truesee's Blog

Man sues Bank of America for "1,784 billion, trillion dollars"

Joe Rauch Joe Rauch   Fri Sep 25, 1:21 pm ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) Dalton Chiscolm is unhappy about Bank of America's customer service -- really, really unhappy.

Chiscolm in August sued the largest U.S. bank and its board, demanding that "1,784 billion, trillion dollars" be deposited into his account the next day. He also demanded an additional $200,164,000, court papers show.

Attempts to reach Chiscolm were unsuccessful. A Bank of America spokesman declined to comment.

"Incomprehensible," U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said in a brief order released Thursday in Manhattan federal court.

"He seems to be complaining that he placed a series of calls to the bank in New York and received inconsistent information from a 'Spanish womn,'" the judge wrote. "He apparently alleges that checks have been rejected because of incomplete routing numbers."

Chin has experience with big numbers. He's the judge who sentenced Bernard Madoff to a 150-year prison sentence for what the government called a $65 billion Ponzi scheme.

Bank of America Corp faces real legal problems, including New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's threat to sue its chief executive and a judge's embarrassing rejection of a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Yet the money Chiscolm wants could dwarf all the bank's other problems.

It's larger than a sextillion dollars, or a 1 followed by 21 zeros. Chiscolm's request is equivalent 1 followed by 22 digits.

The sum also dwarfs the world's 2008 gross domestic product of $60 trillion, as estimated by the World Bank.

"These are the kind of numbers you deal with only on a cosmic scale," said Sylvain Cappell, New York University's Silver Professor at the Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences. "If he thinks Bank of America has branches on every planet in the cosmos, then it might start to make some sense."

Judge Chin gave Chiscolm until October 23 to better explain the basis for his claims, or else see his complaint dismissed.

(Reporting by Joe Rauch; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

Reuters – People walk past a Bankof America branch in New YorkAugust 13, 2009.

REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

Children Who Get Spanked Have Lower IQs

Jeanna Bryner

Life Science

Senior Writer

24 September 2009 09:12 pm ET

Spanking can get kids to behave in a hurry, but new research suggests it can do more harm than good to their noggins. The study, involving hundreds of U.S. children, showed the more a child was spanked the lower his or her IQ compared with others.

"All parents want smart children," said study researcher Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire. "This research shows that avoiding spanking and correcting misbehavior in other ways can help that happen."

One might ask, however, whether children who are spanked tend to come from backgrounds in which education opportunities are less or inherited intelligence lower.

But while the results only show an association between spanking and intelligence, Straus says his methodology and the fact that he took into account other factors that could be at play (such as parents' socioeconomic status) make a good case for a causal link.

"You can't say it proves it, but I think it rules out so many other alternatives; I am convinced that spanking does cause a slowdown in a child's development of mental abilities," Straus told LiveScience.

Intelligence quotients

Straus and his colleague Mallie Paschall of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Maryland studied nationally representative samples of two age groups: 806 children ages 2 to 4, and 704 ages 5 to 9. The researchers tested the kids' IQ initially and then four years later.

Both groups of kids got smarter after four years. But the 2- to 4-year-olds who were spanked scored 5 points lower on the IQ test than those not spanked. For children ages 5 to 9, the spanked ones scored on average 2.8 points lower than their unspanked counterparts.

The results, he said, were statistically significant. And they held even after accounting for parental education, income, cognitive stimulation by parents and other factors that could affect children's mental abilities.

Straus will present the study results, along with research on the relationship between average national IQ and prevalence of spanking around the world, Friday at the 14th International Conference on Violence, Abuse and Trauma, in San Diego, Calif.

Spanking science

Whether or not spanking equates with dumber kids is not known, and may never be known. That's because the only way to truly show cause and effect would be to follow over time two groups of kids, one randomly assigned to get spanked and another who would not get spanked. Barring that method, which is unfeasible, Straus considers his study the next best thing, as he looked back at a nationally representative set of kids who were followed over time.

Jennifer Lansford of Duke University's Center for Child and Family Policy and Social Science Research Institute called the study "interesting," and agrees the method is a strong one. Lansford, who was not involved with the study, said following kids over time as this study did rules out the possibility that children with lower IQs somehow elicit more physical discipline.

However, unlike research showing the link between spanking and a kid's aggressive behavior, in which kids model parents' actions, this link is less clear to her. She added that a question still left unanswered is "what are some of the other mechanisms that could be responsible for this link between physical discipline and lower IQ?"

How spanking harms

If spanking does send IQ scores down, Straus and others offer some explanations for what might be going on.

"Contrary to what everyone believes, being hit by parents is a traumatic experience," Straus said. "We know from lots of research that traumatic stresses affect the brain adversely." Also, the trauma could cause kids to have more stressful responses in difficult situations, and so may not perform as well cognitively.

By using hitting rather than words or other means of discipline, parents could be depriving kids of learning opportunities. "With spanking, a parent is delivering a punishment to get the child's attention and to get them to behave in a certain way," said Elizabeth Gershoff who studies childhood development at the University of Texas, Austin. "It's not fostering children's independent thinking."

So when a child gets in a bind, he or she might do the right thing to keep from a spanking rather than figuring out the best decision independently, added Gershoff, who was not involved in Straus's current study.

And then there are genes, as some kids are just born smarter than others.

Even though spanking has been shown to cause negative consequences, Gershoff said many parents still fall back on the behavior-shaping tool. As for why, she says it's a quick fix, though its seeming success is short-lived and the negative consequences often outweigh the positives. Parents also might have been spanked themselves and so continue the tradition.

FHP: Man drove car into deputy's home

Test showed Rodney Troy Whitley had a blood alcohol level of 0.140

Rodney Troy Whitley
BKaren Voyles

The Gainesville Sun
Staff writer

Published: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 6:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 9:30 a.m.

A Gilchrist County man accused of driving his car through a fence and into a deputy's concrete block home was charged with DUI.

Rodney Troy Whitley, 40, was arrested by the Florida Highway Patrol after the 1:26 a.m. incident north of Bell in northern Gilchrist County.

According to FHP, the white minivan Whitley had been driving wound up embedded on the north side of a home built with concrete blocks and owned by a Gilchrist County deputy and her husband.

The deputy told FHP that they heard a loud noise and then saw that the minivan had come through their bedroom wall. The couple went outside and found Whitley behind the wheel of the minivan, according to Gilchrist County Sheriff's Major Tony Smith. The deputy was not injured, but her husband required stitches due to cuts from flying debris, Smith said.

Whitley reportedly told an FHP trooper that he lost control of the minivan while answering a text message on his cell phone.

After a breath test determined Whitley's blood alcohol level was 0.140, above the legal limit of 0.08, he was arrested on the DUI charge and booked into the Gilchrist County jail.

THIS  LINK INCLUDES ACTUAL FOOTAGE OF HIS PLANE FLYING OVER EX-GIRLFRIEND'S HOUSE

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/bizarre/6635034.html

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2652874/Man-strikes-gold-with-record-haul.html

September 24, 2009

 http://gmy.news.yahoo.com/

Teen held at gunpoint until police arrive

Billings Gazette

Gazette Staff

Monday, September 21, 2009 11:55 pm

http://www.trutv.com/shows/most_daring/index.html?pid=xuzhrJQFB4iZsMkc5vd0hFNd3V_9B77z

Don’t Look Down: 10 Peculiarly Precarious Modern Buildings

 Mike in Architecture & Design

http://weburbanist.com/2009/09/22/10-peculiarly-precarious-buildings/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinkpicturegalleries/6223242/Weird-canned-foods-from-around-the-world.html

Thief swipes wedding cash

What was supposed to be the happiest day of Aaron “Bo” and Margaret Thompson Brown’s lives turned heart-wrenching Saturday night.

During the local couple’s wedding reception at the American Legion in Seymour, an uninvited guest made away with a large wire bird cage that held stacks of congratulatory cards filled with cash, checks and gift cards.

Margaret’s mother, Joyce Thompson, estimated the thief got away with around $5,000.

“What a low-life thing to do to a bride and groom just starting out in life,” Joyce said.

Seymour Police Department was called to the reception at 10:48 p.m. to investigate.

Assistant Chief Craig Hayes said after conducting a search, officers were unable to locate the suspect, whom witnesses described as a skinny white male wearing a dark T-shirt and a ball cap. Anyone with information should call the police at 522-1234.

“No one knows who he was,” Hayes said, reading from a police report.

For Margaret, the whole situation seems surreal, but she’s not letting it get her down.

“It wasn’t even the money, I was upset that someone could come in and do something like that on somebody’s wedding day,” she said. “But I don’t want to remember that, I want to remember that we all had a good time.”

Although many tears were shed, Joyce said friends and family who attended the event did their best to console the bride and groom, even starting a collection to replace some of the stolen money.

“They were able to get about $500, I think,” Joyce said.

Derek Fields, a friend of the couple, was responsible for rallying the guests to give more money.

“He jumped up and took the mic from the DJ and said it was a terrible thing that had happened and suggested that people gift the same amount,” she said. “Then they passed around a box.”

Margaret said that part of the evening was “straight out of a movie.”

“I was in the corner and my bridesmaids were trying to console me, and the DJ played ‘Lean on Me’ and we all started dancing again,” she said. “I decided I could let it ruin everything or I could just forget it and have fun.”

She said she and her husband had planned to use a lot of the money to pay for a honeymoon, which she says they now plan to take in the spring.

“We’ll be OK,” Margaret said.

Joyce is advising guests who gave the couple checks or gift cards to have them canceled immediately and reissued if they choose. If a check has been cashed, she said to check with the bank and call the police.

She also has a message to the thief.

“You put a really sad damper on what was a beautiful day,” she said. “Hope you can sleep at night.”

Sharing their first dance as husband and wife are Aaron ‘Bo' Brown and Margaret Brown. They later learned a bird cage stuffed with cards and monetary gifts was stolen at their reception Saturday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Several of these clips contain strong language, so please be careful if you are easily shocked.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6215920/Newsreader-fails-the-30-most-baffling-onscreen-errors.html

Former postal worker Myles Weathers admits to stealing more than $30,000 in Netflix DVDs mailed through Springfield branch

Jack Flynn

The Republican

September 21, 2009, 8:45PM

SPRINGFIELD – A former U.S. Postal Service employee pleaded guilty Monday to stealing more than $30,000 in DVDs mailed to the Springfield branch.

Myles Weathers, a former Springfield resident now living in New York, admitted taking more than 30,000 DVDs sent out by Netflix to customers in Greater Springfield during a one-year period beginning in January, 2007.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle L. Dineen Jerrett said the movie rental company alerted the post office officials that a suspiciously high number of DVDs were disappearing from the Springfield area.

Between 50 and 100 DVDs were vanishing each week at one point, Jerrett said.

An investigation by the Office of Inspector General zeroed in on the night shift at the Springfield branch, and eventually targeted Weathers, Jerrett told U.S. District Judge Michael A. Ponsor.

He was arrested on Feb. 22, 2008 after agents filmed him taking DVDs from packages and slipping them into his backpack, the prosecutor said.

Ponsor said the maximum penalty for mail theft by a federal employee was 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. By pleading guilty, Weathers faces significantly less time, between 10 and 16 months, under federal sentencing guidelines, the judge said.

Restitution would be about $38,000, with $36,000 worth of DVDs and another $2,000 incurred by Netflix in extra mailing costs, the prosecutor said.

Sentencing was set for Dec. 23.

Springfield defense lawyer Edward B. Fogarty represented Weathers, who pleaded guilty to a so-called information – a charge drawn up by prosecutors – rather than an indictment handed down by a grand jury.

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/sep/21/undercover-drug-investigators-embarrass-polk-sheri/

Why Fall Begins Tuesday

Robert Roy Britt

Editorial Director

21 September 2009 08:38 pm ET