As if being in prison weren't bad enough

Check this out:

Red-faced officials at the scandal-racked Texas Youth Commission on Thursday canceled the release on parole of more than 150 teenage offenders after discovering that many had served little time on their sentences for serious violent crimes such as murder, aggravated sexual assault, aggravated robbery and aggravated kidnapping.

They also announced a top-to-bottom review of their parole criteria as a result.

While that must really suck on a personal level for the 150 kids who won't be getting out of prison after all, it must really suck for TYC, who has been having a bad run of late anyway. If it weren't so disturbing, it might be funny:

One youth on the recent list had been sentenced to 40 years in the knife slaying of a classmate, who was stabbed 15 times. He had served less than three before the agency recommended his release.

Another, serving time for molesting six children, was recommended for release even though he had numerous write-ups in youth prisons for indecent exposure and for possessing a weapon. One was a sex offender who assaulted a Youth Commission employee about a year earlier.

Two of those recommended for parole were escapees who are still at large.

That is correct--TYC recommended parole of two individuals who had escaped and are still at large. If you ask me (I know you didn't), the Legislature (whenever they're around again) should either eliminate the entire agency and start over, or bring in someone to boost TYC's motivation. Just a thought.

Today in tragedies

This is actually quite tragic, sad, and recent. Tragic that people were hurt. Tragic that people died. Tragic that natural gas is so dangerous. Tragic that this may have been avoidable, very, very avoidable. While my initial instinct is to do more light mockery, I'll just quote the story and let the public decide:

CLEBURNE — A man whose wife died after their home exploded had been told not to light any more cigarettes nearly an hour before the blast, according to a city fire marshal's report.

After calling the Cleburne Fire Department's nonemergency number on May 29, David Pawlick told the fire inspector that "every time my wife lights a cigarette, a blue flame shoots up to the ceiling." Fire inspector Scott Oesch said he would check the problem and told Pawlick not to light any more matches, according to a memo written by Oesch two days later.

Oesch did not tell the family to leave the home — where authorities later discovered natural gas had seeped in but went undetected.

Before the inspector arrived, Pawlick's wife, Hazel, said she wanted to smoke. So Pawlick lit a match for his wife's cigarette, but it went out after a blue flash. He lit another match, sparking an explosion of blue flames in the house, Fire Marshal Bill Wright reported.

Seconds later, flames went through the ceiling into the attic. Another more violent explosion then ripped a hole in the roof.

Five of the family members were injured. Hazel Pawlick, 64, died days later from her injuries.

Hazel Sanderson, the Pawlick's daughter, and her daughter, Stephanie Sanderson, remain in critical condition at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, the family's attorney said.

Pawlick is suing Atmos Energy and seeking unspecified damages. Family attorney Dean Jackson declined to comment on the inspector's claim about Pawlick being told not to light any more cigarettes.

The Pawlicks' house did not use natural gas. But fire investigators say a nearby natural gas leak traveled into a sewer line leading into the house.

A condensation line from an air-conditioning unit dropped into the sewer pipe. The result was aunit that worked as a pump, sucking natural gas from the sewer line and distributing it through the air-conditioning ducts, Wright wrote.

Two by two they went...

From Bloomberg (via HuffPo), there is a story about a trend among billionaires to buy their own personal submarines:

The ocean floor is the final spending frontier for the world's richest people. Journeying to see what's on the bottom aboard a personal submersible is a wretched excess guaranteed to trump the average mogul's stable of vintage Bugattis or a $38 million round-trip ticket to the International Space Station aboard a Russian rocket.

Luxury-submarine makers and salesmen from the Pacific Ocean to the Persian Gulf say fantasy and secrecy are the foundations of this nautical niche industry built on madcap multibillionaires.

``Everyone down there is a wealthy eccentric,'' says Jean- Claude Carme, vice president of marketing for U.S. Submarines Inc., a Portland, Oregon-based bespoke submarine builder. ``They're all intensely secretive.''

Who owns the estimated 100 luxury subs carousing the Seven Seas mostly remains a mystery.

Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft Corp., warned his boat builder that loose lips sink ships.

Perhaps I am being paranoid, but there may be a trend that it quite troubling here. We have heard about the disappearing frogs and honeybees, but now our billionaires are retreating to the bottom of the ocean...

What do the billionaires know that the rest of us do not? Be afraid...

10 Minutes

This is a short from Bosnian director Ahmed Imamovic. Gives you an idea of how shitty the world can be. Just a little something to bum you out if you were having a good day.



From the YouTube description:

10 minutes by Ahmed Imamovic. 1994. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Rome, Italy. How many different things can happen for only 10 Minutes. The film won the award for the best European short film in 2002.

This short film, as its title indicates lasts only 10 minutes, but it tells a much longer story which unravels only in our imagination upon seeing the end of the film. While 10 minutes in someone's life mean nothing, they can be fatal in another: a boy and his loving family, tragedy in a war-torn city, death and destruction. All in just ten minutes. The film follows two simultaneous story lines: one set in Rome, and one in Sarajevo, in 1994, the worst time of the war in Bosnia. Although the Rome part was not filmed on the original location, that does not take away anything from the quality of the film, it was just a symbolic element anyway. Cast is great, story is very compact and well written, direction dynamic and precise. There is nothing out of place in the film: well structured, stripped of false pathos, realistic, it is very straight forward. In other words, this is a jewel of a film, and it was not by chance that it won the award for the best European short film in 2002. 10 minutes for me is definitely one of the most moving and powerful films about wartime Sarajevo. Behind the scene: I read that the director Ahmed Imamovic, in search of Japanese for the role of the tourist, had to go to the Japanese Embassy in Sarajevo and ask one of the staff to perform in the film. Luckily for the director, the Embassy allowed one of their employees to star in the film.

My inner geek is vindicated

Because cheesy internet-based quizzes do not lie!!!

You scored as Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica), You are leery of your surroundings, and with good reason. Anyone could be a cylon. But you have close friends and you know they would never hurt you. Now if only the damn XO would stop drinking. Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica) 88% Serenity (Firefly) 81% Heart of Gold (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) 81% Millennium Falcon (Star Wars) 81% Deep Space Nine (Star Trek) 81% SG-1 (Stargate) 75% Moya (Farscape) 75% Bebop (Cowboy Bebop) 69% Babylon 5 (Babylon 5) 63% Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda) 50% Enterprise D (Star Trek) 50% Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix) 44% FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files) 31% Which sci-fi crew would you best fit in with? (pics) created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as The Doctor, You are The Doctor, the last of the Time Lords. You regenerate if you 'die' and always travel with a companion. The Doctor 56% Neo 38% Gen. Jack O'Neill 25% Luke Skywalker 19% Which Sci-Fi Hero Are You? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as The Goa'uld, You are a Goa'uld, the evil race of symbiotic worms that take a human host and enslave them. You claim to be a god, bud aren't The Goa'uld 31% The Master 31% The Wraith 25% Darth Vader 25% Which Sci-Fi villain are you?? created with QuizFarm.com

Amazing time waster!

This is how I spent several hours of my 4th of July holiday. Kind of sad.

Still too pissed off for words

Take it, Keith:



Bush, Cheney, and Libby all belong in prison. Better yet, Iraq (it's their soiree, after all).