That's good

Two more Pitcairn sex offenders sentenced to prison

I've followed this story for a couple of years now. It's distinguished from other cases in four ways:

1. The small, tight-knit community of about 50 people--nine families--many interrelated
2. The notoriety of Pitcairn, the island where Fletcher Christian and the other HMAV Bounty mutineers took Tahitian wives (some perhaps by force) and settled
3. The isolation of the island, half-way between New Zealand and Peru
4. The length of time this has been going on--four decades--becoming a culture of abuse

That brings a total of 8 men who have been sentenced in this scandal, including a former Mayor and a former Magistrate and representing a good chunk of the able-bodied men on the island. The British government, which claims sovereignty in this matter, will house the men in a prison built on the island in response to the convictions.

There have been several challenges in these cases, both in whether the British government does, indeed, have jurisdiction, and claims that sex with girls as young as 12 was seen as normal from the island's founding based on Polynesian customs. (The allegations, however, include girls as young as five).

Custom or not, it's obvious that this setup was very convenient for the men and devastating to the girls, judging from testimony, and certainly did not follow normal consensual parameters, if such young girls can even be said to have the ability to consent. It's good that these trials are putting it to an end and making the perpetrators accountable for their actions.

It's divided the community terribly, of course, and with it struggling with such a low population it may sound a death knell for Pitcairn. But this was important to bring to light regardless on the effect of the island. Hopefully, future children of the islanders will not have to worry about being raped in the underbrush. Kudos for those (outsiders, such as a policewoman and a Seventh-Day Adventist minister) who recognised the abuse and brought it to light and for those women and girls who stepped forward with their stories and maintained their complaints despite pressure from others in the community and with lingering trauma from the abuse itself.

A quiz before I say goodnight

You are from Neptune

You are dreamy and mystical, with a natural psychic ability.You love music, poetry, dance, and (most of all) the open sea.Your soul is filled with possibilities, and your heart overflows with compassion.You can be in a room full of friendly people and feel all alone.If you don't get carried away with one idea, your spiritual nature will see you through anything.

What Planet Are You From?

I saw just a smidge

Listening to: 'Lithium' by Evanescence

of the eclipse as I walked out after work tonight. It's been an odd day weather- and sky-wise. It started out fairly nice this morning, albeit windy, and then turned to snow (not sticking, just big giant flakes going horizontal in the wind), but it stayed sunny for the most part. It threw me off. I actually saw the flakes and thought, oh, it's the cotton off of the trees, because it had been so warm and it kind of messed my sense of time (as in a month or two off), and unfortunately asked what the stuff was blowing in the wind. One of the customers said, gently, that it was snow. So brain dead today. Over the course of the day it turned pretty darn cold. Now it's snowing again, and I think it's beginning to stick, so who knows how things will be tomorrow. This, after temperatures in the fifties most of the week. Welcome to Kentucky weather.

What else to blog about? Tomorrow is GM's (Game Master's) Day, and we're appropriately enough, gaming. I picked up a little something for ours at the Rusty Scabbard. Be sure to show your GM how much you appreciate him/her. It takes a lot of investment in time and books, not to mention plotting out your demise in a way that is both fun and consistent, to do a bang-up job as a Game Master. And if you're very fortunate enough to have a particularly talented one, like ours, you definitely need to show appreciation with proper bribes and good player behaviour, on GM's day and every day. :)

Last thing for the night (I do have to work tomorrow, after all)

A quiz, of course, and so true:


Take the What High School Stereotype Are You? quiz.

A friend and I were talking about a geek/nerd/dork quiz I took a long time ago and I couldn't remember what I came out as. I looked it up and it was definitely nerd (95%):

Nerd Geek Dork quiz
Tri-Lamb Material 95 % Nerd, 47% Geek, 60% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.You scored better than half in Nerd and Dork, earning you the coveted title of: Tri-Lamb Material. The classic, "80's" nerd, you are what most people think of when they think "nerd," largely due to 80's movies like Revenge of the Nerds and TV shows like 'Head of the Class'. You're exceptionally bright and smart, and partly because of that have never quite fit in with your peers or social groups. Perhaps you're realized, or will someday, that it is possible to retain all of the things that you like about being brilliant and still make peace with the social cliques around you. Or maybe you won't--it's really not necessary. As the brothers of Lambda Lambda Lambda discovered, you're fine just the way you are and can take pride in that. I mean, who wants to be like Ogre, right!?

Two good bipolar resources

Bipolar Disorder (a .pdf file; requires a viewer such as Adobe Acrobat Reader)

Psychiatric and medical comorbidities of bipolar disorder (including diabetes, OCD, and ADHD--all of which I have)

Hahahaha

Google as health plan. Check out a Dilbert from last month. The sad thing is, I can well imagine it. By the way, the Dilbert Blog is pretty funny, too. And yes, Scott Adams has googled his own health condition, spasmodic dysphonia, which isn't fun at all.

Can you tell I'm catching up on stuff that I haven't had time to blog about?

A little late, since the controversy's died down a bit

but I felt I should weigh in anyway; I was too busy to earlier.

Children's Book Stirs Battle With a Single Word

Of course it's stupid to ban an entire book (The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron)--especially a Newbery winner--because it mentions a dog's scrotum. But what concerns me is that the article is written to make it sound like all we librarians do are scan through books to find some pretence to keep them off the shelves and out of the hands of thinking individuals (which, oddly enough, does include children), when in truth the vast majority of librarians are far more on the other end of the spectrum, ready to fight to the death to defend intellectual freedom. My faith in the New York Times has never been that high--especially after the plagiarism scandal, but this did nothing to raise my opinion of the quality of writing, although I'm sure some of the reporters are quite excellent.

That's not saying that the book isn't being banned, and by librarians, no less. I'm not sure how much has been spurred by actual book challenges (when parents and other patrons insist on the removal of a book for a variety of reasons, often complicated by the fact that they either didn't read the book or object to something for very spurious reasons). There are some librarians on the public library services to young adults and children who did say they would remove it or not order it, despite the fact that they collect all the Newberys. I don't get that. But then, I'm not dealing with incensed patrons, either, so maybe it's not my place to judge.

Still, it seems terribly un-librarianlike. And I still wish the New York Times had published a more balanced article.

I am happy to report

that my computer is back, after several months. Back in August it was struck by lightning and the motherboard fried. I made do with an older loaner, but it's good to have mine back. It's a slightly faster processor now, too, and the CD burner has been upgraded to a DVD. John and my mom brought it up this afternoon. He was able to restore everything on the drive, too, so all is not lost. The first thing I did was go out and buy a proper surge protector with battery backup. (I did have it on an older surge protector, but it apparently wasn't enough.)

The other good thing is that I have a project that involves taking old data on floppies and an older hard drive and burn them on backup CDs, and I should be able to do that with mine.

I don't know if there was something computer-specific causing the Blogger problem or if it was on their end, so it could have been the switching of the computers or it could have been pure coincidence. But what matters is that I can blog again.

Apparently job issues are following my family. I told my mom that the job at the public library fell through. My mom is no longer with the nursing home where she was working. I'm not sure why, although John said they screwed her over. So she's looking for a new job, even here in Lexington (they live about 45 minutes to an hour away from here).

And they were on their way back to visit John's mom in the hospital. She's going to be put in a nursing home for a short time. She has a lot of health issues, including diabetes, just like the rest of us.

Okay, time for some of Margaret's Amish Friendship Bread and then checking on Cerys and then I'll be back.

I think it's back

I say that because the formatting buttons which had disappeared are back on top of where I type in the post. Sorry for the problems. I've got a backup of the posts that weren't showing up and will repost them.

Test

Let's see if this shows up.