Vigilantes haven’t disappeared – they just don’t wear scarves on their faces anymore

                              Good Day Humboldt County!

  Once upon a time, vigilantes wore scarves over their faces in the Old West. They weren’t interested in a prolonged trial for a cattle thief, so they took justice into their own hands.

This twisted road led to the death of more than one innocent man, left swinging from his neck on a tree limb thanks to these vigilantes. They wore scarves to hide their identities in case an investigation later proved the dead man was innocent.

  There are still vigilantes today. They don’t wear scarves. As a matter of fact, they form neighborhood watches. Most of these loose groups do a great job of looking out for their neighbors and are a benefit to their communities. Gated communities often have these groups. Some of these groups have gun-bearing members and are ready to use them.

The story below is about an armed member of a neighborhood watch for “The Retreat at Twin Lakes,” who shot a 17-year old Florida high school student (Trayvon Martin) because “he looked suspicious.” The student had a bag of Skittles (a candy-coated treat) and an iced-tea, which apparently spooked George Zimmerman, who shot him dead with a 9 mm pistol.

Zimmerman wasn’t wearing a scarf, but he’s no different than the vigilantes of the Old West. Judge, jury, and executioner. Interestingly enough, he was arrested in 2005 for resisting arrest with violence and battery on a law enforcement officer. Kinda makes you wonder about this vigilante with a history of violence doesn’t it?

But the police are saying there’s no evidence to challenge the shooter’s story. In their minds, a deadly bag of Skittles warranted a response from a 9 mm pistol. Maybe the kid threw them at Zimmerman? Now, there’s a reason to kill him. Don’t you think? Or, worse yet, was he murdered because he was an African-American?

The family and friends are trying to seek justice, but face an uphill battle. To read the whole story and view videos go to 6 NBC Miami

Time for me to walk on down the road…

 

  

       

“The parents of a 17-year-old Florida high school student killed last month in Sanford by a neighborhood watch representative gathered Sunday night at a Miami Gardens church to demand justice in their son's shooting.

Family and friends said a prayer and read a poem for the teen, who was visiting his father and step mom in the central Florida town in February when he was gunned down by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch representative for The Retreat at Twin Lakes.

Zimmerman had called police and reported Martin as a suspicious person in the neighborhood, before following Martin from his car, police said.When officers arrived, Martin, who had gone to a nearby store for a bag of Skittles and an iced tea, was dead.

Police said Zimmerman told them that he shot Martin in self-defense.

"George Michael Zimmerman had a 9 millimeter gun, Trayvon Martin had a bag of Skittles, how can he claim self defense?" the Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump said.

A records search revealed an arrest record for Zimmerman, including an arrest in 2005 for resisting arrest with violence and battery on a law enforcement officer. The Martin family and their attorney, disputed the self defense claim.

"The police lied to this family, and told them he was squeaky clean and that was one of the reasons why they weren't arresting George Michael Zimmerman," Crump said.” (NBC 6 – Miami)

FaceBook Fails: Does any of this stuff ring a bell with you?

There’s more stuff like this here.

By The Oatmeal

Middle school coach can’t handle loss and bites off other coach’s ear!

I remember when I coached my three sons in soccer, basketball, and baseball. There was always an irate parent, or coach, who gave each sport a bad name. Adults often get too carried away living vicariously through their children. This is nothing new.

The irony is these kids get the wrong message early – win at all costs! Do whatever it takes. Just bring home a title. I’ve seen and heard of some extreme cases of mayhem by both parents and coaches but was surprised to see the bar is still going up. 

Memories of Iron Mike Tyson biting off Evander Holyfield’s ear came back to me when I read this article today:

“A middle school basketball rivalry took a violent turn on Friday, after one losing coach bit off part of another coach’s ear, police said. Police said the assistant coach of the losing team, Timothy Lee Forbes, 34, of Springfield, assaulted the coach of the winning team after a championship tournament game and bit off part of his ear.

Police received a report of a disturbance at the Holy Name School in Springfield during a sixth-grade boys' basketball game.

People at the game pulled Forbes off the coach, police said, and Forbes ran out of the gym before police arrived. The victim, a 34-year-old Springfield man, was rushed to the Baystate Medical Center in an ambulance to have his ear reattached. He has been released.

Forbes has been charged with mayhem, assault and battery and other charges. He will be arraigned on Monday afternoon in Springfield District Court.” (Read NBCConnecticut.com's story on biting coach's ear)

Things people say: Ordinary people can be drop dead funny

                 Good Day Humboldt County!

Are you ready to walk down a road that will leave you laughing every step of the way? Do you want an infusion of humor to set the tone for the paths you must pursue today?

For the most part, the humor is unrehearsed and unintentional. Hundreds of quotations are listed below. There are lines spoken by people intending to say something else. There are lines spoken by people who misunderstood something or other. They may or may not have known any better. The intricacies of human language may have fouled them up, or perhaps unfortunate slips of the tongue led them to ignominy. Whatever the case, there's a lot to laugh at:

                                                           Slips and Gaffes

• Accident Reports -- Descriptions of accidents as written on insurance claim forms.
• Excuse Letters -- Letters from parents to teachers, excusing their children from school.
• Courtroom Quotations -- Lawyers take ridiculous steps to be thorough.
• Patient Charts -- Doctors' remarks on patient charts.
• Church Bulletins -- Unfortunately phrased announcements in church bulletins.
• Classified Ads -- Classified ads that don't necessarily say what they were intended to.
•  News Reports -- Newspapers, radio, and television garble news reports.

                                                               Things Kids Say

• Kids' Ideas About Love -- 5 to 10 year olds expound on love and marriage.
• Kids' Ideas About Science -- 5th and 6th graders illustrate scientific principles for the layman.
• Kid Quotes -- Young children make hilarious observations.
• Exams and Papers -- 7th through 12th graders give creative wrong answers to exams.
• Classroom Discussion -- Quotes from college kids, spoken during classroom discussions.

                                                                     Stupidity

• Warning Labels -- In today's litigious society, products need ridiculously obvious instructions.
• Employee Performance Evaluation Quotes -- Evaluating the performance of the less proficient employees.
• Bad Predictions -- Famous last words about science and technology.
• Twins -- Some people have comic ideas about what being a twin is all about.
• Anecdotes of Stupidity -- In the general public, you can't hide from stupidity.

                                                               Famous People

• Yogi Berra -- Verbal blunders from one of baseball's legends.
• Samuel Goldwyn -- Verbal blunders from the famous movie mogul.
• Eugene Ormandy -- Verbal blunders from the famous orchestra conductor.
• Murray Walker -- Verbal blunders from the famous motor racing commentator.
• John Madden -- Verbal blunders from the famous football commentator.
• Dan Quayle -- Verbal blunders from a notorious former Vice President.
• Other Famous People -- Verbal blunders from an assortment of other celebrities and political figures.

                             Source: “Things People Said” is a RinkWorks production.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

As It Stands: Smile, ‘They’ only want to get to know you

“This is our land. A land of peace and of plenty. A land of harmony and hope. This is our land. Oceania. These are our people. The workers, the strivers, the builders. These are our people. The builders of our world, struggling, fighting, bleeding, dying. On the streets of our cities and on the far-flung battlefields. Fighting against the mutilation of our hopes and dreams. Who are they?” --   Nineteen Eighty-Four

                   By Dave Stancliff/For the Times Standard
   “They” just want to get to know you.
   “They” have been around since the day you were born, watching your progress and taking extensive notes about things you like and don’t like.
   “They” have many faces that have changed over the decades, but their mission is still to document your life. “They” aren’t doing that to write your biography and make it a best seller. Actually, “They” jealously guard whatever they find out about you, because you are a cash cow.
   The statistics change over the years as you grow older. “They” have the option of selling your likes and dislikes to the highest bidder, or keeping that information stored in their vast data banks for other uses.
   By now, you may have guessed who “They” are. Marketers, advertisers, retailers, pollsters, mobile phone companies, social media like FaceBook, Path, and Twitter, internet investors, and other services that depend upon the ability to personalize for profit.

  “They” really want to get to know you without being too overt. That’s not always possible however. Recent revelations that Google Inc, Twitter and other popular Internet companies have been taking liberties with customer data, are only the tip of the iceberg.
    Privacy advocates and lawmakers are critical of these companies, but nothing ever gets done about them. The companies involved quickly apologize and say they were only doing it to help their customers and their intentions were pure as the driven snow. Or something like that in lawyer talk.
   When you have business models that depend on increasing their ability to target a marketing pitch to an individual, your privacy takes a back seat. Their intentions are pure all right; to make money.

   Millions of times each day, the right to advertise to a specific user is auctioned off in a fraction of a second by computers talking to one another. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Google was tweaking ads on Apple's Safari Web browser to install tracking cookies. 
   Here’s what happens; a company over-reaches, gets caught, and promises to do better. If their promises are not enough to reassure a greater than usual display of outrage and public demands for new legislation, then the industry will counter with a new plan for self regulation.
   This self regulation usually means something like publishing privacy policies that users seldom read. In other words, “They” have the game down. “They” invented the game. “They” have evolved with modern technology, but their mission remains pure; to learn all they can about you.
    Facebook and Google both agreed to 20 years of privacy audits by the Federal Trade Commission after they were caught using customer information that had been considered private. Don’t expect much action from these audits however, when there are few restrictions on data collection.

   I’m sorry to report that privacy advocates say they do not expect big changes any time soon. "Trying to pass a bill through Congress that's actually going to safeguard user records, especially when you've got huge advertiser lobbies trying to defang that law, is an incredible challenge," said Rainey Reitman, activism director with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in a interview with Reuters on February 19th.
   Internet companies have faced little punishment for pushing privacy boundaries. Those boundaries are more extensive than most consumers understand. Practically every key stroke you make, each visit to a website, generate new information about your interests.
   For people who already have privacy concerns with laws like the Patriot Act, this is just another example of how they’re monitored by Big Brother. A Big Brother with many faces.
   As It Stands, from the Feds to FaceBook, they all just want to get to know you.

Don’t ever say we fought for Democracy in Iraqi: look at the legacy we left behind

Only damn fools thought we were fighting for Freedom and Democracy in oil-rich Iraq for a decade. Show me one positive thing that came out of pouring billions of tax-payer dollars into that dump? Soldiers on both sides, and innocent civilians died to accomplish what? Have we restored “human rights” after kicking Saddam Hussein out? Hell no. Get real. photo source for Iraqi Youth who died for dressing like an Emo.

Let’s take a look at some recent news from Iraq to help determine what’s changed:

“At least 14 youths have been stoned to death in Baghdad in the past three weeks in what appears to be a campaign by Shiite militants against youths wearing Western-style "emo" clothes and haircuts, security and hospital sources say.” source 

Sure sounds like the good old days before we invaded the country. There was nothing near a fair trial for those murdered youths who dared to wear something other than the silly assed robes the hardliners wear.

“The killings have taken place since Iraq's interior ministry drew attention to the "emo" subculture last month, labeling it "Satanism" and ordering a community police force to stamp it out.” source 

I’m so impressed with the legacy we left behind. According to Arab news agencies, the number of youths executed because of their fashion choice, is much higher than the confirmed report of 14.

What’s that phrase that goes something like, “The old boss, is the new boss.”???? To add salt to the wounds, billions of American tax dollars have disappeared, and no one seems to know where that mountain of greenbacks is.

Other sources put the"emo" death toll much higher. Hana al-Bayaty of Brussels Tribunal, a nongovernmental organization dealing with Iraqi issues, said the current figure ranges “between 90 and 100,” Arabic-language newspaper Al Arabiya reported on its website.

And so it goes: Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan - whose legacy from our involvement has yet to be determined. I feel safe to say the legacy we leave behind will be less than the dust in the winds. Just like the other countries we conquered in the name of Freedom and Democracy.

As It Stands, there are no winners in wars waging ideologies.

It’s that Time already! Set your clock ahead an hour …

Fair warning: if you don’t want to be running an hour behind until the next time change comes, set your clocks ahead one hour tonight.

Trivia moment: The day of the big switch used to be the first Sunday of April, but in 2005, Congress revised the rule as an energy-saving measure.

Do you have questions about the time switch — and about sleep? I’ve got just the links for you:

  Story: Shedding a little light on daylight-saving time and http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3077304

Question for the Day: How big a role did marijuana play in the lives of Jesus and his followers?

                            Good Day Humboldt County!

Today’s road in search of adventure and truth. leads us down well worn cobblestones that the Romans used to connect their empire. How prevalent was marijuana usage during the time of Jesus, and the height of the Roman Empire? Did people of the period burn pipe bowls of it to relax or medicate? There’s all kinds of questions to ask.

“Was Jesus a Stoner?” was an article about the use of cannabis in ancient Judaism that ran in The February 2003 issue of High Times, a pro-cannabis magazine. Its author, Chris Bennett, likes to shock people. He was the host of Burning Shiva, a show on Canada's Pot-TV, and an advocate for the medical use and decriminalization of marijuana.

Bennett first looked at the use of drugs in religion in 2001, in his book ‘Sex, Drugs, Violence, and the Bible.” He claimed that Jesus's ministry was fuelled by mind-altering substances and that he may have used cannabis-based oils to heal eye and skin diseases. Bennett suggested his very name - Christ - derives from being anointed with cannabis-enriched oil.

Over the centuries drugs have been used by virtually all religions. Why not Christianity? In ancient times cannabis was widely cultivated throughout the Middle East. It grows like a weed and provides nourishing seed, which is also a good source of fiber used to make rope.

People certainly knew of its pleasurable effects. Back in 1935, a Slovakian linguist identified the plant known as "fragrant cane" in the English Bible as flowering cannabis, a link since accepted by some Jewish authorities.

And, if we want to get real funky here, let’s take a look at what we now call the host. Back in Jesus’s time it might have been more than just bread. There are indications that early Christians shared magic mushrooms in writings describing their spiritual visions and ecstasies after eating their eucharistic meal. A 4th-century mosaic, discovered at a basilica in Aquileia (northern Italy) depicts baskets of mushrooms. Why? It wasn't a restaurant. Could the "red mushrooms" have been the ritual meal?

I guess, after wandering along the path of life long enough, we all discover that there’s nothing new under the sun.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Washington Profile: McNugget almost strikes gold for eBay seller

It use to be profiles of Jesus. People were constantly seeing Jesus Christ’s face in trees and pancakes. While in Palm Desert, managing a group of five newspapers in 1991, I sent out a photographer to a trailer court where residents excitedly pointed at a tree.

My photographer looked…and looked, and finally had to admit he couldn’t see the son of God’s face anywhere. Irritated residents stood next to the image and pointed at something. My photographer dutifully snapped the photo, made nice with the folks, and reported back to me.

There was nothing to see. I don’t know if those residents were drinking spiked Kool aid or what. Naturally, I didn’t run the photo to the resident’s disgust. But no one was making money off of Jesus’s image. At least not that I knew of.

Along the same lines, I ran across the following tidbit and thought it might be fun to share with you:  

A Chicken McNugget bearing a striking resemblance to founding father George Washington has been causing quite a stir on eBay. It was listed for $8,000 and had takers!

Turns out the first winning bidder “chickened out” and the second-highest bidder, who had bid $8,000 might fall through as well. The bidder lives overseas. The seller, Rebekah Speight of Dakota City, Neb., told a local newspaper that she is concerned that the McNugget might not remain frozen for the duration of such a long trip, and could start to deteriorate.

Scientists unlock genetic code for gorillas - and show the human link

         Good Day Humboldt County!

It’s time to hit the evolutionary road, and see what those scientists have come up with in regards to humans and monkeys having common ancestors (snippet below). As far as I’m concerned, there’s no monkeys in my family tree (well, I do have a 5-year old granddaughter who might be part monkey the way she climbs things).

Seriously folks, I’m not so sure about all this genetic code stuff proving we (humans) were swinging in the trees back in the day with some sexy monkeys. Then again, I am a free spirit, and my idea of where humans come from is much grander than descending from the simian set.

Have you ever read, “Chariot of the Gods,” by Eric von Daniken? Well, I pretty much agree with the guy and believe our ancestors came from the stars. We have only to look at wonders like the pyramids (perfectly aligned with the stars) and other ancient technologies to know that no cross between a human and a monkey made them. There was outside help, and earth was once a colony.

Okay, call me a kook. It’s just a theory that makes a lot of sense to me. Who knows? Maybe it was like “Planet of the Apes” 50 million years ago and the chimpanzees ran the show and used gorillas for enforcers to keep the not-so-bright humans in line! I’m just saying…

News snippet: 

“HUMANS and gorillas last shared a common ancestor 10 million years ago, according to an analysis of the first full sequence of the gorilla genome. The gorilla is the last of the living great apes - humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans - to have its complete genetic code catalogued.

Scientists, led by researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute near Cambridge, England, and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, also found that 15 per cent of the gorilla's genetic code is closer between humans and gorillas than it is between humans and chimpanzees, our closest animal relative. The genomes of all three species are, in any case, highly similar: humans and chimpanzees share more than 98 per cent of their genes, while humans and gorillas share more than 96 per cent.” (Source)

Time for me to walk on down the road….