Wisely 's Bookmarks

• BESTOR, Arthur E. Educational
  Wastelands: The Retreat from Learning in Our Public Schools, 2nd ed.
  (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985).



 

The wild card, though, is a tornado.

"Let's face it," Mr. Franks said, "the only tornado-proof building would be one underground."

While building standards in hurricane zones plan for 150-mph winds, the highest recorded wind speed on Earth was double that. A portable Doppler radar measured the wind speed of a 1999 tornado in Oklahoma at 302 mph. Wind speeds of the tornado that severely damaged parts of Fort Worth in 2000 were estimated at the time to be no higher than 112 mph by National Weather Service officials.

All numbers are estimates because good data isn't available about ground-level wind speeds in tornadoes. The record speed was measured at about 100 feet off the ground.

David Platten, senior principal at Walter P. Moore, the structural engineering firm for the Cowboys' stadium, said the building codes, if followed, do a good job of protecting against most severe weather.

However, there are no guarantees.

"To design a building to withstand 200-mph wind gusts, like you would see in a tornado, that wouldn't be practical for a cost standpoint," Mr. Platten said. "It's a risk."

In Athens, for example, there was a classification scandal surrounding two tall Tunisian midgets.

The Tunisians were included in throwing events for dwarfs, as there were not enough midgets to justify an event of their own. Classifiers decided that the requirement for competition would not be dwarfism, but height.

The midgets were slightly taller than the dwarfs. They could also fully extend their arms, as midgets' bodies are proportional and dwarfs' are not. The Tunisians broke world records, and the dwarfs were furious.

At the Sydney Games, a group of Spaniards pretended to be intellectually disabled to enter the basketball competition, hoping to claim a cash reward for gold medals that had been offered by the Spanish Government.

As a result, intellectually disabled events were dropped from Athens and Beijing. They will be revived in London, much to the disapproval of physically disabled athletes who believe the inclusion of the "IDs" will confuse the Games with the Special Olympics.

In Beijing, Australia's Heath Francis, who was seven when he caught his forearm in a meat mincer 20 years ago, won gold in the 100 metres, 200m and 400m. He is in the T46 class for athletes with a single above-elbow amputation and runs with an artificial arm to improve his balance. But under the new guidelines, that might not be enough of a disability.

"For sprinting, the upper body is as important as the lower body," Francis said. "When you look at Olympic runners, their arms are almost as big as their legs. The strength of your upper body determines the speed of your legs."

Able-bodied athletes do heavy weight training, but Francis cannot do most of it. "You try to modify them and make the best of it, and I'm lucky that [my coach] thinks laterally, but it's still not as good as the exercises I could do with two arms.

"That then translates onto the track, about how much power and force I can generate with my legs. I'm restricted with the strength in my arms."

Long Distance Alert

Compatible

Long Distance Alert and Priority Call have the same

distinctive ring (short, long, short), so end-users

will not be able to tell if the call is Long Distance

Alert or Priority Call.

Under the new standard, the state must obtain parental consent or a court order prior to removal "unless life or limb is in immediate jeopardy or sexual abuse is about to occur," the memo states.

Additionally, investigators now must weigh factors for each child living in a home before removing any of them based on allegations of abuse involving another child. The standard practice of removing all children in a household when abuse was suspected on any single child was the basis for removing more than 400 children from a West Texas polygamist group in April.

The Texas Supreme Court in late May held that removing all the children was not justified based on allegations that a few underage girls were married to older men.

Gary Gates, the Fort Bend County man whose lawsuit prompted the revisions, said the changes will protect families from having their constitutional rights violated.

"The whole reason we started the litigation was because we felt there were wrongs in the system," said Gates, an apartment building owner and founder of the Texas Center for Family Rights.

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