A pregnant woman has been told that her baby will be taken from her at birth because she is deemed capable of “emotional abuse”, even though psychiatrists treating her say there is no evidence to suggest that she will harm her child in any way.

Social services’ recommendation that the baby should be taken from Fran Lyon, a 22-year-old charity worker who has five A-levels and a degree in neuroscience, was based in part on a letter from a paediatrician she has never met.

advertisementHexham children’s services, part of Northumberland County Council, said the decision had been made because Miss Lyon was likely to suffer from Munchausen’s Syndrome by proxy, a condition unproven by science in which a mother will make up an illness in her child, or harm it, to draw attention to herself.

Under the plan, a doctor will hand the newborn to a social worker, provided there are no medical complications. Social services’ request for an emergency protection order - these are usually granted - will be heard in secret in the family court at Hexham magistrates on the same day.

From then on, anyone discussing the case, including Miss Lyon, will be deemed to be in contempt of the court.

And we’re all worried about al Qaeda. How droll.

It’s a crazy dream of humanity for thousands and thousands of years, and now I see the damn solution to the problem - a toy that mimics the flight of a dragonfly - on a commercial on a basic cable station during, appropriately enough, an airing of the new series of Doctor Who.

Ladies and gentlemen, the future is here.

There’s one woman in the pictures, who appears a few times. She’s clearly a camp administrator of some kind, and she’s young, fresh, and pretty. She’s clearly vivacious and strong-willed; it’s easy to be attracted to this face from more than sixty years ago and imagine a friendship or a friendly beer. And then I realize that behind that smile and those pretty eyes is a mind completely and totally at ease with sorting families into keepers and corpses every single day, and I want to puke myself dry.

Thank the deity of your choice that such an artifact exists, and is in the hands of the National Holocaust Museum. For the danger, as we all know intellectually but tend to forget in our guts, is not from overt acts of monstrousness, but in the workaday—yes—banality of evil.

Should politicians who fillibuster be tazed?
And put on Americas funniest?

This from a person named “Dr. Spanky”.  Oddly, the site doesn’t appear to list where s/he went to med school or garnered a PhD, but since it appeared, ignoring the inherent irony of the site’s name, on Yahoo Answers, you know it’s a credible and important question, needing an answer.

Or not, as it turns out. Most of the several answers were provided in what I think was the spirit of the question. One, however, I think his name was “Buzzkill”, responded:

No, because the rules specifically allow for that activity.

You cannot (reasonably) punish someone for following the rules. All you can do is change the rules.

And since he’s flagged as a “Top Contributor”, whatever that implies, I guess there’s supposed to be some authority behind his revelation, for which we’re all better off. I’m sure that his next act, after posting that clarification, was to go out and yell at the neighbor kids to get off his god damned lawn.

[Wik] Apparently, I ran across that question while it was still fresh, and Buzzkill’s comment was less than a minute old. Serendipity, I guess. Anyway, the discussion’s already degenerated to whinging about brown shirts with Tasers, how they should actually taser the guy who started a war based on lies, and the usual bullshit claptrap. It was fun for the couple minutes it lasted, though.

[Alsø wik] But wait - the fun’s not quite over yet! This, from the (appropriately) self-monikered “Deep Thought”:

Why stop at tazering for filibusters? I’m sure there is good money to be made if you just let people tazer Robert Byrd for fun. Think of the potential. 535 members of Congress. Millions of upset voters. We could pay off the deficit.

NEWS ALERT
from The Wall Street Journal

Sept. 17, 2007

William Lerach is set to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy in the criminal case involving the noted securities lawyer’s former firm, now called Milberg Weiss LLP. The plea agreement, which calls for a one to two year prison term, could be announced as soon as Tuesday.

I’m all for protecting the common man, the common investor, and I’m nothing if not both of those things. However, while Milberg Weiss (...Bershad Hynes & Lerach) LLP has always claimed that their seldom-seemly, and often seedy, pursuit of class action lawsuits, against any company whose stock price took a noteworthy downturn, was for the public good, I’ve never been able to agree.

Not in my stance as a champion of the unfettered right of public companies to run roughshod over their investors, either. Because I have no such stance. Instead, my dim view of him and all who practice his kind of law is justified by standard tactics he and his partners (current and former) have used in pursuit of specious claims. Think “greenmail”, ala Carl Icahn and Boone Pickens in the 1980s - make life tough enough for someone, even someone who’s got no basis for having to defend their actions, and they’ll pay you to go away.

As referred to in an Los Angeles Business Journal article of Sep 3, 2007, Lerach is an “economic terrorist”, and I don’t think that’s too tough a characterization of him. As the article says:

Lerach, of course, did not invent but did perfect the securities class action lawsuit. In that scheme, most any company that sustained a stock drop, even if it had nothing to do with anything of consequence, often found itself the recipient of allegations of fraud in a Lerach-engineered lawsuit. Likewise, companies that announced most anything negative could get the same kind of lawsuit – often within hours of the announcement.

Lerach then pounded the company, using the discovery process to find some little scrap somewhere in some underling’s file drawer that “proved” the company knew that bad news could develop.

In other words, this guy, and all lawyers like him, specialized in swooping in any time there was even a flimsy pretext for doing so. I mean, there’s no way a stock could drop without malfeasance and lying on the part of management, right?

Well, no - that’s wrong. But Lerach, et al, after having put their lawsuit’s stake in the ground, would then embark on forced discovery at their target companies, essentially fishing around for a reason to justify their lawsuit.

And one doesn’t have to be a big-business apologist to find that sort of thing to be outside the bounds of fair and reasonable play.

Over the years, I’ve been the recipient of at least 50 securities class action solicitations. I received one just the other day, ”In re CARDINAL HEALTH, INC. SECURITIES LITIGATION“. And while I almost never take the time to participate in these paper chases, I’ve always paid particular attention to any such action which has either “Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP” or any of the many versions of “Milberg Weiss +/-Bershad +/-Hynes +/-Lerach LLP” listed as the attorneys looking out for my “best interests”.

Because they don’t, they haven’t, and investors are simply a raw material for them and their business process. And I throw their solicitations away as soon as possible, to avoid stinking the house up.

His former partner Bershad has already pled, and if the news report is correct, Lerach’s getting ready to do the same. It’s not the Christian thing to say, but I’m not much of a Christian anyway, so I’ll hope that Milberg, Weiss, and all the rest be following them to the pokey soon after.

I did this:

From right to left that’s two pain levain batards, two sourdough boules, and a part-rye part whole-wheat sourdough miche of my own design - about eleven pounds of lovely bread I turned out of my oven today. This was probably the best day of baking I’ve ever had.

In the background, you can see Herman, my stout and doughty sourdough culture, his billions of yeasts and bacteria toiling away happily on a fresh feeding.

I have a nice little life going here. Better not blink.

I have been making Anadama bread for years, from recipes by James Beard and Peter Reinhardt, but since I have had some time off recently caring for an infant, I’ve gone back to the drawing board, refined the basic formula into by far the best version I have ever tasted, and am now ready to pass it along to you, you lucky dog.

So, I’ve been growing increasingly concerned over the last few years as reports have surfaced of the extent and callousness of the NFL’s disregard for on-field player injuries and for disabilities suffered by retired players. Now, I’m no idiot. I know coaches regularly put guys in numbed up against cracked ribs or a broken finger to finish a series or a game. It’s football! But when you get beyond that, into the realm of doping up a lineman with a broken spine and sending him into the game, or letting your QB or running back play when he’s been hit on the head so hard he’s not sure of his name, the date, or which way is up, that’s a different story. Then pro football with its pads and lucrative ad deals, devolves into mere crude bloodsport (rather than a bloodsport at a remove, which is so much more civilized and refined). My own New England Patriots and their coach Bill Belichick are reportedly among the worst offenders here, taking horrible and stupid risks with players’ health that has cut many careers, and doubtless many lives, short.

Now, again, that’s theoretically an uncomplicated matter of well-informed people making choices as adults to put themselves in harm’s way. But the truth, naturally is not so neat. Via unfogged I have found a fascinating and dismaying article in Men’s Journal about the shameful and shabby treatment of retired injured players at the hands of the NFLPA (the players’ union), the league itself, and the various bodies set up to take care of retired players.

[Wik] A final question: What sense could it possibly make to put a player who makes $6M a year, by contract, for multiple years, in harm’s way unnecessarily? How is that good business? Your journeyman halfback plays on an injured knee, blows out his meniscus and his ACL or fractures his spine, and then collects the rest of his four-year contract from the sidelines, unable to do what he was hired to do but owed every penny of his salary. Wouldn’t it make more rational sense to take better care of your players and try not to play them when injured, in an effort to preserve your investment in him? Hell, leaving aside the fact that this would be the decent thing to do, it’s economically sensible!

Am I right? Am I right?

But let nobody say she’s not a good person: yesterday she found for me a guy who makes flamejob decals… for home stand mixers like my Kitchenaid Artisan 600! A silver-and-black flamejob diamond-plate pattern flamejob decal is on its way to my home as we speak, to give my Kitchenaid mixer at least 100 more horsepower of pure high-grade awesome. My mixer, when done, will look very much like this (except awesome silver on awesome red):

I love the internets.