Officials have announced that the body of John Jones, the spelunker who died after becoming trapped in Nutty Putty Cave in Utah, will not be recovered.  The dangerousness of the spot where Jones died makes a recovery effort too perilous, and so his body will remain there as the cave is sealed off to all future visitors.  A memorial marker will be placed there.The news stories about this indicate that the decision not to retrieve the body was made jointly this morning by law enforcement, the c... Read Full Story

At about midnight last night, John Jones, 26, died in a tiny crevice in Nutty Putty Cave in Utah.  He had been stuck upside down for more than 24 hours, and rescuers had been working feverishly to get him out.  At one point they did get him free, but after an equipment failure he got stuck again.  After hours and hours of talking to him and reporting that he was in good spirits, rescuers noted that he was not responding.  He left behind his wife, who is pregnant, a young ... Read Full Story

If your loved one dies while serving in the United States Military, whether they are killed in action or by accident, you will receive a letter of condolence from the President.  Presidents have been doing this since Abraham Lincoln.  If your loved one serves in the military and kills themselves, however, you will get many of the same things that other families get, but you will not receive a letter from the Commander in Chief.  That has been true at least since the Clinton ad... Read Full Story

Back in September, William Sparkman, a part time census worker, was found hanging from a tree in rural Kentucky with the word "FED" written across his chest.  At the time, the question of whether he was killed as part of a vast right-wing reaction against the census was being bandied about in the press.  Today, word has come that Sparkman killed himself.  He apparently intentionally staged the scene to look like a homicide so his son could collect on multiple life insurance po... Read Full Story

In the early 1980's, Rom Houben, a Belgian 20 year-old, was in a horrific car accident.  He was in a coma, and then diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state.  For 23 years, his family refused to accept his diagnosis and insisted he was conscious and aware of his surroundings.  Finally, with advances in brain scan technology, doctors were able to more thoroughly examine his brain and determine it was essentially normal.  Over time, they were able to help him communicate using a sing... Read Full Story

There was a tiny radiation leak at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania yesterday afternoon.  The worker with the highest radiation exposure from the incident got the equivalent of about two and a quarter chest x-rays' worth.  Nobody else got any.  Workers were sent home until the building where the leak occurred could be cleaned.  No radiation escaped the building.By any rational standard, this is not a very exciting news story.  I tried to dig up some stat... Read Full Story

Gail Schoening was just shy of 36 in 1997 when she vanished on the way from her home in Plantation, Florida to the airport to fly to a job interview.  She had struggled with depression, and her parents wondered if she might have driven off the road, on purpose or by accident.  Despite repeated attempts to search nearby lakes, her body was never found.  Never, that is, until August 18, when investigators using new technology located her car at the bottom of a lake about a footba... Read Full Story

The U.S. military is undertaking a large research project using its own soldiers to see if there is a way to predict who will suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  They are screening hundreds of soldiers before they deploy, including their baseline stress rate, brain scans, family histories and past history of mental illness, and will be looking to see if any factor or combination of factors can predict who is at highest risk. This is a very new way to look at PTSD, and raises i... Read Full Story

In the last week, six members of a single family in Independence, Missouri have been arrested on charges based on absolutely horrifying allegations of child molestation, incest, and abuse.  The allegations come from adult children in the family, and involves years and years of abuse, child pregnancy, forced abortion, and possibly murder.  The accused are a father, his four sons, and his brother.  I would describe my own reaction to this case as revulsion.As with the Shaniya Davis case, these ... Read Full Story

Last month, three adult members of a single family died in an early morning house fire here in Ann Arbor.  When firefighters arrived, the house was fully engulfed in flame.  They could not get in to rescue the occupants.  The Alexandropoulos family was first reported as missing, and later in the day three bodies were found.  From the beginning, this story seemed odd.  Firefighters took more than 10 minutes to arrive, and the stated reason was that they were on the scene of another call.  But ... Read Full Story