What's Worse: Burping or Doing Nothing (SURVIVOR COOK ISLANDS UPDATE)

So on Survivor last night, Candice got booted off. I think her throwing a tantrum was a fatal flaw. Poor girl went to exile island like 4 times or something.

It was interesting seeing the animosity build up against Jonathan though. This guy is a bit insecure, and perhaps a little too direct (obvious is another word). He's not quite as bad as some of them made him out to be. If you selfishly want something and that conflicts with someone elses selfish desire for the same thing, does that make the person who succeeds in getting something (at the expense of another) wrong? No, it's the nature of the game, and often, life.

Maybe he was a bit cocky with his beer, hot dog and pizza (he burped in front of his starving companions), but he also got off his butt and went fishing, while the other 3 in the tribe played wait-and-see (or wait-and-whine, or wait-and-blame).

How can you blame Jonathan for not sharing his catch with people that were glaring at him, resorting to kindergarten name calling and all the rest.

Meanwhile, Yule turns out to be tremendously intelligent. He has made two immensely strong decisions strategically.

1) Turning Jonathan - a swing vote - during a crucial vote just after the merge. This led Yule's group to switch from inferior numbers at tribal council, to a majority. He was able to secure Jonathan's vote by showing that he had the hidden immunity necklace, another coup. Yule was able to find it on Exile Island, those who went before him - could not.

2) Not voting Jonathan off was also a clever vote, because 3 members within the tribe is still a fairly large unknown quantity (who might win immunity for themselves).

It goes to show though that in the game of survivor, the most indecent thing of all is - not burping - but freeloading.

A Tiny Town, Suddenly Smaller by Seven, Mourns and Wonders, Why?

NVDL: South Africa has per capita one of the highest crime rates in the world (41 per 100 000). This is around 80 times higher than Japan, and twice as high as the USA. In South Africa around 50 people are murdered daily. That's a full busload each day, 19 000 people a year, enough to fill a decent sized soccer stadium.

By MONICA DAVEY

Residents of a tiny town in the Northwoods of Wisconsin were reeling yesterday, struggling to understand how six of their young people wound up dead at a homecoming weekend pizza party at the hands, the police said, of a local law enforcement officer who was also, after all, one of their own.

In Crandon, a town, like so many in Wisconsin’s lake-filled northern region of water skiing and snowmobiling, school was closed yesterday. Ballgames were canceled. Ministers held quiet prayers. And the entanglements of a truly small town — 2,000 people live in Crandon — felt especially painful.

The family of Tyler Peterson, the off-duty sheriff’s deputy who the police say shot and killed six people on Sunday and injured a seventh before dying, apparently of a gunshot wound, issued a statement of apology to the town yesterday afternoon.

“We also feel a tremendous amount of guilt and shame for the horrible acts Tyler committed,” the family said in a statement read aloud at a news briefing by Bill Farr, a local pastor. “We are struggling to respond, like most of you. We don’t know what we should do.”

The Petersons’ statement went on, “There is nothing that happened before or after yesterday’s events that has given us any insight into why.”

Before 3 a.m. Sunday, state authorities said, Mr. Peterson, 20, who also served as a part-time police officer in Crandon, arrived at the home of his former girlfriend, Jordanne Murray, 18. Ms. Murray and others — most of them graduates or students of the same close-knit high school in town — were watching movies, dozing and eating pizza.

Mr. Peterson, who many people said had a tumultuous relationship with Ms. Murray and had not been invited to the gathering, argued with the group, then left, state authorities said. But he quickly returned with a weapon — a rifle similar to the type and model carried by local sheriff’s deputies, though officials said they had not yet determined whether Mr. Peterson’s work rifle was used.

He sprayed the apartment with at least 30 rounds of gunfire. Ms. Murray died. So did five others, ranging in age from 14 to 20, including two young men whom schoolmates said Mr. Peterson considered close friends. A seventh person, Charlie Neitzel, 21, was wounded and remained hospitalized.

From The New York Times. For the rest of the story, click here.

As Bad Deaths Go, It's Hard to Top This

By Tony Long

Oct. 3, 1283: Dafydd ap Gruffydd, the last native prince of Wales in a free if turbulent Wales, becomes the first person known to be executed by being hanged, then drawn and quartered.

While the human capacity for cruelty is limitless, it's hard to top the medievals for their sheer inventiveness when it came to executing a criminal -- especially for the crime of high treason.

Captured after attacking Hawarden Castle at Easter during the ultimately unsuccessful Welsh struggle to remain independent of Plantagenet England, Dafydd was imprisoned by an outraged King Edward I, the man given credit for dreaming up Dafydd's grisly fate. The death warrant stipulated Dafydd's demise should be slow and agonizing, and the monarch did not disappoint.

For more, click here.

Disgusting: Massive Housing Scam

From Sowetan.co.za:
By Vusi Ndlovu
19 September 2007

INVESTIGATION: Thousands of people are still homeless due to corrupt officials while some get shabbily constructed RDP houses like this one. Photo: MOHAU MOFOKENG

The Scorpions are investigating more than 30 000 civil servants for fraudulently receiving housing benefits. A team of a special investigations unit headed by Willie Hofmeyer, including Scorpions and housing officials, has identified 31 259 bureaucratsa (from a list of 53 555 government workers) believed to be involved in the massive housing scam.

The team examined whose names appear in a database of subsidised housing and found that 31 259 did not qualify.

NVDL: While the above is disgusting, I think the whole Housing Rollout needs to be re-thought. Obviously I don't expect government to consider this option, but developers in general ought to pursue the New Urbanist approach to the massive housing project underway.

What this involves is instead of converting shanty towns into endless one-house x one-house sprawl (monotonous and ugly), there should be a 3 storied approach, and an attempt to lock these developments into organic systems (streams etc), and an effort made to create friendlier, more attractive walkable communities.

Why not make these areas inhabitable, not the sort of places people want to get away from. Are they just dormitories, or will people want to live there?

The poor get poorer, but their poverity impoverishes us all. Those profiteering out of this do so also at the expense of plenty of entreneurs, not to mention the homeless masses.

The Human Shock Absorber

This is...um...quite funny, even though I suppose it shouldn't be->