Going postal.
I'm sure we all know the phrase, it basicaly means that an ex employee goes to work and then proceeds to massacre his former workmates, it is very popular in the US.
Yesterday saw an addition to the long list.
Jan. 30, 2006 - A female ex-postal worker opens fire at a mail processing plant near Santa Barbara, Calif., killing six people before committing suicide, authorities say.
List of Some Deadly Post Office Shootings Tuesday January 31, 2006 3:01 PM By The Associated Press Some shootings at post offices:
April 17, 1998 - Maceo Yarbough III, a 27-year-old letter carrier, fatally shoots a post office clerk in Dallas after they argue in a break room. He is found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.
Sept. 2, 1997 - Jesus Antonio Tamayo, a 21-year postal veteran, leaves his counter at a Miami Beach, Fla., post office, gets a gun from his car, walks back in and critically wounds his ex-wife and a friend, who were waiting in line. Tamayo, 64, then goes outside and kills himself.
July 9, 1995 - Bruce William Clark walks up to his boss in a processing center in City of Industry, Calif., pulls a handgun from a paper bag and shoots him to death. Clark, 58, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced in 1996 to 22 years in prison.
March 21, 1995 - Christopher Green, 29, a former postal worker burdened with `a mountain of debt,'' kills four people and wounds another during a holdup at the Montclair, N.J., post office. Green was sentenced to life in prison in September 1995.
May 6, 1993 - Postal worker Larry Jasion kills one and wounds two at the post office garage in Dearborn, Mich., before killing himself.
May 6, 1993 - Fired postal employee Mark Richard Hilbun kills his mother, then walks into a post office in the Dana Point community near Los Angeles and shoots two workers, killing one. He was convicted of murder, attempted murder and other felonies and sentenced to life in prison.
Nov. 14, 1991 - Fired postal worker Thomas McIlvane kills four supervisors and wounds five employees at a post office in Royal Oak, Mich., and then killed himself.
Oct. 11, 1991 - Joseph M. Harris, a fired postal worker, kills a former supervisor and her boyfriend at their home in Wayne, N.J., then goes to the Ridgewood post office where he kills two mail handlers as they arrive for work. He was sentenced to death and was on death row when he died in 1996 after suffering a seizure in his cell.
Aug. 10, 1989 - Postal worker John Merlin Taylor of Escondido, Calif., shoots and kills his wife at their home, then drives to the Orange Glen post office, where he shoots and kills two colleagues and wounds another before killing himself.
But this is the shooting that coined the phrase:
Aug. 20, 1986 - Patrick Henry Sherrill, a part-time letter carrier in Edmond, Okla., kills 14 people in the post office there before taking his own life. Sherrill had a history of work problems and faced the possibility of being fired.
And don't forget, as the NRA say, 'It's not guns that kill people, it's people', although I think in these instances an ex postie armed with a mail sack and a franking machine might have caused slightly less damage.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Monday, January 30, 2006
An extract from today’s Independent newspaper
Special Branch 'altered official log' to cover up fatal Menezes blunder
By Maxine Frith
Published: 30 January 2006
A leaked copy of the report obtained by the News of the World said the IPCC found that the undercover surveillance team saw Mr Menezes coming out of a house in Tulse Hill and, according to a first draft of a police control room log, identified him as Hussein Osman, a suspect in the July 21 attacks. Commander Cressida Dick, the Scotland Yard officer responsible for the firearms team, then instigated Operation Kratos, the anti-terrorist strategy that permits suspected suicide bombers to be shot.
The IPCC report found that 10 hours after the shooting, by which time it was known the dead man was innocent, the Special Branch team attended a debriefing meeting in which they were allowed to make alterations to the log. A line in it was changed from saying the team said Mr Menezes "was Osman" by the insertion of the word "not" - passing the blame to the Scotland Yard team.
The amendments were supposed to be signed and accompanied by an explanation, but this was not done, in an apparent attempt to pass off the revised log as the original. According to the newspaper, the IPCC report concludes: "This looks like an attempt to try to distance Special Branch from the decision [to shoot Mr Menezes]."
Well there you go, we’ve all done it, a small cock up at work, change the story a little a bit & Bob’s your Aunties live-in-lover, some other poor sod cops the blame.
The slight trouble in this case, is that this cock up led to Mr Menzes getting seven bullets in his head and no chance to use his ‘super saver’ season ticket.
How on earth did the idiot who added the ‘not’ expect to get away with it?
Special Branch? Obviously not that special, unless special is being used in the same way that certain children are referred to as having ‘special’ needs.
The audacity and stupidity of people who are put into positions of power never fails to amaze.
Special Branch 'altered official log' to cover up fatal Menezes blunder
By Maxine Frith
Published: 30 January 2006
A leaked copy of the report obtained by the News of the World said the IPCC found that the undercover surveillance team saw Mr Menezes coming out of a house in Tulse Hill and, according to a first draft of a police control room log, identified him as Hussein Osman, a suspect in the July 21 attacks. Commander Cressida Dick, the Scotland Yard officer responsible for the firearms team, then instigated Operation Kratos, the anti-terrorist strategy that permits suspected suicide bombers to be shot.
The IPCC report found that 10 hours after the shooting, by which time it was known the dead man was innocent, the Special Branch team attended a debriefing meeting in which they were allowed to make alterations to the log. A line in it was changed from saying the team said Mr Menezes "was Osman" by the insertion of the word "not" - passing the blame to the Scotland Yard team.
The amendments were supposed to be signed and accompanied by an explanation, but this was not done, in an apparent attempt to pass off the revised log as the original. According to the newspaper, the IPCC report concludes: "This looks like an attempt to try to distance Special Branch from the decision [to shoot Mr Menezes]."
Well there you go, we’ve all done it, a small cock up at work, change the story a little a bit & Bob’s your Aunties live-in-lover, some other poor sod cops the blame.
The slight trouble in this case, is that this cock up led to Mr Menzes getting seven bullets in his head and no chance to use his ‘super saver’ season ticket.
How on earth did the idiot who added the ‘not’ expect to get away with it?
Special Branch? Obviously not that special, unless special is being used in the same way that certain children are referred to as having ‘special’ needs.
The audacity and stupidity of people who are put into positions of power never fails to amaze.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
From the BBC.
Whale 'vomit' sparks cash bonanza
An Australian couple who picked up an odd-looking fatty lump from a quiet beach are in line for a cash windfall.
Leon Wright and his wife took home a 14.75kg lump of ambergris, found in the innards of sperm whales and used in perfumes after it has been vomited up.
Long lusted-after due to its rarity, ambergris can float upon the oceans for years before washing ashore on beaches.
Worth up to $20 a gram, Mr Wright's find on a South Australian beach could net his family US$295,000 (£165,300).
A Whale story with a happy ending, unlike, poor old Wally, (Wallyena, as the Whale was a female) who fell off her perch half way up the Thames.
Whale 'vomit' sparks cash bonanza
An Australian couple who picked up an odd-looking fatty lump from a quiet beach are in line for a cash windfall.
Leon Wright and his wife took home a 14.75kg lump of ambergris, found in the innards of sperm whales and used in perfumes after it has been vomited up.
Long lusted-after due to its rarity, ambergris can float upon the oceans for years before washing ashore on beaches.
Worth up to $20 a gram, Mr Wright's find on a South Australian beach could net his family US$295,000 (£165,300).
A Whale story with a happy ending, unlike, poor old Wally, (Wallyena, as the Whale was a female) who fell off her perch half way up the Thames.
Friday, January 20, 2006
Study: Most College Students Lack Skills
Friday January 20, 2006 7:02 AM
By BEN FELLER
AP Education Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - More than half of students at four-year colleges - and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges - lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers, a study found.
The literacy study funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the first to target the skills of graduating students, finds that students fail to lock in key skills - no matter their field of study.
The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.
Without ``proficient'' skills, or those needed to perform more complex tasks, students fall behind. They cannot interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.
``It is kind of disturbing that a lot of folks are graduating with a degree and they're not going to be able to do those things,'' said Stephane Baldi, the study's director at the American Institutes for Research, a behavioural and social science research organization.
Why does the above not surprise me?
I have visited the US on several occasions & I have worked with Americans for several years. Whilst I’ve found the majority of Americans quite pleasant, I have also found them to be lacking in general knowledge of the world around them but the really worrying thing about the above article is that it relates to college students, what are the Americans who haven’t attended college like?
Friday January 20, 2006 7:02 AM
By BEN FELLER
AP Education Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - More than half of students at four-year colleges - and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges - lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers, a study found.
The literacy study funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the first to target the skills of graduating students, finds that students fail to lock in key skills - no matter their field of study.
The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.
Without ``proficient'' skills, or those needed to perform more complex tasks, students fall behind. They cannot interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.
``It is kind of disturbing that a lot of folks are graduating with a degree and they're not going to be able to do those things,'' said Stephane Baldi, the study's director at the American Institutes for Research, a behavioural and social science research organization.
Why does the above not surprise me?
I have visited the US on several occasions & I have worked with Americans for several years. Whilst I’ve found the majority of Americans quite pleasant, I have also found them to be lacking in general knowledge of the world around them but the really worrying thing about the above article is that it relates to college students, what are the Americans who haven’t attended college like?
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Just to follow up on the previous blog.
I forgot to mention one other point that made the whole story even more ironic:
Clarence Ray Allen was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 12.38am (0838GMT) at San Quentin State Prison, less than an hour after his 76th birthday ended at midnight.
Do you think they baked him a cake?
I forgot to mention one other point that made the whole story even more ironic:
Clarence Ray Allen was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 12.38am (0838GMT) at San Quentin State Prison, less than an hour after his 76th birthday ended at midnight.
Do you think they baked him a cake?
Execution today for blind, deaf man in wheelchair
AP
Published: 17 January 2006
The US Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a 76-year-old convicted killer who argued that he was too old and feeble to be executed.
The ruling cleared the way for Clarence Ray Allen - legally blind, nearly deaf and in a wheelchair - to be executed by injection today for a triple murder he ordered from behind bars to silence witnesses to another killing.
Allen went to prison for having his teenage son's 17-year-old girlfriend murdered for fear she would tell police about a grocery-store burglary. While behind bars, he tried to have witnesses in the case wiped out, prosecutors said. He was sentenced to death in 1982 for hiring a hit man who killed a witness and two bystanders.
The Supreme Court has never set an upper age limit for executions or created an exception for physical infirmity.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the California Supreme Court and a federal appeals court previously refused to spare Allen's life.
Allen's final meal was chicken from KFC, a buffalo steak, whole milk, sugar-free pecan pie and black walnut ice cream.
Now, I’m sure that Mr Allen is not a nice man and he certainly did commit the acts of which he is convicted but what is the point in executing him? What good will it serve?
There tends to be three reasons put forth by people who support state executions.
One it stops the person re offending, two it acts as a deterrent and thirdly they get all biblical, an eye for an eye etc.
In this instance, I hardly think that a deaf blind man in a wheelchair is a danger to anyone and as for a deterrent, how many times has a Father ordered the murder of his teenage son’s girlfriend friend and then followed up by hiring a hit man to murder a witness? Not many I bet but if ever I’m in that situation, the execution of Mr Allen will certainly make me think twice.
And the eye for an eye, argument? I omitted a sentence from the original piece:
Allen's heart stopped in September, but doctors revived him and returned him to San Quentin Prison's death row.
Why? It looks to me that God was trying to tell the State of California something or at least trying to save them the cost of a lethal injection and the price of a KFC meal.
AP
Published: 17 January 2006
The US Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a 76-year-old convicted killer who argued that he was too old and feeble to be executed.
The ruling cleared the way for Clarence Ray Allen - legally blind, nearly deaf and in a wheelchair - to be executed by injection today for a triple murder he ordered from behind bars to silence witnesses to another killing.
Allen went to prison for having his teenage son's 17-year-old girlfriend murdered for fear she would tell police about a grocery-store burglary. While behind bars, he tried to have witnesses in the case wiped out, prosecutors said. He was sentenced to death in 1982 for hiring a hit man who killed a witness and two bystanders.
The Supreme Court has never set an upper age limit for executions or created an exception for physical infirmity.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the California Supreme Court and a federal appeals court previously refused to spare Allen's life.
Allen's final meal was chicken from KFC, a buffalo steak, whole milk, sugar-free pecan pie and black walnut ice cream.
Now, I’m sure that Mr Allen is not a nice man and he certainly did commit the acts of which he is convicted but what is the point in executing him? What good will it serve?
There tends to be three reasons put forth by people who support state executions.
One it stops the person re offending, two it acts as a deterrent and thirdly they get all biblical, an eye for an eye etc.
In this instance, I hardly think that a deaf blind man in a wheelchair is a danger to anyone and as for a deterrent, how many times has a Father ordered the murder of his teenage son’s girlfriend friend and then followed up by hiring a hit man to murder a witness? Not many I bet but if ever I’m in that situation, the execution of Mr Allen will certainly make me think twice.
And the eye for an eye, argument? I omitted a sentence from the original piece:
Allen's heart stopped in September, but doctors revived him and returned him to San Quentin Prison's death row.
Why? It looks to me that God was trying to tell the State of California something or at least trying to save them the cost of a lethal injection and the price of a KFC meal.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Toxic waste creates hermaphrodite Arctic polar bears
In the Independent, from an article by David Usborne in New York
Wildlife researchers have found new evidence that Arctic polar bears, already gravely threatened by the melting of their habitat because of global warming, are being poisoned by chemical compounds commonly used in Europe and North America to reduce the flammability of household furnishings like sofas, clothing and carpets.
There is also evidence that compounds similar to the PBDEs have contributed to a surprisingly high rate of hermaphroditism in polar bears. About one in 50 female bears on Svalbard has both male and female sex organs, a phenomenon scientists link directly to the effects of pollution.
"The Arctic is now a chemical sink," declared Colin Butfield, a campaign leader for the Worldwide Fund for Nature, which last month indicated that killer whales in the Arctic were also suffering from elevated levels of contamination with fire retardants as well as other man-made compounds. "Chemicals from products that we use in our homes every day are contaminating Arctic wildlife."
In the Independent, from an article by David Usborne in New York
Wildlife researchers have found new evidence that Arctic polar bears, already gravely threatened by the melting of their habitat because of global warming, are being poisoned by chemical compounds commonly used in Europe and North America to reduce the flammability of household furnishings like sofas, clothing and carpets.
There is also evidence that compounds similar to the PBDEs have contributed to a surprisingly high rate of hermaphroditism in polar bears. About one in 50 female bears on Svalbard has both male and female sex organs, a phenomenon scientists link directly to the effects of pollution.
"The Arctic is now a chemical sink," declared Colin Butfield, a campaign leader for the Worldwide Fund for Nature, which last month indicated that killer whales in the Arctic were also suffering from elevated levels of contamination with fire retardants as well as other man-made compounds. "Chemicals from products that we use in our homes every day are contaminating Arctic wildlife."
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
I found this article a bit of a worry:
From todays Independent newspaper:
Britons in debt to the tune of £1.13 trillion
* 66,000 people predicted to go bust this year; * Average household debt is £7,650 (exc. mortgage); * Two-thirds of EU credit card debt is British; * One in five students owes at least £15,000; * 40% of women keep debt secret from partners; * Half of all heavy debtors suffer from depression
Apparently the British government believes that this is an acceptable level of personal debt & is sustainable.
Maybe I have a longer memory than Blair & Brown but I remember a similar scenario in the late 80's, early 90's, where the whole thing went horribly wrong & ended with negative equity, suicides & the unelectability of the Tory Party.
To quote Charles Dickens:
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and six pence, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds and six pence, result misery.
David Copperfield, 1849
From todays Independent newspaper:
Britons in debt to the tune of £1.13 trillion
* 66,000 people predicted to go bust this year; * Average household debt is £7,650 (exc. mortgage); * Two-thirds of EU credit card debt is British; * One in five students owes at least £15,000; * 40% of women keep debt secret from partners; * Half of all heavy debtors suffer from depression
Apparently the British government believes that this is an acceptable level of personal debt & is sustainable.
Maybe I have a longer memory than Blair & Brown but I remember a similar scenario in the late 80's, early 90's, where the whole thing went horribly wrong & ended with negative equity, suicides & the unelectability of the Tory Party.
To quote Charles Dickens:
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and six pence, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds and six pence, result misery.
David Copperfield, 1849
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