AOL News: Jailed... For Wanting a Better School

How far would you go to get your children into a better public school? The best intentions of one Ohio woman landed her in jail.

In a highly unusual case, Kelley Williams-Bolar, a single mother who lived in Akron public housing, was convicted of lying about her residency in order to send her two daughters to a highly ranked school. Her sentence, which inflamed emotions in the community, was 10 days in jail, according to reports, and is due to end this week.

She should not have lied, but I think I can understand why she did it.

When I hear about stuff like this, it becomes all the more clearer to me that education reform should be a high priority in this country.

Stupid Letter to the Editor in Today's Pilot

Browsing the online edition of this mornings Virginian-Pilot I stumbled upon a letter to the editor that really missed the mark completely.  I'll post the links for you to read at your leisure.

http://hamptonroads.com/2011/01/too-confrontational

The author of this letter seems to be gushing about the prospects of U.S.-China relations, while ignoring the fact that China is a bloody, Nazi-like terror state.  Has the author forgotten about China's brutal 50-year long occupation of Tibet, or its bloody oppression of Christians, Falun Gong and others, or the habitual use of torture against anyone who dares question the great wise ones who rule the country, or the murderous "one-child only" policy that mandates sterilization and forced abortion for those who have more than one child, or the offenses against human dignity like the harvesting of organs from condemned prisoners?  In other words, China is the new Soviet Union, fast becoming a communist bully with the big guns to back it up.

On another note, China has been relentlessly building up its military in an effort to become a superpower.  I believe in my heart of hearts that it is only a matter of time until we come into another Cold War, this time with China.  I think it makes sense for us to be prepared, within reason.

Pax Christi, and pray for those oppressed in China.

WT: Madoff trustee gets $7B settlement

Courtesy of the Washington Times

NEW YORK (AP) — The trustee recovering money for Bernard Madoff's burned investors has reached a $7.2 billion settlement with the estate of a Florida philanthropist and businessman who had been the single-largest beneficiary of the fraud.

The settlement with the estate of Jeffry Picower was detailed Friday in Manhattan court papers.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called it "a truly historic settlement" and a "game changer for Madoff's victims."

Barbara Picower, representing her late husband's estate, entered into the agreement with the U.S. attorney's office.

She said in a statement that her husband was "in no way complicit" with Madoff's fraud. She said the estate would "return every penny received" through Madoff investments.

Picower drowned after suffering a heart attack in the swimming pool of his Palm Beach, Fla., mansion on Oct. 25, 2009.

A recovery of that size would mean that a sizeable number of Madoff's victims could get at least half of their money back — a remarkable turnaround for people and institutions that thought two years ago that they had lost everything.

Picower, who was 67 when he died, invested many years ago with Madoff. Court-appointed trustee Irving
Picard's investigators said that, over time, he withdrew about $7 billion in bogus profits from his accounts. That amounts to more than a third of the dollars that disappeared in the scandal.

That money was supposedly made on stock trades, but authorities said that in reality it was simply stolen from other investors.

Picower's lawyers claimed he knew nothing about the scheme, but the trustee argued in court papers that he must have known that his returns were "implausibly high" and based on fraud.

I must say, it's about time that the victims of this monstrous crime received some just compensation.  The sheer amount of unadulterated greed that went into this is staggering and makes me physically ill.  I harbor no ill will toward Mr. Madoff and I will pray for his coversion and repentance, but I thoroughly condemn the enormous fraud he perpetuated on innocent people.  Life savings were wiped out in his scheme, and I welcome this effort to try to make things right.

Let us continue to pray for these poor souls.  With God, all things are possible.

Pax Christi.

Yahoo News: 'Programming error' caused Russian rocket failure

MOSCOW (AFP) – A programming error may have caused a rocket carrying three Russian navigation satellites to fail to reach orbit, a Russian space agency source told the RIA Novosti news agency on Monday.
"A number of specialists think that mistakes in the programming of the onboard computer system of the Proton rocket led to the engines sending the rocket too high and onto a faulty trajectory," the source said.
The rocket carrying satellites for the Russian government navigation system Glonass, failed to reach the correct orbit Sunday after blasting off from Baikonur cosmodrome, the Russian space agency said.

Oops.

Back to the drawing board there, comrades.

British guy creates super-chili

Reading Yahoo news this morning directed me to an article about a British chili farmer who's created a new claimant to the crown of world's hottest chili... or alternatively, the only chili hot enough to destroy your colon.

Fiery food mavens seeking to one-up each other now have to gear up for a whole new test of culinary bravado: the world's hottest chili pepper.

Yes, the Naga Viper, the latest claimant to the world's-hottest-pepper crown, outdistances its predecessor, the Bhut Jolokia, or "ghost chili," by more than 300,000 points on the famous Scoville scale of tongue-scorching chili hotness. Researchers at Warwick University testing the Naga Viper found that it measures 1,359,000 on the Scoville scale, which rates heat by tracking the presence of a chemical compound. In comparison, most varieties of jalapeño peppers measure in the 2,500 to 5,000 range -- milder than the Naga Viper by a factor of 270.

You hear that right, it's a full 300,000 points ahead of the infamous bhut jolokia, or ghost chili, on the Scoville scale. The pepper clocks in at 1,359,000 Scoville units, which works out to about 270 times hotter than a jalapeno. This thing is so fiery, the military is investigating its use potential as a weapon.

I wonder how long it will be before Adam Richman features a dish containing this colon-destroying pepper on his show?