Four unusual child custody cases

Case #1. Taken from Wikipedia. 

In June 1858, police arrived at the Bologna home of a Jewish couple, Salomone and Marianna Padovani Mortara, to take one of their eight children, six-year-old Edgardo, and transport him to Rome to be raised as a ward of the state. The police had orders from the Catholic Church's Holy Office, authorized by Pope Pius IX. 

"The Kidnapping of Edgardo Montara" 

by Moritz Daniel Oppenheimer 

In those days, the city of Bologna was ruled by the pope. Under church law, baptism may be administered to a person in danger of imminent death by anyone, man or woman, even a non-Christian, and is considered a valid baptism as long as it is done in the manner in which the Catholic Church baptizes. Originally intended as a relief for Catholic families suffering high infant mortality rates, it had not been intended to be used for Jewish families. This rule allowed anyone to perform emergency baptism so the infant would not die unbaptised. Its use in the case of very ill Jewish children was accepted by the Christian population.

As it turned out, six year old Edgardo had been baptized by a servant without his parents' consent. After he was baptized, as attested by the girl, he was Catholic in accordance with Church law.  This law said non-Christians could not raise a Christian child even if the child was their own.

Note: I read Steven Spielberg is working on a movie about this case. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgardo_Mortara

Case #4. Inserted here because it's a new case, about a mother who may lose her four children, who can stay in Australia as she's deported back to Venezuela.

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/tugoflove-mum-fights-department-of-immigration-for-visa-20151009-gk5vj8.html

Case #2.  Taken from PBS and my own memory.

In November 1999 two Florida fishermen found a six year old boy, Elian Gonzalez,  on a raft floating offshore some 60 miles north of Miami. Elian had been brought aboard the raft by his divorced mother, who died during the trip together with all the other adults. 

Climate Models are very large Qberts

Climate models are like the old children's video game, Qbert (see Figure 1). I learned this secret after watching climate videos and looking up stuff on the Internet. 

Figure 1. Qbert grid. The little figures jump 

back and forth from cube to cube. 

Climate model developers lack my external perspective. And I have an advantage over them: I observed, and was victimized by*, the evolution of oil reservoir models over the last 40 years. As it turns out, oil reservoir models are simpler versions of climate models. Lately they look like the picture in Figure 2. 

Figure 2. Oil reservoir model. This diagram 

shows a fine grid depicting geology and 

geometry, the little lines are the wells.

Oil reservoir models are much simpler than their climate counterparts, but they both share the same basic architecture: climate models are like a multilayered bunch of flat dominoes wrapped around a spinning sphere. So it's hard to draw one.

Letter to Daniel

The problem remains the inability of the middle class to understand that total ruin and destruction are inevitable when communists gain power. So the choice you face is reaching absolute misery and despair in the future, or taking a risk and facing more danger now in exchange for a possible way out. 

The only way out is to stop economic activity and hunker down, be willing to die at the end. There's a chance the total lack of economic activity will convince a faction within the Maduro dictatorship to dump him and change course. 

Peaceful protests don't work against a 

regime willing to use shock troops (the

 colectivos), national guard, secret police 

shooters, arbitrary arrests, torture and 

murder as needed to hold on to power. 

The inability to move in this direction keeps you on a conveyor belt that takes you down as you try to crawl up. This applies to the majority of Venezuelans, who don't understand the conveyor belt isn't about to stop, and efforts to crawl up that belt won't move you fast enough. The communists rely on your ignorance of their true intentions and the outcome they visualize. What's even worse what they visualize is utopian, based on resentment and hatred, and/or complete disregard for human rights. 

As long as you don't understand you face 

monsters you won't act. And when 

you act it's too late, or you are not united. 

This is what I saw many years ago. At that time I warned Venezuelans I knew to get out, because I didn't see in them the fighting spirit nor the awareness of the enemy they face. Right now getting out of Venezuela is much harder than six years ago, and six years ago it was harder than 12 years ago. So imagine what it will be like 6 years from now. In other words, I hate to be so brutally honest, but in six years those of you who remain will wish you were dead unless you fight for your freedom now. This is your last chance. Otherwise, leave.

A town where cattle are worth more than people

The minister has arrived. The motorcade fills the unpaved street. Policemen who were slumbering in the early autumn midday heat stir, straighten, then spring into action, clearing the way with their canes for this most important visitor. Mahesh Sharma, India’s minister of culture, is preceded by a small aide in a purple shirt and followed by a large grey-suited bodyguard.

Sharma has come to “condole” the family of Mohammed Akhlaq, a 50-year-old labourer beaten to death by a mob in his small two-storey home in the centre of Bishara village, about an hour’s drive beyond the outskirts of Delhi, India’s capital, last Monday night.

The mob that killed him believed that Akhlaq and his family, who are Muslim, had eaten meat from a cow, an animal considered sacred by the 80% of the Indian population who follow the Hindu faith.

Happy cow

 Akhlaq and his son were dragged from their beds and beaten with bricks. The father died; the son is fighting for his life in hospital.