Netherlands to close prisons for lack of criminals
The Dutch justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut 1,200 jobs in the prison system. A decline in crime has left many cells empty.
During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led to overcapacity in the prison system. The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees.
Deputy justice minister Nebahat Albayrak announced on Tuesday that eight prisons will be closed, resulting in the loss of 1,200 jobs. Natural redundancy and other measures should prevent any forced lay-offs, the minister said.
The overcapacity is a result of the declining crime rate, which the ministry's research department expects to continue for some time.
The news that there are wiretaps revealing Roland Burris talked with former Governor Rod Blagojevich's brother about how to raise money for Rod without it looking like he was buying his way into the vacant Illinois Senate seat doesn't surprise me.
That’s because people feel worse when something bad might occur than when something bad will occur. Most of us aren’t losing sleep and sucking down Marlboros because the Dow is going to fall another thousand points, but because we don’t know whether it will fall or not — and human beings find uncertainty more painful than the things they’re uncertain about.Gilbert's point is one that I think most of us know in our gut, but rarely acknowledge. That if we understood and embraced the notion that we cannot sit in fear of what might happen, but rather worry only about what we know will happen; then overall life would be much better for us.
Many people feel quite strongly about moist — there's even a Facebook group called called "I HATE the word MOIST!" with more than 300 members. One Facebooker calls moist "possibly the worst word in the English dictionary," while another says, "I despise the sick, repugnant word!" It's hard to top the aversion felt for moist, but some other Visual Thesaurus "least favorites" can provoke similar reactions: panty/panties, vomit, ointment, and slacks.So I'm not alone in my hatred of the word. Maybe I'll search out the Facebook group and join up.
It's difficult to find any unifying thread for these words that get people's goat. But much like the enjoyable words on the "favorites" list like serendipity and mellifluous, there's a certain sound/sense combination that sparks these word aversions. Why does moist merit a Facebook group of haters, while hoist and joist go unnnoticed? It's more than just the sound of the word: the disliked words tend to have some basic level of ickiness. As I told the Albany Times Union, this ickiness can have to do with slimy stuff, bodily discharge, or other things that people would prefer not to think about. Icky words include nostril, crud, pus, and pimple. Ointment and goiter share the "oi" sound with moist: there must be something about that diphthong that gets under people's skin.
# I got to high school when PCs were becoming ubiquitous.
# I got to college when Macs were on Apple campuses, and actually useful.
# And when you had no choice but to use libraries for research, so I actually learned what real research is.
# And I was too young to feel cynical about Dead Poets Society.
# I got onto the Internet after it was tiny, but before it was mass market. So I got to see and use most of the tools and software that were key to its evolution, as they were used, then replaced, then discarded. Pine, gopher, Usenet, Mozilla…
BEDFORD, Ohio – An Ohio man who argued with his grown son over a messy bedroom said he overreacted when he called 911. Andrew Mizsak called authorities Thursday after his 28-year-old son — who's a school board member in the Cleveland suburb of Bedford — threw a plate of food across the kitchen table and made a fist at him when told to clean his room.Probably not. I always follow through on my threats. Ian would have ended up spending the night in the clink if he threw a plate of food at me.
The son, also named Andrew, lives in a room in his parents' basement.
The father declined to press charges and told police he doesn't want to ruin his son's political career.
The son, who also works as a political consultant, said he's lucky to be living in the house rent free. He also promises to keep his room clean.
CHICAGO (AP) -- A Chicago mother who left her two-year-old son in a car and a tow truck driver who towed the vehicle away have been arrested.This news mention of my cousin got me to thinking. I know he's in the Chicago police news affairs department. I wonder how many other stories he's gotten mentioned in that I missed.
Police Spokesman Daniel O'Brien says 36-year-old Felicia Nwankwo and Alsip resident Naji Zaareir have been charged with endangering the health and welfare of a child. He says Nwankwo parked the car in a laundromat lot Monday and left the boy in the backseat while she got food at a restaurant across the street.
This computer generated image, supplied by NASA, shows objects that are currently being tracked in Earth orbit. Approximately 95% of the objects in this illustration are orbital debris, i.e., not functional satellites. The dots represent each item. The orbital debris dots are scaled according to the image size of the graphic to optimize their visibility and are not scaled to Earth. This image provide a good visualization of where the greatest orbital debris populations exist. The space shuttle Atlantis is flying at about 350 miles above Earth, an area littered with more dangerous space junk than the lower orbits where shuttles normally park at the international space station.
(AP Photo/NASA)
When the Chicago Tribune put the Pepsi-Cola Throwback into a taste test against regular Pepsi-Cola (I know this is the sort of hard-hitting journalism that will keep the newspapers relevant for another 100 years), one of the comments related to Pepsi Throwback was, "Now this tastes the way Pepsi should."
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After one run through the album I was hooked on the band. No cheesy lyrics or geekfest music to be found; just bright, fun power pop delivered with passion. Plus, they work in some piano on a few of their songs – I love that. I Fight Dragons turns out music that you can listen to anytime, regardless of your mood, and come out the other side feeling good.
