does neither, and the legislature or courts should rectify this problem.
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The Cards closed out their first homestand at their new stadium by taking two of three from the Reds, who came into St. Louis sporting a somewhat surprising 6-3 record. The longball was the story of the two Cardinals wins, as the home team slammed seven homers in Saturday and Sunday’s games, including four by Albert Pujols. Three of those came yesterday, as Pujols tied the game at 4 with a two run blast in the fifth and won the game with a dramatic walk-off two run shot to left in the ninth. This reversed a mini-slump for Albert, who entered Saturday’s game hitting .273 and left Sunday’s game batting .341 with a league-leading 8 HR and 17 RBI.
Chris Carpenter pitched like a Cy Young winner on Friday, even though he got tagged with a 1-0 loss, giving up only four hits and one run in eight innings. Sidney Ponson picked up his first win as a Cardinal on Saturday in a good but not great performance, giving up two runs in six and a third. Ponson throws a lot of pitches, and isn’t going to pitch much past the sixth inning in any game. Mark Mulder wasn’t nearly as sharp Sunday as he was in hist previous start, giving up four runs on ten hits in five innings.
Ponson and Mulder’s starts emphasized the most glaring weakness on the 2006 Cardinals - the bullpen. Mulder was in line for the win after Pujols and Scott Rolen went deep back-to-back in the fifth, but the pen had to be rescued by Pujols’ ninth-inning heroics. Ricardo Rincon and Jason Isringhausen sport ERAs of 9.00 and 15.00, respectively. Izzy is 3-for-4 in saves, but gave the Brewers a win on Thursday and has walked 5 in 6 innings, only striking out one. This is the biggest flaw Tony LaRussa needs to address, although Jim Edmonds’ sloppy defense and lack of hitting is also a concern.
Next up: the Cards start a road trip with a visit to Pittsburgh. Jason Marquis (2-0, 3.97) faces paul Maholm (0-1, 7.71).
baseball, cardinals
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I attended my first game at the new Busch Stadium last week (the Cards’ 11-inning loss to the Brewers), and I came away impressed. First the caveat: I’m not a St. Louis native, and attended only a single game at Busch II, the final game before the 1985 mini-strike on August 5, 1985. Therefore, my memory of the old stadium is not clouded by emotion. Busch II was an abomination, part of the fleet of UFOs that dropped in on National League cities in the late 1960s. There was absolutely nothing memorable about those round, astroturf-laden, multipurpose monstrosities. Luckily, with the demolition of Busch II, all four are now relegated to the dustbin of history.
There’s a strange backlash against the New Retro stadia, such as David Bonetti’s architecture column in the Post on Sunday:
How exciting it would have been for the new St. Louis if a truly contemporary stadium had been built here. Like Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; Rem Koolhaas’ Central Library in Seattle; or Chicago’s Millennium Park, it would have said to the world that St. Louis was a city of ambition and worthy of attention, as it was when it commissioned Eero Saarinen to build the great Arch that defines the city and continues to shame its current timidity.
Ironically, contemporary-style stadiums are being built all over the world, including in the United States, to great popular appeal. The age of the retro stadium is over.
Egad. The Bilbao Guggenheim as baseball stadium. The thought of it makes me cringe. Ultimately, a baseball stadium exists as a venue in which to play baseball, not as a work of art. The new retro stadia are successful because they have clean sight lines, the fans are close to the field, and the layout makes no concessions to the multipurpose stadium of old. And that’s the key to a successful baseball stadiuym design - what is it like to watch a game?
On that front, the new Busch is a triumph. It’s intimate and none of the sight lines are obstructed. The porches in left and right offer good standing room and a perch to try to catch a home run ball. The view from the plate offers a beautiful panorama of downtown.
My favorite feature? Information. Baseball, more than any other sport, appeals to the stat junkie, and Busch III abounds with data. The bullpens tell you the pitch count and ERA of the current pitcher and the stats for someone warming up. The center field scoreboard not only reports out of town scores, but shows who is on base, who is pitching and who is at bat in each out of town game. You get not only batting average, but OBP and slugging percentage for hitters.
These are the reasons Busch III is a great stadium, not because it is retro. Once Cards fans let go of the memories of six World Series at Busch II, they’ll recognize that the new stadium is a vast improvement.
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Flying Spaghetti Monster’s picture irks KS Board of Ed member
Closed Published April 13th, 2006 Tags:
So what happens when one of the ignorant cavedwellers who voted for Kansas’ new anti-science science curriculum comes face to face with the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a deity created specifically to show how ignorant the Kansas Board of Education is? Not pretty.
Creature’s picture irks Board of Ed member
State Board of Education member Connie Morris took exception Wednesday to a picture of a made-up creature that satirizes the state’s new science standards hanging on a Stucky Middle School teacher’s door.Fellow board member Sue Gamble told The Eagle that Morris asked for the picture to be removed.
The creature, called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, is the creation of Bobby Henderson of Corvallis, Ore. It looks like a clump of spaghetti with two eyes sticking out of the top and two meatballs flanking the eyes.
Henderson created the entity and an accompanying mythology on the origin of mankind to make fun of Kansas’ recent debate over the teaching of criticisms of evolution, including intelligent design.
In November, the board voted 6-4 to allow criticisms of evolution to be taught in Kansas schools.
Who won the battle? FSM, of course.
Gamble said she told the principal that it was his decision whether the monster could stick around.
“I advised the principal that Morris has no authority,” she said. “I told him to deal with his staff as he saw fit, not by what a state board member says.”
The picture was still on the door at the end of the school day Wednesday.
[via evolution]
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