What happens when the EU aims for female empowerment and misses so spectacularly that it would take the Hubble array to see female empowerment from where they landed?

This is what happens!

Seems someone over in the EU decided there weren't enough girls studying science, and they needed to change that. Excellent aim! But then, something went wrong. I'm guessing it's because a committee was appointed to look into the matter. That's enough to screw anything up. According to my imagination, the conversation looked like this:

( Warning: Failure Ahead )

What the hell was someone smoking when they thought this up:

If Fred Got Two Beatings Per Day, How Much More Inappropriate Could They Have Made These Math Problems in Georgia?

Summary: Math questions in GA ask questions about how much cotton and fruit slaves could pick and speculate as to the number of beatings they'd receive.

I'm not joking.

( For the link-phobic )

This comes with the usual "read comments at your own peril" caveat; aside from the linked Reddit comment, I don't intend to read any of them myself.

A man at a California bar teased an off-duty cop "Aw, you suck at darts". The cop responded by saying he can do what he wants, pulling out his gun and executing the man.

( Text of InformationLiberation article )

( Reddit comment from reporter who broke the story )

Suspected domestic abusers go free as Topeka city and county officials bicker about money

Short version: The county says that its budget cuts mean it can't prosecute any of the city of Topeka, KS's misdemeanors, including domestic violence. The city says it can't afford to fund the prosecutions itself. Therefore, the city is considering decriminalizing domestic violence in order to force the county to take on the prosecutions again. Meanwhile, don't bother calling the police when your domestic partner beats you up, because no one will prosecute them.

Long version: ( For the linkphobic )

TRIGGER WARNING for sexual assault and victim-blaming. ETA: shadwing also reminded me to include the usual "read comments at your own peril" caveat.

Suit filed against Republic School District - District didn't protect girl from sexual assault, suit maintains.

( Discussion and article text. )

Most of us are keenly aware of the shortcomings of justice system. People are freed after 5, 10, 15, 20 years and longer in prison after new evidence comes to light and exonerates them. Victims of crimes, particularly sexual assault victims, are blamed for the crimes. They are told they were asking for it — that they are responsible because of that. No amount of money can make up for the lost years. Nothing can make up for the emotional trauma of being told you are the one responsible, and not the person who actually committed those offenses.

( Rape and abuse triggers behind the cut )

Daily Kos has the rest of the story.

Glenn Beck compares Norway youth camp to Hitler Youth

Yes, the same one that got shot up. There are no words. There are seriously no words.

From an email sent by Change.org:

A.J. Nelson was just four years old when he was killed in a hit-and-run by an intoxicated driver in Atlanta. Now his own mother, Raquel Nelson -- who was also hit by the car while trying to save her son -- faces up to three years in prison for A.J.'s death.

Grist has the story in When design kills: The criminalization of walking.

Change.org has a petition: Cobb County GA: Release Grieving Mother of Hit-and-Run & Install a Crosswalk.

I have the text of the Change.org email along with my commentary at A petition against the criminalization of walking.

Here's a story I've been following on my blog since July 30th, when I posted Oak Park Woman plants vegetable garden; city objects. In it, I summarized the situation.

the Bass family of Oak Park lost their lawn when the sewer line running under their front yard was replaced. Instead of replacing it with a lawn, they replaced it with a vegetable garden. Their neighbors complained to the city and the city has cited them with a criminal violation of city ordinances. The Basses and the city have a court date on July 26th.
...
Mrs. Bass posted a more complete summary after I wrote (and she read) the above. Please read it.

( As someone familiar with the area, I'm not surprised this is happening in Oak Park. )

Beginning Friday, July 8th, the number of hits on that post began climbing dramatically. When I investigated how that happened, I found out that Drudge happened.

A couple of days ago, Matt Drudge placed a link to The Agitator's post on his front page with the headline "Woman faces 93 days in jail for planting garden in front yard..." Since then, the story has spread like wildfire. Here is a list of the media sources I've found covering this story with links to their articles (Hat/tip to April Alexander at Urban Homestead Diaries for compiling most of these).

Grist: Michigan woman could face jail time for growing a garden

Treehugger: Michigan Woman Faces 93 Days in Jail for Planting a Vegetable Garden

Huffington Post: Woman Could Be Jailed For Vegetable Garden

Washington Post: Julie Bass may face jail time for planting vegetables

Look at that progression. Not only are the environmental publications and the avowedly liberal Huffington Post on board, one of the two national papers of record, The Washington Post, is now covering this story. The issue has even attracted attention from overseas.

The Daily Mail (UK): Woman faces jail for growing vegetables in her front yard

A check of Google News shows 66 results for "Julie Bass", all of which are about this story and are all from July 8th or later.

As for how Drudge was indirectly responsible, he drove traffic to The Agitator, which drove traffic Julie Bass's blog OakParkHateVeggies, where she has a link to my post. Even from three steps away, Drudge increased my readership. Behold the power of Drudge.

In case you're wondering what you can do about it, there is a petition. 4,400 people signed it by Friday, less than a week after it was put up.

UPDATE: The charge against Julie Bass for her garden has been dropped. That's the good news. The bad news is that it has been dropped without prejudice, which means that it could be reinstated at any time. The worse news is that the city is now after her for her dogs. To read more, check out MyFoxDETROIT.com, the Detroit News, and the Detroit Free Press. Julie Bass herself has comments on her blog here and here. Finally my tl;dr comments along with a larger version of the Fox 2 Detroit video are at Good, bad, and ugly news in Oak Park's "War on Veggies".

Art Info: China Steps Up Its Cyberwar on Change.org

Apparently, now China is trying to shut down free speech outside its borders as well as within.

On Tuesday, we reported that the Web site Change.org, which is hosting a petition for the release of detained artist Ai Weiwei, stated that it was facing “highly sophisticated denial of service attacks from locations in China,” and that it was appealing to the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of East Asian Pacific Affairs for help. Well, the latest news is that the attacks haven’t stopped — they have only escalated, and the site says that it has engineers “working around the clock to fend off the attacks.” Below, find the complete text of Change.org’s message sent out to supporters today (in this case, our own ace associate editor Emma Allen) to update them on the situation:

( Email behind the cut )

As far as I can tell, Amazon.com hosts Change.org, along with a whole bunch of other sites. As a result, a whole bunch of domains are off-line, as documented in Amazon servers take down Reddit, Foursquare, and more.

Submitted to unfunnybusiness instead of political_wank or random_lounge because of the unfunny situation involving Ai Weiwei. Besides, if this isn't an example of "the internet is srs bzns" I don't know what is.

Link here

What if people had been trapped in there, and no one knew? Or if someone said there was someone trapped? Would they have opened the hoses then?