The reason for the arrest was a tweet I had posted on the social network Twitter, which was deemed to constitute a bomb threat against Robin Hood airport in Doncaster: “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!” You may say, and I certainly realise now, it was ill-advised. But it was clearly frustration, caused by heavy snowfall grounding flights and potentially scuppering my own flight a week later. Like having a bad day at work and stating that you could murder your boss, I didn't even think about whether it would be taken seriously.

via My tweet was silly, but the police reaction was absurd | Paul Chambers | Comment is free | The Guardian.

So far this year, 113 people have been killed across Chicago, the same number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined in the same period, Fritchey said.

via 2 Chicago state reps: Bring in the National Guard – Chicago Breaking News.

Wow – every once in a while, a well-framed statistic will put the plight of America into perspective. The poor areas of Chicago are the perfect storm of urban decay, neglect of social services, poverty cycles, and violent sub-cultures. Given how rarely the worlds of the poor and affluent overlap in the States, perhaps a call to action as severe as inviting in a branch of the armed forces is what it takes to galvanize the people with the political and financial resources to effect change.

These “electronic defects” apparently discriminate against the elderly, just as the sudden acceleration of Audis and GM autos did before them. In the 24 cases where driver age was reported or readily inferred, the drivers included those of the ages 60, 61, 63, 66, 68, 71, 72, 72, 77, 79, 83, 85, 89…

via Theodore H. Frank: I am not afraid of my Toyota Prius | Washington Examiner.

For anyone who’s not sure that the whole Toyota boondoggle is an episode of Government Motors-sponsored political theatre, read the above article.

Joe Stack’s adult daughter, Samantha Bell, spoke to ABC's “Good Morning America” from her home in Norway. Asked during a phone interview broadcast Monday if she considered her father a hero, she said: “Yes. Because now maybe people will listen.”

via Daughter Calls Pilot in Texas Plane Crash a Hero – Local News | News Articles | National News | US News – FOXNews.com.

Ms. Hegemann finds herself in the middle of a collision — if not road kill exactly — between the staid, literary establishment in a country that venerates writers from Goethe to Mann to Grass, and the Berlin youth culture of D.J.’s and artists that sample freely and thereby breathe creativity into old forms. Or as one character, Edmond, puts it in the book, “Berlin is here to mix everything with everything.”

via Author, 17, Says It’s ‘Mixing,’ Not Plagiarism – NYTimes.com.

I’m all for remixing, mashups, and creative plagiarism – provided its done with proper credit and attribution, and respectfully of other artist’s rights where applicable. Hegemann erred in presenting the work as exclusively her own, not the literary remix that it apparently is.

The bizarre case dwelled on Norse mythology, decoded Hitler references and heard a seven-year-old girl’s graphic description of how to kill black people.

via Alleged racist parents lose custody of children – The Globe and Mail.

It doesn’t sound like Mom was particulary interested in custody anyway, as she skipped town and province as soon as CFS took the kids and hasn’t been back. Whatever the case, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the kids have a better chance in foster care than with their “parents.”

Images taken by police helicopters capturing the collapse of the World Trade Centre buildings have been released. The dramatic images capturing a cloud of smoke and debris roaring down the streets of New York City were made public after a Freedom of Information request from ABC News .

via Dramatic Images of World Trade Centre Collapse on 9/11 Released – AOL News Canada.

JAPANESE authorities have found the body of a man in the landing gear of a Delta airliner that arrived in Tokyo from New York.

via Dead man found in landing gear | News.com.au.

The result two-pronged awful: (1) Afghanistan is evolving into a narco-terrorist state in the tradition of Mexico, threatening its future stability, and (2) heroin and opium are killing more westerners than war.

“If we do not address this, it will be hard to solve all the other problems in Afghanistan,” Mr. Costa said, adding that the lucrative nature of the heroin trade is creating a “narco-cartel” in Afghanistan that includes corrupt government and security officials.

The annual death toll in all NATO countries from heroin overdoses is estimated to be more than 10,000, an annual total that is about five times higher the number of NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan in the past eight years, the report said.

[NYT "Report Shows Afghan Drugs Reach Deep Into the West"]

There’s policy implications in here somewhere. The US has shown how ineffective the “War on Drugs” can be (see: Central America) – I can only imagine its infinitely worse trying to wage such a war somewhere as distant and hostile as Afghanistan. On the flip side, liberalizing drug policy around something like heroin takes away the lion’s teeth – at the expense of the fabric of our society.

At the root of the problem, I believe, is a mis-placed emphasis on the development of government & democracy in advance of a legitimate economy. The gap leaves the door open for insurgencies to strengthen their ties to a society, targeting to poor and disaffected, while newly minted governments provide them with ample motivation to do so – allegations of corruption, vote-rigging, and all the rest be-devil Afghan efforts, for example.

If an economy were built first (I’ll leave it to you to imagine how), I’d like to think the task of government building would be easier: employed people with opportunities are interested in stability and growing their opportunities, not running off to the hinterlands to raise poppies and learn how to fire RPG’s.

The bottom line is that the intersection of political-religious terrorism and narco-economics is a bad one.

What’s your suggestion for beating it?

Picture Credit: PrisonPlanet

“In clinical practice, you’d probably give people a booster shot every two months,” he said, which, compared with some long-term treatments, is “pretty easy to provide.” [MedPageToday]

How about an annual injection, like some birth control techniques?

Now, consider this: Would you advocate mandatory vaccination for all convicts as part of a return-to-society-productively protocol? I imagine addiction is a big factor in post-release recidivism. What if such a vaccine were available for alcohol? Such a drug would have saved this kid, and undoubtedly countless others.