ShortFormBlogJune 3, 2011

Annie was and will always be a wonderful person, by far a better person that I will ever be in my life. I’m sorry I lied. I’m sorry I ruined lives, and I’m sorry for taking Annie Le’s life.
Former Yale animal-research technician Raymond Clark III • Speaking during his sentencing, during which he received a 44-year sentence for the killing of Annie Le, a Yale graduate student whose tragic murder turned her family’s excitement over her wedding into overwhelming grief. The sentence, which will keep the 26-year-old in prison until he turns 70, wasn’t enough for some members of Le’s family, who had hoped he’d receive a life sentence. If it’s of any solace to the Le family, he won’t get paroled early, because Connecticut doesn’t allow parole for convicted murderers. The case drew a large amount of media interest — due in part to the fact that it happened on a highly-secured part of the Yale campus that few people could get inside. Which meant that it was relatively easy to figure out that Clark, who accepts full responsibility for the crime, was the culprit. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

OK, LulzSec, we get your point — Sony should take its user security seriously. But that’s a lesson they’ve been learning repeatedly for a month — they didn’t need another group to teach it. Meanwhile, when you write tweets like, “I hear there’s been some funny scamming with jacked Sony accounts. That’s what you get for using the same password everywhere,” you earn no respect from anyone. End users — especially the elderly ones that made up the bulk of your Sony release — have something to lose with these hacks. You, however, act without respect or care for anyone. You know, say what you will about Anonymous, but they appear to at least have strong social/political reasons for what they do. (The comment above, from Dutch Anonymous, sums it up for us.) You’re just in it for the “Lulz,” as if nobody gets hurt while you guys have your fun. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

After they arrested me, I sat in my cell and I thought, ‘I’m looking at five to seven years.’ So I asked the other prisoners what to do. They said, ‘Easy! Tell them you’re mad! They’ll put you in a county hospital. You’ll have Sky TV and a PlayStation. Nurses will bring you pizzas.’
A diagnosed psychopath named Tony • Describing how he got put into the Broadmoor mental hospital in England. He pretended to be insane to get out of a jail sentence, after other prisoners told him to. He copied books and movies he’d seen and read, and was sent to the mental asylum. However, when it came time for him to get out – he couldn’t. He actually was a psychopath, according to a number of tests that had been done on him. This excerpt from author Jon Ronson’s “The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry” is a fascinating piece on a subject few know about — how psychopaths are diagnosed and treated. source

Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

A complex ambassador for a complex debate: The death of Jack Kevorkian, which wasn’t artificial, is a great time to reflect on what he meant to an issue still fully unresolved to this day: The right-to-die debate. Jack was a purely Michigan icon, an idiosyncratic figure who defines the post-industrial shakiness and weirdness of the state the same way that two other purely Michigan icons of the era, Insane Clown Posse and Eminem, did — by taking a dark, tough-to-grasp issue or demeanor and just going for it, without worrying about the consequences. It led to over 100 assisted suicides that Kevorkian played a direct role in, a number of legal cases, a raised profile for lawyer Geoffrey Fieger (who actually made a failed gubernatorial run back in 1998), and finally, jail time for Kevorkian. While some criticize what Kevorkian did to this day, we think he represented an important role that actually got people to think about a real issue. More thoughts:

Freedom of death One philosophy currently in vogue is libertarianism, which focuses on keeping the government as far away from our personal rights as possible. Is there a more libertarian idea than keeping the government out of our final affairs, instead of gumming up the works? The fact of the matter is, he worked with private citizens on private affairs that they agreed to. To us, it only seems fair to respect this. Maybe government shouldn’t be involved here?
A changing society The concept of the hospice only grew in the wake of Kevorkian’s notoriety. The National Association of Home Care and Hospice notes that in 1990, the year Kevorkian completed his first assisted suicide, 76,000 people used Medicare Hospice Outlays. In 2008, the number topped 1 million for the first time. So, even if it isn’t exactly done Jack’s way, we are focusing on end-of-life issues more. And that’s a huge credit to him.
Was he the right guy? Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson reacted to Kevorkian’s death by suggesting that “the cause of aging and death with dignity is so complex that I don’t think Kevorkian was the right ambassador for that message.” But, really, that was the problem. Nobody was dealing with it on a serious scale until Jack came along. He put the issue in our faces until we finally started to take it seriously. That deserves our respect. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

crash Early Tuesday morning, a major bus crash killed four people in Virginia, and many others on the 58-passenger bus had to go to the hospital after the bus they were on flipped over.
company The government shut down the bus company that owned the vehicle, Sky Express, after the crash; it had garnered many federal safety violations in the past, including driver fatigue.
chargesToday, officials charged the driver behind the wheel during the crash, Kin Yiu Cheung, with involuntary manslaughter for the passenger deaths. Fatigue played a role in the crash. source

Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

» That’s a .2% increase since March, when unemployment was looking “good” at 8.9%. A total of 83,000 jobs were added in the (nonfarm) private sector; however, 29,000 governmental employees got the axe last month, bringing the total number of jobs added down to 54,000. Here’s to a better month.

Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

03 Jun 2011 20:10