News of the Wyrd

[Louis VI the Fat]

I've long wanted a thread in which to post minor news. About events that won't create enough discussion to warrant a thread of their own. But that would be a shame if they weren't shared here. Because they touch on subjects that are often brought up here, are of known interest to posters here, or are simply newsworthy in itself. Some of it gets posted in the News of the Weird thread.

The News of the Weird thread should be reserved for weirdness proper. For keeping track of the octosquid movements, for unspeakable acts commited on unwary material objects, for sordidness and depravity, for the bizarre and surreal.

That thread doesn't lend itself for any smaller discussion either. Hence, I'd like to try this thread. News of the Wyrd. A dumping ground for all sorts of minor news that members would like to share, with room to debate the events that fate, chance or conscious will throw upon an unsuspecting world.

The most fundamental concept in heathenry is wyrd. It is also one of the most difficult to explain and hence one of the most often misunderstood. Here's my stab at an accurate yet relatively brief discussion of how wyrd works and how we can work with wyrd.

The philosopher Schopenhauer voiced the notion that "our lives are somehow irresistibly shaped into a coherent whole by forces beyond our conscious will. He believed that neither chance events nor inborn character were enough to explain the consistency and direction in the life course of an individual, and so he postulated "the intention of Fate" to explain this controlling force in our lives. Many people have equated the notion of wyrd with this sort of "fate" concept, and the Norns with the Moerae or Parcae, the Greek and Roman Fates. However, to do so is to ignore the constant interplay between personal wyrd and universal wyrd and the role we each play in creating our own destiny.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Cruise liner sinking after hitting iceberg!

An cruise liner, said to be able to withstand arctic conditions, was hit by an iceberg last night. It is sinking rapidly. Most of the passengers escaped in lifeboats, and are desperatly awaiting rescue from a warned nearby ship that heeded their SOS. The captain is still on board, and might go down with his ship...

The ship, called the M/S Explorer, is listing to 25 degrees near the South Shetland Islands, south of Argentina, after hitting an iceberg.


Andy Cattrell, of the Falmouth Coastguard, said: "It [the M/S Explorer] has hit something significant certainly because this vessel is designed to operate in these areas.

"It is an old vessel - built in 1969, I believe - but it is a very well-constructed vessel designed to be down there. We know from the American coastguards that there are 154 persons on board, all abandoned into lifeboats apart from the master and chief officer.

"We are awaiting now news of the vessel the Antarctic Dream, which should arrive in just over an hour or so. They should be able to pick up the people from the lifeboats who are, as far as we know, safe in the lifeboats."

[Louis VI the Fat]

Sometimes, don't ascribe to stupidity what can be ascribed to malice.

Authorities in Brazil are investigating reports that a young woman was left in a police cell with some 20 men for a month and repeatedly sexually abused.

Governor Ana Julia Carepa said the age of the woman, put variously at 15 and 20, was irrelevant as she should not have been jailed with male prisoners. Women's rights groups in Brazil say it is not an isolated case.

According to reports in the Brazilian media, the number of men in the cell with the young woman varied from between 20 to more than 30.


Media reports suggested that the girl was placed in a police cell in the town of Abaetetuba on suspicion of theft. But human-rights groups say there is uncertainty about what offence the girl was accused of and she was not formally charged.

They say that she was raped relentlessly and forced to have sex in order to obtain food. The police are said to have believed at one stage that the girl was not under age.

[Vladimir]

A month huh? That's the kind of evil that smothers your heart in a black embrace.

[Gregoshi]

Sometimes, don't ascribe to stupidity what can be ascribed to malice.

It is actions like this that make it very difficult to maintain rational thought when it comes to the subject of justice.

[Papewaio]

I'm against person vs person capital death sentences.

But when it is state vs person, those cops should be executed by shoving durians up where the sun doesn't shine until dead dead dead.

[Pannonian]

Cruise liner sinking after hitting iceberg!

The ship, called the M/S Explorer, is listing to 25 degrees near the South Shetland Islands, south of Argentina, after hitting an iceberg.

It's the fault of the country it's registered with. Icebergs tend to target Linux-registered ships rather less frequently, as they are rarer and thus less rewarding to sink.

[Caius]

M$ Explorer

Some hacker has made a secret message here.

[Lemur]

Why couldn't they just let her teach Biology?

"Porno-prof" teacher suspended

ROME - An Italian teacher has been suspended from school because of her extra-curricular activities as a porn star, local authorities announced Thursday.

The out-of-hours behavior of Anna Ciriani, who calls herself "Madameweb" in hard-core videos on the Internet and at erotic shows, was "not compatible with educational activity," the head of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia education authority said.

Ciriani, dubbed the "porno-prof" by Italy's main newspapers, said she never let her hobby get in the way of her teaching.

"My behavior at school has always been professional and irreproachable," she was quoted as saying by the AGI agency.

"I am a normal woman, with my family and my work as a teacher. I am (also) looking for transgression and sex."

Five years ago Ciriani was transferred from her post as teacher of Italian literature in a secondary school in the north-eastern town of Pordenone after students covered the toilets with nude photos of her downloaded from the Internet.

Since then she has been giving evening classes to foreign adult students in a nearby town.

Madameweb's popularity surged after a video of her shot at the Venus erotica festival in Berlin last month attracted a wide Internet following, prompting the authorities to suspend her from teaching altogether.

[InsaneApache]

Any chance of a link to the rude photos?

[Louis VI the Fat]

A Tale of Two Cities, part I.

'Cultural guerrillas' cleared of lawbreaking over secret workshop in Pantheon.

It is one of Paris's most celebrated monuments, a neoclassical masterpiece that has cast its shadow across the city for more than two centuries.
But it is unlikely that the Panthéon, or any other building in France's capital, will have played host to a more bizarre sequence of events than those revealed in a court last week.

Four members of an underground "cultural guerrilla" movement known as the Untergunther, whose purpose is to restore France's cultural heritage, were cleared on Friday of breaking into the 18th-century monument in a plot worthy of Dan Brown or Umberto Eco.

Continued below:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

For a year from September 2005, under the nose of the Panthéon's unsuspecting security officials, a group of intrepid "illegal restorers" set up a secret workshop and lounge in a cavity under the building's famous dome. Under the supervision of group member Jean-Baptiste Viot, a professional clockmaker, they pieced apart and repaired the antique clock that had been left to rust in the building since the 1960s. Only when their clandestine revamp of the elaborate timepiece had been completed did they reveal themselves.
"When we had finished the repairs, we had a big debate on whether we should let the Panthéon's officials know or not," said Lazar Klausmann, a spokesperson for the Untergunther. "We decided to tell them in the end so that they would know to wind the clock up so it would still work.

"The Panthéon's administrator thought it was a hoax at first, but when we showed him the clock, and then took him up to our workshop, he had to take a deep breath and sit down."

The Centre of National Monuments, embarrassed by the way the group entered the building so easily, did not take to the news kindly, taking legal action and replacing the administrator.

Getting into the building was the easiest part, according to Klausmann. The squad allowed themselves to be locked into the Panthéon one night, and then identified a side entrance near some stairs leading up to their future hiding place. "Opening a lock is the easiest thing for a clockmaker," said Klausmann. From then on, they sneaked in day or night under the unsuspecting noses of the Panthéon's officials.

"I've been working here for years," said a ticket officer at the Panthéon who wished to remain anonymous. "I know every corner of the building. And I never noticed anything."

The hardest part of the scheme was carrying up the planks used to make chairs and tables to furnish the Untergunther's cosy squat cum workshop, which has sweeping views over Paris.

The group managed to connect the hideaway to the electricity grid and install a computer connected to the net.

Klausmann and his crew are connaisseurs of the Parisian underworld. Since the 1990s they have restored crypts, staged readings and plays in monuments at night, and organised rock concerts in quarries. The network was unknown to the authorities until 2004, when the police discovered an underground cinema, complete with bar and restaurant, under the Seine. They have tried to track them down ever since.

But the UX, the name of Untergunther's parent organisation, is a finely tuned organisation. It has around 150 members and is divided into separate groups, which specialise in different activities ranging from getting into buildings after dark to setting up cultural events. Untergunther is the restoration cell of the network.

Members know Paris intimately. Many of them were students in the Latin Quarter in the 80s and 90s, when it was popular to have secret parties in Paris's network of tunnels. They have now grown up and become nurses or lawyers, but still have a taste for the capital's underworld, and they now have more than just partying on their mind.

"We would like to be able to replace the state in the areas it is incompetent," said Klausmann. "But our means are limited and we can only do a fraction of what needs to be done. There's so much to do in Paris that we won't manage in our lifetime."

The Untergunther are already busy working on another restoration mission Paris. The location is top secret, of course. But the Panthéon clock remains one of its proudest feats.

"The Latin Quarter is where the concept of human rights came from, it's the centre of everything. The Panthéon clock is in the middle of it. So it's a bit like the clock at the centre of the world."

Urban Guerrilla I

The Panthéon, the centre of the Quartier Latin, in the rain:

[Louis VI the Fat]

A Tale of Two Cities, part II.

Riots in Paris!

News? Hardly. Exasparating? Definately.

Riots break out in Paris suburbs

Rioters blocked roads with burning cars

Youths have damaged police stations, shops and cars in two Paris suburbs, following the deaths of two teenagers whose motorbike hit a police car.
Police said 21 officers were injured in the rioting in the northern suburbs of Villiers-le-Bel and Arnouville.

The Villiers-le-Bel police station was set ablaze and another in Arnouville was pillaged, police say. At least seven people were arrested.

The violence - reminiscent of riots in 2005 - lasted for more than six hours. In 2005, the deaths of two youths in nearby Clichy-sous-Bois led to France's worst civil unrest in more than 40 years.

Clashes broke out on Sunday night after two teenagers - aged 15 and 16 - were killed when the motorcycle they were driving collided with a police car. Police sources said the two were riding a stolen mini-motorcycle, and that neither was wearing a helmet. The police car was on a routine patrol and the teenagers were not being chased by police at the time of the accident, police said.

Burning cars

After the accident, dozens of youths went on a rampage, setting the police station in Villiers-le-Bel on fire, ransacking the Arnouville police station and torching two petrol stations.


Riot police were sent to the area, but youths blocked their way with burning cars. French media report that the rioters also damaged the Arnouville-Villiers-le-Bel railway station and nearby shops.

Omar Sehhouli, the brother of one of the dead teenagers said that the rioting "was not violence but an expression of rage".

In 2005, country-wide riots erupted after the electrocution of two teenagers from another Parisian suburb - Clichy-sous-Bois - in an electricity sub-station. They were reported to have been fleeing police at the time. Relations between police and young people in many deprived areas have continued to be tense ever since.

Must they have an intifada everytime a criminal wins himself a Darwin Award?

Urban Guerrilla II

[Fragony]

Cool here as well!

http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/3296...as,_hamas.html

'Hamas hamas, all the jews on the gas'

Aren't they cute?



Why doesn't the article mention that one officer was shot in the face?

[Husar]

Must they have an intifada everytime a criminal wins himself a Darwin Award?

What? It's obviously the fault of the police for being there.
The police should do their work, sit behind their desks and protect umm....errr....protect....ehm, the money they steal from fast drivers and so on.

I mean we cannot invite people here and then chase them around after stealing or stand in their way when they're not adhering to the law, that's just...rude!

[Odin]

Must they have an intifada everytime a criminal wins himself a Darwin Award?

So can I deduce from your statement that these are mostly muslim youths? Without going to far into the mud on european issues, I see more and more situations where "youths" in EU countries is code for "immigration issue"

Is my observation valid?

[Fragony]

Is water wet and is the pope a catholic, of course.

[Fragony]

update Paris, 64 policemen wounded, 5 seriously. One gunshot in the face, one in the shoulder. Numerous buildings burned down and of course the usual cars. Sarkozy lead the way, you know what expect from you. Here is your chance to become the hero of taxpaying freedomlovig europeans.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Oh no! An Agatha Christie was going to be put on in an Ohio high school!!

Luckily, the NAACP sprung into action to condemn this racist action, and insist on diversity training programs for thousands of school district employees, which are coincidently offered by a company owned by the President of the local NAACP branch.

Powell said Hines [local NAACP Pres] has a history of making racial accusations against Lakota schools with his personal financial interests sometimes coming into play.

In 2002, Hines accused Lakota schools of widespread, systemic racism and recommended that more than 2,000 Lakota employees be required to enroll in diversity and cultural sensitivity training similar to what was offered by his company. He promised to compile a report months later detailing his accusations against the schools but never produced a document.

Hines, however, has continued to allege racism in the school district.

One senior gets it:

Lakota East senior Luke Null, who has rehearsed since September to perform as one of the lead characters, said "pressure from the local NAACP canceled the play."

"I read the play as part of a class in the ninth grade. There are no racial undertones in it at all, and we weren't putting on the play under it's original name from 1939. We were putting on the play under another name," Null said. He and other theater students are now scrambling to find another play to perform some time early in 2008.

"Some of our First Amendment rights were censored. The race card is a pretty strong card," he said.

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.d...344/1056/COL02

Thank goodness we have the NAACP to squelch anything they say is racist and get a little somethin'-somethin' for themselves on the way.

CR

[woad&fangs]

I hate the NAACP. I have never seen any good come out of them this century.

[HoreTore]

http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...0_US-SANTA.xml

This one certainly belongs here. Lumps of coal, anyone?

EDIT: dang, should've been weird, not wyrd... Curses!

[Crazed Rabbit]

Britain continues its tradition of spending taxpayer's money through the nose to come up with stupid or lame slogans:
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Quirks/...scotland/7038/

GLASGOW, Scotland, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- Scotland has replaced its airport signs proclaiming the country to be "the best small country in the world" with a new slogan: "Welcome to Scotland."

The new slogan, which was revealed Tuesday after six months of development and $250,000 spent on the project, is also printed on the posters in Gaelic as "Failte gu Alba," The Times of London reported Wednesday.

CR

[Husar]

"Welcome to Scotland"?

Must've been a real genius who came up with such an innovative and entirely new idea for a mere 250,000$.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

"Welcome to Scotland"?

Must've been a real genius who came up with such an innovative and entirely new idea for a mere 250,000$.

Man I could have done that for them for $20 plus a kilt, not counting the fee to make the signs, but they'd still be way under budget.

[Fragony]

Sometimes, don't ascribe to stupidity what can be ascribed to malice.

Update, police not only did nothing but did nothing while taping it.

[Vladimir]

Update, police not only did nothing but did nothing while taping it.

With an old 8mm camera with which they also recorded Elvis and the Second Coming! Don't ask me to provide a source though.

[macsen rufus]

"Welcome to Scotland"?

Must've been a real genius who came up with such an innovative and entirely new idea for a mere 250,000$.

Too damn true it was genius -- when was the last time you got paid so much for doing so little?

[Vladimir]

Wyrd indeed.

[Vladimir]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1770

[Viking]

Space rock not to hit Mars after all.

An asteroid nearing Mars will not crash into the planet later this month, scientists said Wednesday.

New observations of the Mars-bound Asteroid 2007 WD5 have allowed astronomers to refine their predictions for the space rock's position during its red planet rendezvous on Jan. 30, according an update by NASA's Near-Earth Object (NEO) program office.

"As a result, the impact probability has dropped dramatically, to approximately 0.01 percent or 1-in-10,000 odds, effectively ruling out the possible collision with Mars," researchers said in the Jan. 9 report.

SPACE.com


Blasted.

[Vladimir]

Took them long enough. What if it was headed for us?