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Old 02-10-2005, 04:36 AM
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Default Weird News

Calif. School 'Tracks' Kids

SUTTER, Calif., Feb. 9, 2005


(AP) The only grade school in a rural Califronia town is requiring students to wear radio frequency identification badges that can track their every move. Some parents are outraged, fearing it will take away their children's privacy.

The badges introduced at Brittan Elementary School on Jan. 18 rely on the same radio frequency and scanner technology that companies use to track livestock and product inventory. Similar devices have recently been used to monitor youngsters in some parts of Japan.

But few American school districts have embraced such a monitoring system, and civil libertarians hope to keep it that way.

"If this school doesn't stand up, then other schools might adopt it," Nicole Ozer, a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union, warned school board members at a meeting Tuesday night. "You might be a small community, but you are one of the first communities to use this technology."

The system was imposed, without parental input, by the school as a way to simplify attendance taking and potentially reduce vandalism and improve student safety. Principal Earnie Graham hopes to eventually add bar codes to the existing ID's so that students can use them to pay for cafeteria meals and check out library books.

But some parents see a system that can monitor their children's movements on campus as something straight out of Orwell.

"There is a way to make kids safer without making them feel like a piece of inventory," said Michael Cantrall, one of several angry parents who complained. "Are we trying to bring them up with respect and trust, or tell them that you can't trust anyone, you are always going to be monitored, and someone is always going to be watching you?"

Cantrall said he told his children, in the 5th and 7th grades, not to wear the badges. He also filed a protest letter with the board and alerted the ACLU.

Graham, who also serves as the superintendent of the single-school district, told the parents that their children could be disciplined for boycotting the badges ? and that he doesn't understand what all their angst is about.

"Sometimes when you are on the cutting edge, you get caught," Graham said, recounting the angry phone calls and notes he has received from parents.

Each student is required to wear identification cards around their necks with their picture, name and grade and a wireless transmitter that beams their ID number to a teacher's handheld computer when the child passes under an antenna posted above a classroom door.

Graham also asked to have a chip reader installed in locker room bathrooms to reduce vandalism, although that reader is not functional yet. And while he has ordered everyone on campus to wear the badges, he said only the 7th and 8th grade classrooms are being monitored thus far.

In addition to the privacy concerns, parents are worried that the information on and inside the badges could wind up in the wrong hands and endanger their children, and that radio frequency technology might carry health risks.

Graham dismisses each objection, arguing that the devices do not emit any cancer-causing radioactivity, and that for now, they merely confirm that each child is in his or her classroom, rather than track them around the school like a global-positioning device. The 15-digit ID number that confirms attendance is encrypted, he said, and not linked to other personal information such as an address or telephone number.

What's more, he says that it is within his power to set rules that promote a positive school environment: If he thinks ID badges will improve things, he says, then badges there will be.

"You know what it comes down to? I believe junior high students want to be stylish. This is not stylish," he said.

This latest adaptation of radio frequency ID technology was developed by InCom Corp., a local company co-founded by the parent of a former Brittan student, and some parents are suspicious about the financial relationship between the school and the company. InCom plans to promote it at a national convention of school administrators next month.

InCom has paid the school several thousand dollars for agreeing to the experiment, and has promised a royalty from each sale if the system takes off, said the company's co-founder, Michael Dobson, who works as a technology specialist in the town's high school. Brittan's technology aide also works part-time for InCom.

Not everyone in this close-knit farming town northwest of Sacramento is against the system. Some said they welcomed the IDs as a security measure.

"This is not Mayberry. This is Sutter, California. Bad things can happen here," said Tim Crabtree, an area parent.
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Old 02-10-2005, 02:17 PM
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Hope Diamond Was French

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10, 2005

AP


Researchers using computer analysis have traced the origin of the famed Hope Diamond, concluding that it was cut from a larger stone that was once part of the crown jewels of France.

A French connection had been suspected for the Hope, but the new study shows just how it would have fit inside the larger French Blue Diamond and how that gem was cut, Smithsonian gem curator Jeffrey Post explained.

The deep blue Hope Diamond is the centerpiece of the gem collection at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, famed for its claimed history of bad luck for its owners. It's been good fortune for the museum, though, drawing millions of visitors.

Post said the new analysis of the diamond took a year, with researchers using sketches from pre-Revolutionary France, scientific studies of the French crown jewels and computer models.

"This new Hope Diamond research would not have been possible 10 years ago," said Post. "What is exciting is that we are constantly learning new information about our collections as we apply new high-tech research methods. Even the Hope Diamond is grudgingly giving up some of its secrets."

The research helps confirm the Hope Diamond as originating with a 115-carat stone found in India in 1668. That stone was sold to King Louis XIV of France who had it cut into the 69-carat French Blue. The French Blue was stolen during the French Revolution.

Just over twenty years later, after the statute of limitations expired, a large blue diamond was quietly put up for sale in London, and eventually Henry Philip Hope purchased it.

Finally donated to the Smithsonian by jeweler Harry Winston, the now 45.52 carat stone is the world's largest blue diamond.

The team of researchers led by Post and Steven Attaway, engineer and gem cutter; as well as Scott Sucher and Nancy Attaway, gem cutting experts, compiled the new analysis.

While the French Blue no longer exists, Post said the sketches of it from France were quite detailed and allowed preparation of a computer model of that stone.

In 1700, French scientists had also studied several stones from the royal collection, determining their specific gravity and other details.

Their analysis of other stones that still exist was quite accurate, Post said in a telephone interview, so the researchers felt the data on the French Blue was also probably accurate.

After using the sketches and analysis to make the computer model of the French Blue, and at the same time measuring the Hope Diamond and entering that data into the computer, the researchers "virtually placed the Hope back inside the French Blue" Post said.

"It turns out it actually fits perfectly in only one way, but at that orientation, when you saw how it fit, you could see why it was cut the way it is," Post said.

"They cut he corners off the French Blue, changed slightly the angle of the bottom facets, and that produced the Hope Diamond," he said.

Indeed, some of the facets of the current diamond may even be left over from the French Blue.





The Hope Diamond is the centerpiece of the gem collection at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.
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Old 02-16-2005, 03:44 PM
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Default Elderly woman attacks cops

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) ? A 79-year-old woman has been charged with using her wooden cane to strike police officers who arrived at her home to check on her welfare.

St. Joseph County prosecutors said the officers came to investigate a possible domestic abuse charge against Betty Chambers? live-in caretaker, Thomas Holleman, 57.

As the officers tried to handcuff Holleman, Chambers allegedly struck Officer Lonny Foresman over the head with her cane, prosecutors said.

Foresman suffered a mild concussion while Sgt. John Pavlekovich suffered a separated shoulder and hand injury, said Jaimee Thirion, a spokeswoman for St. Joseph County police.

Prosecutors charged Chambers and Holleman on Tuesday with resisting law enforcement and battery.

?This is a serious concern because police are there to protect all of us,? said St. Joseph County Prosecutor Michael Dvorak.

A phone number listed under Chambers? name at her address had been disconnected.
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Old 02-16-2005, 03:45 PM
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Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird
WEEK OF FEBRUARY 13, 2005

LEAD STORY

Most Competent Criminal: Jeffrey "Roofman" Manchester, 33, was finally recaptured after six months of inspired police-dodging in Charlotte, N.C., after having smuggled himself out of a previously escape-proof prison nearby. According to a January profile in the San Francisco Chronicle, Manchester (a handsome, athletic, personable man who got his nickname from a multistate series of ceiling-entry burglaries) built an ingenious home behind a cubbyhole at a Toys-R-Us, then at an abandoned Circuit City next door, outfitting both digs with various conveniences, such as a protective surveillance camera. The dashing Manchester volunteered at a church, befriending the pastor and dating a parishioner, who eventually helped police capture him. Said a police sergeant, "(W)e can learn a lot from him." [San Francisco Chronicle, 1-11-05]


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Male Flies and Male Monkeys Are Just Dogs
In articles in recent issues of Current Biology, researchers separately studying the dance fly and the rhesus macaque monkey concluded that males will be males. The male dance fly was found by a team from the University of Western Australia to sometimes present a female with worthless tokens for the opportunity to mate with her, but by the time she discovered their worth, he had already hit and run. A team from Duke University found that the male monkey will forgo his own rewards (juice) in exchange for being permitted to view pictures of female monkeys' bottoms. [Discovery-Animal Planet, 1-11-05] [LiveScience.com, 1-28-05]



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America's Real Gun Problem (all new)
The following people accidentally shot themselves recently: Joey Lujan, 22, shot himself in the head trying to show that his gun wasn't loaded (Rialto, Calif., December). Abran Godoy, 20, shot himself while tucking his gun into his waistband after a robbery (King City, Calif., November). A 20-year-old man shot himself in a femoral artery while showing off for friends (Salt Lake City, November). Latie Whitley, 34, shot himself in the face while allegedly robbing a delicatessen (New York City, December). Jeffrey Wagner, 22, shot himself while tucking his gun into his waistband after showing it to a friend (Dayton, Ohio, January). Lance Cole, 24, won $2,500 in damages from the police after an officer kicked him in the groin two days after he had shot himself in the genitals (St. Louis, Mo., January). [Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, Calif.), 12-27-04] [Monterey Herald, 11-18-04] [Deseret Morning News, 11-20-04] [Newsday, 11-27-04] [WHIO-TV (Dayton), 1-4-05] [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1-25-05]



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News That Sounds Like a Joke
(1) According to a January Associated Press dispatch, an outfit called Rent-a-Priest supplies independent Catholic clergy to perform mass and communion on board cruise ships, even though the reason some are independent is that they're no longer in good standing. (The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said it has begun to screen out unqualified candidates for cruise line jobs.) (2) In a January CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, in answer to the question whether President Bush is a "uniter" or a "divider," exactly 49 percent of Americans said he was a uniter, and exactly 49 percent said he was a divider. [St. Petersburg Times-AP, 1-17-05] [CNN, 1-19-05]



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Compelling Explanations

Farmington Hills, Mich., elementary school teacher Nancy Seaman, 52, on trial for murdering her husband, said it was self-defense, even though a reported autopsy said he had been stabbed 21 times and struck with a hatchet 15 times. (She was convicted in December.) And University of Virginia student Andrew Alston, on trial for fatally stabbing a firefighter after a night of bar-hopping, said the victim had actually inadvertently stabbed himself during aikido horseplay (even though there were 18 stab wounds, spread among the heart, arms, back, shoulder and face). (Alston was convicted of manslaughter in November.) [WEWS-TV (Cleveland), 12-14-04] [The Daily Progress (Charlottesville), 11-9-04]

Ms. Sandu Florenta, 18, a Romanian, was arrested for shoplifting at a Tesco store in Wrexham, Wales, in December with "four packs of frozen lamb, three fresh chickens, three packs of stock cubes, finger chillies, a packet of burgers, garlic, peppers, socks and underwear, plus almost five pounds of oranges and apples" in a special sack under her robes. She told police that not many stores in Romania have carts, and thus, this is how people shop. [Daily Post (North Wales), 12-8-04]

Pro boxer Hector Macho Camacho Sr. was arrested in Gulfport, Miss., for a Christmastime incident in which he, feeling morose, broke into the computer store next to his office in order to get his computer (in the shop for repairs) so he could e-mail family members, and that meant climbing over a wall and onto ceiling panels, which gave way, sending Camacho crashing onto several computers. Said Macho, according to police: "I don't see myself looking too good." Later, describing his motivation for the break-in: "I guess I ran out of ideas." [WLOX-TV (Biloxi), 1-12-05]

Alan Johnson was arrested in Taunton, Mass., in November and charged with burning his girlfriend's 19-month-old boy with a cigarette lighter while baby-sitting. Johnson's explanation: The boy went into a seizure, and Johnson, recalling his lifeguard training, thought the solution was to raise the boy's body temperature to alleviate the seizure. [WJAR-TV (Providence), 12-19-04]


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Fetishes on Parade
Recent Sexual Obsessions: (1) surgical masks (Norman Hutchins, 53, was convicted in Leeds, England, in January, of tricking hospitals into sending him masks for his collection). (2) underwater photos of strangers' legs and buttocks (U.S. Army Maj. James V. McGovern was convicted in January of taking numerous such photos at the swimming pool at Yongsan Garrison, South Korea). [Agence France-Presse, 1-20-05] [Stars and Stripes, 1-20-05]



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Least Competent People
Kyle Hans, 24, drove his car through the front of a Target store in Fort Wayne, Ind., in January, down an aisle, where he told employees he had a gun and wanted to see his estranged wife so he could reconcile with her. When the employees informed Hans that his wife didn't work there anymore, he got frustrated and took one of them hostage, forcing the evacuation of the store and an eventual standoff with police. Officers talked Hans down, got the hostage freed and arrested him. [WISE-TV (Fort Wayne), 1-7-05]



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Recurring Themes
"I don't think I've done more than two days' work in three years," said the New York Liquor Authority's director of wholesale services, Patricia Freund, explaining to the New York Post in December that she is another example of how bureaucracies deal with "problem" workers who are hard to fire. Freund was exiled to an office with no work and no responsibilities (though continuing to draw her $82,000 salary), which she said was in retaliation for raising a stink about Gov. George Pataki's Christian prayer breakfasts and Jesus-laden mementoes, which she said was discriminatory toward Jewish employees, such as her. [New York Post, 12-28-04]



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Readers' Choice
Thinning the Herd: A 23-year-old woman, attempting a handstand on a hotel balcony railing in North Fort Myers, Fla., fell to her death but only after shouting to friends to "watch to see what I can still do" (January). And a 21-year-old student at the University of Nebraska Lincoln was killed when, not belted in, he was ejected from the back seat of an SUV in a crash; the student was prominent for his libertarian political views, including a defiant stand in the student newspaper against mandatory seatbelt laws. (He described himself as one of "a die-hard group of non-wearers out there who simply do not wish to buckle up.") (January) [CNN-AP, 1-18-05] [Lincoln Journal Star, 1-5-05]



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Rodents in the News
In January, sanitation workers in Nairobi, Kenya, finally, after 10 years of complaints, cleaned up the Wakulima Market (the country's largest fruit and vegetable facility), dislodging an estimated 750 tons of garbage, 38 tons of human waste, and about 6,000 rats. Also in January, Cleveland paralegal Austin Aitken filed a lawsuit against the TV show "Fear Factor" for $2.5 million, claiming that the episode in which contestants ate dead rats made him ill, causing him to vomit, become dizzy, and hit his head as he ran from the room in disgust. [Agence France-Presse, 1-4-05] [Reuters, 1-5-05]

Thanks This Week to John Lynch, David Schnur, Willard Wheeler, Casey Harris, Sarah Peake, George Collins, Dale Jelinski, and many people who contributed the Readers' Choice items, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
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