The Loveshade Family Blog

Mandi Hamlin was handed a pair of pliers and told to remove her nipple rings before boarding a plane, according to attorney Gloria Allred.  In a news conference on 27 March 2008, Allred said Hamlin was forced by the Transportation Security Administration on 24 February 2008 in Texas.  (For those who don't know, Texas is a part of the United States, although some Texans insist it's the other way round.)

We didn't realize nipple rings posed such a threat.  We can't imagine any way you could hurt someone with nipple rings, unless you made them swallow.

But if nipple rings are such a threat, surely false teeth are.  You could bite someone with false teeth!  Maybe we should make every passenger remove anything that could be potentially dangerous before boarding a plane.

If nipple rings are dangerous, surely wedding rings are.  What about a watch?  A terrorist could use a watch band to strangle a child, or a little person.  And what about a false leg?  You know terrorists would willingly cut off their own leg so they could replace it with a false one, and then hit people over the head with it.

Come to think of it, if false teeth are dangerous, what about real ones?  Maybe everyone should be given a pair of pliers to pull out their real teeth, not to mention fingernails and toenails.  And it false legs are dangerous, what about real legs and arms?  And speaking of dangerous body parts, if we want to be certain a man can't rape a woman....

Posted by Reverend Loveshade at 06:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

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Arthur C. Clarke, the 90-year-old icon of science and science fiction who passed away on March 19, 2008, has been cleared of having sex with boys.

Clarke served as host and commentator of the television program Mysterious World, and was the creator with Stanley Kubrick of the immortal 2001: A Space Odyssey.  The movie (it was also a book) was honored at the 2001 Academy Awards.  He came up with the idea of the communications satellite, and was a close friend of fellow science and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who in turn was known by our own Alden Loveshade.

But even Clarke could not escape the rampant international pedophile hunt that's ravaging the modern world. The Sunday Mirror had published its story of the allegations 10 years ago when Clarke was 80, ironically (or purposely) a few days before he was to be knighted by the Prince of Wales on a visit to Sri Lanka.  The British-born author had made his home there for many years (he was knighted in 1998).

While no evidence came forth, the allegations haunted Clarke, and resurfaced after his death.  But authorities in Sri Lanka announced Sunday, 2008 March 23, that the investigation had been dropped, and that Clarke had been cleared before his death.

See http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/1998/08/13/fhead.htm and look for the most current article at http://www.citizen.co.za/ (sorry, we don't have the exact URL)

Posted by The Loveshade Family at 08:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

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The title of this entry may be harsh, but waterboarding is torture according to counterterrorism specialist Malcolm Wrightson Nance.  Nance taught at the Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school in California, so is an expert on interrogation and resisting it.  The technique was performed on Nance, who said, "It is an overwhelming experience that induces horror and triggers frantic survival instincts."  It is like drowning, meaning a subject "will say or do anything to make it stop, rendering the information they give nearly useless."

The White House announced that President George W. Bush plans to veto a bill outlawing its use by the CIA (American Central Intelligence Agency).  Strangely, while the CIA can use it the U. S. Military cannot.

According to a report by ABC News, "CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in."  Nance and the officers are professionals who know they're just doing their job, not people who are in terror that they may actually be killed.  But pouring water into the nose and mouth to be inhaled into the lungs can be quite dangerous, and can do lasting psychological and even physical harm.  The two front-running Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have called it torture, as has Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

Even ignoring the fact that America is supposedly a nation that believes you're innocent until proven guilty, there's a great deal of evidence that torture is not an effective interrogation method.  As Nance pointed out, someone being tortured may say anything to get it stopped.  As Americans, do we really believe in torturing legally innocent people in order to get information that's very likely bogus?

The Washington Post interview with Nance is at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/08/AR2007110802150.html, the ABC News article is at http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1322866 and the Associated Press article on Bush's threatened veto is at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080308/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_torture.

(Look for immediate updates by clicking below; later followups will likely be added as separate entries)

Posted by The Loveshade Family at 03:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

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Gary Gygax, who with Dave Arneson created Dungeons & Dragons which transformed the worlds of both gaming and fantasy, died at age 69.  As Steve Jackson wrote, without Gygax and Arneson, the roleplaying game industry might never have happened, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy likely wouldn't have been made.

Alden and I have a personal interest here.  Years ago Alden got involved in a D & D group, which eventually led em to GURPS in Steve Jackson Games.  Most of es closest friends played one or the other game with em as either player or Game Master (GM).  During a very difficult phase of es life, es weekly GURPS game kept em going.  These also led em to involvement in the Society for Creative Anachronism, which lead to an interest in alternative forms of society, which led to...well, keep reading.

I, Reverend Loveshade, saw the Steve Jackson Games edition of Principia Discordia (the first edition that put the book in bookstores) when it came out in 1994.  Before that I didn't know of the book, but it led me to some very strange places.  Discussing it with my Mum led to my learning that my Mum had been friends as a teenage girl with Luna Wilson, who was murdered at age 15.  Luna was the daughter of Robert Anton Wilson who contributed to the Principia, and who wrote about the Illuminati.  I had learned about the Illuminati through one of Bob Wilson's books, but didn't know of es connection to my mother.  But learning this connection led to my contacting the borderline fringe-mainstream writer whom I grew to call Grandbob.

These various connections came together when I had a vision of doing a book, which became the still evolving Ek-sen-trik-kuh Discordia: The Tales of Shamlicht.  Alden brought es vision to it, as did Princess Unicornia, Fairy Princess Yoshikyoko, Dr. Sinister Craven, Untroubled Teen and many others.  Each of those mentioned above connected to the book either through fantasy or roleplaying.  It's likely that, without Gary Gygax and all the interconnections made through the creation of D & D, our book would never have happened, and likely neither would Apocrypha Discordia or several other great Discordian works.

Ironically, Gary Gygax died on March 4, which has been called GM Day.

See an Associated Press story at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080304/ap_en_ot/obit_gygax and see Steve Jackson's tribute at http://www.sjgames.com/ill/archives.html?y=2008&m=March&d=5

(Alden Loveshade contributed to this report.  Details of photo are at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Gary_Gygax_Gen_Con_2007.JPG)

Posted by Reverend Loveshade at 05:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

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Those who know me well know that I'm a bit of a fanatic when it comes to copywritten material.  I believe the biblical "the workman is worthy of his hire," thought I might phrase it in the gender-neutral "the worker is worthy of es hire."  I once complained to leaders of a spiritual congregation that illegally making copies of music being sold by another ministry was stealing.  They responded by asking their congregation for donations to purchase music so that wouldn't be necessary, and received more money for the music ministry than they'd had before.

But my belief applies to the worker, not necessarily to the corporation that wants to own em.  That might be changing in the European Union.

"Charlie McCreevy, the EU's Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services, wants to nearly double the European copyright term in sound recordings - from 50 years to an astounding 95," according to an article posted on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's website.  How many musicians will be around 95 years after they produce their work?

Art is usually meant to be shared.  I suspect that the biggest dream of most beginning musicians is not for some corporation to profit from their work long after they're dead.  Perhaps worse, a corporation can easily hold the rights to an artistic work without publishing it for decades, meaning the artist's creation will almost certainly be forgotten.  If it went into the public domain, it would have a chance to survive.

To learn more about this effort and what you can do, go to http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/02/stop-copyright-term-extension-europe

(Acknowledgement of bias--I've ran events for, made contributions to, and am friends with people who've worked for Steve Jackson Games.  That company was caught in a suit against the U. S. Secret Service, which was an inspiration for the creation of the EFF.  Some friends of mine were involved in a case that touched on changes made to the law at least partially due to that case.

The image above was found at http://www.felicity.com.au/artwork1.htm which has other copyright free images)

Posted by Alden Loveshade at 03:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

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Shackling teens for 12 hours a day; physically and sexually abusing teen girls and teen boys; stripping teenage girls naked and forcing them to eat their own vomit: These are correction methods that have been investigated by various agencies, including the U. S. Department of Justice.  Now the Columbia Training School of Columbia, Mississippi, which has been the site of much of this controversy, is being shut down.

While many of the 13,000 claims of abuse for juvenile correction centers made in America from 2004 to 2007 are likely bogus, it's still a staggering number.  This is especially considering there were about 46,000 detainees in 2007.  Assuming the number of detainees and reports was more-or-less constant for those three years, that's about one report per ten teens per year.

But is the problem just with juveniles, or with the whole system?  The flawed mission of the adult correction system was perhaps intentionally pointed out by Ana Margarita Compain-Romero of the praised Missouri Department of Social Services.  "It's just a different approach that we take. It's a treatment approach.  In other states, they take a more punitive approach, more like corrections."

In other words, so-called adult correction isn't treatment, it's punishment.  But don't you treat something in order to correct it?

See the article "13,000 abuse claims in juvie centers" by Associated Press writer Holbrook Mohr at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080302/ap_on_re_us/juvenile_detention.

(Alden Loveshade contributed to this report)

Posted by Reverend Loveshade at 04:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

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