Strange Exits: Man fought off by 81-year-old woman, drowns in Mirror Lake

The man wanted a dollar. When the 81-year-old woman — on her way to a downtown bank — said no he put her in a headlock and tried to take her down. But she fought back. “He was beating me. I was kicking. I was screaming ” said Joyce Trace. “I m not a sissy.” The man fled. Moments later he was at the edge of Mirror Lake. “You guys didn t see me he told a group of people hanging out nearby and jumped. The water about 7 feet deep with an additional 4-foot layer of silt and sand below it quickly swallowed him. He vanished under the surface. About 90 minutes later a diver from St. Petersburg Fire and Rescue s marine unit pulled his body from the lake. “He went into the water and never came back up ” said fire rescue Capt. Bernard Williams. Police did not release the man s identity Friday night because they had not yet found or notified his family. Witnesses said he was homeless and often hung out at the downtown park which sits behind a library. “He didn t want the police to chase him ” said Amber Jachimski who was part of the group the man talked to before he jumped in the lake. Jachimski and other witnesses said the man appeared intoxicated Friday and stumbled down the side of an embankment before he jumped. “He was drunk ” said William “Pop” Shumate who said he was friends with the man.”

via Man is fought off by 81-year-old woman, runs off and drowns in Mirror Lake – St. Petersburg Times.

Judge orders Web site to give up names

…  A judge in California turned down a motion by Topix.com to quash a subpoena for identifying information on 178 anonymous posters ABC News reported. The judge ordered the Web site to discuss with the plaintiff couple which documents are relevant to the case. … Mark and Rhonda Lesher of Clarksville Texas and a man who works on their ranch were acquitted of rape. But they say their legal vindication has not stopped the stream of anonymous posts on the Internet accusing them of even more serious crimes and their lives have been “torture.” In a lawsuit filed in February the Leshers named the 178 user names responsible for the most scurrilous comments on Topix. They have been the subject of about 25,000 posts.

via Judge orders Web site to give up names – UPI.com.

Free speech requires anonymity when there is corruption.   On the other hand, when cowards attack from the darkness, they may have other motives besides justice.  A greedy shop owner might annonymously libel a competitor, for example, to drive customers to his shop. The owner of the publishing medium is ultimately responsible for the content.  If sued, that owner could be fined, but that’s where it should end.

Defamation of character is the communication of false information stated as a fact which brings harm to an individual or an entity, such as a business, group or government. For it to be defamation, the statement must be delivered in speech or in writing to at least one person other than the victim.

… Slander is used when the defamation of character is spoken. This can be person to person or a person speaking to many people.

… Libel is the defamation of an individual’s or an entity’s character which is published in a written medium

… most courts consider defamation of character made during a radio or television broadcast to also be libel, even though the defamation was spoken.

… There are a number of possible defenses against libel and slander, but the only one which is an absolute defense is truth. If the statement is true, it cannot be considered libel or slander.

Until recently, that is:

a three-judge panel in the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently upended a long-held rule of law that “truth is an absolute defense” when someone is sued for libel. The opinion has surprised some experts on libel — and, if ultimately upheld, would uproot basic legal tenets of free speech and the law.

The judges reviewed Noonan v. Staples, a case involving an employee of a business-supply firm who sued the company after an executive sent an e-mail to about 1,500 employees detailing why the employee had been fired for what the company said was falsifying expense reports.

The court’s opinion said that even if the factual account sent to other workers were true, and apparently it was, the employee involved might be able to recover damages if the e-mail was sent maliciously — in this case, to humiliate the former employee. … If the court’s decision ever were to apply widely, the result could be … A paralysis of public debate in which legal challenges ask courts to examine and determine possible motives of speakers, bloggers, filmmakers, journalists and others, rather than to review the truth of the facts. – baxterbulletin

Weird Easter traditions from around the world

It’s Easter weekend and Britain is stocking up on chocolate eggs and hot cross buns, but elsewhere in the world there are some extremely wacky traditions going on

… Surely the strangest Easter custom takes places in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, where there is a tradition of spanking or whipping women on Easter Monday. Males throw water at females and spank them with handmade whips made of willow and decorated with ribbons at the end. The spanking is supposed to be symbolic and according to legend, females should be spanked in order to keep their health and beauty during the next year.

… On Maundy Thursday in Verges, in Spain, a traditional “death dance” is performed which involves a parade down the streets of the medieval town. Everyone involved is dressed in costumes and the procession ends with frightening skeletons carrying boxes of ashes. The scary dance begins at midnight and continues for three hours into the early morning.

… In Finland, children dress up and go begging in the streets with sooty faces, carrying broomsticks. Sounds a bit like Halloween? In some parts of Western Finland they even burn bonfires on Easter Sunday.

… [image above] More than 4,500 eggs are used to cook up a giant omelette on the streets of Haux in France. The meal must feed up to 1,000 people and is prepared in the main square in time for lunch.

via Weird Easter traditions from around the world – mirror.co.uk.

Would you eat it?

8-year-old girl’s marriage ruled legal

Image: With 370 days and 23 hours left in his reign, George Bush worked on improving Mideast relations — by warmly greeting Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud – tmz

A Saudi Arabian judge has refused to overturn a ruling that declared the arranged marriage of an 8-year-old girl to a 47-year-old man legal a relative says. The judge Sheikh Habib Habib ruled for the second time Saturday in Onaiza that the girl s marriage to a friend of her father s was legal and binding. He said the child wife could file for divorce once she reached puberty CNN reported. An unnamed relative of the girl told the broadcaster that Habib who first refused to annul the marriage last year reconsidered the case upon the girl s mother s appeal. The mother s attorney Abdullah Jutaili said the girl s father arranged the marriage with his “close friend” to pay off a monetary debt. The relative said the girl s mother who is divorced from the father will continue to seek to overturn the marriage. An appeals court in Riyadh will reportedly consider the case again in a hearing set for next month. Zuhair Harithi of the Saudi Human Rights Commission told CNN child marriages in the country must be fought saying they “violate international agreements that have been signed by Saudi Arabia and should not be allowed.”

via 8-year-old girl’s marriage ruled legal – UPI.com.

The Saudi Human Rights Commission (SHRC) has launched a campaign to set a minimum age for marriage in the kingdom. The SHRC began its campaign following several high profile trials, where young girls, sometimes less than 10 years old, were married off to men above the age of 50 and even 70. … For many in Saudi Arabia, the custom of marrying off young girls to older men does not seem immoral. Poor families find this a profitable bargain, as they receive high bridal fees from the old groom.  Such marriages often take place during the summer holidays, when rich men marry young girls and then divorce them when the holiday is over, al-Arab reports. Experts estimate that hundreds of young girls undergo such forced temporary marriages.

via Ending child marriage in Saudi Arabia | jpost.com

Call it what you will, this is child prostitution.  Obama, will you stand up and say to our “friends” that this must stop? Saudi Arabia, “a key strategic ally of the United States in the Middle East–as the world’s largest oil exporter, as host for some of the most sophisticated military bases available to the U.S. in the region” has been a dark place for human rights for many years.

Laser “Light Bullets” Made to Curve

Laser “light bullets” that can curve through the air might someday help scientists monitor air pollution a new study says. The bullets are created by extremely short-duration high-intensity laser pulses said lead study author Pavel Polynkin a physicist at the University of Arizona.

The pulses are so rapid that the beam is broader than it is wide—creating what Polynkin calls “pancakes” of light.

But the use of complex lasers that produce wave patterns called Airy beams causes the brightest part of the beam to bend as the pancake of light speeds away.

The super-brightness of the laser can also cause the pancake to change shape as it moves through air, Polynkin said.

“If the intensity exceeds a threshold, then the beam tends to self-focus—the pancake wants to become a very short needle.”

Within that needle, the light intensity gets so high that the air around it becomes electrically charged, briefly creating a conductive path of plasma. …

Previous work suggested that such light bullets could be used to create human-induced lightning, which has implications for lightning control around sensitive structures such as tall buildings and airplanes.

When combined with the Airy beams, these plasma-producing lasers can also create curving “needle” bullets that might have other uses, Polynkin’s study suggests.

The authors caution that their work does not mean we can build laser cannons that shoot at targets hidden behind walls.

That’s the first question everyone asks, Polynkin said, but “the answer is no.” The curvature of the beam is very small—too small for weapons applications.

Instead, the light pulses leave behind curving plasma trails that emit their own light, providing a way to monitor air pollution in the upper atmosphere without the need for airplanes or weather balloons, Polynkin said.

Shot into the sky, these light trails would illuminate the chemical signatures of atmospheric pollutants, which can then be recorded remotely.

via Laser “Light Bullets” Made to Curve.