An airplane is not the same as a football stadium

Shane McInerney, a 29-year-old man from Ireland, was on his way to Miami to start a new job at a football academy but was arrested because of his behavior during the flight there.

McInerney, from Galway, is also accused of repeatedly refusing to wear a face mask and throwing a can which hit another passenger on the eight-hour journey which departed on 7 January.

He is said to have walked from his seat to complain about the food being served before pulling his pants down, exposing his buttocks to an attendant and nearby passengers.

The pilot tried to speak with McInerney who is said to have responded by telling him not to touch him.

He also put his fist close to the pilot’s face, it is alleged.

McInerney is further accused of refusing to stay in his seat as the plane made its descent to JFK – instead choosing to stand in the aisle.

He was taken into custody after the plane landed.

Legal papers filed in New York said: “During the approximately eight-hour flight, the defendant repeatedly refused to wear a face mask despite being asked dozens of times by flight crew personnel.”

He has been charged with interfering with flight crew – a crime that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years behind bars.

My guess is that he thought that actions that would have passed with little notice during a football game were equally acceptable on an international flight.

No word on whether his job offer is still open.

No more daft detectives!

Over a decade ago ago, I wrote a post titled No more daft women! about one of my pet peeves when watching police procedural shows. While I like the detective and suspense story genre in general, one thing that annoys me is the use of a common trope and that is to have a female character, despite being expressly warned to be careful, do something unbelievably stupid that puts her life and the lives of others in danger. The ‘daft women’ phrase was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock asking “Is the woman daft?” to a screenwriter who was describing just such a development when they were working on The Birds.

But what is worse is when detectives, who should definitely know better, do something similar. I noticed this in two shows that I watched recently. In the first, two detectives investigating multiple missing persons whom they suspect were victims of a serial killer, stumble across a trapdoor covered by earth and leaves in the woods and upon lifting open the heavy lid, discover steps leading down and an awful stench emanating, suggesting the presence of decomposing bodies. So what do they do? Do they call for backup? Does one detective stay on guard outside while the other goes down? After all, the killer might be lurking nearby. No, they both climb down into the hole. If the killer had been around, all they would have had to do was simply close the lid, cover it up, and the two detectives would have joined the list of missing persons. Daft detectives.
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NFTs (not) explained

In a recent post, I tried to explain what NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) were. This is another of crazes that arise (and sometimes disappear) so rapidly in the internet age. Reader David sent me a link to this (non) explanation by Julie Nolke that I found pretty funny. I wonder how many people try to bluff their way into looking like they know what they are talking about when it comes to NFTs.

I was impressed with how she played both roles and then spliced the footage. It is not easy to do reaction shots that look genuine. She must be a professional actor that I have not heard of before.

People have many reasons to not get vaccinated. Almost all of them are bad

Unless you have some kind of medical condition that makes the risk of vaccination greater than the risk of getting covid-19, you should get vaccinated. But there are people who decide, against the best scientific advice, that they know better alternatives. Not all of them are rabid anti-vaxxers or are opposing it because of some ideological fixation or because they believe in some bizarre conspiracy theory that it is a device for the government to gain control over one’s body. There are those who do not get it because they have folkloric beliefs, such as that healthy people have natural immunity or that the symptoms will not be serious or that certain practices such as wellness or Ayurveda or other folk remedies will stave off the infection.
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Trump’s legal problems mount

For a long time, it has been clear that Donald Trump and his family and associates were going to try and block any and all investigations into their affairs by refusing to cooperate with investigators, forcing them to go to court to get information, and then fighting those legal proceedings every step of the way. Given the way that the US legal system is structured, if you have the money, you can have your lawyers throw roadblock after roadblock to frustrate investigators who may be tempted to give up as the time and money involved mount up.

It is only the government (or an equally deep-pocketed opponent) that can go toe-to-toe against this strategy and two of them (the Attorney General’s office of the state of New York and the Congressional committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021) have been dogged.

Yesterday, the latter scored a major victory when the US Supreme Court by an 8-1 voted denied an emergency request by Trump’s team to block a ruling by the lower Appeals Court that the National Archives must hand over documents to the committee. [Read more…]

Radiation paradoxes 14: What others have said about this problem

(Previous posts in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13)

The history of analyses of the question “Does a charge falling freely in a gravitational field radiate energy?” is quite fascinating with experts being all over the place, even to this date. The biggest disagreement is over whether the answer to the above question is yes or no. But even among those who agree on the answer, there are disagreements as to the reasons. For example, among those who say that it radiates, some argue that it leads to a loss in kinetic energy and that the Principle of Equivalence may not even hold in the case of a charge falling freely in a uniform gravitational field. Others disagree on what the source of the radiation is.
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Among the Trumpists

I have to admit that hearing Trump supporters say the most clueless things seems to never get old. I am impressed by Jordan Klepper’s ability to find among them people who can be made to say the most absurd things.

Fellow Daily Show correspondent Michael Kosta seems to be developing his chops in this area as well as he asks them what they think of Trump’s Space Force.

(WuMo)

What is Ricky Gervais’s problem?

Comedian Ricky Gervais seems to have gone off the rails in a big way. After his breakthrough series The Office and the enjoyable film The Invention Of Lying, he seems to have run out of ideas and resorted to what other comedians have done in that same situation and that is resort too cheap jokes targeting marginalized groups.

I wrote before about his Netflix stand up special that I stopped watching when he began with an extended riff where he repeatedly dead-named Caitlyn Jenner, presumably as a response to him being criticized for doing so when he hosted the Golden Globes. Rather than. take the occasion to redeem himself, he doubled down, and seemed smugly proud for doing so.

But that is not all. He has written, directed, and stars in a comedy-drama series on Netflix called After Life where he plays a reporter for a small town weekly community free newspaper. He is deeply grieving over the death of his wife from cancer, so much so that he was suicidal at one point and often acts like a jerk towards other people. The series was getting very good reviews and I decided to watch it, thinking that perhaps he had learned something from the criticisms of his Netflix show.
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Djokovic and the French Open

After being kicked out of Australia for not meeting that country’s requirements for entry, tennis player Novak Djokovic now faces another hurdle. France has just passed a law saying that only vaccinated people will be allowed in public places. The French Open tournament is in May.

The world number one, however, faces more immediate hurdles in his bid to overtake Swiss Roger Federer and Spaniard Rafa Nadal, with whom he is tied on 20 major titles, as he could be barred from the French Open as things stand.

The French Sports Ministry said on Monday there would be no exemption from a new vaccine pass law approved on Sunday, which requires people to have vaccination certificates to enter public places such as restaurants, cafes and cinemas.

“This will apply to everyone who is a spectator or a professional sportsperson. And this until further notice,” the ministry said.

“As far as Roland Garros is concerned, it’s in May. The situation may change between now and then and we hope it’ll be more favourable. So we’ll see but clearly there’s no exemption.”

More and more countries are implementing restrictions on people entering the country and if he continues to refuse to get vaccinated, his participation at Wimbledon, the US Open, and other tournaments could be in doubt.

Given the Australian fiasco, each country will likely be very careful that he meets all their requirements and that there is not even the slightest suggestion that he is being given special treatment or exemptions.

How the January 6th riot split one family

Vice had an article about a family that was split apart when the 18-year old son reported their father to the authorities that he had been part of the mob that invaded the Capitol building on January 6th, 2021. He will be the first person to stand trial next month for his role in the events.

On January 5 last year, Guy Reffitt, a member of the Texas Three Percenters militia, packed his AR-15 rifle and a Smith & Wesson pistol into his wife’s car and set off on the 1,300-mile journey from Wylie, Texas, to Washington, D.C.

The next day, armed with the pistol, he attended the “Stop the Steal” rally in front of the White House, then marched with the crowd over to the U.S. Capitol Building, where he allegedly charged at police officers with such force that they had to fire projectiles and use pepper spray to hold him back.

Reffitt, wearing body armor partially covered by a blue jacket and a black motorcycle helmet, was captured on video on a staircase on the West Front of the Capitol. He can be seen holding his hand up as a police officer sprays him in the face. Moments later cameras capture Reffitt, exhausted from battle, flushing out his eyes with a bottle of water.

When he returned to Texas, according to prosecutors, he delivered an ominous threat to his son Jackson, 18, and daughter Peyton, 16, about what would happen if they told anyone what he’d done: “If you turn me in, you’re a traitor, and you know what happens to traitors… Traitors get shot.”

What he didn’t know was that his son had already turned him in.
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Jackson had actually tipped off the FBI in December, after becoming concerned about his father’s increasingly radicalized rhetoric, including claims he was “about to do something big.”
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Jackson discovered his father was at the Capitol when Reffitt began posting pictures from the insurrection to the family chat group. With the riot still unfolding live on television, Jackson got a call from the FBI, who asked if his father was at the Capitol. Jackson confirmed that he was.

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