PHOENIX -- A 65-year-old St. Louis man is missing after Amtrak personnel, mistaking his diabetic shock for drunk and disorderly behavior, kicked him off a train in the middle of a national forest, according to police in Williams, Ariz.
Police said Roosevelt Sims was headed to Los Angeles but was asked to leave the train shortly before 10 p.m. Sunday at a railroad crossing five miles outside Williams, reported KPHO-TV in Phoenix.
"He was let off in the middle of a national forest, which is about 800,000 acres of beautiful pine trees," Lt. Mike Graham said.
Police said there is no train station or running water at the crossing, which is about two miles from the nearest road, at an elevation of about 8,000 feet.
Amtrak personnel told police dispatchers that Sims was drunk and unruly.
The Sims family said Sims is diabetic and was going into shock.
Sims' brother, Brian Mason, said his family tried to call Sims on his cell phone that night, but Sims was incoherent.
When officers arrived at the crossing, police said, Sims ran into the woods, leaving his luggage and medication behind.
Cell phone records show that Sims' phone was last used in Litchfield Park, Ariz., 180 miles from Williams.
Williams police said Amtrak has used the abandoned crossing as a drop-off site in the past, the television station reported. Graham said that whether drunk or not, no one should be dropped off there.
"You don't put anyone off in an area like that," Graham said.
Amtrak said the company is looking into the matter.
"I just want to find him," Mason said. "I'm not mad at anybody."
"I want to find a way to make sure he's OK," Mason added.
"Our thoughts and prayers are that there's no way he's out there in those woods," Graham said.
Airlines have had to lay on extra flights for all the tort lawyers descending on Arizona as we speak. They wouldn't dare take the train.
#2
I suspect some major CYA by the cops and Amtrak both in this story. Normal procedure would be for the RR dispatcher to call local police to meet the train at a convenient point. Rules (and common sense) require that the crew not release the passenger until the cops are there and ready to take custody.
And how is it that the cops were unable to catch a 65 year old man who was going into diabetic shock after they saw him run from the crossing?
Finally, there are no doubt quite a few flight attendants who envy the train crews' their ability to just pitch unruly passengers out the door.
#5
AMTRAK is just jealous of the Portland Oregon Metro Bus driver who kicked 2 gay teenage gils off the bus for kissing after some old hag started making 'icky' noises. he got busted by the boss and the families are calling the lawyers.
Impressive photo at the link, taken by high school kids using relatively simple equipment.
"Makes one wonder what certain military/government instruments can do in similar situations," one observer quips.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/28/2007 16:52 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
"relatively simple equipment."
Adaptive optics? I wouldn't describe that as simple equipment.
Posted by: Mark E. ||
06/28/2007 16:57 Comments ||
Top||
#2
makes for a better boast, when you call something simple, and everyone in the room goes DUH.........embarrased. nice work, despite the put down to all of us who didnt do it first.
"The folks at the Clay Center Observatory did it...."
Posted by: Mark E. ||
06/28/2007 17:34 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Clay Center Observatory - Operated by the Dexter (Boys K-12) and Southfield (Girls K-12) Schools - both "Very High-End" private schools in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
06/28/2007 18:18 Comments ||
Top||
#5
I've seen university observatories that couldn;t bolster that kind of sophistication.
#6
When after the lift off of the Columbia it was shown the debris hitting the shuttle wing, the Air Force offered to use it's ground based optical equipment to survey the craft, tile section by tile section. NASA declined. The shuttle disintegrated upon reentry. Lost in the recriminations that followed is that the AF had that level of capability.
#1
typical of so many of today's miscreants: when they get caught they try to hide their face from the cameras or shed mass quantities of crocodile tears and blubber about their "remorsefullness," when in reality the only thing they are truly sorry for is getting caught. this POS needs sued by the Duke boys....
They're taxing you depending on the amount of garbage you throw out. They're taxing you when you sell your house. They're taxing you when you register your car. But will they actually have the nerve to tax you just for standing on the sidewalk? City Hall may have another wallet wallop coming for bar and club owners, as it ponders charging to have customers wait outside on Toronto-owned sidewalks to get into establishments.
Those behind the idea believe it will not only generate badly needed revenue but act as a kind of de facto crowd control and reduce the potential for violence downtown. But not everyone is in favour of yet another reason not to head into the core. "Taxing the sidewalk is just another insane thing the city can do," explodes Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong. "We'll tax not only anything that moves, we'll tax anything that doesn't move!"
But the man behind the motion insists it's more about clash than cash. "This isn't a money grab," maintains Councillor Adam Vaughan. "This is about trying to get nightclubs to behave like good corporate citizens and to take responsibility for their customers when they use the public space to hold them."
Not surprisingly club owners are also fuming about the idea."It's really, really annoying, to be very polite," an angry George Kioulmetis seethes. "Basically what you're doing is you're charging an extra tax in a specific district." The proposed bylaw would force club owners to get a permit to rent sidewalk space. There's still no word on exactly how much it would cost them. But while patrons won't pay for it, they're still sure it will wind up coming out of their pockets. "In the end the owners are going to feel the pinch and then the pinch is going to come on us," predicts Andrew Christoforou.
So when will it all happen? Not for a while. The city will hold consultations for the next five months, followed by a council vote. That means the earliest the new tax could have 'standing' is by the end of next winter.
You're a rich girl, and you've gone too far
'Cause you know it don't matter anyway
You can rely on the old man's money
You can rely on the old man's money
It's a bitch girl and it's gone too far
'Cause you know it don't matter anyway
Say money, money won't get you too far
Say money, money won't get you too far
Get you too far, Today,
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
06/28/2007 19:15 Comments ||
Top||
#6
or.....Baby Got Back: Sir Mixalot
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
06/28/2007 19:38 Comments ||
Top||
At least four Frito Lay trucks had washed away, spilling chips along the creek. One large truck emblazoned with the Doritos logo was stuck on its side in the still-running water...
In Parker County, west of Fort Worth, a county judge ordered mandatory evacuation of residential areas along the Brazos River after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened the gates at the Possum Kingdom dam.
#4
It's all Bush's fault. If he didn't spend all his time clearing the indigenous plants from his ill gotten property, there wouldn't be floods like this.
#5
I'm in San Antonio, and the rain just hit us about an hour ago... so far, so good. I'm staying at home today, got another chapter and a couple of reviews to write and post.
My daughter has school, across town though; if it looks bad later, she'll stay home as well.
#6
Sgt Mom, what's the over-under on idiots driving thru flooded low water crossings? That was always my favorite part of the local SA tv news.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/28/2007 8:51 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Consulted with daughter, and our informed estimate is 8-10 who will have to be rescued. At least a couple of those will be people who don't know English and can't figure out the warning signs...
The City began fining these people the cost of their rescue, but most people don't realize that once the water is up to the floor level of the car, you are a whisper from floating away. Especially if there is a strong current.
#10
"In Texas tonight, the chips are down as heavy flooding washes away a Doritos truck . . ."
Posted by: Mike ||
06/28/2007 12:06 Comments ||
Top||
#11
In a lot of places, Rambler, they have markers planted exactly were the water collects, with the feet and inches painted on them, starting from ground level. But in a lot of other places there isn't a marker, and the only clue you have is if you know that particular place very well.
And when it really, really, really pours down in buckets, like it looks to do today, a lot of spots that don't normally flood will do so. In October of 1998, the Hill Country got so much unexpected rain that the rain-guages overflowed. All they could tell is was that it was more than 24 inches, falling overnight. There were people whose cars were swept away, just driving down the street, nowhere near a creek or a low-water crossing! In about two minutes, a perfectly ordinary city street turned into Niagra Falls!
#14
After EVERY Heavy rain they can find at least one idiot that attempted to turn their truck/car/SUV into an amphibious vehicle. I think the TV station send out crew to known locations. In conclusion, it's all Bushitlers fault, well just because.
#15
Arizona has a stupid motorist law which says that if it's marked and barricaded and you go anyway, you have to pay the costs for your rescue. (This doesn't apply for floods in areas not marked and barricaded.)
Posted by: Gary and the Samoyeds ||
06/28/2007 20:39 Comments ||
Top||
#16
There's a railroad underpass on the other side of Richmond - street basically goes straight down & then straight up. Floods whenever there's even a heavy thunderstorm (where's the water gonna go?). The city always blocks it off with sawhorses every time there's a heavy rain, but they didn't use enough that the idiots cars couldn't drive around them.
A number of years ago a woman tried to drive under the tracks after much rain and of course the car shorted out, doors & windows were (electric) locked, way before cell phones, etc. If she'd had any sense, she could have (a) seen the water and gotten suspicious), and (b) seen how little space there was between the top of the water and the bottom of the trestle. She didn't. The street isn't well-travelled, and no one saw it happen. Cops found her body a day or two later when the water had finally receded enough for them to notice the trunk sticking up out of the water.
So the city leaps into action and paints a depth meter on the concrete so you can see how deep the water is (IIRC, it's a 14-foot "ruler") and hopefully not drive into it.
Several years after that, underpass is flooded again (at least 10 feet), sawhorses are blocking the street on both sides - enough so you can't just drive around them - and a guy wants to drive under the tracks (it is the shortest route when it's not flooded), so he gets out of his car and moves the barricades so he can drive through. You guessed it - same thing happened, electrical shorted out, car died, no cell phone, etc.
When the cops found the car, his face was pressed up against the back window). IIRC, they found him sooner than the last one because a cop on patrol noticed that the barricade had been moved and got suspicious & called for the FD divers. But he was still dead - just less bloated.
I know there are cases where the water just rises so fast you get caught in spite of all your precautions (see Hurricane Gaston and the Richmond area a couple of years ago), but 98% of the time it's just stupidity and not paying attention.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/28/2007 21:22 Comments ||
Top||
#17
Both of those drowned morons could have avoided death if they had a pocket tool or some other sharp metal implement to shatter a window with. I always have a Victorinox Swiss Army pocket tool on my belt for just such reasons.
CAIRO (AFP) - Egypt on Thursday finally banned all female circumcision, the widely-practised removal of the clitoris which just days ago cost the life of a 12-year-old girl. Officially the practice, which affects both Muslim and Christian women in Egypt and goes back to the time of the pharoahs, was banned in 1997 but doctors were allowed to operate "in exceptional cases".
On Thursday, Health Minister Hatem al-Gabali decided to ban every doctor and member of the medical profession, in public or private establishments, from carrying out a clitoridectomy, a ministry press official told AFP. Any circumcision "will be viewed as a violation of the law and all contraventions will be punished," said the official, adding that it was a "permanent ban".
A survey in 2000 said the practice was carried out on 97 percent of the country's women.
In the latest fatality, 12-year-old Bedur Ahmed Shaker was taken by her mother to a private clinic in Minya, a town on the Nile south of Cairo, for the operation. She died before she could be transferred to hospital. Her mother accused the woman doctor of negligence, charging that her daughter's death was linked to the anaesthetic and not the removal of the clitoris, for which she had paid 50 pounds (nearly nine dollars). Police have arrested both women.
#8
I wonder what constitutes proper attire according to Sharia law? Will their be a maximum breast size limitation; as to not to get the guys too excited? Will the burgers be Halal? So many questions.
#11
In order to comply with the Muslim sensitivity, the management is only going to hire those who have been surgically sterilized, and call the place 'Neuters."
Six members of a Pakistani family died on Wednesday because of use of anti-septic spray in their rooms. The family was from Lahore. The victims are: Riaz Hussain, his wife and four children, GEO television reported. Police said that the cause of their deaths was use of anti-septic spray in the rooms. The Pakistan embassy in Saudi Arabia is trying to contact the heirs of the ill-fated family.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/28/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#6
Someone needs to go into the "Muslim hero lunchboxes" business. Happy little, Muslim schoolchildren, happy Muslim parents, happy schools... what problem were we talking about?
SARAJEVO - Several dozen skeletons have been exhumed from two mass graves in Bosnia believed to contain victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, a judicial official said Wednesday. Four complete and 44 incomplete skeletons were uncovered in one mass grave in the Zeleni Jadar area, 15 kilometres (10 miles) south of Srebrenica, Jasna Subotic, spokeswoman for the local prosecutors office, said.
The remains were found crushed and compressed -- suggesting that the bodies might have been interred elsewhere, then exhumed and re-buried with the use of bulldozers in a bid to conceal their fate. The remains are so badly damaged that it is even possible that they have been reburied twice, Subotic said, adding that forensic experts had also collected two bags of small bone fragments.
Earlier this week, a smaller mass grave -- near the Potocari memorial cemetery where more than 2,400 identified Srebrenica victims lie buried -- was found, with five remains plus several detached bones, the spokeswoman said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/28/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
But ... the town was under UN protection! The UN declared it safe!
And I almost forgot - the victims of this particular massacre were Muslim.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/28/2007 6:07 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Serebrinica, etal > Iff the UNO does NOT stand for LIFE, and PROTECTION, to include perhaps even for its own, as some news Commentaries have inferred, then it must stand for DEATH and MURDER.
West Coast Democrats called for a hearing Wednesday into the role Vice President Dick Cheney may have played in the 2002 die-off of about 70,000 salmon near the California-Oregon border.
An article in The Washington Post on Wednesday said Cheney played a crucial role in developing a 10-year water plan for the Klamath River that courts later called arbitrary and in violation of the Endangered Species Act. Democrats charged that Cheney's action resulted in the largest adult salmon kill in the history of the West.
"The ramifications of that salmon kill are still being felt today as returns to the Klamath River are so low that commercial, sport and tribal fishing seasons have been curtailed for the past three years," Democrats said in a letter calling for the hearing.
Commercial fishing in California and Oregon was cut by more than 90 percent last year the largest commercial-fishing closure in the history of the country resulting in more than $60 million in damage to coastal economies, the letter said.
U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., whose district includes the area where the fish died, said Democrats want to have a hearing in the House Natural Resources Committee.
"We know that science was manipulated and the law was violated," Thompson said. "Did in fact the vice president of the United States put pressure on midlevel bureaucrats to alter the science and circumvent the law in order to gain political votes for his re-election or the election of other people in Oregon?"
Thompson's office drafted the letter, which was signed by 36 House Democrats in California and Oregon, including all four Democratic House members in Oregon and all Democrats but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in California. Thompson said he did not ask Pelosi to sign the letter.
Megan McGinn, a spokeswoman for the vice president's office, said late Wednesday she had not seen the letter and could not comment.
The salmon die-off and water usage in the drought-plagued Klamath Basin have long been a source of political controversy. In 2004, the Interior Department's inspector general found no basis for a claim by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry that White House political advisers interfered in developing water policy in the Klamath.
The inspector general said President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, was not involved in a 2002 decision to divert water from the Klamath River in Oregon to irrigate farms. While Rove mentioned the Klamath in passing during a briefing with senior Interior officials, "we found nothing to tie Karl Rove's comments ... to the Klamath decision-making process," Inspector General Earl Devaney said.
Three months after Rove's meeting in early 2002, administration officials increased the water supply to more than 200,000 acres of farmland in California and Oregon a decision bitterly opposed by environmentalists and commercial fishermen.
In September 2002, tens of thousands of chinook salmon died in the Klamath River in Northern California. The California Department of Fish and Game laid much of the blame on low water flows controlled by the federal government, saying it created conditions that allowed a fatal gill-rot disease to spread through the fish.
A report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said low river flows played a role but said other factors, including a large return of fish, also contributed to the fish kill, the worst in decades.
This looks scary enough to post here. It might not be as bad as he is stating but then again we remember the floating point bugs in the first Pentium processors - I need to note as a disclaimer that I am posting this on an AMD dual core that for all I know might have it's own set of horrible bugs.
Various developers are busy implementing workarounds for serious bugs in Intel's Core 2 cpu.
These processors are buggy as hell, and some of these bugs don't just cause development/debugging problems, but will *ASSUREDLY* be exploitable from userland code.
As is typical, BIOS vendors will be very late providing workarounds / fixes for these processors bugs. Some bugs are unfixable and cannot be worked around. Intel only provides detailed fixes to BIOS vendors and large operating system groups. Open Source operating systems are largely left in the cold.
As is typical, BIOS vendors will be very late providing workarounds / fixes for these processors bugs. Some bugs are unfixable and cannot be worked around. Intel only provides detailed fixes to BIOS vendors and large operating system groups. Open Source operating systems are largely left in the cold.
As is typical, BIOS vendors will be very late providing workarounds / fixes for these processors bugs. Some bugs are unfixable and cannot be worked around. Intel only provides detailed fixes to BIOS vendors and large operating system groups. Open Source operating systems are largely left in the cold.
- We bet there are many more errata not yet announced -- every month this file gets larger.
- Intel understates the impact of these erraata very significantly. Almost all operating systems will run into these bugs.
- Basically the MMU simply does not operate as specified/implimented in previous generations of x86 hardware. It is not just buggy, but Intel has gone further and defined "new ways to handle page tables"
(see page 58).
- Some of these bugs are along the lines of "buffer overflow"; where a write-protect or non-execute bit for a page table entry is ignored. Others are floating point instruction non-coherencies, or memory corruptions -- outside of the range of permitted writing for the process -- running common instruction sequences.
- All of this is just unbelievable to many of us.
Note that some errata like AI65, AI79, AI43, AI39, AI90, AI99 scare the hell out of us. Some of these are things that cannot be fixed in running code, and some are things that every operating system will do until about mid-2008, because that is how the MMU has always been managed on all generations of Intel/AMD/whoeverelse hardware. Now Intel is telling people to manage the MMU's TLB flushes in a new and different way. Yet even if we do so, some of the errata listed are unaffected by doing so.
As I said before, hiding in this list are 20-30 bugs that cannot be worked around by operating systems, and will be potentially
exploitable. I would bet a lot of money that at least 2-3 of them are.
For instance, AI90 is exploitable on some operating systems (but not OpenBSD running default binaries).
At this time, I cannot recommend purchase of any machines based on the Intel Core 2 until these issues are dealt with (which I suspect will take more than a year). Intel must be come more transparent.
(While here, I would like to say that AMD is becoming less helpful day by day towards open source operating systems too, perhaps because their serious errata lists are growing rapidly too).
I was just talking w/ the brother in law this AM, and in the last 6 or 7 months he's sold over a 600-700 Intel Chips, either stand alone, or in computers or servers he's made from scratch.
He's had no problems with Intel chips and had no returns or complaints due to Intel chips.. He builds them like you do 3dc..
He hasn't had any trouble with these for instance.
Intel Xeon 5160 Dual Core 3.0GHZ /for servers
Intel® Core2 Duo
Intel Core 2 Extreme Processor E6800
[he has sold about 15 Extreme Processors + - , and has a few in stock ]
I'll try and answer any questions.. but don't expect too much LOL!
#2
He's had no problems with Intel chips and had no returns or complaints due to Intel chips.
These are subtle bugs, and may not be exploited as yet. I'll go with the opinion of Theo de Raadt, leader of OpenBSD, one of the most secure general-purpose operating systems available.
#4
Er, the BSD-derived OSX runs on dual-core Intels. Apple certainly hasn't shown any concern. And concerning the number of dual-core machines around, it doesn't appear there are very easily tripped. He may be discussing odd states the processors can get into after very specific series of instructions.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
06/28/2007 19:20 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
PHOENIX -- A 65-year-old St. Louis man is missing after Amtrak personnel, mistaking his diabetic shock for drunk and disorderly behavior, kicked him off a train in the middle of a national forest, according to police in Williams, Ariz.
CAIRO (AFP) - Egypt on Thursday finally banned all female circumcision, the widely-practised removal of the clitoris which just days ago cost the life of a 12-year-old girl. Officially the practice, which affects both Muslim and Christian women in Egypt and goes back to the time of the pharoahs, was banned in 1997 but doctors were allowed to operate "in exceptional cases".
Six members of a Pakistani family died on Wednesday because of use of anti-septic spray in their rooms. The family was from Lahore. The victims are: Riaz Hussain, his wife and four children, GEO television reported. Police said that the cause of their deaths was use of anti-septic spray in the rooms. The Pakistan embassy in Saudi Arabia is trying to contact the heirs of the ill-fated family.
