Samwise rides again

http://xkcd.com/327/

From Record Online …

The girl was called out of class by a security guard during a school sweep last week to make sure no kids had backpacks or other banned bags.

Samantha Martin had a small purse with her that day.

That’s why the security guard, ex-Monticello cop Mike Bunce, asked her The Question.

She says he told her she couldn’t have a purse unless she had her period. Then he asked, “Do you have your period?”

Samantha was mortified.

She says she thought, “Oh, my God. Get away from me.” But instead of answering, she just walked back into class.

It appears that at least a few other girls were also asked the same question.

On Sept. 21, Martin and other girls were called to the office of Principal Robert Worden. Lisa Raymond, the assistant superintendent for business, was also there, Martin said.

“They just asked me what he (Bunce) said. I told them, and they said thanks for coming,” she said.

The small Sullivan County school has been in an uproar for the last week. Girls have worn tampons on their clothes in protest, and purses made out of tampon boxes. Some boys wore maxi-pads stuck to their shirts in support.

After hearing that someone might have been suspended for the protest, freshman Hannah Lindquist, 14, went to talk to Worden. She wore her protest necklace, an OB tampon box on a piece of yarn. She said Worden confiscated it, talked to her about the code of conduct and the backpack rule — and told her she was now “part of the problem.”

The administration is investigating whether they said anything more to some girls.

The school banned backpacks in the halls this year for two reasons, George said: Student health, because heavy bags could hurt the kids’ backs or people could trip on them; and for security concerns, felt nationwide, about concealed weapons.

The health angle is nothing but shit, and the security aspect is laughable security theatre, however if there was a shooting or knifing, they could have used those tampons to stem-the-flow-of-blood ;Op

Parents are furious.

… and quite right too.

Preorders for 4.2 are up.

From Townhall.com …

Researchers have figured out how to give an entire community a drug test using just a teaspoon of wastewater from a city’s sewer plant.

The test wouldn’t be used to finger any single person as a drug user. But it would help federal law enforcement and other agencies track the spread of dangerous drugs, like methamphetamines, across the country.

Oregon State University scientists tested 10 unnamed American cities for remnants of drugs, both legal and illegal, from wastewater streams. They were able to show that they could get a good snapshot of what people are taking.

One of the early results of the new study showed big differences in methamphetamine use city to city. One urban area with a gambling industry had meth levels more than five times higher than other cities. Yet methamphetamine levels were virtually nonexistent in some smaller Midwestern locales

The ingredient Americans consume and excrete the most was caffeine

Cities in the experiment ranged from 17,000 to 600,000 in population, but Field declined to identify them, saying that could harm her relationship with the sewage plant operators.

The science behind the testing is simple. Nearly every drug _ legal and illicit _ that people take leaves the body. That waste goes into toilets and then into wastewater treatment plants.

“Wastewater facilities are wonderful places to understand what humans consume and excrete,”

in the study presented Tuesday, one teaspoon of untreated sewage water from each of the cities was tested for 15 different drugs. Field said researchers can’t calculate how many people in a town are using drugs.

She said that one fairly affluent community scored low for illicit drugs except for cocaine. Cocaine and ecstasy tended to peak on weekends and drop on weekdays, she said, while methamphetamine and prescription drugs were steady throughout the week.

Field said her study suggests that a key tool currently used by drug abuse researchers _ self-reported drug questionnaires _ underestimates drug use.

“We have so few indicators of current use,”

The idea of testing on a citywide basis for drugs makes sense, as long as it doesn’t violate people’s privacy, said Tom Angell of the Students for Sensible Drug Policy, a Washington-based group that wants looser drug laws.

“This seems to be less offensive than individualized testing,”

UPDATE : I can understand why this may protect an individuals privacy at present, though obviously they are showing how easy it is to test anyone, at the city or state level it could be used to support policy which could actually be very damaging if not handled responsibly, unfortunatly when it comes to drugs, the powers that be rarely know the meaning of the word.

As I’ve discussed in two previous posts, imbalances in population sex ratios have been shown to have serious consequences for societal stability.

Recently during a conversation I was reminded of a commonly held belief that there are noticeable imbalances in the sex ratio in Hawai’i. The oft stated claims are along the lines that Hilo, or the Big Island in general, has three or four men to every woman, with the opposite being true on Maui.

Anyway this got me to thinking wether or not this claim was true and, if it was, could I see any effects on the population such as a male “bachelor” underclass, or was it, like many claim, obvious in people’s attitudes.

The following is from Wikipedia and are related to the Census of 2000, which can be referenced against the Census Bureau website.

Hilo …

As of the census of 2000, there were 40,759 people, 14,577 households, and 10,101 families residing in the CDP. The population density was 289.9/km² (750.8/mi²). There were 16,026 housing units at an average density of 114.0/km² (295.2/mi²). The racial makeup of the CDP was 17.12% White, 0.45% African American, 0.34% Native American, 38.30% Asian, 13.12% Pacific Islander, 0.94% from other races, and 29.74% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 8.78% of the population.

There were 14,577 households out of which 30.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 48.5% were married couples living together, 15.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 30.7% were non-families. 24.1% of all households were made up of individuals and 10.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.70 and the average family size was 3.19.

In the CDP the population was spread out with 24.7% under the age of 18, 10.3% from 18 to 24, 24.4% from 25 to 44, 23.9% from 45 to 64, and 16.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females there were 95.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.9 males.

Kona …

As of the censusGR2 of 2000, there were 9,870 people, 3,537 households, and 2,429 families residing in the CDP. The population density was 107.3/km² (278.0/mi²). There were 4,322 housing units at an average density of 47.0/km² (121.7/mi²). The racial makeup of the CDP was 38.65% White, 0.46% Black or African American, 0.46% Native American, 18.28% Asian, 13.16% Pacific Islander, 1.93% from other races, and 27.07% from two or more races. 10.20% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

There were 3,537 households out of which 35.0% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 49.6% were married couples living together, 13.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 31.3% were non-families. 22.6% of all households were made up of individuals and 7.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.78 and the average family size was 3.26.

In the CDP the population was spread out with 27.3% under the age of 18, 9.0% from 18 to 24, 28.8% from 25 to 44, 24.9% from 45 to 64, and 10.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females there were 98.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 95.8 males.

The median income for a household in the CDP was $40,874, and the median income for a family was $46,657. Males had a median income of $30,353 versus $26,471 for females. The per capita income for the CDP was $20,624. 10.8% of the population and 6.5% of families were below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 11.9% of those under the age of 18 and 3.9% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line.

Big Island …

As of 2000, there were 148,677 people, 52,985 households, and 36,877 families residing in the county. The population density was 14/km² (37/mi²). There were 62,674 housing units at an average density of 6/km² (16/mi²). The racial makeup of the county was 31.55% White, 0.47% African American, 0.45% Native American, 26.70% Asian, 11.25% Pacific Islander, 1.14% from other races, and 28.44% from two or more races. 9.49% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

There were 52,985 households out of which 32.20% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 50.60% were married couples living together, 13.20% had a woman whose husband did not live with her, and 30.40% were non-families. 23.10% of all households were made up of individuals and 8.00% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.75 and the average family size was 3.24.

In the county the population was spread out with 26.10% under the age of 18, 8.20% from 18 to 24, 26.20% from 25 to 44, 26.00% from 45 to 64, and 13.50% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females there were 100.40 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 97.70 males.

Basically there appears to be no truth in the rumour, at least on the Big Island, in Hilo women only just outnumber men, in Kona the gap is even narrower and on the Big Island men outnumber women by an even smaller margin.

Admittedly something dramatic may have happened in the past seven years to wipe out the population of men, but it is probably safe to say that the sex ratio here is actually quite stable.

UPDATE : I will have to look at this again, as when comparing numbers to previous articles, some interesting questions started posing themselves.

A while back I blogged about imbalances in sex ratio leading to social instability, a situation where by continuing sex selection favouring males could lead to regional instability of a very serious nature.

Last week I came across a number of stories related to a report that detailed a similar situation in East Germany, the difference in this case is not so much sex selection as mass migration for economic reasons, the result of which is no less worrying.

From Aunty …

The former East Germany is being drained of young women, leaving an underclass of disillusioned young men behind

It is well known that Germans living in the former East have been leaving the region in huge numbers since communism collapsed at the start of the 1990s.

Many have gone to western Germany, or to foreign countries.

The report, entitled Too Many Men, says women have made up the greater part of the exodus.

Since the fall of communism one-and-a-half million - roughly 10% of the population of the former East Germany - have headed west in the hope of better work opportunities.

Most of them are under 35 years old, and with a better than average education.

What this new report by the Institute for Population and Development establishes, is that young women have been leaving in much greater numbers than young men - and that of the men who did leave, many returned.

The result is that in many towns in eastern Germany, the report says, there are simply not enough women to go round.

This lack of female company only adds to the frustrations of often jobless young men, making them easy prey for neo-Nazi groups looking for recruits.

The report suggests that the reason young east German women are more inclined to “go west” and stay there is that they tend to be better educated. And it says the male-female imbalance in the east is already leading to a fall in the birth rate in that part of Germany.

From the Guardian …

Even communities that traditionally have more men than women - such as the polar regions of Sweden and Finland, or the majority of remote Greek islands - do not have such pronounced male surpluses

for every 100 men aged 25 to 30, there are just 80 women.

the exodus of young females (400,000 in the age range 18-29 since 1991) is believed to have more to do with the fact they are better educated than men and set on improved opportunities

“In the west, many women look for their intellectual equal as a -partner. As a result, most do not return.”

The most dramatic effect of the imbalance was the growth of a “new, male–dominated underclass,”

Its members often have little chance either of finding a job or a partner, and as a result they are typically drawn to far-right parties, such as the German Nationalists (NPD) or to neo-Nazi groups. The proportion of eastern German women with degrees is 31%, compared to 20% of men.

A substantial number of men have nevertheless also left - 270,000 since 1991 - but a much higher percentage return, more often than not because they are disappointed by the experience, having failed to find a job and make social contacts.

The development is leading to social erosion on a large scale

It is estimated that between 1995 and 2005, around 100,000 fewer babies were born in the region than would have been the case if the imbalance had not existed.

From Spiegel …

Some 1.5 million have already left the region — roughly 10 percent of the population of East Germany when the Berlin Wall fell. Even worse, most of those who leave are under 35 and many of them have above average education or training.

Since 1991, more than two-thirds of all those who have left Eastern Germany have been women. The result is that in many towns in the region, there are simply not enough to go around — some places are missing up to 25 percent of their young women. Even worse, the young men who stay behind are often poorly educated, unemployed and frustrated — perfect fodder for neo-Nazi groups looking for members.

“In general,” the study finds, “right-wing radical parties receive more votes in those areas where the most young women have left.”

The reasons behind the mass migration from east to west are primarily economic. Despite some regional improvements, the economy in former East Germany continues to lag far behind that of Western Germany. Unemployment remains persistent and is well over 10 percent for those under 25 years of age. The fact that young women in the region tend to be better educated than the young men means that women have an easier time finding work in the west.

Already, Eastern Germany is missing some 100,000 babies that otherwise would have been born in the region had more young women stayed. The brain drain and the lack of offspring further erode the economy.

“In those regions where the economic problems are largest, a new, male-dominated underclass has developed, the members of which are excluded from participation in large parts of the society,”

In state elections in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, the NPD captured fully 7.3 percent of the vote, meaning that the right wingers now hold seats in three German state parliaments, all of them in former East Germany.

The study recommends a greater focus on educating the region’s young men, but admits that solving the problem is a difficult challenge. After all, there is no one to turn to for advice: nowhere in Europe is the disappearance of women as severe as it is in Eastern Germany.

“The lack of women in former East Germany has no equal anywhere in Europe,” the study says. “Even Polar regions in northern Sweden and Finland, where young women have for years been leaving in droves, don’t come close to the problem in Eastern Germany.”

If you would like to see what East Germans are missing, may I present Miss Eastern Germany, Svetlana Tsys, her surname having nothing to do with system temperature …

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,882743,00.jpg

From the Guardian …

The Moscow theatre siege of October 2002 was fated to end badly. A group of militants demanding Russia’s withdrawal from Chechnya invaded the theatre, taking more than 850 hostages. They threatened to blow everyone up; negotiation brought little benefit, apart from the release of some children. Abruptly, as the siege was entering its third day, the Russian secret service pumped a mysterious gas into the theatre, intending to knock out the militants.

It worked - too well. Though 750 hostages were saved, more than 100 died and hundreds more had serious after-effects including deafness and amnesia. The “non-lethal” weapon had proved lethal, with a death toll of 13%. By contrast, with battlefield weapons the overall expected death rate is just 1 in 16, or 6.25%.

Some of the deaths and disabilities arose because doctors on hand outside to help the hostages as they were brought out did not know precisely what drug had been used. Although the best reckoning now is that it was some form of fentanyl - used widely as a general anaesthetic - only the Russian authorities know. The details have never been published.

The use of that chemical weapon in peacetime could be justified by Russia, which is a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, as being for “domestic law enforcement” - an allowed exemption.

military interest in incapacitating biochemical weapons has grown, as the capabilities of pharmaceutical companies have been transformed by developments such as the unravelling of the genome. What once were seen as distinct chemical and biological processes - the function of the lungs or the brain - can now be targeted with increasing precision.

Molecules can be engineered to target processes such as nerve and cardiovascular function. New agents can be designed to act as delivery mechanisms, while not themselves causing disease. New variants can be explored via a mixture of combinational chemistry (which can enable high-capacity screening for thousands of potential functional chemical groups), knowledge of gene structures, microarrays that can be used for rapid testing on DNA examples, artificial intelligence predictions of toxicity, directed evolution, information about what proteins a gene codes for, bioinformatics and computer modelling of chemical receptor structures.

These developments represent magnificent possibilities for curing disease - but they also facilitate new possibilities for weapons that induce paralysis, fear, pain and subjugation.

The convention does not permit the use of riot agents for waging war. However, “law enforcement” is undefined; and the role of incapacitating agents as counter-terror weapons has opened up a significant loophole. That is being exploited by the fast-expanding field of “non-lethal weapons” - especially in the US, via the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate at the US Marine Corps’ Quantico base, where incapacitating chemicals are presented as humane weapons. Drug syringes that can be fired like bullets, most often used for animal control, are now available in the commercial sector as narcotics guns.

However, as the Moscow siege showed, one person’s tranquillisation is another’s lethal dose. Yet much larger devices for mass delivery of chemical agents are being prepared, including mortars. There’s no way to conceive of that as riot control.

In Britain, the development of law-enforcement chemicals is ostensibly guided by the Himsworth Committee principles, which say riot chemicals should be treated more like drugs than weapons, with full publication of results in scientific journals prior to authorisation. So a British doctor called to a siege where knockout gas was proposed as a solution should, in theory, be able to refer to published medical literature.

From Legal & Medical …

The BMA’s report, The Use of Drugs as Weapons, looked at governments’ beliefs that it is possible to use drugs to ‘non-lethal’ effects in law enforcement situations.

Dr Vivienne Nathanson, BMA Head of Science and Ethics, said: “It is important to remember that target groups are likely to comprise people of varying weights, sizes and ages; some may be pregnant or have pre-existing medical conditions. It is virtually impossible to control the amount of a drug delivered or to ensure it acts without producing toxic effects or causing death.

“It is disingenuous of governments to describe drugs as non-lethal – there is no difference between a drug and a poison except the dose. Using drugs as a method of law enforcement may constitute a violation of international conventions which prohibit the use of chemical weapons. This is of great concern to the BMA.”

From the BBC …

doctors needed to be aware that their medical knowledge might be called upon for the development of drugs for military purposes, as well as antidotes and treatments.

She urged medics to advocate against the use of drugs for law enforcement and not be involved in the training of military or law enforcement personnel in the administration of drugs as weapons.

According to the report, some experts in some countries, including America and China, are pushing for legislation to allow the use of chemical weapons beyond the current narrow definition of riot control.

Dr Nathanson said: “It is absolutely essential that we do not allow an extension of the use of chemical weapons or a re-writing of the law that bans them. If we do, that will put all of us at risk.”

One of the main reasons for advocating pharmaceuticals over non-pharmaceuticals in the medical industry is to do with dose, pharmaceuticals tend to have an exact measured dose, which is not available in non-pharmaceutical preparations. As the BMA report mentions, dispersing drugs into the air or similar removes this advantage and moves it into the category of dangerous and most likely lethal. There are many other reasons why pharmaceuticals are often advocated in medicine that are not as good for the public such as patents and consumer confidence, the latter has more in common with the placebo-effect in that the public has either been conditioned or have conditioned themselves into believing that medication in pill form is often the cure, for example the difference between eating an orange or taking a Vitamin C tablet ( I actually have a real world example not too dissimilar to this, which is why I mention it. )

Synthetic THC is a reasonably good example of a pharmaceutical which is actually considered worse than it’s herbal equivalent. Users say the herbal preparations allow them to control the dose and also find the effect more beneficial than the synthetics, it also has the added benefit that they can produce their own medication for very little cost. Interestingly the median lethal dose of THC is extremely high, no pun intended, honest, and could be relativly safe to vaporise over a crowd to subdue a riot, the worse case scenario being that the rioters would whip out guitars and start playing Donovan songs. Scary, but not lethal.

While we are on the subject of rioting, the German authorities are predicting a riot for the G8 summit in June and are using sniffer-dogs to hunt out known violent protesters in the crowd from a database of human scents, a technique used by the East German Secret Police.

Someone mentioned that the population of bees in Britain was wiped out during the first world war, and that all bees in Britain today are actually imported from Mexico.

Regular readers of this blog will be aware that such things are of keen interest to me, the disappearance of bees in North America and the ( possibly related ) infestation of honeybee mites here in Hawai’i are both serious causes for concern.

The story does appear to have a large degree of truth to it, in 1915 during the First World War the British Black Bee was hit by what was known as the “Isle of Wight epidemic”, an infestation of Acarine Mites that was regarded as having wiped out the British Black Bee, and 90% of all bees in Britain. The mites were not identified as the problem until 1921.

The British Ministry of Agriculture for a time during the 1920s imported Italian queen bees from America, however these bees also proved susceptible to the mite.

With respect to security concerns, the connection with the First World War appears to be coincidental as the epidemic was first observed in 1904, though I am not sure that proves anything, I don’t think this detracts from the point of the story.

One of the important things to note, and where this story differs greatly from the current threat to bee populations is that the UK imported fifty five million tons of food a year into the UK at this time from the Empire which included fifty percent of its meat, seventy percent of its cheese and sugar, around eighty percent of it’s fruits and around ninety percent of all cereals and fats, utilising only five percent of the British labour force on farms. During the Second World War importation of foods decreased due to bombing of shipping, a practice that started during the First World War.

In 1916 a German Benedictine monk called Karl Kehrle at St.Mary’s abbey in Buckfast started developing a hybrid honeybee which would be resistant to the mite, and by 1917 he had the first Buckfast bees through selective breeding of Carniolan and Italian queen bees that had mated with native black drones, the only bees at Buckfast to survive the mite infestation.

In 1919 Karl Kehrle, known as Brother Adam, was appointed to manage the abbey’s apiary and set about the task of creating a hybrid honeybee with which to repopulate the hives of Britain.

The traits Brother Adam was looking for in his hybrid were are described as a bee keepers delight :-

• Good-temper
• Disease-resistance
• The ability to produce plenty of off-spring
• A propensity for hard work
• Disinclined to swarm

He appeared to be successful, and even today bee keepers are disinclined to want to cross other races of bee with the Buckfast bees as any benefit are outweighed by the instability caused by upsetting the bloodline, however the Buckfast bee, like any other bee, gives the best result when crossed, the best crossing seems to be a crossing followed by a recrossing of Buckfast drones giving a seventy five per cent Buckfast heritage. High resistance to the mite was not really achieved until 1927 and Brother Adam claimed that he saw the last visible case of trachea mite disease in a Buckfast colony in 1947. It takes at least seven years to develop a new crossing into a line that will show a reasonable genetic stability.

If you are interested in building your own brood of Buckfast Bees, they are available for purchase. Apparently a royalty for every mated and laying Buckfast queen is paid to the abbey. No pun intended. Honest.

From what I know I know of it, it is a rather strange experience receiving bees through the post, in my limited experience bees are shipped in boxes containing holes they can technically escape from but rarely are they inclined to, but what is most notable is the buzzing emanating from the boxes, especially when ordering en masse.

http://www.honighaeuschen.de/typo3temp/pics/7cb37953e7.jpg

Before I start, may I just say a quick “what …” and follow it up with a rather emphatic “the fuck ….”

Yet more involuntary mass surveillance in the UK reported by Aunty …

Merseyside police are using the “spy drone”, fitted with CCTV cameras, mainly for tackling anti-social behaviour and public disorder.

The machine is 1m wide, weighs less than a bag of sugar, and can record images from a height of 500m.

Originally used by the military, it is due to be operational by June for a full three-month trial, which is the “first of its kind” in the UK.

The drone will also be used for monitoring traffic congestion and investigations are to be made into its possible role in firearms operations.

The machines, which are flown by remote control or using pre-programmed GPS navigation systems, are silent and can be fitted with night-vision cameras.

The images they record are sent back to a police support vehicle or control room.

“Our drone will be used primarily to support our anti-social behaviour taskforce AXIS, in gathering all important evidence to put offenders before the courts.

“For us, this is a cost-effective way of helping to catch criminals and supports similar technology we’re already using in our vans and helicopter.”

You have got to be kidding me.

UPDATE : Drones were used at this years V festival.