The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for April 2009

Indian Women Say No Toilet, No Wedding

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This story is a good reminder to be thankful for what we have. More televisions, than toilets, that is bizarre.

In the northern Indian state of Haryana, courtship is generally intricate business, but the mothers of the brides-to-be have simplified matters by clearing stating to potential grooms: “If you don’t have a toilet, you cannot marry my daughter.”

In the northern Indian state of Haryana, courtship is generally intricate business, but the mothers of the brides-to-be have simplified matters by clearing stating to potential grooms: “If you don’t have a toilet, you cannot marry my daughter.”

The slogan, which is a bit longer in Hindi and specifically reads: “If you don’t have a proper lavatory in your house, don’t even think about marrying my daughter,” has been plastered all across villages as part of a campaign to increase the number of available facilities.

The chronic shortage of proper plumbing is ironic in a region of the country where more households have TV sets than toilets.

Believe it or not, it is estimated that in India more than 660 million people still defecate in the open, causing a myriad of medical conditions ranging from diarrhea to polio.

With 8% more men than women, the fairer sex in India have become more vocal about expressing their resentment at having to relieve themselves outside, giving brides more leverage in pre-marital bargaining.

“Women suffer the most from this situation. They must go outside and they have to do so before sunrise or after nightfall so they can’t be seen,” said Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of Sulabh, a company that has built toilets for ten million Indians, and the recipient of this year’s Stockholm Water Prize for developing eco-friendly lavatories to improve public health.

Hard Rock Bug Repellent

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Who knew that listening to Stairway to Heaven or Paint it Black can help you rid yourself of vermin.

TUSCARORA, Nev. — The residents of this tiny town, anticipating an imminent attack, will be ready with a perimeter defense. They’ll position their best weapons at regular intervals, faced out toward the desert to repel the assault.

Then they’ll turn up the volume.

Rock music blaring from boomboxes has proved one of the best defenses against an annual invasion of Mormon crickets. The huge flightless insects are a fearsome sight as they advance across the desert in armies of millions that march over, under or into anything in their way.

But the crickets don’t much fancy Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones, the townspeople figured out three years ago. So next month, Tuscarorans are preparing once again to get out their extension cords, array their stereos in a quarter-circle and tune them to rock station KHIX, full blast, from dawn to dusk. “It is part of our arsenal,” says Laura Moore, an unemployed college professor and one of the town’s 13 residents.

Why NFL Draft Picks Fail

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I really enjoy Live Science because they come up with a slew of interesting articles. This particular article discusses NFL draft picks and their success or lack thereof.

If you read through the article it discusses how the combine is not always a great indicator of success. Can’t say that I was surprised by that. Ezzie will probably be particularly interested in the section on cleveland which delineates the three factors that cause those teams to lose.

Not to mention how it also translates to a huge disappointment for LeBron and company, but I digress.

I recommend reading the article. But I’ll also add that I think that is more proof that few tests do a good job of really measuring how good people will be at anything. There are far too many variables that can influence performance.

And now an excerpt for your review:

“But in a new study, Frank Kuzmits and Arthur Adams, professors at the University of Louisville, evaluated more than 300 quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers drafted over six seasons from 1999-2004.

They compared the players’ combine performance on seven physical tests and the WPT with measures of success in the NFL. These three skill positions were chosen as they have distinct performance statistics that can be tracked (as opposed to linemen or defensive players.) Each position used the success metrics of draft order, salaries for years 1-3 and games played for years 1-3. In addition, QB rating, yards per carry and yards per reception were measured for quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers, respectively.

No significant link was found between combine performance and NFL success, except between 40-yard dash times and running backs. Interestingly, even the Wonderlic aptitude test did not predict NFL achievement, even though a skill position like quarterback requires a decent amount of cognitive talent. That’s not to say other psychological tests would be worthless. Kuzmits and Adams cite other studies that show a player’s level of self-confidence and anxiety management to be strong clues to their future accomplishments.

Of course, not all draft picks are surrounded by great teammates and some don’t even get out on the field during those first few seasons. But this research showed that good or bad performance in the combine is not related to good or bad performance on the field. So, the researchers question the value of these combine tests as a draft decision support tool.They do see a similarity between NFL teams choosing players and companies choosing employees.”

The Somalian Pirates Successful Business Model

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In our continuing series of posts about the Somalian pirates we are pleased to present an interview with a former FBI agent (Jack Cloonan) who specializes in negotiating with pirates.

In it he discusses the hierarchy, intelligence of the pirates and how they communicate.

Here are a few excerpts for your review.

SPIEGEL: How does the money get delivered to the pirates? For example, are speedboats used?

Jack Cloonan: Delivering money is an extremely difficult part of the negotiation process because once you strike a deal, you do have to deliver the ransom. We used to rent tugboats in Mombasa. But the tugboat captains — some of whom have delivered ransoms repeatedly — have actually charged more for the delivery of the ransom than the actual ransom amount. What we do is, we cruise to a certain agreed-upon location with coordinates, you get within sight, the delivery is made from a bagman to the bad guys and then you hope that the pirates do the right thing. They generally do.

SPIEGEL: From your experience with the Somali pirates, are they intelligent people? Or are they simply thugs?

Cloonan: They’re not stupid. They know that they’ve got a life — they can leverage that. They know that it’s a successful business model. They know that they can operate in this wide swath of area almost with impunity and they can pick and choose. And they’re developing better strategies. They’re going further out from the coast because they know the ships have been advised by the International Maritime Bureau to stay a minimum of 200 nautical miles offshore. If ships come in within say 50 or 100 miles, they’re easily stopped.

And they are effective — for example, when they call family members to induce stress. I think shooting off a gun during a telephone call and saying you just killed someone is pretty effective. I think moving ships and threatening to beach them is effective. The fact that they anchor the ships within sight of each other is very intelligent. Some are better than others.

SPIEGEL: In terms of the sociology of the pirates, do you have a sense of their hierarchy or of their structures?

Cloonan: Oftentimes when we’ve been engaged you’ll see that there’s a commander who’s in charge once they get on board. And that situation can be very fluid. You might be dealing with Ahmed one day, maybe for two days, and then he gets frustrated and you get somebody else that comes on. As these things go on — and they can typically last a month or more — you’ll have several representatives from the pirates but then at some point where you’re really getting close and you’re getting frustrated and they’re getting frustrated, invariably the decision-maker comes forward. I equate it to buying a car in the United States. You’re dealing with somebody and negotiating and then finally he just throws his hands up and says: “All right, I’ve got to go talk to my manager.” And then they come back in and make a deal.

Our experience with the pirates suggests to us that there is an organizational structure. So if we’re not making progress with somebody on board during the negotiations, then we ask for the right person, the decision-maker. He could be on land, he could be on board.

If you read the whole interview you’ll see that Cloonan addresses the question of the best way to try and prevent these incidents. His suggestions include taking a different route and escorts for the ships.

I’ll avoid snarky comments about that and suggest that non lethal measures may not be the most effective tool for dealing with these criminals. But then again, I am just a guy writing this from the comfort of my keyboard, so what do I know.

The Naked Wizard & The Police

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The police have a very tough job. I am serious about that. Any time you deal with people you are bound to encounter situations that are going to be quite challenging. And we ask the police to deal with a million different kinds.

They not only have the so called normal citizens but all of the criminals and mentally ill to contend with as well. And now they get to do all of this in a time in which their interactions can be filmed and uploaded for millions of people to critique.

It is a tough job under any circumstances and that just makes it worse. Add to it the suspicion that many people have about cops and you have a recipe for all sorts of trouble.

Anyway, law enforcement is not for me. I have little to no interest in it and I certainly wouldn’t want to have to deal with people like The Naked Wizard in the video below. I’ll lay odds that these officers end up getting sued for tasering this man.

Now maybe he deserved it and maybe he didn’t, hard to say without having see the whole event. What we know for certain is that in addition to this footage there has got to be all sorts of other short clips that were filmed by others. This should make for a fun investigation.


Naked Wizard Tased By Reality from Tracy Anderson on Vimeo.