Teen Pranksters Find Out The Joke Is On Them – News – WHIOTV.com | WHIO:

Three Columbus teenagers playing pranks find out what they were doing is no laughing matter. Police say the three were throwing eggs at passing cars. One car they hit followed the teens and the driver began shooting at the teens. A 14 year old was hit and killed. The boy’s body was found in an alley. The other two teens were not injured. Police have the car, and are looking for a “person of interest.”

The promise of a better tommorow: due to lack of funding, the percentage of inmates participating in education programs is declining, while the prison population continues to surge Black Issues in Higher Education – Find Articles:

According to the Urban Institute, roughly 94 percent of the money spent on prisons, which has exceeded $22 billion in recent years, has been earmarked for construction and maintenance. The remaining 6 percent has gone to prison-based education programs.

I’m not sure if this is the study that the above article references, but it says some stuff that is pretty interesting:

Despite a long-standing historical emphasis in American corrections on education and employment training (Piel 1998; Gaes et al. 1999), and despite the importance of prison programming for improving a range of outcomes upon release, levels of program participation have declined.  In 1991, 42 percent of soon-to-be-released prisoners (less than 12 months remaining) reported participating in education programs, compared with 35 percent in 1997 (figure 1).  Participation in vocational programs declined from 31 percent to 27 percent during this same period (Lynch and Sabol 2001).

One reason for these declines is the rapid and enormous growth in prisons.  Funding for correctional programs has not kept pace with population growth, which has led to a reduction in the number of programs aimed at helping prisoners, such as general literacy and higher education programs, in most state prison systems (Austin and Irwin 2001; Slambrouck 2000).  Higher education programming was all but eliminated by federal legislation enacted in 1994 (LoBuglio 2001).

The decrease in correctional programming also is attributable to an indirect effect of the rapid growth in prisons and the shuffling of prisoners from one facility to another.  This frequent transferring undermines the ability of prisons to implement effective educational and vocational programs.  At the same time, and precisely because of the frequent transferring of prisoners from one facility to another, greater attention and interest have been given to funding substance abuse and anger management programs. One reason is that these programs can be offered on a short-term basis and can be relatively inexpensive compared with educational or vocational training (LoBuglio 2001).

In summary, prison populations have grown significantly while funding for programs and participation rates have declined.  These changes are significant because, as the literature review below shows, educational and vocational training can contribute to a range of positive outcomes, including increased employment and reduced recidivism.

Bot nets likely behind jump in spam | The Register:

A significant rise in the global volume of spam in the past two months has security analysts worried that bot nets are increasingly being used by spammers to stymie network defenses erected to curtail bulk email.

So I’m in Slovakia right now.  I had this intention of making blog posts all across Europe, but the reality of things is that there just hasn’t been time.  But, I wanted to let people know en masse, that, due to a complicated sense of circumstances, my phone number or 812.369.8609 is going away.  If you want to reach me by phone when I get back from tour, please use my house phone at 812.331.0654.  The best way to get ahold of me though, will probably be e-mail at geoff at terrorware dot com.