1/6/03
I had a very difficult day today. I'd call it a 2.5 out of 10. A lot of unpleasant things getting in my way... I need to focus on the positive and minimize those stumbling blocks.

There's a little orange cat that I know who likes to get all up in my face when I have a ricola going. So, things Newt likes to sniff while I eat are - Toothpaste, ricola, orange tofu, and rosemary bread. Sometimes soup. Surprisingly, *not* mint chocolate chip ice cream.

To fend him off, an ice cube is often required. I need to post some new piccies of the Newtster.

I've done a lot of notebook writing, but I'm not terribly happy with the results. More practice is required.

The "local neighbor" I mentioned earlier dropped me from his reading list. I wonder if it was because I didn't reciprocate (actually trying to trim my current list a bit...) or if he actually recognized my brother or me. It's fun to track who comes and goes from linking. As of Sept 1, 30 have added and 29 have removed me. Some deleted their journals and then reinstated them, some just deleted and never came back. More than one deleted and then created a new journal when creepy-weirdies were simpler to run away from than to deal with. I can understand "burning your journal", but I think that more can be gained by saving it to look back on later...make it all private if you don't want anyone to read it. The flipside of that is the weirdness of folks that write purely for other people to read it, with no personal elements at all.

Nation states has been sluggish for the last few days now.

Got a cool Castle Keep and bunch of Star Wars Pez as a belated Christmas Gift from Dave & Cathi

Museum of Foreign Grocery Products - mmm..poppadums and curry pringles

A good idea: Pennsylvania takes DNA samples from people convicted of sexual offenses. As those samples hit the database, some old crimes are being solved. By last year, the October 1998 stabbing death of 21-year-old Liane Evans in McKeesport had become a "cold case" -- a long-unsolved crime with few if any viable leads.

That all changed in late April, when Allegheny County detectives submitted genetic evidence from the crime scene to state police scientists at the DNA laboratory in Greensburg.

The cold case suddenly got very hot when the state's computerized DNA database matched the crime-scene evidence with a DNA sample from an inmate in a state penitentiary in Schuylkill County.

The suspect, Kevin E. Worlds of Morningside, was serving a 20- to 40-year sentence there for a 1999 assault. Like others convicted in Pennsylvania for certain crimes enumerated in the 1995 DNA Detection Act, Worlds had been required to submit a blood sample for inclusion in the DNA database.

Armed with the new, virtually irrefutable evidence, detectives confronted Worlds, who police say confessed to the slaying. He is awaiting trial for the killing.

"We would not have been able to solve this crime without the technology we have," county police Superintendent Kenneth Fulton said at the time.

The Evans case marked the first time Allegheny County police had made an arrest using the state's DNA database, but it is unlikely to be the last.

Last year the Legislature passed a law that more than doubles the number of crimes for which convicts must submit DNA samples, and as the pool of potential suspects grows, the more likely it becomes that a "hit," or match to crime-scene evidence, will occur.

Up until now, the only people required to submit DNA samples were those convicted of homicide, rape, statutory sexual assault, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault, and harassment and stalking.

Now included are burglary, robbery, kidnapping, incest, sexual abuse of children, prostitution and related offenses, possessing obscene and other sexual materials, unlawful contact or communication with a minor, sexual exploitation of children, luring a child into a motor vehicle and indecent assault.

The crimes cited in the law, most have a sexual component, are ones in which body fluids and blood samples can be found at the scene. The burglary and robbery categories were added partly because people who commit those crimes also are frequently involved in assaults, homicides and sex crimes.

Currently, the state's DNA database includes nearly 23,000 samples, about 19,000 of them from inmates. The remainder are forensic samples from unsolved crimes that are stored until a match is made.

The pool will grow significantly under the new law. In the two weeks after it took effect Dec. 16, the Greensburg lab received about 2,500 samples, or about 2,000 more than it normally would receive during the same period.

"From what we've seen since the law took effect, at a minimum it will quadruple our work," said Christine Tomsey, manager of the DNA lab, which employs 19 people in Greensburg and five at a much smaller facility in Bethlehem.

Most importantly, Tomsey noted, if Pennsylvania has the kind of success with an enlarged DNA database that other states have experienced, it's possible there could be as much as a seven-fold increase in the number of police investigations that will be aided or solved here and elsewhere.

Many other states are also quickly expanding their DNA databases.

One tool that has caused the explosion in DNA profiling is PCR, or polymerase chain reaction, a chemical process that can multiply a sample of DNA found at a crime scene more than a billion times in about three hours. That made it possible to analyze thousands of samples that would have been too small to work with in the past. Also, advances in machines that can automatically read the DNA samples have speeded up the process.

Each profile costs between $50 and $100. Pennsylvania law says the inmates must bear that cost if they are able, but the bulk of the bill is picked up by the taxpayers.

"DNA is the jewel of the forensic science community," said State Police Maj. John Capriotti, who heads the state's Crime Lab Department, of which the DNA lab is a part. "Its the biggest advance I've seen in the 36 years I've been in police work."

Capriotti said the impact of DNA profiling has equaled or surpassed that made by fingerprinting. "And we think it's only in its infancy and we'll be able to do a lot more with DNA in the future," he said.

The number of hits from the state's database is likely to grow exponentially because all 50 states have DNA databases that are linked by computers. The genetic pool of potential suspects in the nationwide DNA database, known as CODIS, or Combined DNA Index System, grows as more people are incarcerated, but it's also growing because many states, like Pennsylvania, are increasing the number of crimes for which an inmate is mandated to provide a sample.

Indeed, some states, such as Virginia and Florida, mandate DNA samples from everyone convicted of a felony, making it nearly as routine as an arrested person having his fingerprints taken.

Even at its current level, the state system has had good success.

Last year, it garnered hits in 50 cases in which suspects were unknown. The matches were either with a convict's DNA sample or with an unknown person's sample from another crime, at least indicating to police that the same person committed more than one crime.

Since becoming operational in 1996, the state police DNA lab has had 14 national and 91 in-state hits, which aided more than 145 investigations without a solid suspect. The higher number of investigations is because, in some cases, a single suspect's DNA matched evidence from several crime scenes.

Tomsey said the state had been averaging about a hit a week over the past few years, ever since its database grew to more than 10,000 samples. She predicted that the average could rise to as many as one a day.

"We expect the number of hits to go up," Tomsey said. "Look at Virginia. They have over 100,000 samples and average almost a hit a day. It's the same for Florida."

It's not just law enforcement officials who will benefit from the DNA matches.

If convicts who have provided DNA samples become suspects in a crime after they are released from prison, the samples could rule them out as suspects, meaning police won't be knocking on their doors.

That's the way it should be, said Capriotti, who noted that many people forget that DNA is a great tool for excluding potential suspects.

"If the evidence does not point to that individual, that's fine as far as we're concerned," he said. "We're only interested in the truth.

"If it turns out a prime suspect is not the guilty party, that's fine, or that somebody who is found guilty is later found not to be the offender [by use of DNA], we feel good about that because it's serving justice."




A year ago - Telefutura, game show network, newt shenanigans, my first recorded post on the Usenet, meemee deleted, wonka

Two years ago - Pix quit, love for my sweetheart, Victorian love, spongebob, angry beavers, 's art, Chinese zodiac, Cold Mountain (Everyone I've talked to about it has loved the book, but hated the ending.), peanut butter and nanner sammiches, mother goose.

Lambada, the forbidden dance...or pretending to throw paint on those who wear fake fur.