Old Man Posted October 13, 2017 Report Share Posted October 13, 2017 NPR reports that Puerto Rico is becoming a disaster "an order of magnitude worse than Katrina". 200000 meals are being provided daily for 2 million people who need more than one meal per day. 84% of PR is still without power three weeks later. Food at the ports is not making it to the people who need it but wouldn't have fuel or water to prepare it. Many places have no source of clean water aside from rainwater. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gewing Posted October 13, 2017 Report Share Posted October 13, 2017 Almost the only successful prosecutions of police are done by the Feds. The Feds can easily get and handle a venue change to get you out of the local courts and out of the glare and pressure of local press coverage. Federal prosecutors historically have their s**t together better than locals, and they've got deeper pockets than anyone short of multinational corporations. If there's a federal civil rights violation here, or something that looks like pressure to violate federal medical privacy laws, then the federales could step in and nail a cop to the wall (example 1, example 2). Trouble is, it takes something adequately big for the feds to step in. Dunno if this makes it. They usually take Hipaa pretty seriously... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gewing Posted October 13, 2017 Report Share Posted October 13, 2017 FCC now posits that a single ISP in an area counts as 'Competition' and seeks to remove price caps. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/fccs-claim-that-one-isp-counts-as-competition-faces-scrutiny-in-court/?mc_cid=fd6e6566fd&mc_eid=ac30b8596a I swear I am sick to death of the jackanapes who want to take us all the way back to the "gilded age" If anyone knows a reliable necromancer, we could really use Teddy Roosevelt... Trustbuster! Hermit and Tech priest support 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Badger Posted October 13, 2017 Report Share Posted October 13, 2017 India’s Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down a part of the country’s legal code that had permitted men to have sex with their underage wives — a decision that human rights groups said was an important step forward for the rights of girls. This made for an awkward laugh in our house, as my sister-in-law was married at 17. Barely 17. In her husbands defense, she had graduated high school early and he met up with her in college. He didn't know she was that young until he asked why her mom had to sign the form too. They've been together 20+ years, so it ended okay. My grandma was 16 1/2 when she got married, but that was in 1915. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Badger Posted October 13, 2017 Report Share Posted October 13, 2017 NPR reports that Puerto Rico is becoming a disaster "an order of magnitude worse than Katrina". 200000 meals are being provided daily for 2 million people who need more than one meal per day. 84% of PR is still without power three weeks later. Food at the ports is not making it to the people who need it but wouldn't have fuel or water to prepare it. Many places have no source of clean water aside from rainwater. The big question though is why is the food still at the ports, and who is at fault. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 13, 2017 Report Share Posted October 13, 2017 Transportation is still disrupted, and (aside from imperishables like canned goods) it can't be stored, and at the sites where it's needed it can't be cooked anyway (as noted there). I see eerie parallels between this situation in Puerto Rico and the Great Famine in Ireland in the mid-1800s. The English governmental policies had set up the island for a catastrophe via laws that (to boost English businesses) increased absentee land ownership, restricted food imports, and so on, and when the blight hit ... it took more than a century for the island to recover. Victoria's government actually impeded foreign relief, and in retrospect it is difficult to distinguish what happened there from genocide, except that it was caused through willful negligence rather than active intent to murder. The present US administration seems to have the same attitudes, and so far, policies, vis-a-vis the affected island. gewing 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hermit Posted October 13, 2017 Report Share Posted October 13, 2017 Man, next time Puerto Rico gets an Independence or Statehood vote I can see them going Independent with a big middle finger. Of course they maybe too depleted to risk that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 13, 2017 Report Share Posted October 13, 2017 Hey wouldn't it be a hoot if they went independent and then leased a naval harbor to the Russians? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Hopcroft Posted October 13, 2017 Report Share Posted October 13, 2017 India’s Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down a part of the country’s legal code that had permitted men to have sex with their underage wives — a decision that human rights groups said was an important step forward for the rights of girls. This made for an awkward laugh in our house, as my sister-in-law was married at 17. Barely 17. In her husbands defense, she had graduated high school early and he met up with her in college. He didn't know she was that young until he asked why her mom had to sign the form too. They've been together 20+ years, so it ended okay. My mother was 15 when she married a sailor. The sailor of course was my father -- he served as a SeaBee in the early stages of the Cold War. Today he would have been up on charges. Now I know what you're thinking, but it wasn't a shotgun wedding (at least as far as I know). Mom was 19 when she bore me -- young by modern standards, but no longer a minor. They were married about 20 years before divorcing and tried to get back together a couple of decades later (it didn't work out). When he died in 2008, she considered herself a widow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Badger Posted October 14, 2017 Report Share Posted October 14, 2017 Hey wouldn't it be a hoot if they went independent and then leased a naval harbor to the Russians? But, wouldn't Trump like that? (and CNN might call for a nuclear strike on PR) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
death tribble Posted October 14, 2017 Report Share Posted October 14, 2017 Just read a note on the NCAA after Pariah said the recent ruling was a joke. As the college concerned provided a course which benefited the entire student body and not just the athletes seems to be why North Carolina avoided further sanctions. The report seems to indicate that they had already been scrutiny or punished. The unusual factor seems to be the academic side being at fault rather than the coaching staff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grailknight Posted October 14, 2017 Report Share Posted October 14, 2017 Just read a note on the NCAA after Pariah said the recent ruling was a joke. As the college concerned provided a course which benefited the entire student body and not just the athletes seems to be why North Carolina avoided further sanctions. The report seems to indicate that they had already been scrutiny or punished. The unusual factor seems to be the academic side being at fault rather than the coaching staff. It makes an even bigger joke of a hilariously bad system of eligibility. If you're just going to give out grades and diplomas by having sham classes, then anyone who gets in will earn a degree by taking them to bolster their GPA.. Add twelve shams hours of A's in with your regular courses and you're golden for sports but may have no more education than reading a newspaper if that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 14, 2017 Report Share Posted October 14, 2017 Precisely. We on the academic side at NCAA Division I schools come to despise athletics for these and other reasons. Fake classes; fake degree programs; fake learning disabilities to set up situations where a proctor from Athletics can give the student-athlete the answers to the exam they are proctoring, and so on. Oh, and a case for which I have first-hand knowledge, coaches of teams in non-revenue sports (in this case, swimming) apply pressure to student-athletes to get out of real programs (in this case, a physics major) and change majors into fake programs so the student can spend more time working under the coach's thumb working on their athletics. And that was in a brand-new (and therefore bottom-tier) Division I school, so there was no chance of the student being able to turn their sport into a real job. Also, you absolutely cannot get honest accounting of the costs of an athletic program. It would take platoons of Nazis with machine pistols, and an army of Russian hackers, all making simultaneous raids and holding everyone at gunpoint, opening all the files before they can be destroyed or deleted, to do that. And it's the boosters and Athletics who have the armed goons on campuses these days. And we won't get into the general corruption a really successful program brings. Bobby Knight in the late 1980s had approximately unlimited power in Bloomington, Indiana, even outside the university. He got a high school coach fired there because that coach wasn't giving Knight's son enough playing time. That case made the papers, because the son wasn't very good, and the fired coach went public; other influences were obviously present but didn't make the papers. Pariah 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ternaugh Posted October 14, 2017 Report Share Posted October 14, 2017 Precisely. We on the academic side at NCAA Division I schools come to despise athletics for these and other reasons. Fake classes; fake degree programs; fake learning disabilities to set up situations where a proctor from Athletics can give the student-athlete the answers to the exam they are proctoring, and so on. Oh, and a case for which I have first-hand knowledge, coaches of teams in non-revenue sports (in this case, swimming) apply pressure to student-athletes to get out of real programs (in this case, a physics major) and change majors into fake programs so the student can spend more time working under the coach's thumb working on their athletics. And that was in a brand-new (and therefore bottom-tier) Division I school, so there was no chance of the student being able to turn their sport into a real job. Also, you absolutely cannot get honest accounting of the costs of an athletic program. It would take platoons of Nazis with machine pistols, and an army of Russian hackers, all making simultaneous raids and holding everyone at gunpoint, opening all the files before they can be destroyed or deleted, to do that. And it's the boosters and Athletics who have the armed goons on campuses these days. And we won't get into the general corruption a really successful program brings. Bobby Knight in the late 1980s had approximately unlimited power in Bloomington, Indiana, even outside the university. He got a high school coach fired there because that coach wasn't giving Knight's son enough playing time. That case made the papers, because the son wasn't very good, and the fired coach went public; other influences were obviously present but didn't make the papers. We had Jerry Tarkanian. Same thing, different school. Cancer 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cygnia Posted October 15, 2017 Report Share Posted October 15, 2017 Hurricane Ophelia strengthens to major Category 3 storm, barreling toward Ireland Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hermit Posted October 15, 2017 Report Share Posted October 15, 2017 Ireland? Okay yeah I am surprised Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 15, 2017 Report Share Posted October 15, 2017 I blame BP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted October 15, 2017 Report Share Posted October 15, 2017 Archermoo and family are battening down the hatches -- they moved to Ireland not that long ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lawnmower Boy Posted October 16, 2017 Report Share Posted October 16, 2017 Ireland? Okay yeah I am surprised It's almost like the climate is changing or something. Personally, I blame Aquaman. Aquaman and fossil fuels, but mainly Aquaman. Tech priest support 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
st barbara Posted October 16, 2017 Report Share Posted October 16, 2017 It's almost like the climate is changing or something. Personally, I blame Aquaman. Aquaman and fossil fuels, but mainly Aquaman. Nah ! It is Black Manta and Ocean Master up to their tricks. Ireland will need Aquaman to save it ! Hermit and assault 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech priest support Posted October 16, 2017 Report Share Posted October 16, 2017 It's almost like the climate is changing or something. Personally, I blame Aquaman. Aquaman and fossil fuels, but mainly Aquaman. Aquaman! Aquaman! Aquaman! Wtf is the obsession with that joke character? Namor was the original and a lot cooler, plus he had more reason to hate humanity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Badger Posted October 16, 2017 Report Share Posted October 16, 2017 Nah ! It is Black Manta and Ocean Master up to their tricks. Ireland will need Aquaman to save it ! As one of Irish descent, I weep for Ireland, then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grailknight Posted October 16, 2017 Report Share Posted October 16, 2017 Aquaman! Aquaman! Aquaman! Wtf is the obsession with that joke character? Namor was the original and a lot cooler, plus he had more reason to hate humanity. Aquaman has a better personality, much better press coverage and a smoking hot wife. Namor just can't compete here, wcw43921 and Hermit 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pattern Ghost Posted October 16, 2017 Report Share Posted October 16, 2017 Ireland? Okay yeah I am surprised Me too. I'd have expected Denmark. Hermit 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Badger Posted October 16, 2017 Report Share Posted October 16, 2017 Aquaman has a better personality, much better press coverage and a smoking hot wife. Namor just can't compete here, Ehh, I don't like either one really (well Aquaman is semi-likeable but still useless) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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