Homo oecologicus

They’re dead serious (I think), but that didn’t stop me from laughing at every sentence. You couldn’t satirise gobbledegook this well.

Even by academic humanities standards, it’s a painful abuse of the English language.

The West Australian Crime Files #6

Forget the election; forget the economy.  We gots serious crime happening here in Western Australia:

Man charged for couch towing

An 18-year-old man has been charged after a report of a vehicle towing a couch in Gooseberry Hill yesterday.

East Metropolitan Traffic Police have alleged that the man was driving a Holden Commodore sedan on the Zig Zag Scenic Road around 11.30am towing a sofa with two youths sitting on it.

A crowd had gathered to watch, with one person filming the event on a mobile phone.

The Kalamunda man has been summonsed for reckless driving.

Good to see our police are keeping busy.

Illegal Immigrants Returning to Mexico in Record Numbers

Fox News

DAMN! Now what do our greedy American (owned by Dem’s and Repub’s) companies and business’s do?

DALLAS — Illegal immigrants are returning home to Mexico in numbers not seen for decades — and the Mexican government may have to deal with a crush on its social services and lower wages once the immigrants arrive.

The Mexican Consulate’s office in Dallas is seeing increasing numbers of Mexican nationals requesting paperwork to go home for good, especially parents who want to know what documentation they’ll need to enroll their children in Mexican schools.

“Those numbers have increased percentage-wise tremendously,” said Enrique Hubbard, the Mexican consul general in Dallas. “In fact, it’s almost 100 percent more this year than it was the previous two years.”

The illegal immigrant population in the U.S. has dropped 11 percent since August of last year, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. Its research shows 1.3 million illegal immigrants have returned to their home countries.

Not That I’m Laughing

Something about this is just surreal. Although he’s not the only person in Australia to have this type of family history…

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s ancestors include petty criminals – one a street urchin sentenced to death for stealing a dress and underwear from another child, family researchers say.

Lawyers Aren’t Always Bad

Years ago, in a house far, far away, I was undergoing a course which involved a module to do with the “Law of Evidence”, which involved learning about what types of evidence is acceptable in Courts in Victoria. We did an in-depth study of the case of Leith Ratten, a man from the very far North of Victoria who was convicted of shooting his eight-month-pregnant wife, causing her death.

Now, Leith Ratten may or may not have been guilty, because I’m certainly not convinced “beyond reasonable doubt”, and we all know what that means. Leith Ratten was apparently turning from facing left to facing right while holding a loaded rifle, and he was blind in his right eye. So yes, it could have been intentional, and it could have been an accident. And when he rang the Echuca telephone exchange (who were, and are now, in charge of connecting all phone calls) he said either “Police!” or an unheard (“Ambulance”) “Please!” Again, reasonable doubt springs up.

Add to it that Ratten was having an affair with a married woman at the time. Reasonable doubt all around, either way.

Note To Richard Ryan

Keep up this constant harassment and I will not hesitate in taking legal action.

And you will certainly not do well out of that.

For The Historically Interested

The scene is England. The date is August 31, 1759 and it’s dark outside. It’s a quarter past nine in the evening, and two men are fighting.

They are both skilled fighters. Their dispute started in an ale-house, when the landlady attempted to send one of the men and another who was with him away. The second man assisted her, and he and the first man started fighting.

Out in the street, one of the men stabbed the other in the abdomen, and was then taken to the hospital. The other was arrested. The man who was stabbed died at 2pm the following day.

The case of the murder of William Kendal was heard in the Old Bailey in England on 12 September 1759, and the sentence was immediately given.

The sentence was swift, with no appeal process:

Now, for the plug:

This all comes from the Old Bailey Online, which has just released transcripts of criminal trials from back to 1674. It makes for rather fascinating reading. Those of us interested in history, particularly that of criminal matters, will enjoy this.

Three observations though:

1. 11 days to prepare a criminal trial and have a sentence handed down? Brilliant! Now it’s lucky to take less than 11 months.

2. Two and a little bit days to carry out a sentence for almost nothing (monetary wise)? Equally good, as long as guilt is established. In this case, it seems to have been pretty conclusive.

3. We’ve advanced far in medicine, because this kind of injury is often overcome these days. Of course, I say that just going off the information read in the transcript.

One last thing, if anyone likes reading about true crime and the like, I have plenty of links if you’re interested.

Has to be in the running for the dumbest little bastards award, under 15 years of age category. Just has to be.

Teens try to rob Cop Shop

What. The. Hell?

New Zealand is clearly going astray under the leadership of Helen Clarke.

Where else in the world can you get charged with “assault with a hedgehog“?

Head on beach face to be revealed… Mind out of the gutter. Although it ain’t bad…the surf, the salt air…nevermind.

A woman’s head and two hands were found on the beach.

Police hope to be able to issue an artist’s impression of a woman after a head and hands were found on a beach.

Efforts will also continue to try to establish a more exact age for the dead woman, whose head was found wrapped in a plastic bag on Arbroath beach.

BBC

Rodenator®. Heh.

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters)

A war on gophers waged by two Canadian men went awry this weekend when a device used to blast the rodents in their holes sparked a massive grass fire in a rural area near Calgary, Alberta, causing more than C$200,000 (US$197,000) in damages.

Despite a ban on fires in the tinder-dry area of Springbank, just northeast of Calgary’s city limits, two men went into a field to kill gophers using a device called a Rodenator, fire officials said on Monday.

The device pumps a mixture of propane and oxygen into gopher holes, which is then ignited, and, according to the manufacturer’s Web site, the resulting blast creates a shock wave that kills the gopher and collapses its tunnel system.

“We had a couple of acreage owners out taking care of their rodent problem with this device,” said Captain Joe Garssi of the municipal district of Rocky View’s fire department.

“They did a few holes successfully and then hit a hole that didn’t go in very far. When they filled it with propane it over-filled the hole…and when they ignited it (fire) flashed out of the hole into the grass beside them.”

The resulting grass fire scorched about 160 acres of surrounding property and destroyed a number of outbuildings. No homes were damaged.

“The way I look at it, it’s ‘humans eight, gophers one’.” Garssi said, as the two men destroyed about eight of the rodents before sparking the blaze.

Charges are being considered against one of the two men involved.

UPDATE: PAAAAAAAACOOOOOOO!!!!

Detroit Mayor Charged With Perjury…

Kym L. Worthy

Wayne County Prosecuting Attorney
DETROIT (AP) – Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, a one-time rising star and Detroit’s youngest elected leader, was charged Monday with perjury and other counts after sexually explicit text messages contradicted his sworn denials of an affair with a top aide.Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy also charged the popular yet polarizing 37-year-old mayor with obstruction of justice and misconduct in office.

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Gosh, Mr Mounds, Rev. Wright, Michelle Obama….Look, it’s Eliot Spitzer…Well, kinda. Of course, when YOU three stop to look at it…this is just another ‘whitebread’ entrapment, right?

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Ms. Worthy, you have my greatest respect. Now, prove your case, to “we the people”, in your county.

Make sure it is a FAIR jury…not one of the “purchased” juries.

Russia’s Most Famous Female Bodyguard Murdered During Carjacking

Anna Loginova, Russia’s most famous and glamorous female bodyguard, was murdered by a carjacker when her own personal Porsche Cayenne was stolen from her.

This is sad but predictable. Russia has a rampant crime problem, and this is a direct consequence of years under a godless, totalitarian, communist dictatorship. Call it a societal amoral hangover, if you like.

Now that capitalism has taken hold in the former Soviet Union, the have-nots – can-nots, more likely – feel no moral compunction about coveting the property of others to the point of theft and even murder. That’s why Anna’s outfit had such brisk business.

She makes some excellent points in the previous interviews quoted – especially the point about obviously beefy security guys being barred from eateries and such – but she should never have gone anywhere without male backup, in my opinion.

Sometimes a big, buff, and well-trained male motherfucker-of-a-killing-machine is the only thing that will work. Hope some Russians learned a lesson from this… but given that it’s Russia, after all, I wouldn’t bet on it.

Use the Force, Luke!

On the other hand, there’s this.

So the spirit of defiant freedom isn’t entirely dead.

(again, Instapundit, which I won’t link, because if you haven’t bookmarked him, you should.)