- How would you like the chance to have your son coached by a convicted criminal and one of the most notorious head cases in NFL history? The man once known as Brock Middlebrook (when he was trying to conceal his identity, anyhow) is now the head coach of Northwestern High in Flint, Mich. after beating out 13 other applicants for the job. The school apparently was willing to overlook his criminal background and focus on the fact that he’s a former Pro Bowl wide receiver. How a coach leading kids when he’s on the hook for mounting child support debts in Genesee County and Georgia is acceptable, I don’t know. Seems to me that spending a month in a Georgia jail in 2004 after failing to pay $107,000 in child support there and declaring bankruptcy in 2007 to avoid making further child support payments would make a guy a bad example for kids, but maybe I’m way off base. Although Rison has reportedly settled all existing child support debts, there is still the matter of his $30,000 in court-ordered attorney fees to the lawyer for the mother of two of his children, Randall Kessler of Atlanta. Kessler isn’t even pursuing the remaining $30,000 in attorney fees he said Rison owes and doesn’t think he will file a lawsuit to get the money. With all of this as a backdrop for his candidacy, Rison was able to convince school officials that he is fit to lead their team and they are fully on board. “As long as he doesn’t have any felonies, I have no problem with him coming to be a role model for the students,” school board member David Davenport said. Trying to look on the positive side, maybe Rison can be a quality role model for his players. And perhaps he can resuscitate a program on an epic run of futility that dates all the way back to the mid-‘80s, when Rison was star athlete at the same school. “It’s not just about football. It’s about getting in the mindset of education comes first. Football, we’ll deal with the X’s and O’s. But we’ve been working on character building, being on time and doing well in school more so than the X’s and O’s right now, Rison said of his new gig. “Sports are a great window of opportunity for them to earn a scholarship to college. I drill them on how they can make a difference, not only with themselves, but with their community, and I think they’re buying into it.” Best of success to you and your new team, Brock………
- Just another case of The Man infringing on your rights. According to a federal appeals court in California, The Man (in the form of law enforcement) can now secretly place a GPS device on a person's car without seeking a warrant from a judge. According to a recent ruling by that legally ignorant appeals court in California, the Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Oregon who covertly attached a GPS to the silver Jeep owned by Juan Pineda-Moreno in 2007 were well within their rights to plant the tracker. Pineda-Moreno was suspected of growing marijuana, so apparently that invalidates his right to not have cops creeping onto his property without a warrant and dropping a tracker on his car. Fact is, when Pineda-Moreno was arrested and charged, one piece of evidence was the GPS data, including the longitude and latitude of where the Jeep was driven, and how long it stayed at each stop. Prosecutors argued that the Jeep had been driven several times to remote rural locations where agents discovered marijuana being grown. To me, that point is irrelevant. The ends do not always justify the means and just as police cannot (I don’t think) storm your house on mere suspicion, later find evidence of a crime and get away with it, cops should not be able to plant a tracker on a person’s car without a warrant, even if that person later pleads guilty to conspiracy to grow marijuana, and ends up serving a 51-month sentence. How the appeals court didn’t agree with Pineda-Moreno’s contention that sneaking onto a person's driveway and secretly tracking their car violates a person's reasonable expectation of privacy, I will never know. "They went onto the property several times in the middle of the night without his knowledge and without his permission," said his lawyer, Harrison Latto. Yet the freaking U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the appeal not once, but twice -- in January of this year by a three-judge panel, and then again by the full court earlier this month. Now, law enforcement (for the time being) has a green light to place trackers on cars, without seeking a court's permission, in the nine western states the California-based circuit covers. A glimmer of hope can be found in the decision of a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., in a similar case. That court ruled officers who attached a GPS to the car of a suspected drug dealer should have sought a warrant. Ultimately, the issue is likely to come before the U.S. Supreme Court. Hopefully those nine judges espouse the same attitude as one of the dissenting judges in Pineda-Moreno's case, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who opined that the defendant's driveway was private and that the decision would allow police to use tactics he called "creepy" and "underhanded." "The vast majority of the 60 million people living in the Ninth Circuit will see their privacy materially diminished by the panel's ruling," Kozinksi wrote in his dissent. Thank you for standing up against tyranny and abuse of power, Judge Kozinksi………..
- It sounds like a bad excuse for people who are overly sensitive to avoid being mocked and teased, but in truth, it’s an actual medical condition. Gelotophobia is not the fear of sweet, jiggly gelatin desserts, but rather the fear of being laughed at. "Gelo" means laughter and "phobia" means fear in Greek. The concept has been the subject of in-depth research by scientists in Europe, who looked at 218 people from the French part of Switzerland and 245 people from Quebec, Canada to measure the prevalence of Gelotophobia. The study, published in the latest issue of the European Review of Applied Psychology, looked at the French version of short questionnaire for identifying gelotophobes, using it to determine which individuals in their study feared the laughter of others. Those who have the fear experience negative reactions to laughter from other people, even strangers. In the mind of a gelotophobe, that laughter is designed for one thing: putting them down. That elicits a suspicious reaction when a gelotophobe hears others laughing and they believe in what many would call a paranoid fashion that all laughter is directed at them even if there's no justifiable reason for that. Having this irrational fear rattling around inside one’s head can obviously have serious social consequences, as gelotophobes tend to isolate themselves rather than step into situations where there might be laughter. In turn, that isolation can lead to ostracizing and the end result is a person who is already struggling finding themselves even more alone. In the study, researchers found that fear of being laughed at was independent of the participants' age, sex or marital status. Those who suffer from this fear also miss out on the normal joys and release that laughter brings to a person’s life. However, even though gelotophobia is related to social anxiety, it is not tied to specific fears. Unfortunately, there is no empirically verified intervention for it. In other words, gelotophobia is no laughing matter…….
- Because it’s been a couple hundred years since we’ve had the experience, most Americans probably don’t grasp what a big day today was in Kenya, where the nation celebrated the signing Friday of a new constitution expected to usher in major change. Even if the day became a lightning rod for controversy because Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, wanted for war crimes, came to celebrate the occasion, nothing could ruin this day for Kenyans. The kings of the marathon were overwhelmingly ecstatic to welcome a new constitution more than two decades in the making. The issue had picked up momentum after postelection violence left more than 1,000 dead in 2008, but crossing the finish line still took a tremendous amount of work, as it probably should any time you are laying out the governing document for an entire country. The signing of the constitution was attended by thousands of Kenyans three weeks after voters overwhelmingly approved the referendum. "For the last two decades, the people have yearned for a new constitution," President Mwai Kibaki said. In what some might view as overkill, Kibaki signed six copies of the constitution and held one up to the crowd, which was raucous and enthusiastic throughout. Afterward, a 21-gun salute and the national anthem marked the day’s festivities. The constitution itself will result in a more decentralized political system that minimizes the president's powers, so it’s ironic that Kibaki was the one signing it into law. Other aspects of the document call for land reform and allows dual citizenship -- a key issue with Kenya's massive diaspora community. The rest of the world celebrates with you today, Kenya, so party it up and enjoy the achievement………..
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