Surely we can do better?

Yesterday’s issue of the Plain Dealer had this tragic news item.

Deputy kills man holding gun to head

Authorities are investigating after a Wayne County Sheriff ‘s deputy shot and killed a man during a confrontation Sunday morning in the downtown area of Apple Creek. Deputies responded about 10:50 a.m. Sunday after receiving a call for assistance from the Apple Creek Police Department, the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office said in a post on Facebook. Deputies learned that a man armed with a handgun was behind a downtown business and threatening to shoot himself, the sheriff’s office said. Over the course of 34 minutes, law enforcement tried to de-escalate the situation. The man continued to hold a gun to his head and told authorities they were going to have to ”shoot him.” The man approached a deputy who told him multiple times to stop and drop the gun, the sheriff’s office said. The deputy fired one round from his rifle, hitting the man.

The man was holding a gun to his own head and threatening to shoot himself so the police shot him? I understand that a man advancing towards you with a gun is dangerous even if he is pointing it at his own head, since he could suddenly point it at you. But is shooting to kill the only option in such a situation?

This illustrates how the police in the US are poorly trained when it comes to dealing with deeply troubled people, treating them as if they are indistinguishable from violent and dangerous criminals.

Is no sport safe from bad behavior?

Whenever I rail against unethical and rude behavior in sports, fans of curling have pointed out to me that that game exhibits the highest standards of sportsmanship and it did seem to be the case and I became a convert. Hence I was saddened to read about bad behavior in curling. In one case, a Russian curler was stripped of his Winter Olympics bronze medal after he admitted to doping

Krushelnitsky had initially protested his innocence after testing positive for the banned heart drug meldonium, claiming his drink had been spiked. However on Thursday he dropped his appeal before he was officially banned by the court of arbitration for sport.
…

It means that the medal won by Krushelnitsky and his wife Anastasia Bryzgalova will be awarded to the Norway pair of Kristin Skaslien and Magnus Nedregotten, who had originally finished fourth.

[Read more…]

How the peace symbol came to be

I am always on the lookout for interesting pieces of historical trivia and how the famous peace symbol came into existence certainly qualifies. It turns out that it was created in 1958 by Gerald Holtom by superimposing the international semaphore alphabet signals for ‘N’ and ‘D’ so that the symbol represents ‘Nuclear Disarmament’.

On Good Friday 1958, thousands gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square to protest nuclear weapons. They were responding to a string of test blasts conducted by the United Kingdom, the third nation to join the nuclear club after the US and USSR.

For the next four days, the bravest among them marched to Aldermaston, a small village 50 miles west of London where British nuclear weapons were designed and stockpiled.

On the protesters’ signs and banners, a new symbol was making its first appearance. Gerald Holtom, a designer and a pacifist, had developed it specifically for the march just a few weeks prior. He believed that a symbol would make the message stronger.

He was right: The symbol was adopted soon after by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and went on to become one of the most widely recognized designs in history.

“It’s a minor masterpiece with major evocative power,” said design guru and cultural critic, Stephen Bayley, in an email. “It speaks very clearly of an era and a sensibility.

“It is, simply, a fine period piece: the ordinary thing done extraordinarily well.”

The symbol has a strong similarity to the Mercedes Benz emblem (that has resulted in some satire about how people mistakenly used one for the other) and I wonder if the car company ever considered suing for copyright infringement. Of course, this was in 1958 not long after the Nazis had been defeated in World War II and a German company’s efforts to suppress a peace symbol may not have been viewed as the wisest public relations move.

Meanwhile in the chess world …

The championship match between Magnus Carlsen and challenger Fabiano Caruana has so for resulted in eleven straight draws, breaking the earlier record of eight straight draws before one person won. The 12th and last regular game will be played on Monday. If that game also ends in a draw, then the match will be decided on Wednesday in a series of increasingly rapid-fire games in the following order.
[Read more…]

Dine-and-dash dater gets his just desserts

Remember the story I wrote about back in August of the Los Angeles man who would use dating apps to arrange dinner dates with women at nice restaurants and after eating an expensive meal would leave the table on some excuse and vanish, leaving the women with huge bills? He had defrauded at least ten women over a period of two years.

Well a court has sentenced him to 120 days in jail, three years of probation, and banned him from using dating apps and websites.

At least for the next three months, he won’t have to pay for his meals.

That’s pretty impressive speed work

I knew that in Formula One car racing the pit crews can do things incredibly fast but I was not aware that they could remove all four tires and replace them with new ones in less than two seconds. Watch.

This made me curious about what holds the tires in place that enables such a quick turnaround. Magnetism? Or is there a single clasp that holds each tire in place?

(Via David Pescovitz.)

Impressive trick

This performance by Eric Chien was enough to win him the FISM Grand Prix at an event held in Hong Kong recently. I assume that this trick was done on a stage in front of judges without camera trickery and CGI. But I am not sure if this video is taken from that stage performance or was created independently in a studio. Anyway, it is fun to watch.

(Via Seamus Bellamy)

Taking advantage of the kindness of strangers

This story has received widespread coverage but I felt that I had to comment on it because these kinds of things infuriate me. Last year, I read the heartwarming story of a homeless man who gave his last $20 to a woman whose car had run out of gas. The woman and her boyfriend posted this story online and started a GoFundMe page to raise money for the homeless man and received over $400,000.
[Read more…]