In fact, collective data from police departments showed that in the first year they used Tasers, sudden deaths went up sixfold, and firearm-related deaths increased twofold. After that year, the numbers fell back to normal, which suggests to the study's authors, UCSF doctors Zian Tseng and Byron Lee, that there may be a learning curve in the safe operation of Tasers. It also raises a question about whether officers are mistaking their guns for Tasers, as some have speculated was the case in the Oscar Grant shooting.
"Our interpretation for these finding is that police agencies are recognizing these events," Tseng told SF Weekly. He speculated that, when people die unexpectedly after being Tasered, the police may be making new policies regarding when and how they use the Tasers.
Tseng has been speaking out in the media for years, warning that Tasers can pose a lethal risk when the volts are applied repeatedly, directly over the heart. That said, he admits that he study isn't exactly conclusive. The largest 10 cities in the United States were unwilling to release their statistics, and the data from the 50 participating cities did not include any detailed information about the sudden or firearm-related deaths.
Regardless, the San Francisco Police Department might want to think twice on the recommendations of its recent organizational assessment -- which pushed for Tasers.
The CIA thinks they can infiltrate the Mountain of Dr. Klahn!
You can't scare me, you ... bastard.
Take him to -- Detroit!
No! No, not Detroit! No! No, please! Anything but that! No! No!
Look, citing the needs of one's family and then taking a job in Detroit is like looking out for your prize canaries by opening up a feral cat shelter in your garage. It puts the lie to the "Spend more time with my wife and kids" mantra regurgitated by every coach forced to resign from a job (or, in Linehan's case, not take it in the first place). Locally, it also gives notice that something is very rotten in the park of Candlestick. If Linehan spurned the Niners at the altar in favor of a team that didn't win one damn game and plays its home contests in a city where you require Arctic-grade winter clothing and stands a good chance of being hit up for cash by a desperate automotive CEO -- well, you've got to wonder about his real motives.
Speaking of desperation, let's get back to the 49ers. In discharging former coordinator Mike Martz, they've once again fired a perfectly respectable coach with no clue whatsoever who will fill the vacancy -- and if that eventual successor is even an improvement. The competition could well now be down to two guys named Jagodzinski and Chudzinski -- either of whom may or may not have had a disastrous marriage with Aglaia Epanchin at the conclusion of Dostoevsky's The Idiot.
It was Malcolm Gladwell who most recently emphasized that tense, desperate situations often induce people to make rash, unfortunate decisions. Let us hope that the 49ers don't follow this predictable course in their hiring choices.
UPDATE: It appears the 49ers have taken a shine to NFL graybeard Dan Reeves for the job. Reeves, incidentally, did not marry Aglaia -- but is old enough to have known Dostoevsky.
Well, that is the $1.9 million question, isn't it?
infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit
than Pip. So I called myself Pip and came to be called Pip. -- Charles
Dickens, Great Expectations
Tila Tequila, the multi-barely-talented singer/MySpace phenomenon/reality TV subject/pinup is holding a copy of Great Expectations in a page one photo in her new book (!) Hooking Up With Tila Tequila.The first line of her tome? Right here:
FUCK OFF. That's right. I know what you're thinking: Tila Tequila wrote a book? What does that bitch have to say? Can she even fucking write? Well, APPARENTLY I can. I mean, I write blogs all the time, Don't I? And someone's reading them, right? I've only got something like three MILLION friends on MySpace.
Well, there you go. Poking holes in the vapidity of someone who feels that becoming "THE symbol of stardom in today's digital age" is some kind of meritorious achievement is the logical next move -- but it's somewhat akin to pulling a rabbit out of a rabbit hutch.
I don't think there's anything I can say about Tila Tequila she can't say more effectively herself. So, here's everything you need to know about this book:
