Story here. Excerpt:

'A Shoplifter convicted for the 175th time was spared a prison sentence after magistrates decided to give her another last chance.

Joanne Jones, 31, has faced more than 200 court hearings and served 34 jail terms over the past 16 years, at a cost to the taxpayer of more than £700,000.

But she walked free from the court after Canterbury magistrates decided there was a "chink of light" to suggest she could change – despite the fact that she was on bail when she committed her last offence and is still hooked on heroin.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A mother killed her two children and later went to the nearby college she attended and brandished a gun Thursday before handing the weapon to a health counselor, police said.

The threat at the University of Louisville ended with no injuries about half an hour after it began, but police who were then asked by school officials to check on the children found them dead with gunshot wounds.

Gail Lynn Coontz, 37, is charged with murder in the deaths of 14-year-old Greg Coontz and 10-year-old Nikki Coontz, said Louisville police Officer Phil Russell.'

Story here. Excerpt:

"Ohio Crime Stoppers has issued a reward of up to $2,000 for information leading to the arrest of a Bexley, Ohio, woman accused of having sex with a 14-year-old girl, 10TV.com reports.

A search warrant revealed the girl was at Becky Jo Tatum’s house earlier this month and said she "had been drinking and had a buzz" prior to the alleged sexual conduct.
...
According to Tatum's daughter, her mother has engaged in sexual activity with a number of her friends, Townsend reported.

"(She's) done this before with my friends; I'm kind of used to it," Tatum's daughter said.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Heather Mills is trying to prove Paul McCartney is worth much more than the $800 million he claimed in their divorce battle, the Daily Mail reports.

She has told friends she is employing a team of forensic accountants to examine her estranged husband's finances, the Mail says.

Such information, she hopes, will lead to the divorce ruling being overturned and see more money go to their 4-year-old daughter Beatrice, according to the Mail.

In her impromptu press conference after the divorce hearing at the High Court in London, Mills said: "We all know he's worth $1.6 billion. He's been worth $1.6 billion for the last 15 years."'

Article here. The argument seems to be that the registry would be helpful for health reasons (It's For The Children![tm]) and that would override privacy considerations, because no one, least of all the government, would ever consider inappropriate use of this information, and what kind of scum are you not to want your children to able to find you, anyway, sir?!

Seems to me such a registry would have health benefits for the children of recipients of egg and sperm donations, but I am somewhat concerned about privacy. What if you wound up being a DNA parent to 30 - 40 infants, all of whose mothers demand CS? Talk about a Family Court feeding frenzy!

Story here. Excerpt:

"After two decades, Sean Reid of Surrey, British Columbia, discovered that he had a son. Fred Turley of Des Plaines, Ill., learned he didn’t have a daughter. And Wendy Lieb of Lewis Center, Ohio, made certain she wasn’t going to be a grandmother quite yet.

In all three situations, crucial genetic information altered the lives of the people involved. And in each case, it came not from a doctor or other medical source, but from a $29.99 kit on a drugstore shelf.

Reid, Turley and Lieb are among more than 800 customers who responded to the first wave of marketing for do-it-yourself DNA paternity tests sold as Identigene by Sorenson Genomics of Salt Lake City."

It's official. Read it here. More than that, white men in particular are less empathetic than... everyone else.

This "experimental report" includes two fractionate categories: "white men" and "everyone else". No experimental bias here! And by the way, just how does one measure "empathy" in an objective way? What "newly-devised test instrument" did they use that the author mentions? Well anyway, excerpt:

'In several previous posts, I've discussed Simon Baron-Cohen's theory of autism as a symptom of an "extreme male brain" ..., and also Mary Bucholtz's hypothesis that nerdity is defined by "hyperwhite" behavior ... I'm ashamed to say that it never seriously occurred to me to cross-pollinate these two theories, ...
Thus, in their sample at least, the difference between males and females in two empathy-related measures was smaller than the difference between whites and non-whites.
...

The petition is here. As we know, boys are much more likely to be prosecuted under differential underage sex laws than girls. In the case in question, it has a 16-YO boy branded a sexual predator for the mistake of believing a 13-YO girl when she told him she was nearly 16. Excerpt:

Artilce here. Excerpt:

'When professor Suzanne Steinmetz published the results of her survey on domestic violence, no one had prepared her for the firestorm that would ensue. You see, feminists take it as an article of faith that only husbands abuse their wives.

So when Steinmetz revealed that women are often as violent as their husbands, the fem-fascists started a whispering campaign designed to block her promotion at the University of Delaware. When that didn't work, they phoned in a bomb threat at her daughter's wedding. Cowed by the threats, Steinmetz soon suspended her pioneering research.

Erin Pizzey of England had impeccable credentials -- she was the founder of the first abuse shelter for women. So a few years later she published Prone to Violence, a book that revealed these women are often as physically aggressive as their mates.

Article here. Looks like the boys are getting the message in Britain. The McCartney settlement sure didn't much help those girls that would like to marry.

Marriage is not a good proposition in England or the USA right now - and is likely not to be for some time to come.

Article here. Excerpt:

"A man who used to be a woman is five months pregnant, according to an article he has written for an American magazine that features a picture of him at 22 weeks, with facial hair and a man’s flat chest above his swollen stomach.

Thomas Beatie, who was born a woman, describes himself as a “transgender male” in the piece which says his decision to have a child “has been met with discrimination and outright derision by health care professionals”.

...According to the piece, Mr Beatie went through a sex change but decided to have only chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy, stopping short of making any changes to the reproductive organs he was born with.

Mr Beatie is legally male and lives with his wife, Nancy, in Bend, Oregon.

...“How does it feel to be a pregnant man?” he writes in the article.

Article here. Excerpt:

"Many men believe the world is now dominated by women and that they have lost their role in society, fuelling feelings of depression and being undervalued...

But the hunter-gatherer role is still a strong male instinct. Once fatherhood arrives, men say they would prefer a more traditional role of either being the sole breadwinner with their partner a full-time mother and homemaker (34 per cent), or the main breadwinner with their partner working part-time (24 per cent)...

...What they apparently want is what some American academics have dubbed a "menaissance" - a return to manliness, where figures such as Sir Winston Churchill were models of manhood...

...Harvey Mansfield, a Harvard professor and America's best known political philosopher, who tackles the topic in his book Manliness, says the issue is ignored.

"A man has to be embarrassed about being a man. I am trying to bring back the word manliness. It's not respected," he said.

Driving in today, I heard a radio "interview" with the author of this book. It was done in the style of a late-night infomercial where the interviewer seems to be skeptical and take up Devil's Advocate but of course is quickly won over. (The interviewer worked for the radio station, too.)

I found little surprising in what was said simply because I have heard it so much before. Still, somehow, the glaring foolishness and sheer mercenary thinking espoused (no pun intended) by such people still shocks me. The author is very direct and specific about the importance of doing certain things to make sure the wife "gets the house" (note: 'the house', not 'his house', which is the case most times, as he is paying for it). And she also of course had to declare women still get the 'short end of the stick' in divorces.

Title? "He Had It Coming: How to Outsmart your Husband and Win Your Divorce". Not content to make a fortune doing divorces, the author also had to make money on it by writing a strategy book (geared to women only, of course) on the topic.

Read about it here. Excerpt:

'British Airways' first female pilot has been selected to fly the first plane to land at Heathrow's new Terminal 5.

Capt Lynn Barton, 51, became BA's first woman pilot in 1987. She will be the flight commander on BA026 from Hong Kong, landing at 0450 GMT on Thursday.

"I was incredibly proud to have been British Airways' first ever woman pilot and now I have another first to my name," Capt Barton said.'

I wonder how BA's 3,000 male pilots felt about having this opportunity. Ms Barton is one of 176 female pilots.

Story here. Excerpt:

"Largo police say 52-year-old Celeste Minardi tried to kill her own son over the weekend. He's only fifteen years old. And, the way she allegedly did it, even has police officers shaking their heads in disbelief.

It happened during a Saturday afternoon court-appointed visit at a Largo psychiatrist's office. This is where Minardi and her son have been going for the past 3 years. Visits under supervision. It is still a mystery as to why this mother is under guard with her child on these occasions.

Police say, when a nurse who was present turned her head, Minardi took a 15-inch decorative dagger and a drywall knife out of her purse, and began slashing her son."