Thursday, December 3, 2009

“Va. man charged with threatening official cleared - Bluefield Daily Telegraph” plus 4 more

“Va. man charged with threatening official cleared - Bluefield Daily Telegraph” plus 4 more

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Va. man charged with threatening official cleared - Bluefield Daily Telegraph

Posted: 03 Dec 2009 06:39 PM PST

Published: December 03, 2009 09:46 pm    print this story  

Va. man charged with threatening official cleared

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A Vietnamese immigrant who sent his congressman a bloodstained letter vowing to decapitate a U.S. consular official was acquitted of two charges Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Robert Payne ruled that prosecutors failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Phuong Nguyen Le of Richmond really intended to harm U.S. Consular Chief Charles Bennett in Ho Chi Minh City.

Le, 50, last year mailed a letter to the Richmond office of U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott threatening to cut off Bennett's head. Le was angry because a visa application for his wife in Vietnam was rejected, and Bennett's letter informing him of the decision suggested the marriage was a sham.

The letter also threatened a massacre worse than the Virginia Tech shootings. The typewritten page was heavily smeared with Le's blood, which he also used to sign his name.

Payne said he was persuaded by a psychiatrist's testimony that in Vietnamese culture, the decapitation remark would be viewed as an insult, not a threat. Dr. Paul K. Leung, psychiatry director at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, also said blood-signing is intended to convey a letter's seriousness and truthfulness.

Le's lawyer, Amy Austin of the federal public defender's office, said her client's drunkenness and poor grasp of the English language resulted in the unfortunate choice of words.

"This is a case in which the concept of reasonable doubt truly makes a difference," Payne said, citing testimony that "language about head-cutting can be and is a euphemism" in Vietnamese culture.

Payne found Le not guilty of threatening a federal official and using the U.S. mail to do so, but he warned Le that he would no longer be allowed to use cultural or language barriers as an excuse for improper behavior.

"You have opened your mouth in a way that is utterly unacceptable in the United States," Payne said. "Your letter-writing days better be over."

He encouraged Le to seek mental health treatment.

While language and cultural differences helped explain the beheading remark and the blood-signing, even the defense had trouble justifying the threat to orchestrate a Virginia Tech-like massacre.

"Now that is troubling to me when I read it," said Leung, the expert witness for the defense. "I think that is a threat."

However, that threat could not be considered an element of the charge against Le because it was not aimed directly at Bennett, the judge ruled.

Le earlier this year pleaded guilty to the mailing charge, but Payne later allowed him to withdraw the plea and go to trial. The acquittal meant Le, a former maintenance man at a Richmond housing project, was allowed to go free after nearly a year in jail.

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Show choir to present Christmas program tonight at Paramount - Abilene Reporter-News

Posted: 03 Dec 2009 06:53 PM PST

James Pearce has taught college music classes.

James Pearce has taught college music classes.

Betty Ann Blackburn is director of the group.

Betty Ann Blackburn is director of the group.

Abilene's Celebration Singers, a popular local show choir, will present its 13th annual show "Celebrate the Season" tonight at the Paramount Theatre.

The show will begin at 7:30 p.m. and is free to the public with donations accepted at the end of the concert. The show has been partially underwritten by the Abilene Cultural Affairs Council, First Financial Bank, and Copies Etc.

The 50-voice choir, along with several instrumental accompanists, will present a program of seasonal secular music, traditional Christmas arrangements and a dramatic Nativity with special effects.

The show will feature choir director Betty Ann Blackburn and guest director and soloist James Pearce.

Blackburn, director of the group for the past two years, is recovering from a recent illness and will share conducting duties with Pearce.

Pearce has taught music at both McMurry and Hardin-Simmons and is the minister of music at First Baptist Church. He will be the featured soloist during the performance of the Nativity.

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Brown Bag Lecture Series brings racial issues to light - State News

Posted: 03 Dec 2009 07:00 PM PST

By Emily Wilkins (Last updated: 56 minutes ago)

To Javier Pescador, racial biases of Mexicans during the Great Depression era still can be seen today.

Pescador, a history professor, gave a lecture Thursday at the MSU Museum Auditorium examining the work of photographer Dorothea Lange and the racial biases her photos show. Lange is famous for her photo "Migrant Mother," which shows a white woman struggling during the era. Although Pescador said Lange's work has artistic value, it has perpetuated the stereotype of Mexicans as farmers and laborers.

"Dorothea Lange did a wonderful job documenting the plights of white American workers," Pescador said. "But when it came down to documenting the conditions of Mexican workers in the same location, she adopted a completely different approach."

Pescador took examples from the book "An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion" by Lange and her husband, sociologist Paul Taylor. The book includes a mixture of photos, captions and text illustrating the struggles of those who moved to California in the Great Depression looking for work on large farms.

Many photos shown during the presentation did not show Mexicans laboring in the fields, but simply were portraits. Lange's photos with nonwhite subjects at work did not show faces or provide names and quotes from the subjects.

"She portrayed them with an alienation position," Pescador said.

Pescador's presentation showed how white farmers were seen as displaced, while Mexicans were viewed as "natural migrants" and were not expected to own their own farm and property.

"The notion any group are migrants by nature is biased in prejudice," Pescador said, "You see a lot of people leaving Michigan right now. Anyone can become a migrant."

He also attributed racial tension and prejudges of the times to have contributed to the lack of diversity photographed in Lange's work.

Arts and humanities freshman Carlyn Deaver agreed with Pescador and said it wasn't surprising Lange focused on white subjects.

"Obviously it was the culture back then to focus on white people," Deaver said.

But Pescador said the issue isn't something that's been left in the past.

"This is all the way up to the present times," he said "Mexicans are associated with farms and fields."

Pescador's lecture was part of the Brown Bag Lecture Series, which is in its 14th year and has given more than 100 presentations ranging from poetry and fiction reading to concerts, films and exhibits inside the museum and elsewhere.

"It was a great presentation," said John Beck, associate director of the MSU School of Labor and Industrial Relations. "All the talks are so diverse. We look at the cultural intersection between work and labor."

The next presentation in the Brown Bag Series, Working on the Imperial Farm: Convict Labor and Discipline on the Fernando de Noronha Island Penal Colony, Brazil 1830-1897, is scheduled from 12:15-1:30 p.m. Jan. 14 in the MSU Museum Auditorium.

Originally Published: 56 minutes ago

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The Analytic Mode - New York Times

Posted: 03 Dec 2009 06:46 PM PST

Many Democrats are nostalgic for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign — for the passion, the clarity, the bliss-to-be-alive fervor. They argue that these things are missing in a cautious and emotionless White House.

But, of course, the Obama campaign, like all presidential campaigns, was built on a series of fictions. The first fiction was that government is a contest between truth and error. In reality, government is usually a contest between competing, unequal truths.

The second fiction was that to support a policy is to make it happen. In fact, in government power is exercised through other people. It is only by coaxing, prodding and compromise that presidents actually get anything done.

The third fiction was that we can begin the world anew. In fact, all problems and policies have already been worked by a thousand hands and the clay is mostly dry. Presidents are compelled to work with the material they have before them.

The fourth fiction was that leaders know the path ahead. In fact, they have general goals, but the way ahead is pathless and everything is shrouded by uncertainty.

All presidents have to adjust to these realities when they move to the White House. The only surprise with President Obama is how enthusiastically he has made the transition. He's political, like any president, but he seems to vastly prefer the grays of governing to the simplicities of the campaign.

The election revolved around passionate rallies. The Obama White House revolves around a culture of debate. He leads long, analytic discussions, which bring competing arguments to the fore. He sometimes seems to preside over the arguments like a judge settling a lawsuit.

His policies are often a balance, as he tries to accommodate different points of view. He doesn't generally issue edicts. In matters foreign and domestic, he seems to spend a lot of time coaxing people along. His governing style, in short, is biased toward complexity.

This style has never been more evident than in his decision to expand the war in Afghanistan. America traditionally fights its wars in a spirit of moral fervor. Most war presidents cast themselves as heroes on a white charger, believing that no one heeds an uncertain trumpet.

Obama, on the other hand, cloaked himself in what you might call Niebuhrian modesty. His decision to expand the war is the most morally consequential one of his presidency so far, yet as the moral stakes rose, Obama's emotional temperature cooled to just above freezing. He spoke Tuesday night in the manner of an unwilling volunteer, balancing the arguments within his administration by leading the country deeper in while pointing the way out.

Despite the ambivalence, he did act. This is not mishmash. With his two surges, Obama will more than double the number of American troops in Afghanistan. As Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard pointed out, he is the first Democratic president in 40 years to deploy a significant number of troops into a war zone.

Those new troops are not themselves a strategy; they are enablers of an evolving strategy. Over the next year, there will be disasters, errors and surprises — as in all wars. But the generals will have more resources with which to cope and respond.

If the generals continue to find that stationing troops in the villages of Helmand Province leads to the revival of Afghan society, they will have the troops to do more of that. If they continue to find that order can be maintained only if social development accompanies military action, they will have more troops for that. We have no way of knowing now how those troops will end up being used. And we have no clue if it will be wise to withdraw them in July 2011.

The advantage of the Obama governing style is that his argument-based organization is a learning organization. Amid the torrent of memos and evidence and dispute, the Obama administration is able to adjust and respond more quickly than, say, the Bush administration ever did.

The disadvantage is the tendency to bureaucratize the war. Armed conflict is about morale, motivation, honor, fear and breaking the enemy's will. The danger is that Obama's analytic mode will neglect the intangibles that are the essence of the fight. It will fail to inspire and comfort. Soldiers and Marines don't have the luxury of adopting President Obama's calibrated stance since they are being asked to potentially sacrifice everything.

Barring a scientific breakthrough, we can't merge Obama's analysis with George Bush's passion. But we should still be glad that he is governing the way he is. I loved covering the Obama campaign. But amid problems like Afghanistan and health care, it simply wouldn't do to give gauzy speeches about the meaning of the word hope. It is in Obama's nature to lead a government by symposium. Embrace the complexity. Learn to live with the dispassion.

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All About raven28256 - Gamespot News

Posted: 03 Dec 2009 07:00 PM PST

I very briefly mentioned a little lore I've written for a potential fantasy gameseries a few blogs back and I've been getting some requests in my inbox to reveal a little more. So, I decided that I'd blog about some of it here and there, albeit in more summarized, condensed form than what I have written in documents for the sake of length. This first blog will be about magic and magic users, specifically among the humans in the kingdoms that make up an alliance (Currently dubbed "The Alliance" for placeholder's sake, but that will most definitely change by the time this lore gets adapted into anything, assuming it ever does) in the northwestern and central areas of the primary continent in the series. Please note that the names of many factions, nations, places of note in the story/lore, and continents are still up in the air because I tend to not be so great at such things.

Magic and Humans in The Alliance

The ability to channel mana and use magic isn't as natural to humans like it is in some other races. Among humans, the ability to use magic is genetic, either brought about by a mutation or by having a family history of magic users. Thus, someone can't just become a magic user if they really want to or try really hard; they must be born with the ability. As magic is much more understood and accepted within the kingdoms and nation-states that make up The Alliance, this region tends to have the greatest population of human magic users on the continent. There are a variety of traits that are shared among human magic users of The Alliance, to be detailed below.

Fields of Magic

The most "generic" type of magic are the basic elemental types. Most magic users start in a standard/generic elemental field like fire or water to gain a basic understanding of magic. Some chose to stay in their starting field and specialize in it, while some will switch to a related field. For example, someone who starts out with water magic may move onto a similar but more advanced field such as storm-based magic. Others may chose to switch fields altogether after getting a good feel for magic, choosing to pursue a completely unrelated form of magic than what they started with.

Some fields may require the user to study additional subjects like science or metal-working. A user that wishes to spend their time making magical weapons or clothing and selling them will need to learn skills normally associated with a blacksmith or tailor. Magic may be able to do fantastic things, but it can't allow an individually to "magically" learn more mundane skills required for some fields of magic. For a more advanced example, an alchemist will need to spend years studying subjects such as chemistry, various forms of mathematics, gems and precious metals, and more, depending on what exactly they wish to do with alchemy. Likewise, a druid who wishes to pursue a life of nature-based magic will need to have a good grasp of biology and spend years studying animal behavior and the culture of forest-dwelling races or factions that they will likely encounter, as well as learning how to live off the land and what plants can be used for what purposes, should they wish to live amongst nature as many druids eventually do.

Familiars

Familiars play a very important role in magic among humans originating in the Alliance-controlled regions. One of the first things a magic user does after gaining a basic knowledge of magic is to acquire a familiar. A user's first familiar is often a small animal, usually one often kept as a pet such as a cat, dog, small species of bird, or even something more exotic like one of the smaller species of gryphon or drake.

The point of familiars can vary. Familiars can assist in the channeling of mana and casting of spells. They can help patch weaknesses in a magic user's own skills, serve as faithful companions (A familiar has a stronger bond with its magic user than any mere pet) or, more often than not, warn the magic user of danger and/or provide protection.

The number and type of familiars that a magic user surrounds him or herself with is directly proportional to the extent and quality of their understanding of magic. Because of this, familiars are commonly used as status symbols; a magic user with a particularly large number or difficult type of familiars to handle is indicative of a particularly skilled and powerful magic user.

The types of familiars that a more skilled magic user may surround themselves with can vary from person to person. Someone who pursues the life of a druid or other practitioner of nature-based magic will likely tame more exotic creatures found in the forest. Most common among elemental magic users is to form raw elemental mana into, well, elementals. The size, complexity, and power of an elemental is also a sign of how powerful a magic user is, as a weaker magic user would be unable to keep a particularly powerful elemental under control for sustained periods of time.

Golems and gargoyles are other artificially created elemental beings that are popular among magic users. The size, power, and even general intelligence of a golem or gargoyle is also a sign of how powerful a magic user is. While magic users can get someone else to craft a golem or gargoyle from a particular material and allow the user to animate it with magic, the best are those that the user creates from scratch; the users that wish to do this must first learn how to become a skilled (If magically enhanced) sculptor beforehand.

Perhaps among the most difficult creatures to create are homunculi, chimera, and emotionals. Someone that has one or more of such creatures in their following of familiars are truly skilled at the art of magic.

A homunculus is a living, breathing, but ultimately still artificial being (Usually, but not always, some type of humanoid, and even then normally a highly idealized, beautiful being) created by a magic user. Homunculi, while normally highly intelligent, are incapable of disobeying their creator. Their purpose can vary, but they are usually created by the more egotistical magic users as a sign of just how powerful they are. For a humanoid homunculus to be made, a magic user generally needs an extensive knowledge of anatomy; while the beings are artificial, they still have the same needs as a human or other living being.

Chimera are created when a magic user attempts to create a non-human creature. They are almost always a combination of multiple animals, but can be created either by combining existing animals that the magic user possesses or, more uncommonly, summoned from scratch. A chimera can vary in size and shape, and don't always need to be a combination of real animals; they can be a completely original creature designed by the magic user. As with homunculi, an extensive knowledge of anatomy and the biology of the animals being used is required before such a summoning should be attempted.

Finally, emotionals are literally the personification of an emotion, feeling, or thought. They can come in whatever shape or size the creator wants, and can vary from humanoids to more bestial forms. Often a magic user attempts to create such a creature when they feel that they have trouble controlling a certain emotion or feeling. The emotional is basically the personification of that aspect of the creator's feelings and personality. A successful creation, symbolically, means that the magic user has "gained control" of that aspect of themselves. Sometimes emotionals and homunculi overlap, creating such things as a homunculus that is the personification of the creator's feelings.

It should be noted that all three of these types of familiars are highly frowned upon by practitioners of nature or life magics, as the very concept of creating or altering life is "against the natural order" and amounts to "playing God."

The next parts will appear sometime soon.

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