Under a Gibbous Moon

Here is another video coming out of the protests on Wall Street in New York City, in this video, a reporter and camera man for the local Fox affiliate are injured by a police officer during the protest.

One thing that I found interesting in this video is the police officer’s (captain in the white shirt) use of force. Most police, including the NYPD train with what is known as the Force Continuum (or Continuum of Force, etc). It details how violence escalates and which actions are to be used and it what order. I could not find an online source for the NYPD’s guide (though it is apparently on page 7 of the NYPD Academy textbook), typically you are supposed to use OC spray (pepper spray) before you start striking people with batons. This is because OC spray does no lasting harm while a baton can cause bruises, broken bones, and internal bleeding.

The other thing I found interesting is how the officer is swinging almost at random, frequently striking people in the back who are either trying to escape or are unaware of his presence.

On a final note with regards to the pepper spray itself. According to the Report of the Pepper Spray Committee (pdf), NYPD Patrol manual states that: “They are taught not to fire the spray from within three feet of subjects, not to use the spray on a windy day, and not to use OC in group settings or for crowd control; they are trained to fire a maximum of two one-second bursts of the spray.”

Apparently, in an attempt to teach students fiscal responsibility, MasterCard has launched a new ad campaign.

Remember kiddies, if you want it now, just bill your parents!

Occupy Wall Street, the protest against the economic policies that allowed Wall Street to destroy this countries economy (and still benefit from it), turned ugly this past weekend as the NYPD started getting violent with some of the protesters. This hasn’t been covered well in the media but here is a collection of some of the videos that I have found of what is going on.

Looks like the NYPD is trying to run through all the goodwill they built up after 9/11.

Coloring books are favorite standby for children. The subject matter is usually benign and involves cuddly animals, popular characters from children’s media, cars, and dinosaurs. This is from the back cover of the latter.

There is just no good way to explain this image. It is nice to see carnivores and herbivores getting along, I guess.

Apparently, this is going to become something of a regular series. Everytime I get a new email from NCC NOW, I can expect another trip into stupidity.

Could you find the greatest happiness of your life after being fired, going through a divorce, and learning you have a serious illness? Best-selling author of “How Starbucks Saved My Life” Michael Gates Gill did, and he shared his remarkable story at NCC

Starbucks you say…

Don’t be afraid to try a math problem. No one is going to die or get hurt if you get it wrong!

See, this is what happens if you spend to much time at Starbucks. A short list of disasters caused by wrong math:

• Conversion errors doomed the Mars Rover.
• Last year, a math error cost the state of Maryland 31 MILLION dollars.
• A fuel miscalculation caused Air Canada Flight 143 to run out of fuel mid flight.
• After construction plans were changed, no one bothered to rerun the math, killing 114 people.
• Another calculation error kept a Patriot missile from intercepting a Scud during the First Gulf War, killing 28 soldiers and wounding another 100.
• A failure in an inertial reference calculation caused an European Space Agency Ariane 5 to explode forty seconds after take off.
• Bad math in calculating concrete and ballast requirements led to the sinking of Sleipner A offshore oil platform
• The flood walls and levees in New Orleans were built and maintained using some shady math leading to catastrophic failure during Hurricane Katrina.

This is hardly and exhaustive list, but I would like to point out that math is serious business and it would seem this Michael Gates Gill is not familiar with what he’s talking about. Not a great person to have come and talk to your students.