THE DAILY BLADE: The First Earth Day
An unintentionally hilarious piece in The New Yorker casts a nostalgic eye on the origins of Earth Day:
The first celebration of Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, was a raucously exuberant affair. In New York, Fifth Avenue was closed to traffic. People picnicked on the sidewalk; dead fish were dragged through midtown; and Governor Nelson Rockefeller rode a bicycle across Prospect Park. Students in Richmond, Virginia, handed out bags of dirt (to represent the “good earth”); demonstrators in Washington poured oil onto the sidewalk in front of the Interior Department (to protest recent oil spills); and in Bloomington, Indiana, women dressed as witches threw birth-control pills into the crowd (no one was quite sure why). …
This week, when Earth Day turns thirty-nine, the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation will plant trees. The Interior Department will host a fair in Washington’s Rawlins Park, and in Bloomington volunteers will teach sixth graders about karsts and creeks. As perhaps befits a middle-aged celebration, these are all eminently reasonable activities. But Earth Day has lost its edge and, with that, the sense that a different world is possible.
Is it any wonder people who were too young to be hippies but old enough to be lumped in with the baby boomers want out.
An Age-Old Question
Just how old is Somali pirate Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse? Is he 15 years old - as his nomadic goat-herder father Abdukadir Muse Ghedi claims - or is he 18 or 19 years old, as NYPD detective Frederick Galloway testified Muse admitted being?
Judge, Andrew J. Peck found the father’s testimony to be “incredible” and declared Muse would be prosecuted as an adult on five, including “the crime of piracy as defined by the law of nations.” He then ordered Muse held without bail, reports The New York Times:
The head of the F.B.I. in New York, Joseph M. Demarest Jr., said in a statement: “Modern-day pirates bear little resemblance to the swashbuckling antiheroes of popular fiction.” He called Mr. Muse and his band “armed hijackers who robbed the ship, threatened the crew and held the captain hostage at gunpoint.” …
Disputing his father’s portrayal of his son as an unwitting dupe, prosecutors say Mr. Muse conducted himself as the leader of the pirate gang, and was the first among them to climb aboard the Maersk Alabama on the morning of April 8 in the Indian Ocean off of Somalia.
He fired his gun at the captain, Richard Phillips, who was still on the bridge, and then entered the bridge with two other armed pirates, and demanded money, the complaint said.
On Tuesday, Mr. Muse’s father seemed upset about the way the episode turned out. “To save that one American they killed three Somalis,” he said. “Well, the American life seems to be more valuable than the Somalis’.”
After questions arose over whether several Chinese gymnasts met the age threshold of 16, several methods to determine age are being investigated.
DNA analysis can approximate a person's age within a two-year window and combining it with other methods, investigators may be able to home in on whether Muse is younger or older than 18 years. This testing ought to be pursued to forestall endless rounds of appeals should he be found guilty. Just eyeballing his photo suggests Muse is rather mature-looking for a 15-year old - which would be unlikely in a poverty-stricken, chaotic county plagued by food shortages, which tend to stunt growth and maturation.
The Glass Is Half Empty/Full
According to The Associated Press, “Taliban militants from Pakistan's Swat Valley are tightening their grip on a neighboring northwest district closer to the capital - patrolling roads, broadcasting sermons and spreading fear in another sign that a government-backed peace deal has emboldened the extremists to spread their reign.”
Reporting on these same developments USA Today finds “[a] public backlash is building against the Pakistani Taliban, who looked triumphant after gaining control of the northern region Swat last week.”
Lower Tolerance For Zero Tolerance
The Washington Times reports that the zero-tolerance policies that were instituted in schools nationwide ostensibly to deter another Columbine massacre are losing favor:
A week before Colorado marked the 10th anniversary of the iconic tragedy Monday, the legislature sent to the governor a bill making an exception in the state's zero-tolerance policy on weapons in schools. …
Colorado state Sen. Kevin Lundberg said he proposed the legislation in his state after Marie Morrow was expelled for leaving three facsimile drill-team rifles in her car in the school parking lot. She missed six days of school before a school hearing officer allowed her to return …
"We tried to add a little common sense," said Mr. Lundberg, a Republican. "I wasn't trying to challenge zero-tolerance policies on dangerous weapons; I was trying to define what a dangerous weapon is."
States had begun to pass zero-tolerance laws after the Gun Free School Act of 1994, but those efforts intensified after the Columbine shooting. Provisions mandating expulsion or suspension for bringing firearms to school were expanded to include any weapon.
It soon became clear that "weapon" could be defined as anything from a pencil to a machete. The result was a rash of horror stories about students suspended or expelled for bringing plastic knives to school in their lunches, keeping nail-clippers in their lockers, even pointing finger-"guns" at other students.
Zero tolerance rules on “weapons” quickly morphed into zero tolerance rules on drugs, including prescription and OTC medications – ultimately leading to a Supreme Court challenge of the strip-search of a female honor student student in AZ who was accused of secreting an ibuprofen in her vagina.
Capital One: What’s In Your Wallet?
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