What it’s like to be stalked and harassed by the same man—for 36 years
By Colby Cosh - Thursday, August 26, 2010 - 0 Comments
A Regina woman tells how it all started with a cup of coffee
Bryan Schlosser/Leader-Post
The date that changed Cathy Kaip’s life was one of those rambling metaphysical coffee-house conversations that are part of any well-furnished youth. The year was 1974. Kaip, an 18-year-old nursing student, had hit it off with Gerald Klein, then a 27-year-old musician, at a wedding. When he heard that his daughter was going out to see an older man, one trying to extricate himself from an unhappy marriage, Kaip’s Roman Catholic father responded with gentle firmness.
“He said to me, ‘You realize he’s a married man, he has a child,’ ” she recalls. “ ‘This will be the first and last time you go out with him.’ So that’s what I told Gerry: this is the first and last date. I did say I thought it was unfair that Dad should be telling me what to do, but I told him, ‘He’s my dad and I respect his wishes.’ ”
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That's not funny!
By Alex Shimo - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 2:20 PM - 47 Comments
The website behind those cute cat photos has a darker side
In December 2007, Chris Forcand was arrested in his Toronto apartment and charged with luring an underage girl, possessing a dangerous weapon and other related offences. Forcand, then 53, had posted nude photos of himself in Internet chat rooms and tried to proposition young girls. After some of those lurid conversations were sent to members of his church, Toronto police’s Child Exploitation Section was called in. Forcand was later sentenced to 12 months. The cyber-vigilantes who uncovered his activities and brought about the arrest did not reveal their identities. But subsequent reports linked them to the Internet group Anonymous, which grew out of a message board site, 4chan.org, that is arguably one of the odder places you’ll find online.If you’ve never heard of 4chan, you’re probably still aware of some of its actions. Its users have created some of today’s most popular Internet memes, such as Rickrolling, which blasts people’s computer screens with a link to the Rick Astley song Never Gonna Give You Up, and lolcats, those photos of cutesy felines accompanied by broken English captions like “I can has Cheezburger?” (itself an irritating slang called lolspeak). Remember the buzz about the Chocolate Rain song, by Tay Zonday? Its popularity partly stemmed from a joke—channers decided to boost its ratings because of its absurd lyrics and melody; it was eventually covered by John Mayer and others. With more than 300 million page views per month, 4chan can create news simply on the basis of size. When something becomes a trend on the site, it will likely hit your computer screen soon, explains Tim Hwang, a research associate at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
