World of Suck

Today, there were many people without power due to damaged equipment and downed power lines from storms that went through the area yesterday. Then today we were oppressed with 90+ F temperatures. Between a weakened infrastructure and higher than normal demand, someone had to pull the short straw and lose power.

My city pulled that short straw and at 11 am National Grid plunged it deep into our rectums while they plunged us into non-air conditioned darkness without so much as warning or advisory on how long they expected it to last. At City Hall, new police cadets were being sworn in. Businesses, who struggle in this post-industrial city and rely on daytime customers, were getting ready for lunch rush.

My gripe isn't that we had to lose power for the greater good - my gripe is that the arrogant bastards at National Grid decided to pull the plug without even a courtesy call to the city mayor and the larger office buildings. Its not like this was an outage caused by outside factors - it was a conscience decision.

No one should ever be willfully forced into an "emergency" situation. If they had given a mere hour's notice to officials: The city could have gotten police to direct traffic at affected lights. Larger commercial structured could have removed the less mobile out of the buildings more safely. Area businesses could have prepared by sending home unneeded staff and food establishments could have made less food. Their careless act could have endangered our community's safety and cost businesses money in a town were times are tough.

A big fat boo to you National Grid!

Let me introduce you, loyal readers, to my latest target of rage and disgust.

Jennifer Roback Morse. PhD even. God only knows what she got her doctorate in, but it certainly couldn't have been the medical profession. I fucking hope it isn't at least.

Why has she earned her place on my list of ignoramuses?

Well, she recently penned one of the most idiotic articles I've ever seen. Once again, as loyal readers, you know that sets the bar pretty fucking high. Ok.. To be fair... top ten. Worst is pretty harsh. Still, I had difficulty even attempting to catalog all of the lies and distortions in her article on contraception and sex ed.

You see, she wants to get the government out of sex ed. By that, she means Planned Parenthood and similar groups that teach about various methods of safe sex. Not the abstinence only crowd. They should be allowed to suck the government teat.

I can accept that viewpoint. I disagree, but I accept the position. What I find reprehensibly unacceptable is lying to achieve your goals. Distorting facts to confuse people. And alluding to causation with unrelated correlation.

She's a liar, and a bad one.

For example, she uses interesting versions of statistics. Instead of the proper usage failure rates of condoms, she lists the "common usage" as though it was the norm. So, instead of the 2% failure rate of properlly used condoms, she lists the rate as 15%. 15% is the rate of failure including improperly used protection. Because the failure rate is so high, she contends that we must give up on teaching condom usage and focus on abstinence, which has a 100% success rate.

Couple problems here, beyond her woeful ignorance of course. First off, the lack of real sex ed is what leads to improperly used condoms. The real interesting usage of that stat is to say that 13% of condom failures are due to people using them in an improper manner, so education is needed to close that gap. But hey, she's a slack jawed idiot. My expectations are probably too high for her. Secondly, I bring up a argument regarding her usage of the 100% rate. Yes. She's right. It is. If you do it right. If you don't, not so much. See? Since we're including improper usage, can we get some stats on kids that failed to use abstinence protection properly? That is, how often did the people who fucked without protection get pregnant? We ARE including improper usage, right? Idiot.

But she's not done. Oh no. That sort of stupidity is just the tip of her mental juggernaut. She goes on to say that a cohabitating teenager on the pill has a 48.4% failure rate. That's amazing. Simply amazing. You'd think someone would have noticed the pill doesn't work as well for teens 'living in sin'. I mean, seriously... how do you think the pill is designed to detect that? I mean, it would have to have some sort of sensor to alter it's chemical structure in order to fail more than the .3% failure rate associated with proper usage. Because short of chemical change, usage is the key factor. If it fails that much in certain socioeconomic groups, we're not talking about a drug failure. We're talking about an education problem.

And that's what she's trying to block. Getting sex ed out of schools. Abstinence only. No funding for educational programs like Planned Parenthood that offer alternatives and medicinal advice on how to prevent parenthood and have safe sex.

Honestly, this bitch is the fucking problem she's trying to solve. I suggest suicide.

There have always been "dirty" coaches. These are the types that encourage their players to do more than just mentally intimidate the other team, but actually go so far as to injure them. For the most part it's accepted, especially in full contact sports like lacrosse and football. The soccer-fairies notwithstanding, you expect a lot less deliberate injuries in other sports like basketball and baseball. They happen, yes, but it's generally not anything like hockey where blood is part of the institution.

Kiddie leagues are also not without their dastardly types, although it's not too often you hear news about a teammate being asked to take out one of their own. The case in point is one little league coach that offered to pay one of his team $25 for beaning the autistic boy on the team, ostensibly to keep him off the field.

Before I continue with my opinion on this topic, I'd like to remind the reader where they are - consider it a public service announcement or "station identification". This is World of Suck, where our opinions are, usually, slightly off color.

But back to the story: Coach offers kid money to bean teammate, kid gets thwacked with a few balls but nothing serious, people find out, case goes to court and the coach is slapped with 1 to 6 years in jail.

Downs was convicted of corruption of minors and simple assault for offering $25 to an 8-year-old boy to hit his mildly autistic teammate with a ball while warming up before a June 2005 playoff game. The younger boy testified at trial that, on Downs' instructions, he purposely threw a ball that hit his teammate in the groin, then threw another that hit him in the ear.

Of all the things I have an issue with it's offering the teammate money. To be honest I have a problem with the whole "everyone needs to be equal" bullshit. Realistically the parents of the autistic kid should have had the common sense not to force their child onto other people. Following that, I'm sorry, sidelining ineffective members so the team can win isn't really all that bad in my book. It's happened for years and fifty years ago, the autistic kid never would have been let on the team to begin with.

The better way to handle the situation would have been for the parents to keep their kid out for the high-pressure game, and if not, the coach should have asked them to. If that wasn't an option he should have talked to the kid and asked him to sit out for the good of the team, and then in the last resort talk to the team about minimizing the weak link by having the rest of them play harder.

I don't outright condone his asking a teammate to take him out with a ball, but then again in the grand scheme of things he was only trying to do what was best for the whole team after being saddled with an ineffective player. And yes, money should never have entered into it.

But one to six years? I don't think so.