Developed by Richard Berk, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the software is already used in Baltimore and Philadelphia to predict which individuals on probation or parole are most likely to murder and to be murdered.
. . .
If the software proves successful, it could influence sentencing recommendations and bail amounts.
"When a person goes on probation or parole they are supervised by an officer. The question that officer has to answer is 'what level of supervision do you provide?'" said Berk.
It used to be that parole officers used the person's criminal record, and their good judgment, to determine that level.
"This research replaces those seat-of-the-pants calculations," he said.
. . .
Beginning several years ago, the researchers assembled a dataset of more than 60,000 various crimes, including homicides. Using an algorithm they developed, they found a subset of people much more likely to commit homicide when paroled or probated. Instead of finding one murderer in 100, the UPenn researchers could identify eight future murderers out of 100.
Berk's software examines roughly two dozen variables, from criminal record to geographic location. The type of crime, and more importantly, the age at which that crime was committed, were two of the most predictive variables.
. . .
Scientifically, Berk's results are "very impressive," said Shawn Bushway, a professor of criminal justice at the State University of New York at Albany who is familiar with Berk's research.
Predicting rare events like murder, even among high-risk individuals, is extremely difficult, said Bushway, and Berk is doing a better job of it than anyone else.
But Berk's scientific answer leaves policymakers with difficult questions, said Bushway. By labeling one group of people as high risk, and monitoring them with increased vigilance, there should be fewer murders, which the potential victims should be happy about.
It also means that those high-risk individuals will be monitored more aggressively. For inmate rights advocates, that is tantamount to harassment, "punishing people who, most likely, will not commit a crime in the future," said Bushway.
It was Alexander’s 11-year conquest, between 334 and 323 B.C. that had brought me to this point — sharing a belching ferry ride this month across the Dardanelles with a gaggle of school girls giggling at the sight of a passing pod of dolphins. It was his crossing here that also made me realize, with a laugh, that my own ambitious undertaking — to walk 2,000-plus miles in the footsteps of Alexander as he set about redrawing the maps of the ancient world — lacked what would, back in the day, have been considered essentials (an army of many thousands of men, horses and supplies for at least a year).
Do they still say the pen is mightier than the sword?
Tea Leaves: Sex, Love, and Marriage in Gaza
On our half hour drive back, I began peppering Hamouda with questions about one topic I’ve never delved into here: sex, love, and marriage in Gaza. He was a good sport and let me cover all the relevant topics top to bottom. Hamouda, age 20, says he wants to get married in 2 years. His parents will facilitate the arrangement with a girl’s family.
In the world of arranged Muslim marriages, it’s somewhat incorrect to assert that there isn’t a period of dating and courtship. It just happens in the opposite order of how it’s done elsewhere.
Here, after families pair the bride-to-be with the groom-to-be and financial terms are arranged, the two get engaged. The engagement, which can last typically 6 months, essentially allows the couple to spend time alone with one another and get better acquainted. They can sit next to one another in cars, enjoy one-on-one dinners, and walk together in public. In other words, engagement first, dating second.
I’ve heard all sorts of horror stories involving Hamas police beating up men they catch walking down the street alongside a girl they’re not engaged or married to. Hamouda told me that when he drives a girlfriend (or “a girl that is a friend,” if we’re going to get high school about it) in his car, she sits in the back so he can claim to Hamas officials that he’s driving her for work. Still, though, Hamouda insists that young men and women find a ways to maintain friendships, through cell phones, the internet, and a little bit of discretion.
The highlight of the conversation came when I asked Hamouda about the wedding night. He’s already picked out the spot for the party, but he was quick to move onto the after party, which features the couple’s first ever trip to the bedroom.
Hamouda described at length how it’s important for the groom to find an apartment for him and his bride to move into immediately after the ceremony because, as he explains, you don’t want to sleep with a girl for the first time in the family house with your parents right outside the door.
As for honeymoons, a great line: “Gaza is closed, and we can’t leave. So we spend the honeymoon in the bedroom.”
Perhaps he had put on a few pounds since the last time he went, er, window shopping.
For when this hapless burglar tried to break into a house at 2am yesterday, he found himself in a bit of a tight spot.
After attempting to slip in through an unlocked window under the cover of darkness, the thief found himself stuck fast in the tiny frame measuring just 12in by 8in.
Unable to wriggle out of it, the crook was left with his bottom and legs dangling outside the ground floor window for almost six hours until he was discovered by the astonished owner of the house as he came downstairs for breakfast.
Police, ambulance and fire crews were called to the address in Bow, east London after the homeowner reported the intruder's sticky predicament at 7.30am.
Two fire engines attended and ten firefighters worked to free him using a ladder to support the man's legs as bolt-cutters sliced through the window frame.
Amused by the spectacle, neighbours gathered to watch.
One resident said: 'It was hilarious. All of the neighbours came outside to take a look at his legs and backside sticking out of the window.
'He must have felt a right idiot. Most people wanted him to be left there. There is one neighbour who is a surgeon, and he told the emergency services he'd be able to get the burglar out without damaging the window.
'But they politely declined, saying they would rather get him out in one piece.'
Every weekend, across the nation's rolling countryside, watch out for the MAMIL's: Middle-Aged Men In Lycra [better known in the US as Spandex].
And ladies, if you have a man at home taking an unusual interest in how you shave your legs, you may have a Mamil in the making too.
Research conducted by the retail analyst Mintel suggests there has been a surge in the number of middle-aged men choosing to get on two wheels.
Given the number of men aged 35-44 who are buying fancy-pants road racing machines, is this a 21st Century mid-life crisis? Has the silence of skinny tyres and carbon fibre framesets replaced the thunderous noise of motorbikes?
Back in the day, when some men with a bit of disposable income reached a certain age, they did some strange things. The grind of the office and home life convinced some that the answer to an expanding midriff lay in a pair of designer jeans and a flashy but cheap Japanese sports car. Teenage daughters ran away screaming. Sons were deprived of the role models seen in adverts for shaving products.
Gents, our womenfolk were right all along. It wasn't a good look. And did it do anything for the beer belly?
But then came a confluence of coincidences that gave a man an option other than looking like a gigolo cruising Italy's glitzy Lake Como.
The past three years have seen the rise of the uber-techno, super-flashy, full-carbon fibre, bobby-dazzler road bike. The market for these bikes has expanded faster than a 45-year-old's waistline, partly thanks to the success of the British cycling stars at the Beijing Olympics. Marketing departments have produced smart advertising messages that encourage a bit of freedom, elite performance and memories of teenage derring-do.
And the result can be seen on Saturday and Sunday mornings as middle-aged blokes polish the rear derailleur, lower the mirrored shades and pedal into the hills. Every couple of weeks, you'll see a girth of Mamils gathering to race a "Sportive", a form of amateur competing that has taken the British cycling world by storm.
While the serious, younger riders are busy getting into the zone of elite competition, we're comparing the latest GPS route-finding cycle computer and pretending that we know how to stretch.
We hit the first hill and suddenly we're a puffing, panting, heaving mass of sweaty humanity that is well past its sell-by-date. Sounds humiliating? I've never had so much fun in my life - and there are also some unintended benefits of being the older rider.
First, there's the no-questions-asked fan club. My kids, on the promise of an ice cream, will cheer me over the top of any climb. They're still young enough to think I'm Superman - and you don't get that kind of pick-me-up on the golf course.
Even better is the Mamil's solution to saddle sores. A teenage shop assistant in a too-posh-to-pedal London shop tried to sell me some balm for £30. What's the point of that, I asked. I've got loads of unused nappy [diaper] rash cream at home. He thought I was terminally uncool. I know better son, learn from your elders.
. . .
I conclude with a message from my own Mrs Mamil to other cycling widows. She's discovered a precise form of retaliation. If your portly husband buys another stupid fluorescent jersey, buy yourself another pair of shoes.
That way, at least one of you can look good.
Prof Rosaleen Duffy has researched the issue for 15 years for a book to be published this month.
. . .
Ms Duffy says the development of nature tourism has meant international pressure to save high-profile species is intense.
Some conservation groups regard the protection of the gorilla, rhino and other endangered species as more important than human life, she says.
In countries, including Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Malawi, private security firms have been brought in to provide military-style protection for these iconic animals.
. . .
"Because private military operations and also park rangers are given authority to shoot on sight, the suspected poachers, then they can shoot first and ask questions later," she told the BBC.
"I think what happens then is that local people get justifiably very angry about people being shot because they're suspected of poaching whereas in fact what they might be doing is simply taking a short cut through a national park or they might be collecting grass for thatch."
Ms Duffy concedes that some poachers are heavily armed professionals - often former members of security forces - who are only too willing to open fire themselves.
But escalating this war for wildlife is, in Ms Duffy's view, not the way forward.
She argues that conservationists should work with local people, so that they value the animals that wander near their homes.
It’s not easy to hear conversations over the clinking of glasses and raucous banter that fills the hangar-like London venue of the Great British Beer Festival, but this year among the thousands gathered to toast their beloved warm beers, there is talk of heresy.
The Great British Beer Festival is exactly what its name implies. It’s a festival, it’s great, there’s beer — enough of the stuff to soak an entire city — and it’s a proud celebration of brewing traditions that no one else upholds quite like the British.
Except, it seems, the Americans.
For lurking like sediment in an empty barrel is the controversial claim that American craft brewers, in their enthusiastic efforts to recreate the traditional bitters, porters, stouts, milds and golden ales of England, Scotland and Wales, are actually now bettering them.
And British drinkers can’t get enough. Midway through the five-day festival, most of the 80 American draft beers on sale (the largest collection of U.S. beers ever assembled anywhere in the world, the organizers claim), had run out. Bottled beers were selling just as quickly.
. . .
Sales of beers from both sides of the Atlantic are welcomed by the Campaign for Real Ales, or CAMRA, the festival organizers, which stages the event as the yearly centerpiece to its long-running battle to preserve artisanal brewing methods under threat from industrial giants.
With more than 60,000 visitors, the event is a runaway success, giving CAMRA a platform to drive home its serious messages about British pub closures and beer taxation, as well as some headline-grabbing pseudo-science about how “switching to beer can help you lose weight.”
This year, to celebrate the ascension of U.S. beers, there’s also a new prize for best American cask ale. The inaugural winner of the Michael Jackson award (named after a British beer aficionado, not you-know-who) is Smuttynose Big A IPA, from Portsmouth, N.H.
Says Garrett, who volunteers to work at the festival but earns his beer money as a civil servant, said Smuttynose boasts the “big flavors,” which are partly behind the popularity of the American brews and, with a 9.7-percent alcohol by volume (ABV), is typically potent.
“The reason people love the American beers is they’ve taken the British brewing traditions and made them their own," Garrett said. "You often hear phrases like ‘pushing the envelope’ and I suppose that’s what they’ve done. They have used more of everything to ramp up the flavor. There’s no subtlety — they go for very big beers.”
. . .
The British brewing industry can, however, probably rest easy for the time being. While U.S. craft ales such as Boston’s Samuel Adams and California’s Sierra Nevada have made headway into the potentially-lucrative U.K. market, the high cost of importing is likely to remain a barrier for most, as are the CAMRA naysayers.
“We can’t really expand the international beer section at the festival any further without treading on a few toes,” Garrett said. “It will remain the British Beer festival, but we just want people to know that American beer is better than Budweiser.”
With that, he proffered a bottle of Smuttynose recovered from a hidden stash behind the bar, a brew he describes as “very balanced and deceptively drinkable,” adding, with a wry smile, “I wouldn’t recommend more than one bottle, mind you.”
The competition’s goal was to obtain new ideas in types and appearances for 220kV high-voltage towers and lines. The competition emphasized that specific consideration be given to the visual impact of the towers (or lines) and that careful consideration be given to the appearance of towers near urban areas and unsettled regions.
The competitors were free to choose whether all the towers would have a new look, particular towers and selected environments would have a new look, or whether the appearance of known types of towers would be altered. In addition, it was left up to the competitors whether the design would blend into the landscape in rural and urban areas, or the tower/towers would stand out as objects.
The main goal of the competition was that a new type of tower/towers would emerge, altering the overall appearance of line routes and that towers could be developed further with respect to environmental impact, the electromagnetic field lifetime and cost.
The competition was advertised in Iceland and abroad.
Making only minor alterations to well established steel-framed tower design, we have created a series of towers that are powerful, solemn and variable. These iconic pylon-figures will become monuments in the landscape. Seeing the pylon-figures will become an unforgettable experience, elevating the towers to something more than merely a functional design of necessity.
The pylon-figures can be configured to respond to their environment with appropriate gestures. As the carried electrical lines ascend a hill, the pylon-figures change posture, imitating a climbing person. Over long spans, the pylon-figure stretches to gain increased height, crouches for increased strength or strains under the weight of the wires.
. . .
Despite the large number of possible forms, each pylon-figure is made from the same major assembled parts (torso, fore arm, upper leg, hand etc.) and uses a library of pre-assembled joints between these parts to create the pylon-figures’ appearance. This design allows for many variations in form and height while the pylon-figures’ cost is kept low through identical production, simple assembly and construction.
Like the statues of Easter Island, it is envisioned that these one hundred and fifty foot tall, modern caryatids will take on a quiet authority, belonging to their landscape yet serving the people, silently transporting electricity across all terrain, day and night, sunshine or snow.
It is a competition not for the fainthearted, but several brave Canadians rose to the challenge at the Clovermead Bees & Honey, Bee Beard Competition in Ontario yesterday.
Beebearding is thought to date back to the 1700s when an English beekeeper discovered he could create a beard of bees by tying the queen to a thread around his neck and would parade through the streets wearing the unusual costume.
In a recent interview with The Australia Telegraph, professional beekeeper Melanie Kempers explained the beard process.
'Every colony has one queen,' she says. 'They all recognize her by smell. We put her in a small plastic cage and tie it around the neck, and we take the bees from her colony.
'We put them onto newspaper, and then pour them into a pair of hands just below the queen. They smell her and walk up towards her. Once they smell her, they huddle around her, that’s what creates the certain look.'
