Flashing Lights to Warn of Speed Trap: Free Speech?
I’ve done it – warned other drivers of a speed trap ahead. And I have benefited from other drivers warning me. And I am fully aware that for a law and order kind of girl, that is contradictory behavior. So the question is . . . are we allowed?
From AOL Auto News:
When Michael Elli of Missouri flashed his headlights to warn other drivers of an upcoming speed trap in Ellisville Mo. he didn’t think he was doing anything illegal.
After he received a ticket for obstruction of justice, which carried a $1,000 fine, he fought back, saying the warning was protected free speech. Eventually prosecutors in Missouri dropped the charges, but now Elli and the American
“Those who use their First Amendment rights to warn others to drive cautiously should not be punished for their message,” said Tony Rothert, legal director of the ACLU-EM. “After all, the purpose of traffic laws is to promote safety, not generate revenue.”
Is flashing your headlights protected free speech? It depends on where in the U.S. you are. Florida, Utah and Tennessee, Ohio, New Jersey and Pennsylvania have all deemed that warning other drivers with a flicker of your high beams is protected by the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Alaska and Arizona have laws strictly forbid headlight flashing in any situation.
Dubai’s Weight Loss Challenge: 1 Gram Gold Per Kilo Lost
Need some motivation to cut that flab? If you live in Dubai, you can win gold to do just that. A new campaign âYou are Worth … Your Weight in Goldâ is aimed at promoting a healthy lifestyle and achieving optimal body weight. The contest is open for public.Â
The winner will be the one who loses maximum weight during the program period of 30 days from its inception on Friday this week. The top three winners will get a gold coin equivalent to AED 20,000. Other participants will get a gram of gold for each kilo reduced from their body weight. However, the minimum weight to lose for the eligibility is two kilograms.
Addressing a press conference on Tuesday, Dubai Municipality officials said the winners will get two grams of gold if they could reduce at least two kilograms within one month.Â
Hussain Nasser Lootah, director-general of Dubai Municipality, said the initiative comes after the grand success of âYallah Walkâ campaign launched in 2011.
âIt is also aimed at introducing walking tracks in different parks in the city of Dubai. Walking is an easy and economic way to stay fit and healthy. The municipality has provided residents with safe and accessible walking tracks in urban and rural areas,â Lootah said.
âCurrently Dubai has a total of 91 places where one can practice sport activities. These include residential parks, public parks, jogging track and beaches. In addition to this, every year the civic body opens new parks in more areas and adds sports equipments and tools for the public to promote a healthy community, he said.Â
âRamadan is the most appropriate season to launch such initiatives as it reminds us about many health benefits of reducing weight and encourages us to take strong steps to change our bad lifestyles,â he added.Â
The weight of each participant will be measured during registration and at the end of program. Participants can register at the event sites any day during the period. Participants must have excess weight to reduce and stay away from unhealthy methods to lose weight.
The final weight will be measured after the Eid holidays on Aug. 16.
Ahmed bin Sulayem, executive chairman of Dubai Multi Commodities Center (DMCC), said the DMCC is proud to support this health awareness drive to encourage society to change their daily routines in return for a healthier lifestyle.
âWe would highly encourage everyone from all walks of life to take part in this great initiative and hope DMCCâs contribution of AED 100,000 worth of gold coins will help motivate individuals reach the final target of improving and sustaining a healthy lifestyle and consequently a better quality of life,â he said.
âI am sure Dubai can be the role model and astonish the world by its innovative ideas and initiatives,â said Anil Dhanak, general manager of Dubai Gold & Jewelry Group.”
Rape Victim Spends Seven Months in Jail, Framed by her Rapist
This is from the New York Times City Blog:
Man Is Sentenced for Raping Ex-Girlfriend and Then Framing Her
By DAN BILEFSKY
Updated 5:42 p.m. | The Queens private detective who raped his ex-girlfriend and then framed her for a series of fictional crimeswas sentenced to the maximum of 32 years in prison on Wednesday, bringing to a close one of the most bizarre cases to grace a courtroom.
Using knowledge he acquired partly from watching crime dramas like âC.S.I.,â the private detective, Jerry Ramrattan, 39, orchestrated what prosecutors in Queens called one of the most elaborate frame-ups in recent history.
Mr. Ramrattanâs ex-girlfriend, Seemona Sumasar, 36, had accused him of raping her. After she refused to drop the rape charges, he concocted a schemethat landed her in jail for seven months, making it seem as though Ms. Sumasar was the likely perpetrator of a series of brazen armed robberies, for which she was accused of impersonating a police officer.
At his trial in State Supreme Court in Queens, prosecutors produced evidence that Mr. Ramrattan cajoled and extorted witnesses to falsely testify that she had robbed them. He even staged fake crime scenes, prosecutors said, in which he planted evidence, handcuffing one of Ms. Sumasarâs supposed victims to a pole and planting several bullets at the scene of one of the imaginary crimes.
Before Mr. Ramrattan was sentenced on Wednesday, Ms. Sumasar delivered a stinging victim impact statement, noting that he showed no remorse and was so intent on revenge that he would have stopped at nothing to destroy her. âI donât have words for you,â she said as as he stared ahead, stone-faced, while she spoke. âYou are pure evil. You are a sociopath. You need help.â
âSomeone needs to put a stop to your madness,â she added.
During her seven months in jail, awaiting a robbery trial, Ms. Sumasar, a former Morgan Stanley analyst, was separated from her young daughter. She lost her business, and her house went into foreclosure. Her bail was set at $1 million, which she could not afford. Mr. Ramrattan, meanwhile, was free until an informant came forward in late 2010 and exposed his plot.
Mr. Ramrattan was convicted in November of a series of charges, including rape, conspiracy and perjury. The nearly monthlong trial offered two opposing plot lines that were seemingly irreconcilable. Prosecutors portrayed Ms. Sumasar as a single mother duped by a wily confidence man intent on malicious vengeance. But the defense characterized her as a dejected lover who had turned on Mr. Ramrattan after he said he was leaving her to return to his wife and family.
Members of the jury said the guilty verdict was predicated on their acceptance of Ms. Sumasarâs account of being bound with duct tape and viciously raped by Mr. Ramrattan, which apparently gave him a motive to create his ruse.
In his plea for leniency, Mr. Ramrattan insisted that he was innocent, saying that he had spent years helping the police solve cases as an informant. âI stand before you with no choice but to accept what is going to happen,â he said. âThink about all the cases I made over the years, the rape victims I assisted. I maintain my innocence.â
Before he was escorted away by police, he added: âThere is more to come.â As he spoke, his mother, Shirley Ramrattan, began wailing and was escorted from the courtroom.
His lawyer, Frank Kelly, told the judge that Mr. Ramrattan was not the âmonsterâ he had been made out to be.
But Justice Richard Buchter said Mr. Ramrattan deserved no mercy, calling him a âdiabolical conniver and sinister manipulatorâ who had âshamelessly exploited the criminal justice system.â
The Queens district attorneyâs office and the Nassau County district attorneyâs office had insisted on Ms. Sumasarâs guilt up until she was freed just weeks before her own robbery trial was set to begin. Ms. Sumasar filed a civil suit in December against the New York City Police Department and the Nassau County Police Department for negligence leading to her wrongful imprisonment..
Justice Buchter railed against the Nassau County police, who had wrongly imprisoned Ms. Sumasar, saying that it did not take âa Sherlock Holmesâ to deduce that a 5-foot-2 former Wall Street analyst with no criminal record would not have held people up at gunpoint.
He chastised the police for their egregious handling of the case, saying detectives had âturned a blind eyeâ to Ms. Sumasarâs protestations that she was innocent and had too easily been taken in by Mr. Ramrattan.
âThe police were duped by liars by whom they had a right to be suspicious, and as a result a rape victim was framed by her rapist,â the judge said. âShe was victimized by the rapist and then again by the criminal justice system.â
He added: âThe defendant is the architect of his own ruin. He deserves no mercy from me, and he wonât get any.â
Justin Cronin: The Twelve
I had downloaded The Twelve to my iPad for a trip, but didn’t get to it, and sort of forgot it was there until my son mentioned he was listening to it on audio-books, and it was good, maybe even better than the first book in the trilogy, The Passage. He had loaned me The Passage several years ago when it came out, and as soon as I finished, I got on the list to download as soon as the next book came out – it was that good.
Cronin’s gift is an ability to create a future world entirely different from our own, with a devastating enemy – the virals – who, literally, are us, transformed. Cronin can make the enemy terrifying, destructive, truly horrifying – and can make them also captive to their repugnant nature and even pitiable. I think that is an amazing dance for an author to accomplish.
The setting is post-apocalyptic USA; the government had a sector working on a secret weapon which – of course – was not able to be contained, creating 12 super vampire-like creatures called Virals, who in turn create hordes of minions. This volume, The Twelve, is set more than 100 years later, but shifts back to earlier times to help us understand how this disaster occurred, and how characters relate back to the earliest times of the disaster. Â The populations live in fear of sudden attacks; one family, out on a picnic, are almost totally wiped out by an eclipse for which the Virals were prepared – and the families were not.
As I read his books, I find them very cinematic, but, as my son and I discussed, too complex for a movie; it would need a gritty HBO series like The Wire, or OZ, or Deadwood to capture the subtleties, the nuances that make this a best-selling series. The heroes and heroines are all make for the screen, their relationships – and inter-relationships – make them interesting, and then, as we learn more, interesting again. We never know enough to make a final judgement on any character; the characters are complex and the relationships obscure until the author chooses to reveal. It makes it fun to try to spot them before he tells us. I missed a couple!
Although it can be read as a great-adventure stand-alone, you’ll be happier if you read The Passage before you read The Twelve. If you have a problem with postponing gratification, you might want to wait until the third and conclusive volume of the trilogy is published  – and that may be a year or so.
Welcome Ramadan 2013!
My first Ramadan was in Tunisia. It was summer, it was hot, and the days were long. The days dragged by, and then, in the evenings, our neighbors would send over huge platters of lamb and couscous, hot and spicy, to share with us. Our neighbors had ten children, all around our age, some older, some younger, and cars would arrive endlessly, bringing and taking people. They often included us in the family gatherings, out of the kindness and generosity of their hearts.
I didn’t understand how it all worked, Ramadan and fasting, and they would explain it to me. It’s a lot to take in. It took me a long time, many years, many Muslem countries, many Muslim friends. I still don’t think I understand all of it, but I understand enough of it to know this – it’s like a month of Christmas Eves.
A good Muslim won’t just fast from sunrise to sundown. A good Muslim circumcises his or her heart in this time. A good Muslim will read through the entire Quran at least once during Ramadan. The whole point of the sacrifice is to purify the soul.
I wish for my Muslim friends a joyful Ramadan, full of blessings. May God our Creator and Heavenly Father receive your sacrifice and bless your fasting. May your Mama prepare all your favorite foods for the breaking of the fast. đ
Jeannette Walls and The Silver Star and Negligent Mothers
The first time I read anything by Jeannette Walls, I had not read her autobiographical best-seller, The Glass Castle. If I had, when I read the opening pages of one of my all-time-favorite books, Half Broke Horses , three young children out checking on the cows in America of the mid-1800’s, I would have said “Oh, yes, this is Jeannette Walls” instead of being so shocked that these three children were so far from home with a storm approaching. Not only does the storm approach – the oldest sister pushes her younger sister and brother up a tree and they are stuck there through a violent storm all night. No adult comes looking for them.
“Where is their mother?” in shock I thought, “a mother with three children out in the storm goes looking for them!”
Not if you are a Jeannette Walls mother. To ‘get’ Jeannette Walls, you really have to start with The Glass Castle, and learn about how she and her siblings are at the mercy of an alcoholic mother and father, both big liars, maybe with some attendant mental problems. Half Broke Horses is fiction, based on her own grandmother, who, at 15 rides 28 days across Indian territory to teach at a far-away school (What mother lets her 15 year old DAUGHTER ride for a month across dangerous country ALONE??)
I was on the send-as-soon-as-it’s-published list for Silver Star. And even once it arrived, I waited until I knew I might have a few free hours in the evening to read it – once you start Jeannette Walls, you can’t put it down. Her heroines in this novel are 15 year old Liz and 12 year old Bean (Jean) whose mother ran away from her hometown in Virginia to pursue a career in music. The mother has a small inheritance to sustain them; when life sours, as it often does for her, she packs the girls into her worn Dodge Dart and takes off. She isn’t always good about paying her bills. She talks to her girls about what a great team they are, and then takes off for a day or two, usually with some man, leaving them to eat chicken pot pies. Then, she abandons them with no sign of when she will be back.
The girls are pistols. They are survivors, much like Jeannette Walls grandmother in Half Broke Horses. When social services start coming around asking where their mother is, they take off headed for their Mom’s old home town, across the continent, in Virginia.
The heart of the story finds the girls living in the old family mansion, scouting for odd jobs, learning more about themselves and their heritage, and learning how a small community can smother, judge and support their community members in unexpected ways.
If you are a negligent, man-oriented, self-absorbed mother, you don’t want to have a writer for a daughter. Jeannette Walls is having a ball; her books are both sad and hilarious, and she has utter scorn for mothers who do not take the reins of motherhood and behave like grown-ups.
Police Know Where We Are and Where We Go
This is not good news for people who don’t want other people knowing where they have been. I don’t see how it’s any different from cameras in big cities that are used by the police to see what cars went through at a time of a crime, for example. If you don’t have anything to hide, is this invasive? Where property crimes are increasing, where there is an increase in violent crime or assaults, these re tools to keep the majority of the population safer from the predators – in my opinion. Can you change my mind?
From AOL Auto News:
Police License Plate Scanners Record Driver’s Locations
Unregulated cameras store information indefinitely
Government surveillance isn’t just in our phone records and search engine history, but on our roads as well.
That’s what the Center For Investigative Reporting found when researching the small cameras popping up on police cars across the country known as license plate scanners. License plate scanners allow police officers to quickly scan thousands of license plates a day, looking for runaway criminals or stolen cars. In California there are very few limits on these readers and almost no transparency. These cameras record time and place of your vehicle, and even can store a picture record of your whereabouts.
Michael Katz-Lacabe, a security consultant, requested the records from the San Leandro, Calif., police department of every time his car was scanned. He was amazed at the frightening amount of information police had recorded. His two cars were scanned 112 times since 2009, and average of about twice a week. There was even a picture of him and his two daughters getting out of his Toyota Prius in their driveway.
The Center For Investigative Reporting points out that the use of license plate scanners has been growing quickly and quietly across the country. Read their fascinating story here to learn more.
Arabs wary of expressing their opinions online
Fascinating study results published in Qatar’s Gulf Times:
Northwestern University in Qatar has released new findings from an eight-nation survey indicating many people in the Arab world do not feel safe expressing political opinions online despite sweeping changes in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.
From over 10,000 people surveyed in Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan and the UAE, 44% expressed some doubt as to whether people should be free to criticise governments or powerful institutions online.
Over a third of Internet users surveyed said they worry about governments checking what they do online.
According to the report, âThe implied concern (of governments checking what they do online) is fairly consistent in almost all countries covered, but more acute in Saudi Arabia, where the majority (53%) of those surveyed expressed this concern.â
The study – titled âMedia Use in the Middle East – An Eight-Nation Surveyâ – was undertaken by researchers at NU-Q to better understand how people in the region use the Internet and other media. It comes as the university moves towards a more formalised research agenda and is the first in what will be a series of reports relating to Internet use.
The survey includes a specific chapter on Qatar, the only country where those surveyed regarded the Internet as a more important source of news than television. âWe took an especially close look at media use in the State of Qatar – a country with one of the highest Internet penetration rates in the Arab worldâand internationally,â said NU-Q dean and CEO Everette Dennis.
These findings follow a preliminary report NU-Q released last April that showed web users in the Middle East support the freedom to express opinions online, but they also believe the Internet should be more tightly regulated. âWhile this may seem a puzzling paradox, it has not been uncommon for people the world over to support freedom in the abstract but less so in practice,â Dennis explained.
Among other findings, the research shows: 45% of people think public officials will care more about what they think and 48% believe they can have more influence by using the Internet.
Adults in Lebanon (75%) and Tunisia (63%) are the most pessimistic about the direction of their countries and feel they are on the âwrong track.â
Respondents were far more likely to agree (61%) than disagree (14%) that the quality of news reporting in the Arab world has improved in the past two years, however less than half think overall that the news sources in their countries are credible.
Online transactions are rare in the Middle East, with only 35% purchasing items online and only 16% investing online.
The complete set of results from the survey is available online at menamediasurvey.northwestern.edu. Â The new interactive pages hosting the survey on the website have features that allow users to make comparisons between different countries, as well as between different demographics within each country.
Dennis confirmed that the research report is the first in an annual series of reports produced in collaboration with the World Internet Project; one of the worldâs most extensive studies on the Internet, in which NU-Q is a participating institution.
NU-Q and WIP signed an agreement earlier in the year, providing a global platform for the current research.
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