Perhaps the new airport body scanners are a bit too revealing.
A TSA worker in Miami was arrested for aggravated battery after police say he attacked a colleague who'd made fun of his small genitalia after he walked through one of the new high-tech security scanners during a recent training session.
Rolando Negrin, 44, was busted for assault after things got ugly at Miami International Airport between Negrin and some of his fellow Transportation Security Administration workers on Tuesday.
Sources say Negrin stepped into the machine during the training session and became embarrassed and angry when a supervisor started cracking jokes about his manhood, made visible by the new machine.
According to the police report, Negron confronted one of his co-workers in an employee parking lot, where he hit him with a police baton on the arm and back.
"[Negron] then told victim to kneel down and say 'your sorry,'" the report reads. "Victim stated he was in fear and complied with [Negron]."
Negron was arrested the next day when he arrived for work. He told police he had been made fun of by coworkers on a daily basis.
"[Negron] stated he could not take the jokes anymore and lost his mind," the report reads.
Negrin was arrested and booked into Miami-Dade County Jail. His arrest photo (above) shows him wearing his blue TSA shirt at the time of the arrest.
The attack may be the first piece of proof that the new scanners may be leaving too little to the imagination.
The $170,000 machines, which were introduced last year, took some heat from fliers who weren't quite ready to show their bod to government employees.
But if this latest incident is any indication, the scanners sound like good news for anti-terrorism and bad news for less-than-average men.
Yeah, that guy's supervisor should be fired. That's not appropriate, and as the "boss" he shouldn't be making fun of ANYONE. You would think people would know better.
I don't know. If you see a man's penis, and it's small, then you're obligated by man code to point it out and ridicule him. If the guy didn't like it, then perhaps he shouldn't have a tiny penis. Or at the very least think about some good porn before you go through the scanner.
Kenny Strasser, who either lives in Antigo or Neenah or maybe somewhere else, says he a yo-yo champion, loves talking to schoolchildren and wants to save the Earth.
He's been divorced twice, doesn't have any kids, and has personal issues with members of his family. He also says he's had drug and alcohol problems.
Or so he says.
It's not entirely clear who Strasser is. What is clear is that a person who called himself Kenny Strasser, Kenny Strassburg, or K-Strass managed to persuade at least five television stations - four of which are in Wisconsin - to put him on live television in recent weeks.
Two other stations - both in La Crosse - came close to putting him on, but were warned ahead of time that Strasser was not who he says he is.
His latest appearance occurred Thursday morning on KQTV's "Hometown This Morning," in St. Joseph, Mo.
"He got us," said Bridget Blevins, the station's news director. "I hate that we got duped."
And how good was he with the yo-yo, a skill Strasser has said made him a champion? "He did some really lame things. He hit himself in the face and the groin with his yo-yo," Blevins said.
Lisa Malak, who anchors the "Sunday Morning" show on WFRV in Green Bay, thought it would be fun to book somebody who said he was a yo-yo champion. When Strasser showed up April 11, he said he forgot the string for his yo-yo. With no tricks, Malak and Strasser spent their live TV segment talking.
"It was the most bizarre thing that has ever happened to me on the air," Malak said.
The stunts Strasser pulled appears to be similar to the performance artistry practiced by the late comedian Andy Kaufman. Kaufman created characters like Tony Clifton, a down-and-out lounge singer who abused audiences.
The way Strasser managed to get on TV followed a familiar pattern and laid bare the pitfalls of live television, where stations are always looking for somebody to fill air time in the morning.
Elaborate hoax
In each case, producers at the television stations received an e-mail from Joe Guehrke, saying he represented Strasser and ZimZam Yo-Yo, "the world's first 'green' " nonprofit toymaker.
Guehrke told the stations that Strasser, whom he called a "master yo-yo artist," would be in their area to bring his environmental message and "zany sense of humor" to kids.
Guehrke wrote in one e-mail to a TV station that Strasser was a dynamic talk-show guest who comes "equipped with a roster of amazing yo-yo tricks, juggling and fun tips about how kids and adults alike can take small steps to make the world a greener place."
The e-mail solicitation stated that Strasser was a runner-up for Rookie of the Year in 1995, grand champion at the Pensacola Regional and was nominated for the Walt Greenberg Award in 2000.
There is no Walt Greenberg Award in yo-yo, and there is no evidence Pensacola ever hosted a yo-yo tournament or that Strasser won a rookie of the year award.
But the solicitation was good enough for the bookers on the TV stations.
In one particularly bizarre segment on WSAW's "Sunrise 7" show in Wausau on April 20, Strasser told interviewer Amy Pflugshaupt that he is just a 35-year-old kid at heart. "I don't have a girlfriend, don't want one. My parents, they live in Denver, they just got divorced. My dad is now in Oshkosh. . . . I have a brother in Portland who I don't get along with very well because of his wife."
And then, incredibly, his cell phone rings on the air. Pflugshaupt halts the interview, throws it back to the anchors, but later comes back to Strasser.
In the solicitation, there is a reference to ZimZam yo-yos, and a related Web site. But in registering the domain name, Zimzaminc.com, Guehrke gave a fictitious Milwaukee address and provided a phone number that is now disconnected.
At WISC in Madison, Strasser was booked and ready to go on "News 3 This Morning." But things took a strange turn when Strasser said on the air, "Do you want to hear a scary story?"
Colin Benedict, the station's news director, said the anchors were confused. They thought a yo-yo champion was supposed to be on.
Instead, Strasser started talking about his personal story of alcohol and drugs.
And the yo-yo tricks? Benedict said Strasser tried one but the yo-yo fell apart and onto the studio floor.
That was enough for WISC. The anchors took over and Strasser was off the air.
Strasser also got on WMTV in Madison.
Strasser apparently left Wisconsin and headed west, where he appeared at the St. Joseph, Mo., station.
Strasser has not been spotted since. Mikel Lauber, a reporter with Wausau's WSAW, tried to find him and located a phone number for Guehrke. The number was traced to Joe Pickett, who is a comedy filmmaker and operates a business with partner Nick Prueher. Both men have Wisconsin ties.
Their business, "The Found Footage Festival," tours the country showing obscure, unusual and bizarre home videos, promotional clips, outtakes and training films to comedic effect.
Neither Pickett nor Prueher returned repeated phone calls, but in e-mails to the Journal Sentinel, Prueher said his festival "had nothing to do with this yo-yo guy."
"Wish we could take credit for it, but we've never met this Kenny fellow," Prueher said.
But the Found Footage Festival was in Missouri last week, not far from St. Joseph.
As someone who is very hesitant to ever be on TV simply because he is afraid of making himself look like a jackass, this is completely incomprehensible to me.
...Wow...that guy really isn't that great at Yo-yo-ing. At least good to be sure, but not great. Also he kinda just made a fool of himself on (national?) television (Not that it matters if it's national or not with the internet and all).
There are idiots that will do anything to get onto shitty reality TV shows for a 30 second 'look at this retard' spot. As evidenced by all Idol shows/variants.
This guy has decided to do it on his own terms. Still looks like a retard, but now he's a retard ninja.
You never know where he'll show up to hijack a crappy morning show and hit himself in the nuts with a yo-yo,
I still like the Balloon Boy strategy better. Seeing the look on Wolf Blitzer's face when he realized the kid was on the ground the whole time and that they had just wasted hours of CNN time.... priceless. Wife swap wasn't good enough for them? Clogging up CNN for a few hours did the trick.
This may have gone in effed up news at another time, but since I've lately flooded that thread with articles about random butchering of small children, this seemed tame by comparison, since nobody actually died and the teacher here is actually just a fucking idiot.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — A Jefferson County geometry teacher was investigated by the Secret Service after he used a hypothetical assassination of President Barack Obama as a way to teach geometric angles. School officials said the Corner High School teacher apparently was instructing his students about parallel lines and angles and used the example of where to stand and aim to shoot the president.
Authorities were alerted, and Roy Sexton, special agent in charge of Birmingham's Secret Service office, said his agency spoke with the teacher.
"We did not find a credible threat," Sexton said.
He said the investigation was closed. No charges were filed.
Jefferson County school officials said Tuesday that Superintendent Phil Hammonds declined to release the teacher's name. They referred questions to the school system's attorney, Burgin Kent, who did not immediately return a call for comment.
Hammonds said earlier the teacher remains at work and there are no plans to fire him.
"We are going to have a long conversation with him about what's appropriate," Hammonds told The Birmingham News. "It was extremely poor judgment on his part, and a poor choice of words."
Joseph Brown, a senior in the geometry class, told the News that teacher "was talking about angles and said, 'If you're in this building, you would need to take this angle to shoot the president.'"
I agree that the topic wasn't appropriate, HOWEVER, how I'd imagine that playing out, is some stupid kid is like: "Geometry and Obama are stupid, I should shoot Obama." To which the Geometry teacher points out that you would need geometry to not fail miserably at aiming.
Also, I'd say this is in the right thread it's plenty amusing enough to put in the Amusing News Thread, but not quite screwed up enough to put in the Effed Up News Thread.
Course that could just be cause I spend too much time in Idaho, which is a Republican state, and everyone here hates Obama based upon his Democratism, and thus this seems like something that's liable to happen around here.
Well, that's the thing about free speech. Just because you can, doesn't always mean that you should. He wasn't thrown into the secret dungeons and iceboarded (waterboarding is the pussy torture, the top secret hardcore stuff the military uses is iceboarding). Many other countries would have done such by now.
But, this is America. He was investigated, found to be pretty retarded, as Alabamans typically are, and then promptly ignored.
So even in the US TALKING about killing the President in hypothetical situations wins you an investigation? This world blows.
I don't see a problem with this at all. Your free speech falls short of causing harm to another. You can't directly threaten others and you can't tell others to kill another individual. He obviously didn't cross that line and that's why he's still free. But he was close enough, or one of his students complained in such a manner that it appeared he was close enough to crossing the line that he was investigated.
Also, the context of this is important. Sitting around with your buddies, drinking beer, playing poker, and talking about the angles you'd need to calculate to kill the president is one thing. Having this conversation as a teacher in a room full of students is another. There'd also be disciplinary action if the teacher were to talk about angles and vectors and velocities you'd have to calculate to throw babies against the wall and have their heads burst, or something like that.
There's a good chance you haven't heard of Douglas R. Hughes, an obscure candidate hoping to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California.
But he's found a good way to garner some attention. He calls it Pedophile Island.
Hughes' website details his plan to keep pedophiles from being "released back into our neighborhoods to rape our children." Here's how it works: Pedophiles and sex offenders get three options - either leave California, stay in prison for life, or move to an island of the California coast made up entirely of their kind.
Hughes, who appears to be a Republican, has designated a small landmass called Santa Rosa Island to become Pedophile Island, arguing that it is currently a waste of taxpayer money used only by park rangers and environmentalists. Pedophiles will be sent there to create a "self-supporting" community where they live out the rest of their lives.
The first pedophiles sent to the island, he writes, will be "a lead team" made up of pedophile police, pedophile fire personnel, pedophile judges, and pedophile forest rangers, among others. They will create what he calls the island's "master plan," which will include building a city hall, medical facility and other needs for the community.
They will also write the Pedophile Island Constitution.
"This 'Island' will represent a way of life that has long since been forgotten: one in which our forefathers came to this land with a wagon, some animals, seed, and tools, looking for water and land to build their lives around," Hughes writes.
He argues that the island is the best way to "provide pedophiles with a society of like individuals where they can live and work without conflict and do no harm to children - a humane place for these sick people to live out their lives if they so choose."
Hughes is not the only candidate running on a platform in part predicated on aggressive handling of pedophiles and sex offenders. In Alabama, GOP candidate Tim James is running an ad calling for sex offenders to re-register with the state every 90 days, even though "some politicians" think it might "inconvenience" them.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that sex offenders can be imprisoned even after their sentences expire if they are seen as mentally ill and sexually dangerous.
Wait wait wait... So as only a GOVERNOR he wants to take away some U.S. land (Albeit a small island) to create an ENTIRELY different country? I'm not entirely sure he has the authority to do that.
Otherwise, I guess it's a... decent plan, if nothing else.
Wouldn't matter, not part of the U.S., not California's problem. Which is sadly how most politicians would probably handle that situation. Either that or steal the kid away from his parents and smack him into an orphanage.
So this is a smaller version of what Britain did with Australia but with the focus on pedophiles?
Another thing, does California really have the range of pedophiles to make up the "lead team" with all the necessary pedophile police, pedophile fire personnel, pedophile judges, and pedophile forest rangers?
I just don't think this idea would work. Give a pedophile the choice of life in prison, life in a Penal colony, or just go to another state I think they would just go to another state (which I think is probably the major goal of this thing if you get rid of all of this "a way of life that has long since been forgotten" island crap).
Visitors to Beijing zoo are warned not to feed the animals, but they are encouraged to eat them at a restaurant that offers crocodile and scorpion on its exotic menu.
After watching the beasts in their cages, diners at the zoo's restaurant can gnaw on the webbed toes of a hippopotamus, chew a kangaroo tail, nibble a deer's penis or slurp down a bowl of ant soup.
The sale of the dishes has caused outrage since it was reported by the Legal Daily newspaper earlier this week, with conservationists condemning the practice.
"It is utterly inappropriate for a zoo to sell such items," said Ge Rui of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. "One of the zoo's missions is to foster love of animals and a desire to protect them. But by selling the meat of caged beasts, this zoo stimulates consumption and increases pressure on the animals in the wild. It is socially irresponsible."
Chang Jiwen, a legal expert at the China Academy of Social Sciences who is trying to draft an animal protection law, said: "Although it is legal, I don't think it is humanitarian. It is very inappropriate and immoral of them to sell such products. It is against the aim of the zoo."
Online comment was also predominantly critical. "Watching animals imprisoned in a limited space while eating their siblings, how would you feel?" wrote Zheng Yuanjie, a famous Chinese writer, in his microblog.
The owners of the Bin Feng Tang restaurant were unwilling to comment to the Guardian, but they have told domestic media that the meat was from exotic animal farms and its sale had been going on for several years with the full approval of the authorities.
In the wake of the negative coverage, however, staff said they would be revising the menu, which also includes set dishes of scorpion, peacock, ostrich egg, shark fin soup and other delicacies for between 100 and 1,000 yuan (£10-£100).
The criticism is a sign of changing times. In the past, notices on each of the zoo's animal cages included information about which parts were the tastiest and most useful according to traditional Chinese medicine. Those details have now been omitted.
Comments
And here's one of the 'interviews':
I tip my cap to you, sir.
There are idiots that will do anything to get onto shitty reality TV shows for a 30 second 'look at this retard' spot. As evidenced by all Idol shows/variants.
This guy has decided to do it on his own terms. Still looks like a retard, but now he's a retard ninja.
You never know where he'll show up to hijack a crappy morning show and hit himself in the nuts with a yo-yo,
Ala. teacher uses assassination example in class
Also, I'd say this is in the right thread it's plenty amusing enough to put in the Amusing News Thread, but not quite screwed up enough to put in the Effed Up News Thread.
Course that could just be cause I spend too much time in Idaho, which is a Republican state, and everyone here hates Obama based upon his Democratism, and thus this seems like something that's liable to happen around here.
But, this is America. He was investigated, found to be pretty retarded, as Alabamans typically are, and then promptly ignored.
I don't see a problem with this at all. Your free speech falls short of causing harm to another. You can't directly threaten others and you can't tell others to kill another individual. He obviously didn't cross that line and that's why he's still free. But he was close enough, or one of his students complained in such a manner that it appeared he was close enough to crossing the line that he was investigated.
Otherwise, I guess it's a... decent plan, if nothing else.
Additionally, what happens if female sex offenders on the island have a kid?
Another thing, does California really have the range of pedophiles to make up the "lead team" with all the necessary pedophile police, pedophile fire personnel, pedophile judges, and pedophile forest rangers?
I just don't think this idea would work. Give a pedophile the choice of life in prison, life in a Penal colony, or just go to another state I think they would just go to another state (which I think is probably the major goal of this thing if you get rid of all of this "a way of life that has long since been forgotten" island crap).
Hippopotamus on menu at Beijing zoo