Man Survives Fall From 17th Floor
MINNEAPOLIS — A man crashed through a double-paned window in a hotel on Saturday and plummeted 16 floors — but survived when he was caught by a roof overhang.
Joshua S. Hanson, 29, of Blair, Wis., was taken to a hospital. Police and fire officials said he had multiple broken bones and internal injuries.
The man must have "an angel on his shoulder or something," said police Lt. Dale Barsness. "He's a lucky guy."
According to a police report, Hanson and two friends returned from a night of drinking at about 1:30 a.m Saturday. When the elevator reached the 17th floor, Hanson ran down a short hallway toward a floor-to-ceiling window, Barsness said.
He apparently lost his balance and crashed through the glass, then fell 300 feet, landing on the roof overhang one floor up from the street.
The window was double-paned and had a safety bar, said Tom Mason, general manager of the Hyatt.
Police said Hanson was conscious and communicating when he was taken off the overhang.
"This has never happened before," said Mason, who added that hotel officials will investigate and take whatever steps to ensure the hotel's safety

Copyright 2007, The Associated Press.

Experts: Mo. boy controlled by captor
By CHRISTOPHER LEONARD Associate Press Writer © 2007 The Associated Press
TOOLS
KIRKWOOD, Mo. — For more than four years, Shawn Hornbeck seemed to have had every chance to escape, left alone for hours to ride his bike, play video games and walk past missing-child posters showing his own age-progressed image.
But mental health experts say this troubling case is hardly so simple, and that Hornbeck was likely kept mentally shackled by terror and domination from the man accused of kidnapping him, 41-year-old Michael Devlin.
"I think it's a real mistake to judge this child. Whatever he did to this point to stay alive is to his credit," said Terri Weaver, an associate psychology professor at Saint Louis University.
Weaver, an expert on post traumatic stress disorder, said children in such situations kick into survival mode, "doing what needs to be done to keep yourself going day-to-day."
Devlin, a 300-pound pizza parlor manager, is accused of abducting Hornbeck four years ago when the slight boy, taken as he was riding his bike, was just 11. Now a gangly 15-year-old with floppy hair and a pierced lip, he was found by surprise Friday when police acting on a tip went to Devlin's modest-two-bedroom apartment in this St. Louis suburb to rescue 13-year-old Ben Ownby, who had been snatched four days earlier on his way home from school.
Now investigators are piecing together the details of Hornbeck's captivity and Ownby's abduction, trying to discover how the man kept the boys captive in an apartment where neighbors often heard banging, shouting and arguing.
Residents in Hornbeck's hometown of Richwoods were shocked the boy could have so much contact with the outside world but remain at his captor's side — refusing to flee even as Devlin worked two jobs that forced him to leave Hornbeck and, later, Ownby, alone.
Weaver said repeated contact with outsiders can actually reinforce an abducted child's sense of helplessness.
"Over time, your safety has been threatened. You are a child. You may have been traumatized in other ways. You may feel helpless to reach out to other people," she said.
The case is reminiscent of the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping. The Salt Lake City teen was taken for nine months by a religious zealot and passed up several chances to escape.
Stephen Golding, a forensic psychologist who examined the suspect in the Smart case, said captors often establish control over their victims through fear.
"People are led to believe, through someone taking advantage of their vulnerabilities, that leaving is not an option, that things will get worse for them or will get worse for others," Golding said.
Neighbors describe Devlin as a loner with a quick temper. He obsessed over a reserved parking space at his apartment complex.
Rob Bushelle, who lives in Devlin's complex, said he made that mistake last fall. Devlin arrived in his white pickup with an adolescent boy in his passenger seat, whom Bushelle now recognizes as Hornbeck. Devlin became furious and began shouting at Bushelle, demanding he move. Bushelle refused, and Devlin called police.
While Devlin spoke with officers, Hornbeck got out of Devlin's truck and walked into the building, Bushelle said.
Devlin was raised in the St. Louis suburb of Webster Groves. His family released a statement Saturday praising law enforcement agencies for returning Ownby and Hornbeck to their families. Devlin's relatives said they prayed for Ownby's safe return when they learned last week he was kidnapped, and said "the past few days have been incredibly difficult.
"Just as we are relieved that both Ben and Shawn are now safe, we hope that Michael will be safe as the facts of his case are revealed."
Devlin's childhood neighbors told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Devlin was adopted and one of six children.
Sarah Sullivan described him as a quiet child in an otherwise outgoing family. He was always big for his age and avoided sports. He had a hot temper and spent a lot of time in his room, she said.
Devlin got a job at Imo's Pizza when he was in high school. He never left the pizza parlor over the years. He has no apparent criminal past, except for a pair of traffic fines, officials said.
"He's smarter than most people, so he liked to be a smart aleck," co-worker Gus Nanos told the newspaper.
"In his calmer moments, he would be an incredibly nice and thoughtful person," Nanos said.
Co-workers noticed that Devlin became more withdrawn in 2002, the year Hornbeck was abducted. That was also the year Devlin, a diabetic, had a toe amputated.
"He went from being such a teaser to a much quieter person. I felt like he had been humbled by all of his health problems," Nanos said.
Police say Devlin drove his pickup to Beaufort, Mo., Monday and kidnapped Ownby. A witness spotted his truck and its description was broadcast in an Amber Alert.
Kirkwood police officers Gary Wagster and Chris Nelson spotted the truck Thursday night outside Devlin's apartment.
"Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" Wagster asked Nelson, according to the Post-Dispatch.
A neighbor said the truck belonged to Devlin, and the officers saw him leave his apartment to empty his trash into a trash bin. They questioned Devlin in the parking lot, and he was friendly and cooperative.
His demeanor quickly changed when they pressed him for permission to search his apartment. Devlin became defensive and refused.
The officers reported the exchange to the task force in Franklin County trying to track down Ownby. Task force officers went to Devlin's apartment that night and were also refused entry.
Authorites arrested Devlin while he was at work Friday. They found Ownby in Devlin's apartment along with Hornbeck, who identified himself when they arrived.
The families of both boys have refused to comment beyond a pair of news conferences they held Saturday, during which the boys were told not to talk to reporters.
___
Associated Press writers Betsy Taylor and Cheryl Wittenauer in St. Louis contributed to this report.

I’m gay and soon science may be able to tell me why

Andrew Sullivan

Times of London
In the 21st century, we have decoded human DNA, we can examine the stars of distant galaxies and we have even begun to unlock the myriad mechanisms inside the human brain, but of one universally natural phenomenon we still know virtually nothing. That phenomenon is homosexuality.
When I was a teenager trying to find out how or why I turned out gay, there were very few reference books to help me. The phenomenon itself had been scientifically documented by the American social scientist Alfred Kinsey — but he proffered no explanation of its origins. It had befuddled Freud.
The scientific consensus had been laid out in the Wolfenden report in 1957, which solemnly concluded that homosexuality was “compatible with full mental health”. But the tantalising questions endured. Are people born gay? Is it genetic? Is it related to hormonal variations in the womb during pregnancy? Could it be affected by early childhood environment? Or is it a function of some other unknown factor?
We still don’t know. All we know is that it appears to be fixed by about the age of three. This lack of precision is partly due to the complexity of the phenomenon. Who knows whether sexual orientation isn’t multi-determined by any number of genetic, environmental or hormonal factors?
But our ignorance is also due to ideology. Neither the right nor the left has really wanted to know. Anti-gay social conservatives have long been uninterested in research that might prove the genetic basis of homosexuality — because it would “normalise” it. And the post-modern left insists that sexual orientation is socially constructed, and so scientific research is irrelevant. This politically correct right-left pincer has essentially slowed research on homosexuality to a crawl. Even now, a gay teen has barely more knowledge than I did 25 years ago.
Yes, there are some recently uncovered, tantalising genetic clues, gleaned more from the maternal DNA lineage than the paternal one. There are studies pointing to clear differences between homosexual and heterosexual hypothalamuses in the brain.
There’s a huge new volume of data about animal homosexuality, revealing it to be ubiquitous and complex. And as more and more gay people have emerged into the sunlight of public life, the range of their own stories has added to our collective understanding of what being gay, in all its varieties, can mean.
The trouble is: whenever science gets closer to figuring out the puzzle, politics intervenes. And so last week, Martina Navratilova and the usual suspects protested against new research on gay sheep being conducted at Oregon State University.
The researchers have been adjusting various hormones in the brains of gay rams to try to see if they can get them to be interested in the opposite sex. The indifference of many rams to otherwise attractive and fertile ewes is a drag on sheep-breeding, it seems. We don’t have any peer-reviewed studies yet, but reports of success in manipulating the sexual behaviour of some rams have led to an outcry.
The gay rams have a right to be what they are, Navratilova complains. She may be a little defensive about the breeding of farm animals — but you can see her broader worry. If you can figure out how to flip the gay switch off in sheep, how long will it be before someone tries to do the same in humans?
The good news, then, is that the empirical origins of sexual orientation are slowly being discovered. The bad news is that once discovered, they could be manipulated. There seems no likelihood in the foreseeable future of a hormonal treatment that could affect sexual orientation in adult humans. It’s been tried to no avail for decades — and once drove great men like the brilliant codebreaker Alan Turing to suicide.
But it’s not unimaginable to see scientific insight into the origins of animal homosexuality being abused if directed towards human beings in their first months and years. Maybe hormonal manipulation in utero could make homosexuality less likely in a sheep — or a child. Or maybe in the future, research like that being done now on sheep could be used to detect homosexual orientation in foetuses or babies — and prevent it. Why not, if that’s what parents wish?
The answer, of course, is an ethical no-brainer. Experimenting on other human beings crosses a bright moral line — even when that other human being is in your own womb. There is no medical reason for meddling with anyone’s sexual orientation, let alone in the crucial first months of a human being’s life. And the potential for all sorts of unintended consequences is huge. Most ethical doctors would abhor such practices. And rightly so. Laws could even be passed, and enforced, to ban them.
But what of the darker scenario in which we merely discover scientific clues to the origins of homosexuality in human embryos and allow the potentially gay ones to be selectively aborted? That, it seems to me, is by far the likelier scenario. In fact, we’d be naive not to expect something like it.
We already have widespread gender-selective abortion, with fewer and fewer girls being born in the developing world. And most parents across the globe are far more hostile to the idea of a gay child than of a daughter. Tests that could infer even a slightly higher probability of homosexuality in foetuses could lead to the equivalent of a “final solution” to the existence of gay people — the dream of bigots for millenniums.
In such a world, liberals and conservatives would be at sea. America’s religious right would have to make a choice between its goal of ridding the world of homosexuality and its strong opposition to abortion. Liberals would have to concede that genetics do indeed matter — and deal with the consequences. But how could they square their support for the right to abortion if it meant the deliberate extinction of a beleaguered minority?
Libertarian-minded conservatives like me would be equally conflicted. Who am I to tell someone what kind of child she can have if she wants to? Once I have conceded the possibility of legal abortion, and the rights of a woman to do with her own body as she sees fit, what case can I make against the potential of a quiet gay genocide — imposed and executed by parents?
The truth is: I don’t have such a case, and the combination of expanding human knowledge and human freedom can indeed be a perilous one. That much we already know. But the point is: it need not be. Science and morality are not necessarily at odds. It is not an insane position to support unfettered scientific inquiry into the origins of sexual orientation, while insisting at the same time on ethical norms that protect the dignity of each human person, gay and straight.
Scientific truth, after all, is neither morally good nor bad. It just is. How such truth is used is the question. With nuclear physics, we can choose between carbon-free power and Hiroshima. With jet airliners, you have the option of easy global travel . . . and 9/11. With ultrasounds, you can either lower infant mortality or permit a global culling of unborn girls. The scientific breakthroughs are morally neutral. What we do with them isn’t.
Maybe deeper scientific knowledge could even lead us away from moral dangers rather than towards them. A better understanding of foetal development, for example, might prod us to do far more to reduce the number of abortions, because we can see more intimately the humanness of the life at stake. Deeper knowledge of the emotions of animals can persuade us to alleviate cruelty towards them in farming.
Similarly, the natural origins and ubiquity of homosexuality suggest a deep evolutionary purpose behind it, which we interrupt at our peril. Knowing more, in other words, need not mean hating more. Complete ignorance of homosexuality gave us centuries of brutality, bigotry and murder. Could greater knowledge lead to something far more benign?
I’m prepared to live with that hope, along with the fear. Besides, I also simply want to know why I am the way I am. Wouldn’t you?

SLATE ESSAY

CHRISTOPHER HITCHEN'S

Death of a butcherer!

The disgusting video of Saddam Hussein's last moments on the planet is more than a reminder of the inescapable barbarity of capital punishment and of the intelligible and conventional reasons why it should always be opposed. The zoolike scenes in that dank, filthy shed (it seems that those attending were not even asked to turn off their cell phones or forbidden to use them to record souvenir film) were more like a lynching than an execution. At one point, one of the attending magistrates can be heard appealing for decency and calm, but otherwise the fact must be faced: In spite of his mad invective against "the Persians" and other traitors, the only character with a rag of dignity in the whole scene is the father of all hangmen, Saddam Hussein himself.
How could it have come to this? Did U.S. officials know that the designated "executioners" would be the unwashed goons of Muqtada Sadr's "Mahdi Army"—the same sort of thugs who killed Abdul Majid al-Khoei in Najaf just after the liberation and who indulge in extra-judicial murder of Iraqis every night and day? Did our envoys and representatives ask for any sort of assurances before turning over a prisoner who was being held under the Geneva Conventions? According to the New York Times, there do seem to have been a few insipid misgivings about the timing and the haste, but these appear to have been dissolved soon enough and replaced by a fatalistic passivity that amounts, in theory and practice, to acquiescence in a crude Shiite coup d'état. Thus, far from bringing anything like "closure," the hanging ensures that the poison of Saddamism will stay in the Iraqi bloodstream, mingling with other related infections such as confessional fanaticism and the sort of video sadism that has until now been the prerogative of al-Qaida's dehumanized ghouls. We have helped to officiate at a human sacrifice. For shame.
In Baghdad last week, I missed the best chance I shall ever have to mention rope in the house of a hanged man. The house belonged to Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam's repellent half-brother and one of the two men who are now scheduled to follow him through the trapdoor. These days, it serves as the office of President Jalal Talabani, with whom I was invited to take lunch. The television was showing the trial of Saddam and his associates for the Anfal campaign, that ruthless and mechanized devastation of Iraqi Kurdistan and the systematic slaughter and clearance of its people by conventional and chemical weaponry. Every Kurd I know was eager to see this episode properly aired in court and placed on the record for all time, with its chief perpetrator on hand to be confronted with his deeds. Instead, the said chief perpetrator was snatched from the dock—in the very middle of his trial—and thrown as a morsel to one of the militias. This sort of improvised "offing" is not even a parody of the serious tribunal that history demands.

I couldn't help but notice that President Talabani was unwilling to be drawn on the subject of the death penalty, to which he is opposed. He might have been forgiven a bit of gloating after all that his people had endured, but he denied himself the pleasure. I also couldn't help noticing that when the Iraqi "appeals court" confirmed the death sentence (after a period of time so short that it would be insulting to describe it as a judicial review), it stipulated that not even the president could commute the sentence. In other words, the need of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to ingratiate himself with Muqtada Sadr's forces has been allowed to take precedence over everything else, including the stern requirements of justice that were the supposed point of the trial to begin with. The timing—isn't anyone in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad paid to notice this kind of thing?—was explicitly designed to rub every kind of humiliation into Iraqi Sunnis. It profaned their observance of the Eid ul-Adha holiday, while gratifying the Shiite fundamentalists whose ceremonies begin one day later. To have made the butcher Saddam into a martyr, to have gratified one sect, and to have cheated millions of Iraqis and Kurds of the chance for a full accounting—what a fine day's work!
I think that there is a reason the Kurdish reaction is somewhat different from the Shiite one. Iraqi Kurdistan escaped from Saddam's rule in 1992, and its citizens have since been engaged in patiently building up their autonomy. They did not have to endure the appalling humiliation of sanctions plus Saddam, and they have not since been so much engaged in a foul civil war begun by Sunni extremists desecrating shrines and slaughtering civilians. Their attitude to their former despot and murderer is somewhat more detached and judicious. If they feel a thirst for vengeance, they do not make a tribal fiesta of it. The moral difference here is not negligible.
Reporting from defeated Germany in 1945, and noticing some brutal treatment of captured SS men, George Orwell wrote a brilliant essay called "Revenge Is Sour." I hadn't thought of it for a while but pulled it down from the shelf when I returned from Iraq. Here is the key passage:
Properly speaking, there is no such thing as revenge. Revenge is an act which you want to commit when you are powerless and because you are powerless: as soon as the sense of impotence is removed, the desire evaporates also.
Who would not have jumped for joy, in 1940, at the thought of seeing S.S. officers kicked and humiliated? But when the thing becomes possible, it is merely pathetic and disgusting. It is said that when Mussolini's corpse was exhibited in public, an old woman drew a revolver and fired five shots into it, exclaiming, "Those are for my five sons!" It is the kind of story that the newspapers make up, but it might be true. I wonder how much satisfaction she got out of those five shots, which, doubtless, she had dreamed years earlier of firing. The condition of her being able to get near enough to Mussolini to shoot at him was that he should be a corpse.
The shabby, tawdry scene of Muqtada Sadr's riffraff taunting their defenseless former tyrant evokes exactly this quality of hysterical falsity and bravado. While Saddam Hussein was alive, they cringed. Now, they find their lost courage, and meanwhile take the drill and the razor blade and the blowtorch to their fellow Iraqis. To watch this abysmal spectacle as a neutral would be bad enough. To know that the U. S. government had even a silent, shamefaced part in it is to feel something well beyond embarrassment