Showing posts with label Fear. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fear. Show all posts

Monday, May 21, 2012

HOW TIME FLIES

Stumbled across this post from June 2007 about the 15th anniversary of the Three Missing Women. "The next time we hear about (them) ... will be June 2012," we wrote back then.

And here we are.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

CROSS PIMPING

Keeping the CHATTER audience informed of the place where the boy does more than typing: the latest post on the Act Your Old Age blog. Have you ever wished to meet your destiny, only to realize later that you really should be careful what you wish for? We have.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

PETA PORN

PETA -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals -- says it wanted to run this ad during the Super Bowl. NBC censors apparently said no way.

Who's right? Watch the ad and decide for yourself.


'Veggie Love': PETA's Banned Super Bowl Ad

Saturday, June 21, 2008

HUNTER HATER

Fourth-grade kid in Vermont goes to school, talks turkey with classmate during the break known as snack time. Teacher overhears conversation, goes all freaky.

Jared Harrington is now being home-schooled. His parents are on the hunt for a teacher trophy. As the Times Argus report:
Jared Harrington's mother, Wendy Bordwell, and his father, Martin Harrington, removed their son from school with 10 days left in the school year and home-schooled the 10-year-old boy.

"We are aggressively pursuing Jared's right to free speech," Bordwell said. ...

Bordwell said in a telephone interview that she believed her son was "singled out" by Kathleen Backus, Jared's teacher, while talking about hunting with a schoolmate.

Bordwell said that, during snack time, Jared was discussing the recent spring turkey hunting season with a classmate when Backus interrupted the conversation, insisting that there be no talk of "killing" in her classroom. ...

"Jared's teacher covered her ears, trying to block the conversation, and singing 'la la la la.' When asked by another school employee about her odd behavior, the teacher claimed she did not want to hear about the boys and their 'killing.' The boys were left feeling that they were not legitimate hunters, but 'killers' in the eyes of an important authority figure in their lives," Bordwell said.

After Jared's parents decided to take up the matter with the school board, Backus assigned 137 pages of homework for the boy.

"That led us to believe he was being singled out," Bordwell said.
Does Kathleen Backus enjoy her Thanksgiving bird?

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

PEACE, LOVE, KNOWLEDGE

Barack Obama campaigned hard to end politics "as we know it" -- a kōan perfect for the picayune American mind obsessed with change. Too many Americans are blissfully ignorant about politics (one in three can't name the governor of their state, and three in 10 can't name the vice president of their country). They want to change politics as they don't know it. Maybe then they'll pay attention.

But then again, no. Attention requires effort requires sacrifice, and we're just not into that. What, we should search for information and actually read it? Exercise the big muscle between the ears? Maybe if you bring it to our (desk)(couch)(bed) and hand it to us with the really important stuff highlighted. So, you know, we don't have to work at it.

And slap a slogan on it. We love slogans. "Change We Can Believe In." "A Leader We Can Believe In." "Ignorance Is Strength."

The men who would lead our country appreciate and rush to the lowest common denominator. They talk good, high-minded games to the faithful in their flocks, but they cater to the people who know Peyton Manning but draw a blank on Vladimir Putin, the folks who can't name the Sunni branch of Islam (to them, probably, all Muslims are sweaty, swarthy terrorists).

They follow another time-honored kōan: Keep it simple. Don't bother with facts. Nugget-sized platitudes and zingers, hold the sauce. Don't discuss the difficulties in the Middle East, the complexities of the U.S. relationship with China, the fact that Americans pay half as much (or less) than Europeans at the pump. Don't make people think. Hurts. Brains.

John McCain comes to Springfield on Wednesday. He's supposed to talk about energy and the economy. Avid Republicans will eat the sweets (even though they don't especially care for the confectioner). Avid Democrats will naysay his offerings as leftovers from the Bush kitchen.

Everyone else will wonder why traffic around Missouri State University is bollixed up, but only if it's inconvenient to them. What they know about John McCain and Barack Obama would fill a bumper sticker but not a brochure. They will decide this election based on the last, best slogan they saw on a 30-second ad, sometime in late October.

"The darkness of insanity," as the immortal poet-philospher Declan Patrick MacManus put it. Don't bother looking for a switch. The strong and the trusted like it better with the lights out.

Monday, June 16, 2008

A HONEY OF A HOUSEGUEST

Dateline: Concord, N.H.

Skinny: Homeowner sees sticky stuff on walls, dips a finger, takes a taste. It's honey. In the walls, bees crawled.

WYFF reports:
Mark Jones’ 100-year-old house has more than 60,000 [bees].

Jones and his wife, Amychelle, said they can sum it up in one word: insanity. On Sunday, they found a way to deal with the bees.

Beekeepers removed 60,000 bees from the Joneses' home Sunday morning, leaving about 1,000 still buzzing inside.
No queen, so no lingering infestation. Four bees stung the beekeepers. All good, and the house remains tasty.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

FEAR AND CLOTHING

Michelle Malkin, the blogger, has gotten her way. Dunkin' Donuts is now safe from terrorism, Rachael Ray is a left-wing apologist, and anyone wearing a black-and-white silk scarf is Against Us.

Dunkin' Donuts ran an ad featuring Ray wearing a scarf with a paisley design, "selected by her stylist for the advertising shoot," according to DD (mmm, double-Ds).

Malkin started ranting and said the scarf looked like a keffiyeh: "The keffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad ... the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant and not-so-ignorant fashion designers, celebrities, and left-wing icons."

According to the Boston Globe:
[Dunkin' Donuts] at first pooh-poohed the complaints, claiming the black-and-white wrap was not a keffiyeh. But the right-wing drumbeat on the blogosphere continued and by yesterday, Dunkin’ Donuts decided it’d be easier just to yank the ad.

Said the suits in a statement: "In a recent online ad, Rachael Ray is wearing a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design. ... Absolutely no symbolism was intended. However, given the possibility of misperception, we are no longer using the commercial."
Dunkin' Donuts caves, Malkin crows, idiocy reigns. Soon the clock will strike 13.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

WRITER WITH A REAL VOICE

It pays to be bland.

Exhibit A: Steven Barber, former student at the University of Virginia's College at Wise. He turned in a short story for a creative-writing class. His instructor freaked out at the story's violent tone. Barber, 23, was forced into a psych bin, then expelled.

The Wall Street Journal reports:
"It had to be acted on immediately," says Christopher Scalia, the instructor. He alerted administrators, who reacted swiftly, searching Mr. Barber's dorm room and car. Upon discovering three guns, they had him committed to a psychiatric institution for a weekend. Then they expelled him.

Yet the psychiatrists who evaluated Mr. Barber during his hospitalization determined he was no threat to himself or others. Mr. Barber says the guns were for protection from threats such as school shootings. He maintains that his story, titled "Sh---y First Drafts," was merely a fictional attempt to address school shootings such as the April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech massacre, which left 33 dead, including the gunman. The story "was supposed to show how disturbed people are who do that," Mr. Barber says. ...

The problem for Mr. Scalia, the instructor, was the story's references to the class and its assignments and to the murder of a professor called Mr. Christopher, a name identical to his own first name. Mr. Barber, a Navy veteran who served in the Iraq war, wrote of stockpiling alcohol and drugs for a binge and sleeping with the "cold and heavy steel" of a gun under his pillow. "I knew I had a choice," he wrote. "Murder or suicide. Either way, death was imminent."
Scalia is the son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He believes Barber's story was about him.

Barber gave the school enough ammo to shoot him. He was already on school probation for booze and for possession a nightstick-like weapon. He also had a 3.9 GPA and was on the dean's list. He says he'd write about "butterflies and rainbows" if he had a second chance at Wise.

The WSJ hed: Schools Struggle With Dark Writings. The real struggle seems to be with common sense.

Thursday, May 01, 2008

WIKIPEDIA MONKEY BUSINESS

Someone within the Department of Justice wants to mess with our heads. A typist using an IP address belonging to DoJ made edits to an article about the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, also known as CAMERA.

The scrubbed info: How CAMERA was trying to "cooperate with prominent Wikipedia editors to promote a Zionist viewpoint and oppose pro-Arab viewpoints on Wikipedia."

The Wikimedia Foundation has been all over the story. According to this report from mister-info:
After the IP address belonging to the DOJ was blocked, Wikipedia editors informed the Wikimedia Foundation's Communications committee about the incident. Both Wikinews and Wikipedia are projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. In addition to the DOJ IP address, several Wikipedia users determined to be cooperating with the CAMERA campaign to influence Wikipedia had also previously been blocked by Wikipedia administrators.

Wikinews requested a statement from the Department of Justice on the edits to Wikipedia, but as of this article's publication had not received a response.
The (for now) anonymous DoJer also made edits to articles about Tracy Jordan, Roger Ebert and James E. Akins.

The DoJ address was blocked for "repeated vandalism," but someone else in D.C. is also making the same edits to the CAMERA article. Nice to know CAMERA is a government front, and we always suspected there was something odd about Roger Ebert. But Tracy Jordan? Maybe the Black Crusaders are real.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

TWO DAYS, TWO DOOZIES

Reading opinion letters in the local paper can be a dangerous mission. Sometimes the missives are so hilarious that one suspects they were created by spoofbots cranked to the "ridiculous" setting. This would be much better than the reality -- that living, breathing people actually harbor such thoughts.

A Saturday letter from Edith Kaiser, an associate professor of Bible at Global University in Springfield, claims -- without much logic -- that "the Earth is not billions of years old." Kaiser tees off on writer Bill Fuenfhausen for invoking science to stand up for evolution:
You talked about the evidence from various scientific fields. Where and what are they? Did you know that scientists came up with the age of the Earth based on tests done on meteorites? They tested them four ways and came up with four different answers and just arbitrarily took one number! If my students came up with four answers to a question, I would mark it incorrect! Also if the fact that the magnetic force around the Earth is deteriorating is figured in the equation, the mathematical equation is changed and the dating is in thousands and not billions! In fact, modern scientific investigation is challenging all carbon dating methods.
Such blatant dishonesty by an alleged academic would be funny, if Kaiser wasn't filling minds with her nonsense. One can only hope her students wake up, realize their instructor is duping them, and do some outside reading. Maybe then they'll see that Kaiser's exclamation points only prove she'd rather shout than think.

Sunday, Nancy Harmon of Springfield opined that moving to the city was a huge mistake:
My husband and I moved here from South Dakota a little over two years ago. What a mistake! Missouri has higher taxes, higher insurance and higher utilities. South Dakota also has no state income tax or personal property tax. We traded in a car this year also and had to pay 7 percent tax on the difference here in Missouri rather than 3 percent on the difference in South Dakota.
A shame that Harmon and her husband apparently did no research about state-by-state taxation before moving from South Dakota. No shame the Harmons will soon be leaving the Ozarks.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

OH, THE HUMANITY

Gore everywhere, and not the Al kind. The political landscape of January 2008 is saturated with blood and brains. Tiny bits of skull stud the mess like pieces of broken tile, the sort of bad art deco done by people who watch too much HGTV.

Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt held a news conference on Wednesday and actually laughed and smiled. The first time it happened the heads of a few reporters and opinion writers immediately exploded (the shooters survived intact because they have seen and heard everything; nothing a politician says or does can surprise a photog). A mult box was liberally splashed with blood, and from that point forward everyone's recording was marred by a low hum.

No one among the sane bought Blunt's excuses for not seeking a second term. This was largely because Blunt never lived up to his surname. Had he said something like -- Polls showed I was losing to a guy named Nixon, and Christ, if that isn't bad, I don't know what is. I'm packing it in, boys and girls, getting out while the getting's good. See you suckers in Hell. -- well, heads still would have exploded, but at least there would be a reason for the sanguinary scene. We would get the last W in our filthy mitts to go with the Who, What, When and Where. We would know truth. We would know the Why.

For now we know nothing that's real. There is only a suspicion that Matt Blunt has been replaced with some sort of malfunctioning robot, an incredible fake that looks and talks like him, but has a touch too much good humor. We will know for sure it's a cyborg if it starts bedding down in the Governor's Mansion in Jefferson City, or maybe picks up a phone and talks with Roy Blunt.

---

Mitt Romney has his own exploding head problem, only it's not his noggin in danger of becoming blood pudding. It's the other guys running against him. They hate his guts.

According to a New York Times report, Romney has become "the most disliked" candidate, the black-hole equivalent to Miss Congeniality:
“The glee the other candidates go after Romney with is really unique,” said Dan Schnur, a Republican strategist who worked on (John) McCain’s presidential campaign bid in 2000 but is not affiliated with any campaign now. ...

Mr. Schnur used a schoolyard analogy to compare Mr. Romney, the ever-proper Harvard Law School and Business School graduate, to Mr. McCain, the gregarious rebel who racked up demerits and friends at the Naval Academy.

“John McCain and his friends used to beat up Mitt Romney at recess,” Mr. Schnur said.
Bam! More heads shatter and spray. These belong to the conservatives who despise McCain for his campaign-finance loving ways (not to mention his soft stance on immigration -- he doesn't want to strangle illegals with his bare hands, unless they're from Vietnam). They think McCain is nuts, and even though we happen to agree, it's difficult to hate the guy for it. When those eyes get to dancing in McCain's misshapen head you can catch a glimpse of the hell-with-it devil infesting his brain, and damned if it isn't endearing in a goofy gramps sort of way.

Hardline conservatives don't feel that warm mojo. Screw McInsane, I won't vote for him and the party can suck it. Same goes for Huckabee. No less than The Godfather says McCain and Huckabee are destroyers:
I'm here to tell you, if either of these two guys get the nomination, it's going to destroy the Republican Party, it's going to change it forever, be the end of it. A lot of people aren't going to vote. You watch.
Thus Rush throws his considerable weight behind Romney, by default. Tepid but tolerable. The country-club Republicans say Mitt's good enough on abortion, on gays, on all the social issues, because he's a damned fine businessman and a good-looking fella and that doesn't mean we're gay, we just appreciate a mighty fine looking man, someone with a chiseled chin and silver at the temples and five handsome sons, none of them looking too hairy, and did we mention we're not gay?

---

Over at Free Republic the gore is ankle-deep, Dexter deep. Conservative darling Duncan Hunter has endorsed the much-maligned Huckabee, and Freepers are freaking. They hate Huckabee because he reminds the Freepers too much of Bill Clinton -- a formidable pol who wears the mask of the optimist. Besides, his last name makes them think of hillbillies.

The discussion about Hunter's endorsement makes Scanners look like Gumby -- the Claymation version, not Eddie Murphy, dammit. It's all confusion and bad blood on the slippery floor, and it's only January. The chance of more mayhem is great.

Thursday, October 04, 2007

AN AGONIZING COLLISION

Say this, if nothing else, about the current administration -- it really does create its own reality. Not as tasty as making your own gravy (unless you believe Nick Lowe was right about that whole cruel-to-be-kind business), but it's fascinating to watch. Almost funny in a macabre way, until you realize it's happening in the United States.

Thursday's New York Times rolled with a deep, detailed story about the redefinition of torture by this country's leaders. The skinny: Congress outlawed “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment of prisoners. In a legal opinion, the U.S. Department of Justice agreed. But in a secret opinion, Justice said things like waterboarding, sleep deprivation, sensory overload and blows to the head are not cruel, inhuman or degrading.

Problem solved. Secrecy preserved -- until The Times opened a few windows so all of us can see what the government is doing in our names.

Do yourself a favor, if you haven't already. Read the story and go from there.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

AND THEY DIDN'T SMELL!

When Bill O'Reilly peeled away a corner of his public mask and allowed us a peek at what's inside -- that's when the end game began. The outcome in our post-Imus world is clear; he can kick and scream (or whine with decreasing volume), but O'Reilly is, professionally speaking, a dead man talking.

As you probably know, O'Reilly talked last week about his dinner with Al Sharpton at Sylvia's, a famous soul-food restaurant in Harlem. During his rambling, O'Reilly repeatedly expressed surprise at the lack of profanity and violence -- and at how well-behaved black people were during dinner and an Anita Baker concert.

Media Matters has the transcript of what O'Reilly said. The transcript also includes Juan Williams in his role as O'Reilly's lapdog.

Some of what O'Reilly said is truth:
I don't think there's a black American who hasn't had a personal insult that they've had to deal with because of the color of their skin. I don't think there's one in the country.
But much of what he said was steeped in an I'll-be-damned amazement -- black folks being respectful! all dressed up! not a grill in sight!
And I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship.
O'Reilly is trying hard to dismiss the predictable outcry from his remarks as a sign the "liberal media" is out to get him. Like his notions about black people, O'Reilly dates himself when he peddles the "liberal media" cliche. He sounds so establishment '60s, the parent who's surprised to find his son's hippie friend isn't a grunting Commie.

In saying such things, O'Reilly proves he's a dinosaur waiting for an asteroid. His time is short.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

AN OBSCENITY OF ITS OWN

A grand jury in Wyandotte County, Kan., has indicted three Kansas City-area businesses on obscenity charges. The adult-entertainment industry says Philip Cosby is to blame.

According to AVN:
Cosby heads the Kansas City chapter of the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families (NCPCF). Earlier this year, he organized a petition drive calling for grand jury investigations of 32 adult businesses in Kansas and Missouri for promotion of obscenity. Enlisting the help of church leaders and community activists, Cosby's group delivered the petitions to six county courthouses in May.
Guys like Cosby are the scariest culture warriors.

Saturday, June 30, 2007

FEAR AND SELF-LOATHING

We've mentioned again and again the almost-irresistible allure of "To Catch A Predator," the Dateline segments featuring sting operations played out against alleged pervs.

There is reason to resist, and not just because the shows are more hype than anything else. Some excerpts from an Associated Press report about a sting gone awry in Murphy, Texas:
"Dateline" works with an activist group called Perverted Justice, which supplies adults who troll Internet chat rooms, posing as underage boys and girls, and try to collect incriminating sex talk.

City manager Craig Sherwood approved such an operation in this well- to-do community of 11,000 after being approached by "Dateline" and Perverted Justice, but he never informed the mayor or the City Council. He said secrecy was necessary for the sting to be effective.

Over four days in November, 24 men were arrested at a two-story home in one of Murphy's newer neighborhoods after allegedly arranging to meet boys or girls there.

Some other suspects contacted Perverted Justice decoys online but never showed up at the house. Among them was Louis Conradt Jr., an assistant prosecutor from neighboring Kauffman County, who allegedly engaged in a sexually explicit online chat with an adult posing as a 13-year-old boy.

As police knocked at his door and a "Dateline" camera crew waited in the street, Conradt shot himself. ...


last month, Collin County District Attorney John Roach dropped all charges. He said that in 16 of the cases, he had no jurisdiction, since neither the suspects nor the decoys were in the county during the online chats.

As for the rest of the cases, he said neither police nor NBC could guarantee the chat logs were authentic and complete. ...

Two weeks ago, the City Council voted to buy out the city manager's contract for $255,000.

NBC's Chris Hansen said Murphy is the only place the show has encountered such resistance.

"I don't want to get involved in the DA's business or the police business," he said. "I can tell you in the other locations, these issues did not come up."
Sorry, Chris Hansen, but you are involved in police business, and whether or not "these issues" happened in other locations, they did happen in Texas.

Monday, May 14, 2007

JOKING ABOUT A GUNMAN

Scales Elementary School in Murfreesboro, Tenn., may soon have a few job openings.

Last week the sixth grade took its annual weeklong field trip to Fall Creek Falls, a state park. On the last night of the trip, teachers and staffers pulled their annual prank.

And ha-ha, the adults thought it would be hilarious if they told the kids that a gunman was on the loose, firing shots in the park.

Teachers told the students to hide under tables. The lights in their common room were extinguished. A teacher disguised in a hooded sweatshirt yanked on doors.

According to The Tennessean, several students were crying and begging for their lives.

Five minutes later, the "prank" ended. Over the weekend, dozens of parents met with school administrators and listened as the principal talked about "poor judgment." The school also issued a news release:
The lead teacher told the students and other adults that there were people somewhere in the park shooting guns but they were not shooting people; they were driving around playing. He added that the Park Ranger had advised him to tell everyone to take cover as a precaution.

The lead teacher had already instructed the children (as a precaution) to get under the tables. The children remained there quietly for a short period of time.

Soon after, the lights were turned on and the children were informed that this was the prank that they had been forewarned about and was just a joke.

The staff used this incident as a teaching opportunity. The children were praised for following the rules of the school system's "Code Red" procedure.

Most of the students stood up and said, "That was a good one." "Yeah, you got me." High fives were exchanged. The children were then sent to their dorms to clean up before bedtime.
The school principal -- ironically, a graduate of Virginia Tech -- sees nothing funny about the incident. She's promised disciplinary action.

Monday, April 02, 2007

PREDATOR ALERT

We all know what a predator is supposed to be, yes? We know he's evil and unstoppable, like the monster in that Arnold movie. We know that Life As We Know It is not safe when predators are around, especially when children populate the neighborhood, because predators love to prey on children. "Dateline" tells us so.

And that's the danger. The current culture has bastardized the P-word into banality. What used to be defined as "any organism that exists by preying upon other organisms" now means "any bastard that we can string up, especially if it keeps the children safe."

This week, cops in Florida busted 28 men for soliciting sex with minors. According to The New York Times:
Three of the 28 people who were arrested told authorities they worked for the Walt Disney Company, which owns and operates several theme parks in the Orlando area including Walt Disney World. Among the other arrested suspects were a volunteer for the Orlando Boys and Girls Club and a student at the University of Florida.
It all sounds tidy -- predators arrested, kids kept safe. But consider:

•The "kids" were undercover cops conducting a sting. They claimed to be girls, ages 13 or 14.
•The sting happened because it was "fairly simple" to set up -- not because police had noticed an uptick in sex cases involving children.
•The youngest of the suspects is 17. Another is 19. Two are 21.

There is also the media-whorishness of it all. The sheriff's office invited "reporters and photographers from several news agencies" to witness the sting, according to The Times. Grady Judd, the sheriff of Polk County, Fla., delivered his best fearmongering. "We will not allow these criminals’ behavior to escalate to kidnapping or murder," Grady said in a statement.

Easy arrests that make national news. How can Judd go wrong?

By continuing to hype an "epidemic" that needlessly frightens parents:
The sheriff’s office said that, according to national statistics, 1 in 7 children say that they have received an online solicitation; 1 in 11 has received an aggressive online sexual solicitation; and 1 in 3 has been exposed to unwanted sexual images on line.
Really? Let's dig a little deeper. This Skeptical Inquirer article cites the same statistics and notes:
A “sexual solicitation” is defined as a “request to engage in sexual activities or sexual talk or give personal sexual information that were unwanted or, whether wanted or not, made by an adult.” Using this definition, one teen asking another teen if her or she is a virgin—or got lucky with a recent date—could be considered “sexual solicitation.” Not a single one of the reported solicitations led to any actual sexual contact or assault. Furthermore, almost half of the “sexual solicitations” came not from “predators” or adults but from other teens—in many cases the equivalent of teen flirting. When the study examined the type of Internet “solicitation” parents are most concerned about (e.g., someone who asked to meet the teen somewhere, called the teen on the telephone, or sent gifts), the number drops from “one in five” to just 3 percent.
A three-percent problem with big hype, akin to the overblown methamphetamine "epidemic".

The problem of predator hype isn't confined to Florida. Like most states, Missouri keeps a list of what we'd all like to think of as evil sex predators. According to state statute, the bad guys include anyone who's been convicted of:
The acts of rape, forcible rape, statutory rape in the first degree, statutory rape in the second degree, sexual assault, sodomy, forcible sodomy, statutory sodomy in the first degree, statutory sodomy in the second degree, child molestation in the first degree, child molestation in the second degree, deviate sexual assault, sexual misconduct and sexual abuse, or attempts to commit any of the aforesaid.
In Missouri, second-degree statutory rape means someone who's 21 or older having sex with someone who is "less than 17 years of age." A similar law defines second-degree statutory sodomy as someone 21 or older having "deviate sexual intercourse" with someone who's less than 17.

Just so you'll know, "deviate sexual intercourse" in Missouri is defined as:
[A]ny act involving the genitals of one person and the hand, mouth, tongue, or anus of another person.
Put bluntly, a 21-year-old guy getting a handjob from a girl who's almost 17 is guilty of statutory sodomy in the second degree, and if he's found guilty, he could face up to seven years in prison -- and be on Missouri's sex offenders list for at least 10 years after serving his sentence. He will also have to provide access to his home computer to a parole officer, so everyone can feel safe.

Is this your definition of a predator?