Weird News of the World Thread

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Weird as hell right? I know around here most of the worksheets and homework the kids do come from pre-approved booklets. So where did those come from?

 

[KevanG]

I forget which state it was but I think you posted an article a while back with slavery being the subject of a math problem.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

There was an article I posted awhile back that had kids on field trip treated like slaves and called the n-word and they forced a black girl to do slave stuff, I don't recall a math one but could be. I've posted too many articles to remember them all

 

[KevanG]

Whelp here it is anyway. New Yorks version http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/22/slave-math-question_n_2740909.html

When a student teacher at P.S. 59 in Manhattan saw the math homework for her fourth-grade class, it didn't add up: The assignment asked pupils to solve equations about the whipping and killing of slaves on a slave ship, reported local TV news station New York 1.
Aziza Harding showed the problems to her graduate-school professor at NYU, who vented his outrage to NY1. The station then contacted "appalled" P.S. 59 Principal Adele Schroeter.
Visit NY1 for its full report.
According to the New York Post, teacher Jane Youn had originally distributed the problems -- reportedly written by students -- for a previous class to augment a social studies lesson on slavery. Another class was to receive the same questions for homework on Thursday, when Harding was asked to photocopy the assignment and instead blew the whistle.
One of the questions from the assignment:

"One slave got whipped five times a day. How many times did he get whipped in a month (31 days)? Another slave got whipped nine times a day. How many times did he get whipped in a month? How many times did the two slaves get whipped together in one month?"​

In a statement emailed to The Huffington Post, New York City's Department of Education said: “This is obviously unacceptable and we will take appropriate disciplinary action against these teachers. The Chancellor spoke to the principal, and she has already taken steps to ensure this does not happen again.”
New York Magazine lambasted the teachers for allowing fourth-graders to solve equations "that casually reference people suffering and dying with little historical context." NYMag also suggested that the educators might have known of potential fallout because of a similar incident that led to the resignation of a teacher in Georgia last year. That incident included a math problem about a slave picking fruit and another about the amount of beatings someone received.

And here's Georgias http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/08/examples-of-slavery-in-school-worksheet_n_1192512.html

Parents of students at Beaver Ridge Elementary School in Norcross, Ga., are outraged at the school district's response to the reports of using examples of slavery in math word problems, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
The word problems in questions include references to slavery and "beatings," according to the paper.

"Each tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?" and "If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week?"
​

It's not just the word problems that are sparking criticism, but the way it's being handled. According to the AJC, district officials said the elementary school's principal will "work with teachers to come up with more appropriate lessons."
District spokesperson Sloan Roach told the station the teachers were trying to incorporate social studies lessons in math problems for a "cross-curricular activity."
Roach went on to tell My Fox Atlanta that, while the the questions were inappropriate, she doesn't believe the teachers meant any harm.
"This is simply a case of creating a bad question," Roach told the station.
Parent Terrance Barnett told WSB TV that having to explain the questions to his child was painful.
"Something like shouldn't be imbedded into a kid of the 3rd, 4th, 5th, any grade," Barnett told WSB TV. "I'm having to explain to my 8-year-old why slavery or slaves or beatings are in a math problem. That hurts."

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Google Clone Makes It Easy to Search for Drugs and Guns on the Dark Web

It can be hard to find good smack without leaving the comfort of your own home. At least it used to be. A new search engine for black markets is making it easier than ever to find anything from high quality heroin to assault rifles. The site even looks just like Google. It's called Grams, and it works remarkably well.

You simply open up your Tor browser—it only works with Tor—navigate to grams7enufi7jmdl.onion, type in your sin, and in half a second you're presented with a buffet of options. There's even an "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. Yes, there's is now an "I'm Feeling Lucky" button for meth on the internet, albeit a buggy one. We tried to find some crystal quickly and were instead redirected to a search for "silencer." At least, there's a built in joke, there.

You can't blame Grams for being a little janky so far, though. It's the work of one man, who simply calls himself Gramsadmin. "I noticed on the forums and reddit people were constantly asking 'where to get product X?' and 'which market had product X?' or 'who had the best product X and was reliable and not a scam?'" he told Wired. "I wanted to make it easy for people to find things they wanted on the darknet and figure out who was a trustworthy vendor."

For now, Grams works with eight different black markets, including SilkRoad2, Pandora, and something called Nice Guy. Each of the markets have also given Grams explicit permission to scrape their sites for search data. Gramsadmin, who built the whole site in just two weeks, says he'll soon have a Google AdWords-like product as well that will let vendors promote their listings. He'd like to hire a programmer to help, but it turns out it's hard to find hackers you can trust.

Obviously, there's a lot about this new idea that's highly illegal, so who knows how long it'll stay up and running. If you've searching high and low trying to find an AR-15 with the serial numbers filed off, though, now's your chance.

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/grams-search-engine-dark-web/

Anyone here admit to surfing the DarkNet?

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Whelp here it is anyway. New Yorks version http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/22/slave-math-question_n_2740909.html



And here's Georgias http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/08/examples-of-slavery-in-school-worksheet_n_1192512.html

Good god that's incredibly stupid. Ya I think I would remember that one if I posted. Would def have gone right up in the Stupid thread

 

[KevanG]

Well that's... different. Easy black market buying. Wonder if they take paypal?

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Deadliest-Ever Avalanche on Mt. Everest Kills at Least 12

At least 12 Nepalese guides were killed and four remain missing after an avalanche on Mount Everest on Friday.

The guides had travelled ahead of group of climbers to set ropes when the avalanche struck at about 6:30 a.m. Four of the survivors were airlifted to a hospital in Katmandu, and several others are being treated at base camp.

From the Associated Press:

The avalanche hit an area nicknamed the "popcorn field" for its bulging chucks of ice and is just below Camp 2, Ang Tshering of the Nepal Mountaineering Association said. Camp 2 sits at an elevation of 6,400 meters (21,000 feet) on the 8,850-meter (29,035-foot) mountain.

One injured guide, Dawa Tashi, lay in the intensive care unit at Grande Hospital in the capital late Friday after being evacuated from the mountain. Doctors said he suffered several broken ribs and would be in the hospital for a few days.

Tashi told his visiting relatives that the Sherpa guides woke up early and were on their way to fix ropes to the higher camps but were delayed because of the unsteady path. Suddenly the avalanche fell on the group and buried many of them, according to Tashi's sister-in-law Dawa Yanju.
The disaster is the deadliest in the mountain's history. In 1996, eight climbers were killed during a snow storm, and in 1970, six guides died in an avalanche.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/avalanche-sweeps-everest-6-killed-9-missing

And that is why I don't climb mountains that don't have a ski lift

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Six-Layer Pizza Cake Is About to Become a (Canadian) Reality

Canadian pizza chain Boston Pizza (real actual thing) is holding a social media poll to determine which non-pizza food item it will attempt to graft pizza onto next. The current frontrunner is a six-layer cake, because nothing matters.

Boston Pizza already makes a chipotle chicken and bacon pizza taco and "Pizzaburger" sliders—start taking notes, Yum! Brands—and this campaign seems like an obvious publicity rollout for the cake. Pizza-flavored mints are in a very distant second place, and nobody's really into a "pizza beard" face protector. As Eater points out, it's possible the whole "If You Like It, We'll Make It" game is rigged.

If all goes well, Canadians will soon have access to a baked mountain of pizza that's "great for birthdays, bar mitzvahs, weddings, and even lonely nights watching infomercials."

U.S. residents can continue ordering 6 regular pizzas and stacking them on top of one another, as the Founding Fathers intended.

http://www.pizzagamechangers.com/

I expect KevanG to sample this and report back the findings

 

[KevanG]

I was going to say that looks terrible as I like to enjoy my food and eat it slow. Besides, I don't like Boston Pizzas pizza.

Unless you were willing to fork up the money to buy it for me then I'd be happy to give a full report on the subject.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Dutch Man Charged With Cyberbullying Amanda Todd

Amanda Todd's cyberbully has reportedly been found. A 35-year-old Dutch man who was arrested in January for indecent assault and child pornography is now suspected of having been the man who tormented Todd, who committed suicide at 15 years old in 2012.

She left behind a YouTube video detailing the horrors she suffered at the hands of the bully. It went viral, and an avalanche of commentary followed. (I wrote about it elsewhere at the time.)

The reports of the Dutch man's connection surfaced first on Dutch television yesterday. Then Christian van Dijk, the Dutch lawyer for the man, confirmed to the Associated Press that one of his client's alleged victims was "a 15-year-old girl from British Columbia." He said that American and Norwegian authorities were also involved. And the Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced that:

RCMP have laid five charges including child pornography, extortion, criminal harassment and Internet luring against an unnamed man in the Netherlands in connection with the Amanda Todd case.
The man's name is not being released by the Dutch authorities, and the Canadians are abiding by that. All we know is that he had dual Dutch and Turkish citizenship, that he had no partner or children and lived alone, and that when he was arrested he was living "in a vacation house in the town of Oisterwijk."

We also know from van Dijk, the attorney, that so far the man is remaining silent. But van Dijk suggests he believes his client is innocent:

... he doesn't believe prosecutors have sufficient evidence to convict his client, and said that even if there is evidence of unlawful activity on his computer, it may have been hacked.

"Prosecutors seem to think they have a big fish here, but if I see the evidence, it's not much," he said. "Lots of references to IP addresses and such."

Those who were following this story back in 2012, at the time Todd's case was inspiring international attention, may recall that Anonymous got involved and doxxed a Vancouver area man as Todd's tormenter. The police investigated, and he denied it. They believed him. In fact, the doxxed man said he had actually found the real culprit living in New York.

Now the breadcrumb trail appears to have led somewhere else entirely from those initial suspicions. Doxxing has its legitimate uses, but the lessons of the last two years are that facts in highly emotional cases can be a bit of a moving target. The right guy deserves to have the book—or if it really is this guy, the books, Dutch and Canadian—thrown at him. But it's important to be sure it's the right guy.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/0...ction-with-web-extortion-of-b-c-teen-reports/

Hopefully they have the right guy and he pays for what he did to that poor girl

 

[Teelie]

The bullying is bad but the child porn charges are really what's going to be important.

 

[KevanG]

They really need to crack down on crap like this. I'm all for internet freedom but not when it lets people start having kids kill themselves for their jollies.

 

[Teelie]

Making it a crime, however minimal, would be a start. I don't mean calling someone a name kind of stuff but the torment that drives someone to suicide should definitely be a criminal act.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Woman Discovers Dead Body During 4-Year-Old's Easter Egg Hunt

On Wednesday, a woman hosting an Easter egg hunt party for her four-year-old son discovered a dead body under her deck.

For about a week, Tara Hanouskova had noticed a strong, rotten odor coming from her backyard in Knoxville, Tenn. With the help of her landscaper, she searched for the smell's source but found nothing.

Then, during her tot's Easter egg hunt on Wednesday, Hanouskova followed the odor to her deck, beneath which she found a decomposed body.

"I really don't even know how he got there," Hanouskova told the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Police say the body, which so badly decomposed it still hasn't been identified, had been there for at least two weeks. Based on an autopsy, foul play isn't suspected.

Happy Easter everyone!

http://wwlp.com/2014/04/18/body-found-during-kids-easter-egg-hunt/

That kid is going to have one of the weirdest Easter stories to tell people when the kid grows up

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Climate Change Is Helping Invasive Species Spread Northward

This creepy, furry little bug is called a Southern pine beetle, and it's on the move. Thanks to northern climes slowly warming up over the years, these beetles are migrating northward and wreaking havoc on local forests.

Columbia University's Ben Orlove wrote a blog post last week explaining the cause behind a thick layer of smoke and haze that choked the New York City metro area on Monday April 7. The poor air quality was the result of smoke that spread north from a pine forest fire in southern New Jersey.

Orlove notes that the beetles are moving north into areas where they are not native, killing many previously-healthy trees, effectively turning them into tinder waiting for a spark.

This past December, Smithsonian Magazine ran a piece on how climate change is allowing invasive species to move into non-native areas and turn local ecosystems on their collective heads.

The longer seasons, however, are also helping invasive plants annex American soil; extended springs mean they can more quickly push aside native species and transform ecosystems. "What's interesting about climate change is that humans are effectively manipulating how species experience time," says ecologist Elizabeth Wolkovich of the Biodiversity Research Centre at the University of British Columbia.
As much of the media's coverage of the effects of climate change focuses on its direct impact on humanity, it's a good (albeit unsettling) reminder that humans aren't the only organisms affected by a changing climate.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...-invasive-species-take-over-180947630/?no-ist

Reminds me of the episode on the Simpsons were Bart brings a bullfrog to Australia

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Three Hospitalized After Pet Cat Named Khat Attacks Family

Three people from an unlucky California family were hospitalized after they were attacked by their pet cat.

The cat—appropriately named Khat—basically mauled its owner's entire family. Khat's owner's mother, sister, and 10-year-old brother were all treated for gashes a local hospital.

"The cat ran and jumped on [my brother's] leg and was like, attached to him," the owner told News 10. "He's never been an aggressive cat, he's never been mean, he just flipped."

The owner, who asked not to be identified, called Roseville police, who directed her to the Animal Control department. The office for Animal Control was closed, though, so the Roseville Fire Department took the call.

"Absolutely a first for us," Roseville Fire Captain Derek Carey told News 10. "We tried to push it into a cage, and it grabbed on to my engineer's boot and turnout bottom and was hissing and going off."

Eventually, the fire department trapped the cat into a cage by covering it with a blanket and forcing it into a cage with a metal pole. The cat was taken to the SCPA, where it awaits its fate.

The cat attack comes just five weeks after an angry Oregon cat trapped his owners in their bedroom, leading to one of the best 911 calls in recent history.

http://www.news10.net/story/news/lo...ville-family-three-taken-to-hospital/7794045/

Must have got into the wrong bag of catnip

 

[Teelie]

Cute cat, tragic story. I wonder what could have set him off. I've had cats react negatively to other cats introduced or being startled but never flipping out for no reason.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Serial Playground Pooper Remains on the Loose in Ypsilanti, Mich.

Residents of one Michigan city are pulling out all the stops to catch a serial pooper who has been despoiling their playground slides. Ypsilanti locals have started a hashtag and even put up a billboard in an attempt to bring the fecal fiend to justice.

The mystery pooper has been on the loose for six months, with police even installing a hidden camera in an effort to catch him.

Local ad company Adams Outdoor Advertising did its part by having an in-house designer whip up a billboard with a rotating series of messages asking citizens to report the pooper via Twitter hashtag.

"Our art guy had a lot of fun," Adams general manager Todd McWilliams told the Daily Dot. "He came up with a few designs—and I rejected a few."

The three taglines read, "Do your civic doody, report the pooper," "Help us flush the pooper," and "Help us catch the poopetrator."

City officials aren't exactly grateful for the help, even though they've failed for half a year to catch a guy who poops on playgrounds.

"We're not authorizing it and we don't need it," City Manager Ralph Lange told Mlive.

Within a day of the billboard going up up, Lange said police were "closing in" on a person of interest in the case.

http://www.dailydot.com/crime/michigan-playground-pooper-billboard-hashtag/

I really hope this hashtag blows up on Twitter. This story is weird as hell, some people get off on the strangest things

 

[KevanG]

I thought that issue with the cat was the same case as before but it's not. That's odd.

 

[Teelie]

Serial Playground Pooper Remains on the Loose in Ypsilanti, Mich.

Spoiler

http://www.dailydot.com/crime/michigan-playground-pooper-billboard-hashtag/

I really hope this hashtag blows up on Twitter. This story is weird as hell, some people get off on the strangest things

It must be said: What a ****** thing to do.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Clever Crook Uses Heat Vision Drone to Hunt Down Weed and Steal It

The police have long used thermal imaging cameras to detect marijuana growing operations. Now, thanks to drones, crooks are getting into the weed-finding game too. Except in their case, they're trying to find the weed so they can steal it.

The Halesowen News in the UK reports that at least one criminal has used an unmanned drone armed with heat-detecting cameras to find growhouses. For those of you unfamiliar with the business, in-door marijuana growing operations give off an enormous amount of heat because growers use powerful lighting arrays to grow very potent weed very fast.

According to the delightful interview with the criminal drone operator, finding illegal growing operations is a piece of cake, but taking the weed is easy, too. Forget the strongarm drug house robberies on shows like The Wire.

The 33-year-old said: "Half the time we don't even need to use violence to get the crop. Growing cannabis has gone mainstream and the people growing it are not gangsters, especially in places like Halesowen, Cradley Heath and Oldbury.
The crook, then, either straight up takes all the weed or imposes a tax on the growers. That's the way of the world. New technology changes the way we do business, even if you're working in the black market. Are you ready to get high on the new drone economy?

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/cr...-seeking-drones-to-sniff-out-weedand-steal-it

Don't hate the player hate the game son haha

 

[KevanG]

That's innovative and hilarious.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Look At These Beautiful Little Corals Grown Like Popsicles In A Lab

Coral sex is a wonder to behold. On a summer night, always around a full moon, corals somehow all know to release billions of sperm and eggs into the sea, turning the water into a pink miasma of sex. This spawning relies on precise environmental cues, which could get scrambled in climate change. That's why researchers are trying to get them to spawn in the lab.

This delightful photo was snapped by Heather Sullivan during a behind-the-scenes tour of the Horniman Museum in London. There, aquarium curator Jamie Craggs is leading Project Coral to study how climate change could impact coral reproduction.

As one part of the project, they're growing a Caribbean brooding coral species called Favia fragum, Craggs told me in an email. (Favia fragum is actually one of the few coral species that don't spawn, but they do release larvae into the water based on the lunar cycle.) The little purple popsicles are pieces of calcium carbonate tile, specially made for settling coral larvae. Once ready, they'll be used in a feeding experiment.

These small pieces of coral are actually between one and two-years-old now, which gives you a sense of exactly how slowly they grow. That's why coral reefs, once destroyed, are so hard to restore.

Well good thing they are growing them since they are getting killed all over the place in the ocean

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Woman Suing New Jersey for Rejecting Her Atheist License Plate

A New Jersey woman says the state discriminated against her on the basis of her beliefs when it rejected her request for a license plate reading "8THEIST" as "objectionable."

Nonbeliever Shannon Morgan, of Maurice Township, N.J., said that after her custom plate was rejected, she tested "BAPTIST," and the Motor Vehicle Commission's website accepted it.

Now she's filing a First Amendment suit against New Jersey, with representation from Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

A spokesperson for the MVC says the state doesn't discriminate against nonbelievers, citing a case where American Atheists president David Silverman's request for a plate reading ATHE1ST was allowed after a review.

Morgan's lawsuit says the fact that Silverman had to fight to get his plate approved establishes a pattern of rejecting atheist plates in the State, "thereby discriminating against atheist viewpoints and expressing a preference for theism over non-theism."

Her plate wasn't just inadvertently rejected by a computer algorithm, either. A spokesperson for the MVC told NJ.com, "We review every request personally ... and we review them for anything that's offensive of objectionable."

http://www.nj.com/cumberland/index....files_lawsuit_over_atheist_license_plate.html

How is an atheist plate in any way objectionable? Seems like she has herself a pretty good case here