Night of the Twisters

I've wrestled with how personal I want this blog to be lately.  On one hand I enjoy featuring serious (or interesting, at any rate) news pieces and my resultant responses.  This serves a purpose, certainly.  I've considered a general refrain from the more personal topics, namely because who really cares and, more to the point, why share it on the Internet in the first place?  Well, mother, I'm not exactly handing out my phone number to total strangers here.  After much deliberation I've decided, what the heck.  I can put whatever I feel like on here.  Excuse me if a post surfaces about the expiration dates on the cans in my pantry, that might be going a tad too far.  I'll figure things out as I go.

Anyways, last evening, as I was futzing around (it's a technical term, you understand) on my (relatively) new (okay hand me down) 24" computer monitor (thanks Uncle T!) I was startled by a sound I have not heard since the middle of last summer.

See, I live in a stretch of the U.S. known as Tornado Alley.  We have a tornado season, similar to hurricane season and baseball season (some are more catastrophic than others), which is generally a summer thing.  It's all based on the fluctuations of the jet stream and front movements and a bunch of other fancy weathery terms that all basically mean that our particular part of the Midwest offers the perfect tornado-inducing weather.

Funny story, when my parents first arrived in the St. Louis area some time ago on a military installment, fresh from the West coast, they had no clue about the technicalities of living in a tornado-prone area.  One day my mother was at a store when lo and behold the sirens went off.  Bless her heart, my mother allegedly turned to the nearest Midwesterner and asked WHAT THE HECK IS THAT?!  I truly wish I could have seen what that other woman's face looked like when she replied with, to her, the obvious explanation.  My mother says the woman looked at her like she had two heads.  I don't doubt it.  Silly West-coaster.  What I find additionally amusing to the story is that the sirens might not have been an actual tornado warning; during the "official" (you'd think I knew when this was) tornado season, there are drills on the first Monday of every month.

It was after 10 o'clock last night when I heard the first blasts of the tornado siren.  I honestly thought there was an emergency vehicle on my street, though I couldn't figure out what kind would make such an odd sound.  Then it dawned on me.  Maybe it was just a test, you know, past ten... on a Sunday night... Okay, the test theory got ruled out pretty quickly.

Wait, a tornado siren in February?

We did have a wave of tornadoes blow through on New Year's Day.   It's possible but highly uncommon for tornadoes to form over the winter months.  The bursts of unseasonably warm weather over the past month, however, combined with the alternating cold (and normal given the season) weather is actually a perfect recipe for an unstable atmosphere.  Tornado alley, ladies and gents.

Last night when the sirens went off I took a look outside but it didn't look much worse out there than any other given thunderstorm.  Then I checked the Doppler.

Red is bad.  

This is only a snapshot from last night, obviously, and doesn't reflect the storm at its peak.  At one point, a decent majority of the metro area was covered by red mass.

The first round of sirens died down as we considered taking cover in the basement.  When the second round flared up, which was around when the storm peaked for us (i.e. it was at it's highest intensity, i.e. it was VERY violent out there), I was all for the basement option.  I tossed my mac book and cell phone into a tote, then grabbed my cat and a blanket.  Just the essentials.

I didn't get to the basement, however, because en route the sirens stopped and the storm quieted significantly.  Still wary, as tornadoes are known to cause a sudden calm in a storm before a strike, I waited for the all clear from the radar.  We were good to go.

As I found out this morning, my dad and a friend of mine in other parts of the area, saw some more action than we did.  My dad's place only suffered a few downed trees.  My friend's house, however, was hit by one of the tornadoes that actually touched down last night.  Fortunately, no one was hurt, and there was only some minor damage to his house (though his yard is apparently a mess).

In all the years I've lived in the Midwest, I honestly can't remember a tornado touching down in our area. In the past two months, including last night and New Year's Day, there's been more than enough.  Crazy.

All of this makes me want to dig out an old favorite book of mine, Night of the Twisters by Ivy Ruckman.  It's an oldie, I was in middle school when I last read it.

Sorry this post didn't feature any exciting tornadoes, here's a picture of one to suffice.  

Cheers!

RF

Baby Trafficking?!

Source

According to an Australian Broadcast Corporation report,  a company in Thailand has been exposed for its "terrifying surrogacy ring."  Make no mistake, this isn't a case of surrogacy where a contractual agreement exists between a childless couple and a willing surrogate mother participant.  The company known as Baby 101 is accused of holding thirteen Vietnamese women captive in order to bear children for Taiwanese clients.  Because gestational surrogacy is illegal in Taiwan, the Thai company provided a black market solution for some childless Taiwanese couples.  The only problem is, the "surrogate" mothers aren't technically free agents; they're victims of human trafficking.  Their unborn children haven't even breathed their first breath outside the womb and they're trafficking victims, too.

BANGKOK - THIRTEEN Vietnamese women, seven of them pregnant, have been rescued from an 'illegal and inhuman' surrogate baby breeding ring in Thailand, officials said on Thursday.

Police said the company, called Baby 101, received orders by email or via agents from childless couples and in some instances the male partner would provide sperm to inseminate the women.

'This is illegal and inhuman. In some cases it looks like they were raped,' said Public Health Minister Jurin Laksanawisit, who added that those carrying children would be cared for in a private hospital.

The Vietnamese women, some of whom were offered thousands of dollars per baby, were held in two houses in Bangkok and had had their passports confiscated.

The women were freed after they were able to send an email to the Vietnamese embassy, which tipped off Thai authorities.

'Nine of the women said they had volunteered to work because they were told they would earn US$5,000 (S$6,400) for each baby. Four said they were tricked,' said Deputy Immigration Commander Major General Manu Mekmok. -- AFP  [Straits Times]

This scenario presents a terrifying (not necessarily) new (but yet widely unheard of) scenario where not only are young women (often children themselves) bought and sold as chattel for sex and domestic labor (which is bad enough) they're baby machines to boot.  In the business sense of global human trafficking, it makes scary sense.  Human trafficking exists widely because of demand and the supply for demand.  In the case of Baby 101, the company saw a demand by childless couples in a country where surrogacy is illegal.  So Baby 101 supplied that demand.

Nearly 40 women, who are identified only by a numbered code, are pictured in various poses on a website believed to be run by the company, many of which seem to be around a swimming pool at the same property.

The surrogacy service, from egg and sperm donation to the delivery of a baby, is advertised on the site for $32,000 plus other expenses.

It appears to be aimed at Taiwanese customers and says that because running a commercial surrogacy business in that country is illegal it conducts its operations in other locations.

Offices were listed in Bangkok, Phnom Penh in Cambodia and Vietnam.

The website says Thai women are not used as surrogates and adds "the protection of the law is absolutely (sic)".

It says where the women live "there are security lookout in every entrance, severely control the person and vehicles that pass in and out to the community, the guards routinely patrol around 24 hours a day all year".

Pictures of pregnant women in the house are also shown.

The company describes itself as "eugenics surrogate" and promises no "connection between consignor (client) and surrogate mother".

"We could create the finest procreation condition for your baby, mainly through the efficient embryo refining, only the superior left for implanting," it adds.

"It is really really critical for the investigators to get to the bottom of this," said Phil Robertson, of New York-based Human Rights Watch.

"This is human trafficking in its most perverse and horrific form, sexual exploitation and rape, the mind boggles that something like this could happen," he said. [ABC News]

Fortunately in this case, charges are expected against at least one member of Baby 101's deprave organization.  On a grim note, however, I fear what other "commodities" trafficking rings around the world have exploited for financial gain at the detriment of enslaved women and children.  We only know what's been brought into the light, but we'd be fools to think there's not more injustice hiding in the darkness.

Grimly,

RF

Education Crisis

This evening's news heralded more coverage here in St. Louis on the Albert Pujols contract dilemma with the Cardinals.  ESPN speculated the following in a report today, Albert Pujols talks break off.   

"Is Albert Pujols worth $30 million per season?  He is a year and a half younger than Alex Rodriguez was when he signed a 10-year, $275M contract in 2007, and based on the numbers here, one could say that Pujols has been underpaid." 

Another issue that is on the Greater St. Louis area's plate is more budget cuts for one of our largest school districts.  This evening Francis Howell School District announced that it expects to lay off nearly one-hundred employees (mostly teachers) this week during a board decision meeting.  The almost certain decision will affect nearly every school in the district.

Check out KSDK's Francis Howell School district layoffs expected video report.  (Technical note, when I embed this particular source it defaults to automatic play on my blog's home page, long story short it's rather irritating hence the provided link).

My brother and I are products of the Francis Howell School District.  While I attended a private secondary school, my entire primary school education was through FHSD.  My brother will graduate this May, a K-12 product of the district.  Not only is FHSD one of the largest districts in the area, it also offers a myriad of extended learning services including top quality support for disabled and mentally handicapped students.  While the district, like other St. Louis area districts, has faced budget cuts in the past, I feel that at some point enough is enough.  I am not in any way criticizing the decision Francis Howell will most likely make as they are responding to their budget cuts the best they can.  My problem is in the budget cuts, and education funding in general.

In a larger sense, education budget cuts are a national trend;  St. Louis is not unique in this regard.  Money is a hot button topic and everyone loves to complain about the darned economy.  Yet at the same time, our entertainment industry seems to be doing just fine.  I don't have access to credible figures, but I'd be willing to bet that an obscene amount of money is funneled into the entertainment industry annually in the U.S.  Take James Cameron's 2009 Avatar, for example, which cost a whopping $237M to produce and grossed $2.7B worldwide.  Criticisms regarding the content of the film aside, I wouldn't say it was completely hopeless (if you ignore the "unobtanium" moniker); but in the grand scheme of things, do we really think this film was worth the money?  Here's the kicker, Avatar isn't the only movie out there to cost mega mullah.  I guarantee that the majority of the films that make it to theaters blew through millions as well; and for what?  To offer a lineup of new movies every few months - a ridiculously small percentage of which are even worth a fraction of the cost to go see it at the theater?

I realize it might seem a bit odd to take education cuts and the entertainment industry and discuss them side by side when they represent two very different systems.  Education is government sanctioned while the entertainment industry is comprised of private corporations.  The way I see it, however, there is a common denominator: the public (i.e. everyday Joe Schmoes, e.g. yours truly).  Our tax dollars support the education budget in our states.  Our money also directly funds the entertainment industry.  The only difference is that taxes are compulsory and going to the movie theater or buying a DVD is elective.

This is not to condemn paying for a movie or sports ticket, entertainment is there for a reason.  That said, I still take offense that we can so readily support one industry for our pleasure and then nickel and dime another.  The possible solutions to this conundrum I guarantee would be met with heated criticism.  Politics aside, this is our children's education that is at stake here.

To even begin to address our society's aspirations, that liberty and happiness our government was founded on to ensure, we absolutely have to educate our children.  They are our future.  If we neglect them now, we will certainly pay the price.  This is not to say that a thrifty education system cannot provide a quality education, but with continual budget cuts we run the risk of jeopardizing the quality the system is able to offer for the sake of money.

I bring this up because I am passionate about public welfare.  In a year I plan to graduate with a B.A. in Criminal Justice.  Even in the short period of time I've been exposed to the Criminal Justice field, I can resolutely affirm just how crucial a supportive education is for society.

The money exists that would benefit education; the question is how do we as a society ensure that it's used in the best way possible?

Candidly, I wonder what it would take to organize a "Movie Tickets for Education" event?  What if there was a way to encourage people to donate the cost of just one movie ticket's worth to their local school district?

Just some food for thought.

Signed,

RF