7 Year Old Steals Car.

7 Year Old Steals Car, Utah police say that a 7-year-old led officers on a low-speed car chase in an attempt to

avoid having to go to church.

Dispatchers received reports of a young boy driving recklessly on Sunday morning. Klint Anderson, Weber County Sheriff’s Captain, says an eye-witness saw the boy drive right through a stop sign.

Anderson says two deputies managed to catch up to the boy and tried (unsuccessfully) to stop the Dodge Intrepid in an area that was approximately 45 miles north of Salt Lake City. The car got up to speeds of 40 mph before the boy finally stopped in a driveway and hid inside a home.

Later, when the boy’s father later confronted him, he said he simply didn’t want to go to church. The boy will not be prosecuted as he is too young and no citations were issued. Police, however, police did urge the father to make his car keys more inaccessible to children.

rorschach blots wikipedia

This Is Only a Test: Rorschach Blots Rocking the Web.

Ever take the inkblot test—or at least see one administered on TV (like in any "Law & Order" episode)? If so, then you know that there are no right or wrong answers on a Rorschach test, but responses do provide insight to the test-taker's state of mind.

And yet, a controversy about the posting of 10 Rorschach inkblots on Wikipedia is rocking the scientific community, according to The New York Times. In addition to the blots themselves, the Wikipedia entry also includes the most common interpretations of what these blots look like—the old bison vs. butterfly vs. moth.

Taking the Test

The Rorschach test—a series of ink blots shown to patients, who are then asked to explain what they see—is named after Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach. Five of the blots are black-and-white, two are black, white, and red, and the last three are in pretty colors. (Or not pretty, depending on your view.)

The test-taker is evaluated on 100 variables, which will show what he/she truly feels deep inside—not just separating psychotic thinking from "normal" thought. One Rorschach FAQ site describes it as asking "How does someone view and organize the world around them?"

One nonprofit parenting site, SPARC, explains that it's not only what patients say in describing what they see, but also what "hand gestures and body movements" they make. (Interestingly, SPARC precedes its lengthy description of the whole process with a disclaimer, posted "after repeated letters from dozens of outraged psychologists and psychiatrists.")

Illuminating or Cheating?

Is the test's public availability stimulating free debate, or enabling test-takers to "cheat"? Depends on how you look at it:

• From the Wiki view: Supporters say it's informative—and searches on Yahoo! for "rorschach" have popped up 111% in the past week.

• From the psychologists' view: These "cheats" could help test-takers game the system and get in the way of research. And if patients peek at the interpretations beforehand, they may get in the way of their own diagnoses.

• From the test publishers' view: The test's publisher is "assessing legal steps" to have the images removed from Wikipedia, even though those images—created some 90 years ago—are in the public domain. Still, one spokesperson huffed that Wikipedia's position is "unbelievably reckless and even cynical" for recognizing concerned claims and posting the images anyhow.

But Does One See Results?

Despite the outrage over Wikipedia's posting, not all researchers believe in the test's validity. The method was severely criticized in the 1950s and revised in the 1970s. Scientific American revived its 2005 article that called Rorschach's test "frequently ineffective" as a mental health tool.

Ideally, at least two clinicians should be involved in the interpretation of the test's results, but often they may not agree. Even worse, according to the article "What's Wrong With This Picture?", research also "suggests" that the Rorschach can't really gauge violent tendencies, depression, sexual abuse in children, antisocial tendencies, and so on. Since the test is administered to all kinds of people, from convicts seeking parole to parents in custody battles, obviously a lot rides on the interpretation of the results.

By the way, the Wikipedia uproar erupted in June, when an emergency-room doctor added the remaining nine inkblots to the one Wikipedia already had. When The New York Times told the doctor about all the experts' complaints, he replied, "Show me the evidence." Preferably not in the form of an inkblot.

iphone virus

iphone virus.

Is there actually an iPhone virus? Well, that depends upon exactly what you mean by a virus. Certainly there has already been an iPhone Trojan, in fact it's been around for about 18 months.

So if you think that a trojan is a virus then yes, there is already an iPhone virus. The point to note about that iPhone virus though is that it only works on phones that have been "jailbroken", that is, without Apple's permission, adjusted so that third party software can be loaded. So if you haven't jailbroken your iPhone, you don't need to fear that particular virus.

However, there are two other points to note about the vulnerabilities of the iPhone. The first is described here and is a design flaw. There's a serious memory corruption bug in the way the iPhone handles SMS messages and this can be exploited, by sending a specific SMS message, to take control of the phone.

The second point is much more important though than just this one proven breach in the security of the iPhone.It is that iPhones and even Macs are not as resistant to viruses and trojans as many think. The reason there are so few at present is that Macs have never been more than a very small segment of the market. For anyone writing virii for a living (which of course many are) machines running Windows are a much more attractive target for here are many times more of them.

So the reason Macs don't get attacked is not because they cannot be attacked, it is because people aren't bothering because there are so few of them. However, this is now changing with the success of the iPhone. It uses essentially the same operating system as a Mac and there are many more cell phones out there than there are computers. With many more potential targets perhaps it will become worth it for virus and trojan writers to attack the Apple O/S. And if it's true that they are inherently no safer than Windows, then they'll at times be successful.

All of which might turn out to be slightly ironic. The success of the iPhone will lead to more virii being written for Apple machines: which will remove one of the reasons people do buy Macs, that they don't get attacked by virii.

rajmata gayatri devi

Indian queen Gayatri Devi dies.

One of the last queens of India, Gayatri Devi, once described as one of the most beautiful women in the world, has died at the age of 90.

She was hospitalised about 10 days ago with stomach and respiratory problems in Jaipur before dying on Wednesday.

Born in to a royal family, she became the third wife of Sawai Man Singh, the Maharajah of Jaipur, in 1939.

The fashion icon broke with tradition by winning election to parliament in 1962. She was re-elected twice.

She supported education for women, and founded a prestigious school in Jaipur, now the capital of Rajasthan state.

Gayatri Devi was born into the royal family of Cooch Behar in 1919.

In an interview with The Times of India, she recalled as a young girl going out hunting, sitting on the neck of an elephant.

Jail

She became the third Maharani of Jaipur in 1939, marrying into a lavish lifestyle.

The family, in effect, ruled the city of Jaipur and the surrounding area in the western Indian desert kingdom.

They spent the summers in Europe and educated their children at elite schools in England.

Gayatri Devi and her husband spent the summers in Europe.

Gayatri Devi loved tennis and polo, and was a talented horse rider, while her taste in saris and jewellery, inherited from her mother, made her a glamorous fashion icon.

Vogue magazine once listed her among the "World's Ten Most Beautiful Women".

In 1962 Gatatri Devi entered politics, founding the Swatantra party, and running against the Congress Party.

During the 1970s, the then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi abolished the last royal privileges, and Gayatri Devi was jailed for five months for violating tax laws.

In later life, Gayatri Devi became known affectionately as Rajmata, or Queen Mother, still greatly admired for her natural grace and beauty.

She is survived by two grandchildren.

rorschach test

A Rorschach Cheat Sheet on Wikipedia?

There are tests that have right answers, which are returned with a number on top in a red circle, and there are tests with open-ended questions, which provide insight into the test taker’s mind.

Enlarge This Image

Orlando/Three Lions/Getty Images

Psychologists say Wikipedia’s entry jeopardizes the Rorschach test’s usefulness.

Enlarge This Image

In June, Dr. James Heilman posted all 10 plates on the site, along with research about the most popular responses to each.

The Rorschach test, a series of 10 inkblot plates created by the Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach for his book “Psychodiagnostik,” published in 1921, is clearly in the second category.

Yet in the last few months, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia has been engulfed in a furious debate involvingpsychologists who are angry that the 10 original Rorschach plates are reproduced online, along with common responses for each. For them, the Wikipedia page is the equivalent of posting an answer sheet to next year’s SAT.

They are pitted against the overwhelming majority of Wikipedia’s users, who share the site’s “free culture” ethos, which opposes the suppression of information that it is legal to publish. (Because the Rorschach plates were created nearly 90 years ago, they have lost their copyright protection in the United States.)

“The only winners seem to be those for whom this issue has become personal, and who see this as a game in which victory means having their way,” one Wikipedia poster named Faustian wrote on Monday, adding, “Just don’t pretend you are doing anything other than harming scientific research.”

What had been a simmering dispute over the reproduction of a single plate reached new heights in June when James Heilman, an emergency-room doctor from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, posted images of all 10 plates to the bottom of the article about the test, along with what research had found to be the most popular responses for each.

“I just wanted to raise the bar — whether one should keep a single image on Wikipedia seemed absurd to me, so I put all 10 up,” Dr. Heilman said in an interview. “The debate has exploded from there.”

Psychologists have registered with Wikipedia to argue that the site is jeopardizing one of the oldest continuously used psychological assessment tests.

While the plates have appeared on other Web sites, it was not until they showed up on the popular Wikipedia site that psychologists became concerned.

“The more test materials are promulgated widely, the more possibility there is to game it,” said Bruce L. Smith, a psychologist and president of the International Society of the Rorschach and Projective Methods, who has posted under the user name SPAdoc. He quickly added that he did not mean that a coached subject could fool the person giving the test into making the wrong diagnosis, but rather “render the results meaningless.”

To psychologists, to render the Rorschach test meaningless would be a particularly painful development because there has been so much research conducted — tens of thousands of papers, by Dr. Smith’s estimate — to try to link a patient’s responses to certain psychological conditions. Yes, new inkblots could be used, these advocates concede, but those blots would not have had the research — “the normative data,” in the language of researchers — that allows the answers to be put into a larger context.

And, more fundamentally, the psychologists object whenever diagnostic tools fall into the hands of amateurs who haven’t been trained to administer them. “Our ethics code that governs the behavior of psychologists talks about maintaining test security,” Steve J. Breckler, the executive director for science at the American Psychological Association, said in an interview. “We wouldn’t be in favor of putting the plates out where anyone can get hold of them.”

Alvin G. Burstein, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, wrote in an e-mail message that his preference was to have the images removed but that he did not think they would harm the psychological process.

“The process of making sense of one’s experience,” he wrote, “is gratifying. To take Rorschach’s test is to make sense of ambiguity in the context of someone who is interested in how you do that.”

more to love fox

Sneak peek at 'More to Love'

I just watched a preview copy of Fox's More to Love, which features plus-size women vying for the love of a plus-size bachelor and premieres tonight.

The show is very ... fraught. All dating shows have a degree of desperation to them, right? Every woman and man on The Bachelor or The Bachelorette has discussed at one point or another their difficulties on the dating scene, but on More to Love, all the women -- and the bachelor, Luke Conley -- have a single issue at the forefront that they believe to be the source of their dating difficulties: their weight.

There are several women who are very comfortable with their size. But there's also a woman who's never been on a date before, a woman who quit her job to be on the show, a woman who says she feels this is her last chance to find love with someone who will give her a chance.

Like I said ... it's fraught.

Keep an eye out for Danielle, who is either a 25-year-old receptionist from Baltimore (if you believe the show's captions) or a 25-year-old theater company technical director from L.A. (if you believe the show's press release), and check out what she does to get Luke's attention.

I don't want to give too much away, but you will not believe what the show's answer is to The Bachelor's giving and receiving of roses.

OK, I will tell you, but stop reading here if you don't want to know before the show.

After meeting all of the women, Luke gives each a diamond ring (!!!), which he says signifies his promise that he will get to know them inside and out, since he already thinks they are all gorgeous.

But then how will the eliminations take place, if the women already have the rings, you ask? Well, he takes all 20 of the rings back and then only gives out 15 at the end of the show. Harsh!

I'm curious what you all will think of the show, so come back and talk about it afterward. One thing I noticed was that there was a lot of talk about food, which seemed pretty gratuitous and unnecessary.

apollo project

NASA's Final Apollo Missions: The Last Footsteps on the Moon.
The American astronauts of Apollo 17 left a metal sign on the moon marking the end of the first explorations of Earth’s satellite. Transcript of radio broadcast: 28 July 2009

VOICE ONE:

I'm Shirley Griffith.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Steve Ember with EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English. Today we tell about the flights that followed Apollo Eleven to the moon.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

The summer of nineteen sixty-nine was a special time in history. That was when men from Earth -- American astronauts -- flew their Apollo Eleven spacecraft to the moon, landed and returned home safely. The world honored the astronauts as heroes.

The launch of Apollo 12 took place in bad weather

Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin were the first to land on the moon. But they were not the last. NASA -- the National Aeronautics and Space Administration -- launched six more Apollo flights.

Apollo Twelve lifted off only four months after the Apollo Eleven flight. Rain had fallen the night before. The clouds cleared, but more rain was expected. Space officials decided the weather was safe enough for them to launch the spacecraft.

Thirty-six seconds after lift-off, lightning hit the huge Saturn Five rocket. The Apollo spacecraft lost electrical power to its control system. The astronauts worked calmly to get the power back on. Then lightning struck again. And power was lost again.

The lightning, however, did not affect the Saturn rocket. The rocket continued to push the spacecraft on its path. The astronauts soon fixed the electrical problem. The situation returned to normal. Apollo Twelve could continue its flight to the moon.

VOICE TWO:

All three astronauts of Apollo Twelve were Navy fliers. Charles Conrad was the flight commander. Richard Gordon was pilot of the command module. Alan Bean was pilot of the moon lander.

Apollo 12 astronaut Pete Conrad inspects Surveyor 3. The lunar module Intrepid is in the distance.

After four days, Apollo Twelve was near its landing area on the moon. It would land in an area called the Ocean of Storms. The Ocean of Storms was about two thousand kilometers west of the place where Apollo Eleven had landed.

Richard Gordon remained in the command module circling the moon. Charles Conrad and Alan Bean flew the lander craft to the surface. They came down near Surveyor Three, an unmanned spacecraft that had landed on the moon two years before. Surveyor had sent back six thousand pictures of the moon before it stopped working.

Conrad stepped out of the lander onto the moon. He described the surface as he walked away from the spacecraft. "Oh," he said, "is this soft! I don't sink in it too far. "

VOICE ONE:

Alan Bean followed Charles Conrad to the surface. The two astronauts collected about thirty-five kilograms of rocks. They left five scientific instruments designed to send information back to Earth. And they visited the old Surveyor spacecraft.

The two astronauts spent more than thirty-one hours on the moon. Then they returned to the orbiting command module and started back to Earth. They landed in the Pacific Ocean, only six kilometers from the ship that waited to rescue them.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

The command module of Apollo 13 after landing safely

The next flight in America's Apollo space project -- Apollo Thirteen -- never landed on the moon. Three days after launch, an explosion damaged the spacecraft. The astronauts lost most of their oxygen. They had to cancel the moon landing and use the moon lander as a lifeboat. Oxygen from the lander kept them alive during the long trip back to Earth.

Apollo Fourteen was launched in January, nineteen seventy-one. It landed in the hilly Fra Mauro area of the moon.

Fra Mauro is a huge highlands east of Apollo Twelve's landing place. A large meteorite hit the area four thousand million years ago. The force of the crash spread material from deep inside the moon. Scientists wanted to study this material. They believed it would give them important information about the early history of the moon.

VOICE ONE:

The commander of the Apollo Fourteen flight was Alan Shepard. He had been the first American in space. Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell were the other members of the crew. One piece of equipment on Apollo Fourteen was a light-weight vehicle with two wheels. The astronauts used it to carry tools and cameras while they were on the moon. The vehicle made it possible for them to travel farther from the spacecraft to collect rocks and do experiments. They walked as far as three kilometers from the moon lander. Even with the two-wheeled vehicle, however, Shepard and Mitchell could not reach one of their goals -- a crater called Cone. They did not have enough oxygen to walk that far. They had to return to the lander.

Apollo Twelve and Apollo Fourteen produced much new scientific information. And they increased the interest of scientists in the next Apollo flights to the moon.

(MUSIC)

The lunar rover of Apollo 15

VOICE TWO:

The last three flights would permit astronauts to stay much longer on the moon. They also would provide a vehicle with four wheels in which astronauts could ride. With such a vehicle, astronauts could explore a much larger area of the moon's surface. The vehicle was called a lunar rover.

The lunar rover was powered by electricity. It could carry two astronauts more than thirty kilometers from the lander. It could carry more than one hundred ten kilograms of equipment. The Lunar Rover also had a television camera and an antenna for sending color television broadcasts back to Earth.

VOICE ONE:

David Scott, Alfred Worden and James Irwin were the crew for Apollo Fifteen. They were launched in July, nineteen seventy-one. They landed at Hadley Rille near the Apennine Mountains, northwest of the place where Apollo Eleven had landed.

The "genesis rock"

Scott and Irwin were the first to use the Lunar Rover vehicle. They made several trips from the landing area to study the surface of the moon. They gathered seventy-six kilos of moon rocks. And they placed a small satellite in lunar orbit before they returned to Earth.

The Apollo Fifteen astronauts returned safely. Scientists were excited about the moon rocks the astronauts brought back. They named one of them "the Genesis Rock." It is believed to be more than four billion years old. Scientists say the rock was created very early in the life of the moon.

Soil brought back contained bits of orange glass. Scientists said the glass came from material created as deep as three hundred kilometers below the moon's surface.

Astronauts John Young, Thomas Mattingly and Charles Duke flew Apollo Sixteen to the moon in April, nineteen seventy-two. Young and Duke landed southwest of the Apollo Eleven landing place. They spent forty-five hours on the moon. They collected rocks and set up scientific equipment.

(MUSIC)

Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan with the American flag, and Earth in the lunar sky above him

VOICE TWO:

Astronauts Eugene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt and Ronald Evans made the last Apollo flight to the moon. That was in December, nineteen seventy-two. Cernan and Schmitt landed in a valley almost directly north of the Apollo Eleven landing place. They spent seventy-five hours, in all, on the surface. More than twenty-two hours were spent working outside the lander.

The astronauts made three trips in the lunar rover to take pictures and collect rocks. The astronauts also left many scientific devices that would continue to report information about the moon.

Cernan and Schmitt lifted off the moon on December fourteenth. Just before leaving, they placed a metal sign on the surface. The sign was to remain forever.

It said: "Here man completed his first exploration of the moon December 1972 [A.D.] May the spirit of peace in which we came be reflected in the lives of all mankind."

VOICE ONE:

Production of the Saturn Five rocket and the Apollo spacecraft ended with Apollo Seventeen. America's manned explorations of the moon were completed.

It was the end of a special time in human history. It had been the first time people moved beyond their small planet into the huge solar system. Now, once again, the moon was beyond human reach.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Our program was written by Marilyn Rice Christiano. It was produced by Mario Ritter. I'm Steve Ember.

VOICE ONE:

And I'm Shirley Griffith. You can find the complete series on the American space program on our Web site, voaspecialenglish.com. Join us next week for EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English.

Todd Genger.

Todd Genger has just managed to get himself arrested for essentially grooming a 15 year old girl over the internet. The reason Genger's "essentially" been doing that is that what he thought was a 15 year old girl on the internet was actually an investigator for the Westchester DA's office.

Tsk, tsk.

Todd Genger is (still is but presumably this will change to was at some point) an attorney at Goldman Sachs. Apparently the high profile career and a marriage with three kids wasn't enough so off he went to the chat rooms to see what he could find. Starting out in April he kept up the conversation with what he thought was a 15 year old girl and when he traveled to Westchester to consummate the deal he found that, well, Westchester tends not to employ investigators who are still in high school.

Genger "admitted to participating in the online conversations about the intended tryst, which included 'specific explicit sexual acts´." and could get anything from 15 months to 4 years if convicted.

But what inquiring minds want to know is, has anyone ever heard of one of these 15 year old girls on the internet, supposedly just agog with excitement at getting it on with someone possibly older than their own fathers, actually being 15 year old girls just agog with excitement? The only stories we ever seem to hear are of those who aren't, who are investigators or guys having a joke. Is it that we never hear about in happening in reality, or that it never does happen in reality?

To give you some further background on Todd Genger:

Todd W. Genger and his wife Tamar have been active members of the Darkhei Noam community for three years and have three beautiful children, Aryeh, Akiva and Sela. Todd is a graduate of the University of Maryland and George Washington University School of Law. Currently, Todd is an attorney at an investment bank downtown and is a founding board member of JNFuture, the young leadership division of the Jewish National Fund.

No, nothing to do with his Judaism, rather, it seems now that sexual shenanigans by the religious are no longer confined to the stricter.

chris harrison blog

Chris Harrison Blog Goes into Hibernation.

Chris Harrison's blog is more highly anticipated sometimes than the show he hosts. The Chris Harrison blog about the previous night's Bachelor or Bachelorette episode is always a big feature on Entertainment Weekly's website. Chris Harrison gets to write a blog over these episode because

Chris Harrison Blog Goes into Hibernation

he hosts The Bachelor and Bachelorette, and can give fans a behind-the-scenes perspective on all the drama. After the highly anticipated "After the Final Rose" special aired last night, Chris Harrison posted his last blog of the season for Entertainment Weekly and said goodbye to the fans for now.

Chris Harrison is already famous for hosting The Bachelorfranchise, but has extra Internet fame for the blog he posts after every episode. Harrison blogs about everything that went into making the previous episode, and the actions of the contestants before they made their choices.

The Chris Harrison blog approached its season finale, much like The Bachelorette itself. Since Harrison himself was part of the drama, when he talked things out with BacheloretteJillian Harris before she chose Ed Swiderski, many wanted to read his blog and get his take on the scene.

Harrison wrote that Jillian "needed a friend to talk to" who would lead her back to where she really wanted to go - with Ed. Despite Reid Rosenthal making a final pitch, Harrison helped Jillian gather herself and make the choice to marry Ed.

However, when the "After the Final Rose" special aired last night, many expected that Jillian would leave Ed after all. But Harris and Swiderski were still together at the end of the special. Harrison himself attacked the conspiracy theories on his blog, saying fans wanted a happy ending this time and "they're still not happy!"

Chris Harrison's blog was also highly anticipated today because fans want clues as to who the next Bachelor will be. However, Harrison wasn't giving out any answers, saying that they still haven't made a decision - although many believe that the next Bachelor will be Bachelorette runner-up Kiptyn Locke.