Call the diversity police!

In Skokie, Illinois “Members of the group then kicked and punched the victim while using racial slurs” and so “six people have been charged with felony mob action and aggravated battery for allegedly beating an African-American man,” reports the Chicago Tribune. The alleged perpetrators are George Won Guk Tai, Vuong Quach, Alexander Hernandez, Emily A. Peele, Andrius Spokas, Sarun Thitayarak.

UPDATE: According to the Skokie Review, Aaron T. Moskowitz has also been charged with mob action and battery. — Seventh suspect charged in beating

Might have been, could be, and better avoided

But which is which?

• Change we can hope for? A Madcap Proposal is just what P.J. O’Rourke would have written if he were a completely different man.
• Emergency preparedness is worth re-examining from time to time.
• Mortgage basics, part 1 and Mortgage basics, part 2. I haven’t read these in detail yet, but they look pretty good. There’s a fascinating chart in part 2 that would make a great basis for parody.

Eighty-eighth Storyblogging Carnival

The eighty-eighth Storyblogging Carnival is up.

The ‘summer of love’

Mary Eberstadt vividly describes how I feel about some Baby Boomers:

Did Your parents ever leave home for the weekend when any of You were kids, putting You in the care of teenage siblings? Do You still remember the two-day nonstop party, and the expressions on Your parents’ faces Sunday night when they saw the overflowing ashtrays and empty kegs and someone else’s underwear in the laundry and throw-up in the fish tank? Well You should know that’s pretty much what it was like for those of us who went through life after You baby boomers did, a decade or so after what might be called the Godless Generation swept through first. — The Loser Letter of May 16, 2008

Literally

Cat-and-mouse chase causes 72-hour blackout – “The animals ran into an area of high-voltage cables and were electrocuted.”

Historiography, and a curse

Two from Britannica Blog:

• Lots of things happened in the past. The events that make up history depend on what is in the historian’s newspaper today.
  

  “It’s not a matter of triumphalism or partisanship so much as the unavoidable consequence of the fact that the historian, whenever he is writing, occupies the unique present moment and is highly apt to pick out from the nearly infinite number of incidents and accidents of the past those that appear to bear a particular relevance to that present.” — Whig History and Whig Biography

• A good solid post on the importance of writing and following instructions, with link to an amazing video of how to fold a T-shirt. The real gem is the included curse on plagiarists:
  

  “May you misread the recipe so that the senn pest fills your taftoon with both unwanted crunchiness and unseemly rheological qualities” — The Lost Art of Following Instructions

Insurance

Heh, have to remember this one: Proof of the Riemann Hypothesis.

Twitter, civil rights, and food riots

Here’s one thing Twitter is good for.

“When Egyptian police scooped up University of California, Berkeley, graduate journalism student James Karl Buck, who was photographing a noisy demonstration, and dumped him in a jail cell last week, they didn’t count on Twitter. Buck, 29, a former Oakland Tribune multimedia intern, used the ubiquitous short messaging service to tap out a single word on his cellular phone: ARRESTED.” — How Egypt, U.S. got all a-Twitter over Cal student

Buck says he and his translator were photographing a demonstration at which people were trying to find out the status of others arrested during the Egyptian food riots. Of course it helped that Buck is an American citizen. His translator, Mohammed Maree, is not so fortunate. He is being held incommunicado by the Egyptian authorities.

Food riots

It seems to me that food riots in Egypt and elsewhere ought to be bigger news than the coverage indicates. Here are some links:

• 6 April 2008, Egyptian Workers Riot Over Rising Prices: “Thousands of demonstrators angry about rising prices and stagnant salaries torched buildings, looted shops and hurled bricks at police who responded with tear gas Sunday in a northern industrial town [Mahalla el-Kobra] as Egyptians staged a nationwide strike.”
• 8 April, Egyptian boy dies from wounds sustained in Mahalla food riots: “The gritty industrial city [Mahalla, as above] has been the scene of two days of violent clashes between police and residents angered over rising food prices. On Sunday, security prevented workers from going on strike.”
• 9 April, Egypt Seeks to Appease Angry Workers: “Egypt rushed Tuesday to grant bonuses to workers after two days of deadly riots over high food prices and low wages wracked this northern industrial city, fueling government fears that economic angst might boil over across the country.”
• 11 April, Egypt arrests 9 journalists in city where economic riots erupted: “Amnesty International said Friday it was disturbed by the killings of two Egyptians during the rioting in Mahalla el-Kobra and the arrests of pro-democracy activists in the aftermath of the unrest sparked by rising food prices.”
• 12 April, Food riots in Bangladesh, Egypt and Philippines – many other nations ready to explode : “Nearly two dozen people were injured as police opened fire in air and used batons and tear gas to disperse thousands of protesters who turned violent while demanding a wage hike to meet the steep food prices in Bangladesh capital Dhaka.”
• 15 April, US in $200m food crisis response: “Rising food prices have sparked recent riots in several countries, including Haiti, the Philippines and Egypt.”

Merry Christmas to all

Remember, do not eat the desiccant.

8 things about me

Doc Rampage tagged me for 8-things-about-me. Here’s the deal:

The rules are simple…Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

I like Marmite, and eat some about every week.

I am an exercise fanatic. Right now I mostly lift weights. Later in the year I will change my weight routine and start using the rowing machine again. I don’t play any sports or compete at anything, although I used to run the occasional 5 or 10 k on a weekend.

I don’t own any jeans.

My business is my own. When I mail letters, I keep the address face down so people can’t see who I’m writing to. Otherwise I could be sitting at a stop light and someone might walk by, look in the window, and see I was sending mail to the gas company. I can’t take that risk.

My least favorite hymn, possibly my absolute least favorite piece of music, is Amazing Grace. I understand that most people love this song and find it deeply moving. I acknowledge the overwhelming importance of its message. Sorry, I’d rather sing Kumbaya, or hear MacArthur Park, or sit through a guitar mass.

I have five of those miracle-thaw plates. I buy another whenever I see one at the thrift shop for less than a dollar.

My natural sense of direction is so poor it is worse than random. I unconsciously assume that whatever direction I am facing is north, unless it really is north; then I am convinced it is southeast. I get places by using or remembering maps, using the often horribly-inefficient procedure that got me there last time, or in very rare cases writing notes and leaving orange marking tape as I go.

I never tag anyone for things like this.

UPDATE 11 February 2011: Out of Marmite, up to 11 miracle-thaw plates.