News – Everyone’s Talking about VT

Americas

Lucinda Roy, a professor who taught Cho Seung-hui, says she had attempted to warn school VT University officials in 2005 about his behavior. Largely due to disturbing pieces of writing that he created in creative writing class. She took him out of the class to teach him personally and gave multiple warnings to University staff about him. This should be looked into to see if officials were negligent in not taking these warnings more seriously.

Seems to me that he was well known as being a disturbed young man. Yet no one took action, save that one professor.

The speed at which word of the shootings appeared on student run blogs, minutes as opposed to the two hours that was the official word, shows that we need a new means of disaster alert for situations like this. We’re being shown the way by those who manage to take first hand accounts and publish them in a comparative eye blink. Considering the pervasiveness of cell phones, one that pings them would be a given.

Explainer looks at Campus Cops and looks at the guns that Cho used.

Of course, there will be finger pointing with regard to the media circus. Mind, news is a business and they have to give the people what they want to get ratings. And the people want conflict. It’s another aspect of that capitalism that people pimp so much. Don’t like it? Don’t watch em.

A vid of one of the survivors speaking on his experiences. I encountered a warning page loading it. Not sure if you folk will, but for the sake of respecting their warning system, it’s marked as graphic, so if you wouldn’t agree to a warning splash page to view it, then don’t.

Digging into how presidential candidates are spending the money given by the people.

Middle East

Condi Rice has talks with Palestinian finance minister Salam Fayyad. The topic? Easing the steady decay of Palestine’s economy.

Charges against Sergeant Sanick Dela Cruz, one of the soldiers on trial for the killings in Haditha, has his charges dropped. His role in the incident was determined to be minor in comparison to the value of his testimony.

Asia/Pacific

China is criticized(rightly in my opinion) for allowing tigers to be bred for the production of ‘tiger bone wine’. Of course, I’m going to be extremely biased on this one as I consider tigers to be one of the world’s most perfect creatures. Such gross mistreatment of them makes me.. well, extremely cross to tone it down.

Europe

Russia is making the first floating nuclear plant, designed to provide power to remote areas. An interesting idea, though matters of pollution and security would be the first caveats to leap to my mind.

General

Studies show that too much bacon(and other cured meats) could be bad for the lungs. How’s that? Has to do with the nitrates that can damage body tissue being present in the meat.

Researchers believe that ethanol may be worse in the long run than normal gas on an environmental level. Sad to see that this might be the case, but it’s yet another show that it would be better to scrap the internal combustion engine rather than phase through different fuels. I had hoped ethanol might have been a good step toward that, but better to cut out the middleman and go right to electric/hydrogen.

Reports of online child porn are up. This just means that our law enforcement services need to get more tech savvy to take the fight to them. Tech will always change the battleground, but never the fight against such deviant practices.

Ways to beat the P2P snoops.

The Blogs look at the Virginia Tech tragedy. No more, no less.

Today’s Papers has a very amusing dispatch from London that uses the breakup of Prince William and Kate Middleton to take a look at the intricacies of class structure in Britain and how they remain important and lots of bits and pieces from the VT shooting.

Amusements

Seven steps to getting yourself a threesome. Having a million dollars curiously absent

Man gets so stoned that he couldn’t tell whether he was handing the cop his driver’s license or his marijuana pipe. Jailarity naturally ensued, a fact he will no become aware of sometime in the next few days

Man jailed for “smash and grab” in the parking lot of a jail. Asinine, Silly and Stupid tags all step out of the way for the clear winner

Woman charged with hiring kidnappers on MySpace now in real trouble. With the Girl Scouts. She could lose cookie-selling merit badge

Too many idiot drivers don’t know how to, or even want to, get out of the way of emergency vehicles

Powerball winner to quit job with North Carolina Parks Department because he feels “kind of guilty holding a job that someone else might really need.” What a generous guy

Small French town launches campaign to remind British tourists about which side of the road they’re supposed to drive on

PSA: If you’re going to make a code to page your drug dealer for emergency requests, don’t make it ‘911’

Note to local politicians: When mailing out a toll-free number for people to call about local sex predators, make sure it’s not a sex chat line

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Fark Photoshop Challenge: Photoshop these rusty cans

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