John McCain and the Straight Acting Express over the years…

That deer in the headlights look at the end when he’s asked about civil unions for gay couples is priceless.

Via SLOG.  Okay…I am not a dog person.  But sometimes they can be a lot of fun…

Made me laugh.  I like cats…but you couldn’t get a cat to do that for you…

Some days, you really wonder if the pulpit thumpers really think about what they’re doing to people…

Idaho man saws off, microwaves his hand after he sees "mark of the beast" on it

A Hayden, Idaho man who believed he bore the "mark of the beast" used a circular saw to amputate one of his hands, cooked it in a microwave and summoned authorities, Kootenai County sheriff’s deputies say.

The man, in his mid-20s, was calm when deputies arrived at his home in this north Idaho town Saturday afternoon, and neither he nor the severed hand bore any noticeable tattoo or other mark, sheriff’s Capt. Ben Wolfinger.

"It had been somewhat cooked by the time the deputy arrived," Wolfinger said.

Maybe this is what that poor man was taught to be afraid of…

I have described the hand when it uses a tool as an instrument of discovery…we see this every time a child learns to couple hand and tool together – to lace its shoes, to fly a kite or to play a penny whistle.  With the practical action there goes another, namely finding pleasure in the action for its own sake – in the skill that one perfects, and perfects by being pleased with it.  This at bottom is responsible for every work of art, and science too; our poetic delight in what human beings do because they can do it.  The most exciting thing about this is that the poetic use in the end has the truly profound results.  Even in prehistory man already made tools that have an edge finer then they need have.  The finer edge in its turn gave the tool a finer use, a practical refinement and extension to processes for which the tool had not been designed.

…The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.  Civilization is not a collection of finished artifacts, it is the elaboration of processes.  In the end, the march of man is the refinement of the hand in action.

-Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man.

And in the end, this is exactly what fundamentalism hates most of all:  All that is possible to us as human beings, that we discover on our own, by way of the pleasure we take in action and discovery for its own sake.  More then any other pleasure, even sex, this is the one we must be denied.  So that our spirits cannot soar.  So that they will not be left behind.

Via Atrios… A catchy tune, lyrics about heartbreak, loneliness and suicide, and some very, Very weird CAD imagery…what’s not to like?

Me and Mean Gene’s got a beautiful voice
he carries me home on his beautiful horse.
Where she waits, I will ride ride ride
c’mon stranger just sing me a song
And if it’s sad, I’ll sing along long long
I told you I knew every word

Yeah I’m waiting for something to give
Well I’m waiting, I hope it’s not me
Yeah I’m waiting…

…who told me once that he and his wife are more into nature then technology.

Three bridges within a mile hit SIXTY-TWO times by curse of satnav

It has been blamed for directing huge articulated lorries down tiny country lanes, encouraging car drivers to plunge into impassable fords – and even sending inattentive motorists down railway lines.

And last night, it was revealed the curse of satnav has found yet another way to wreak havoc on Britain’s roads – by funnelling tall vehicles under low bridges.

The problem came to light after rail chiefs realized that three of the railway bridges most often hit by traffic lay in a one-mile radius in the same town: Grantham in Lincolnshire. Between them, they were struck an astonishing 62 times last year.

Half involved one of the structures, earning it the dubious distinction of being Britain’s most crashed-into railway bridge.

A spokesman said: "It’s a rising problem and satnavs are playing a greater role. They are great tools but they are no substitute for common sense and following the rules of the road."

An AA spokesman added: "The fact that you’re getting bridges with a reputation for being hit suggests that satnav software is directing large numbers of vehicles to take those particular routes.

"The problem is ‘blind reliance’. If people were using a map they would be more likely to question whether a bridge was high enough for their vehicle but it’s staggering to what extent people are blindly relying on technology."

Freight Transport Association director Geoff Dossetter agreed: "Satnavs are wonderful for drivers in unfamiliar territory but if a road sign says ‘low bridge ahead’ there really shouldn’t be any doubt about what that means.

"Foreign drivers are particularly bad in their blind adherence to satnav and need to improve their behaviour."

The first question that came to my mind was, isn’t there one of those universal road signs that means "Low Bridge"?   And apparently, there are:

I own a car that has a satnav system in it, and I’m here to tell you it’s a lovely little bit of technology.  And I’m someone who Never had trouble with maps.  I love reading maps.  A favorite pastime of mine since I got paid vacation is to browse my big road Atlas like it’s a Christmas toy catalog.   But for helping me navigate large, snarly highway interchanges in unfamiliar territory, or guiding me to a specific address when I have to be someplace at a certain time, the satnav system is really handy.  Even so, if I saw it telling me to drive into a creek or make the next left onto a set of railroad tracks, I wouldn’t do it.  I’d probably just frown and think to myself, well this part of the map needs a little work. 

But that’s because I understand the technology from the inside out.  It’s not some kind of mysterious magic to me.  To me it’s only a computer program manipulating pixels on an LCD screen.  I may not know the details of how that particular program works, but I can build a general idea of how it’s probably doing it in my head.  I know what it is that it’s telling me and, just as importantly, what it isn’t telling me.  But more importantly, probably, I know what all computer professionals know about computers: garbage in equals garbage out.  It didn’t take me long after I got the Mercedes, to realize that just because its nav system is telling me there’s a gas station two miles ahead of me, that doesn’t mean that there really is a gas station two miles ahead of me.  It might be there was one there at one time, when the map was being made, but now it’s abandoned.  Or it might never have been there at all to begin with.  At some point, all the information in one of those satnav systems had to be put into it by a human.  And if the human got it wrong, the computer will happily feed you the wrong information just as though it was good information.  And not even ask for thanks, because it’s just doing its job.

I know this.  I have to keep reminding myself that to other people, computers seem a tad mysterious and maybe even a bit creepy.  You can’t see a program running.  The computer just sits there and then the next thing you know it’s displaying something on the screen.  Maybe it’s what you asked for.  Maybe it’s something like this…

And a lot of people, seeing that, wouldn’t curse the lazy ass programmer who wrote that lousy, utterly worthless error message, but just sit there and let their computer make them feel stupid and they’re not.  The computer knows something I don’t…  No…the computer doesn’t know anything.  It’s just a machine. 

I know a lot of people feel this way about computers:

Everyone always wants new things. Everybody likes new inventions, new technology. People will never be replaced by machines. In the end, life and business are about human connections. And computers are about trying to murder you in a lake. And to me, the choice is easy.
-Michael Scott, The Office

But this is as silly as saying that skin will never be replaced by clothes.  We are not our technology, but our technology is us.  Technology does not dehumanize us.  That’s trope.  A stone ax is technology.  A plow is technology.  A book is technology.  To say that humans are tool makers misses it a tad.  Tools are the visible part of the human soul.  They are embodiments of our thoughts, our feelings, our innermost selves.  They are art.  All technology, is art.  The masters of a craft, the ones who make the best, most useful, most enduring tools, are the ones who understand this.  In the way that output is only the visible part, the part you can see, of the running computer program, the things humans make, our tools, our machines, our buildings, our works of art, are embodiments of the inner, essential human nature every generation leaves behind in its wake.  Whether it’s an arrowhead, a cuckoo clock or a satnav system, their nature is our own.  And as the saying goes "There’s nothing as queer as folk".

Computers are something humans came up with, to help with tasks that humans wanted to do.  They’ve become ubiquitous because the basic technology is so damn versatile.  Trust it where you can verify that it’s working properly and not when it hands you something you can plainly see with your own two eyes is crap.  It’s just a machine.  It’s judgment cannot replace yours because it doesn’t have any judgment.  It’s just a machine.  In his poem, The Secret of the Machines, Rudyard Kipling wrote…

Though our smoke may hide the Heavens from your eyes,
It will vanish and the stars will shine again,
Because, for all our power and weight and size,
We are nothing more than children of your brain!

When the road and the nav system disagree, believe the road.  If the computer directs you to go jump in a lake, it’s not being malicious, and you don’t have to do it.  It’s not working right.  Go find the programmer and make them fix it.

I had just been hired for a job as a contract programmer after a dry spell of well over a year where I couldn’t get any other work besides low paying temp jobs, and the occasional lawn that needed mowing.  The pay was great, absolutely great, better then anything I’d ever made before.  But the job was in Baltimore and I was still living a friend’s basement in Rockville and I had no car.  At the time I couldn’t afford insurance on one, let alone buy one.  So I was making due with various forms of public transportation, and my own two feet.  I’ll say this much…all that walking kept me in good shape.

So, with the help of a friend, I bought an old Ford LTD  station wagon.  It was a big tank of a car, with a huge 450 cubic inch V-8 motor, that had belonged to the mother of a friend of his, who used it for her gumball machine business.  She drove it all over West Virginia servicing her gumball machines.  The car had over 240 thousand miles on it. But at least it ran.  I named it The Great White, as in Great White Whale.  For over a year The Great White got me from Rockville, and then from Wheaton, to Baltimore and back, until I was confidant enough in my new line of work, that I bought myself a brand new 1993 Geo Prism.

One day shopping at the Rockville A&P grocery store.  As I walked out to the wagon I saw, on the other side of my car, two young women slowly walking in my direction, chatting idly with each other and taking very little note of their surroundings.  I had other things on my mind just then, but as I saw them I noted that I’d probably have to watch out for them as I drove away.  They were walking at a very slow pace, and chatting with each other like they were having a stroll in the park instead of walking through a busy parking lot.

I got in the car, closed the door, and started the big V-8.  Then I turned in my seat and looked back down that long tunnel of glass (the car was huge, even for a station wagon) and watched as the two young women walked just past my tailgate, and away from the car.  I turned around, put my foot on the brake, released the parking brake and put the car into reverse.  The transmission settled into gear with a loud ‘Clunk’. 

I heard the most hellacious scream I’d ever heard in my life, turned, and saw one of the women rushing back to the tailgate of my station wagon.  I saw her reach down as if to pick something up.  Then I saw her walk away again, leading a little toddler by the hand.  The kid couldn’t have been more then my own knee height.  The woman was chattering at the kid, scolding him I guess for not sticking by her side.  Meanwhile I was about having a heart attack.  I put the car back in park and had to just sit there for a few minutes and calm down.

I never saw the kid.  I was looking.  I was watchful.  I was paying attention to the area around my car.  I was being careful.  And I still didn’t see the kid.  I could have killed him.  You could argue that it would have been more the woman’s fault then mine….but so what?  I’d have had to live with knowing that I killed a little kid.

Flash forward to now.  When I bought the Mercedes I saw that there was a dealer installed option to have a backup sensor installed.  I opted out at the time of delivery, because I wanted to investigate it some more.  It was a lot of money, but I figured it would be well worth it if it did what they claimed.  So I checked things out here and there, and to cut to the chase, instead of buying one of the other aftermarket ones, I bought the Factory Authorized system instead, because in the end I just didn’t want anything installed in that car that wasn’t approved by Mercedes-Benz.  I was lead to believe by my dealer that there was a version of the system that had visual, as well as audible indicators, but that turned out not to be the case after all.  I really wanted something with a visual indicator too, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.  But I have the system installed now anyway, and just a little while ago I gave it the acid test.

The system consists of four small round sensors they install into your rear bumper.  When you put the car into reverse the system activates and you hear a single beep to let you know that it’s working.  It only starts beeping at you when you begin to approach some obstacle and the beeps increase in frequency until you are about a foot away from it, when they turn into one continuous tone.  For the past week I’ve been using it to gage how close I am to the other cars on the street, or the back of the parking garage at work.  As a parking aid it’s fine.  But that’s not what I bought it mostly for.

Today is my usual telecommute day, which means I’m home and most of my neighbors are at work.  Which means the street out front is pretty empty.  Just right for my acid test of the system.  I have several twenty pound sacks of bird seed down in the basement (I stock up on it for the winter months), that are about the size of a toddler.  Just a while ago I took one outside and placed it just behind the rear bumper where I couldn’t see it from the inside of the car, but I’d hit it almost at once if I backed up.  Then I got in, turned on the engine, and put Traveler into reverse.

Immediately the backup sensor started yelling at me.  Good.  I placed the sack at various spots around and near the bumper, trying to find a spot where I could put the sack, couldn’t see it, and my sensor wouldn’t detect it, which would allow me to hit it upon backing up.  I couldn’t find one.  The sensor always complained that there was something back there.  Nice.

Since it’s an electric gizmo I expect at some point the cost of these will come down and they’ll be available for all makes and models.  As you can see from the photo above, you don’t have to be driving a big SUV to miss seeing something that’s right behind you.  Eventually I think, these sensors should become standard safety equipment.  In the meantime, this wasn’t a cheap add-on by any means.  But better you feel it in your wallet then you hear it screaming in your dreams.

What Valentine’s Day would be complete without a heartwarming story of true love succeeding against impossible odds?

Married prison psychologist fell pregnant after affair with mentally-ill inmate

A married psychologist is about to have a baby by a mentallyill prisoner after one-to-one therapy sessions, a court heard yesterday.

Stephanie Reeves, 30, had sex with the convicted criminal in the lavatories of a secure hospital unit while escorting him to the gym.

He is currently being treated for paranoid schizophrenia at Ashworth secure hospital, where patients include Moors murderer Ian Brady.

Reeves – whose husband also worked at the unit – said she loves the prisoner and plans to raise the child with him if he is ever considered safe enough to be released.

In other news, Fark.Com is having their annual design a Valentine card you’d send to an ex Valentine’s Day photoshop theme…

And you thought I was bitter.  So…to any knuckle-dragging homophobes who might be thinking that my little Valentine’s Day poster contest is only proof that The Gay Lifestyle^tm is inherently desperate and lonely: just peruse the cannonballs being lobbed across the gender fence over at Fark.Com.  Or just google "anti-valentine".  There’s a lot of discontent out there on the heterosexual side of the street too.  And I’ll bet you pinched faced, uptight blue noses are responsible for a lot of That too.

And in other Valentine’s Day headlines…

Razer blade found in Valentine’s Day lollipop

Radio station giving away free divorce

Happy Valentine’s Day From The Storm Worm

Don’t let stale chocolates leave a bad taste in your valentine’s mouth

Apparently some of those Valentine’s Day treats have been sitting on the shelves past their use-by date.  Kinda ironic, when you think about it…

And finally, some random entires from this Fark.Com finish the sentence contest:  I knew this was going to be the worst first date ever when…

she brought out those beancans and started cutting up that squirrel.

He brought a can of corn along on the date.

he asked to meet me in the Winn Dixie parking lot.  

…he squealed the tires pulling out of my mother’s driveway, then told me he had problems telling left from right because he’d smashed one too many

When I realized that every time he smiled he looked like George W. Bush.

when he told me how much he still loved his ex-girlfriend.

He showed up at the restaurant with plastic cutlery and said one can never be too careful when it comes to germs.

he told me "masturbation was getting kinda old"

When I kissed him and couldn’t get the taste of butter out of my mouth for a week.

My date brought me a hot cocoa sampler pack instead of flowers.

The second sentence she says to me, and I quote: "The way [blank] described you, I thought you would be hotter."

I got my ass handed to me in Star Wars Trivial Pursuit.

she wanted to cuddle afterwards.

Goodbye Valentine’s Day 2008.  It was…swell.  Let’s do it again sometime…okay? 

Teach your children well,
Their father’s hell did slowly go by…

Bill would keep homosexuality out of schools’ curriculum

An essay on little Johnny’s two mommies could be tossed in the trash bin before it ever gets the chance to bask in school hallway-display prominence.

Newly proposed state legislation would ban anything from being taught in schools that exposes students in prekindergarten through eighth grade to homosexuality.

"Homosexuality, bisexuality, that’s something that should be left to be taught at home and not at our schools," said Rep. Stacey Campfield, R-Knoxville, author of the legislation.

The bill, however, would allow for the teaching of heterosexuality.

"Without heterosexuality you wouldn’t be able to teach biology," Campfield explained.

He added that keeping heterosexuality on the books would protect schools from litigation. "’Jack and Jill went up the hill’ – some organizations say you can’t teach that because it pushes a heterosexual agenda," he said.

And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you’ll know by…

Oxnard student declared brain dead

An Oxnard junior high student who was shot in the head by a classmate earlier this week was declared brain dead Wednesday, and the 14-year-old male suspect now faces a first-degree murder charge, authorities said.

Lawrence King, 15, was declared brain dead by two neurosurgeons about 2 p.m. at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard, said Craig Stevens, senior deputy Ventura County medical examiner. King’s body remains on a ventilator for possible organ donation, he said. He was shot early Tuesday in a classroom at E.O. Green Junior High School.

Authorities initially believed that King was improving. But the boy’s condition worsened early Wednesday, and he was placed on a ventilator a few hours later with his family nearby, said an official, who asked not to be named.
their privacy.

Police said the suspect, whose identity was not disclosed because of his age, shot King at least twice at the beginning of the school day and then fled the campus. The boy was apprehended by police a few blocks away and is being held in Juvenile Hall. He is scheduled to appear in court today.

…

Police have not determined a motive in the slaying but said it appeared to stem from a personal dispute between King and the suspect…

But several students at the south Oxnard campus said King and his alleged assailant had a falling out stemming from King’s sexual orientation.

The teenager sometimes wore feminine clothing and makeup, and proclaimed he was gay, students said.

"He would come to school in high-heeled boots, makeup, jewelry and painted nails — the whole thing," said Michael Sweeney, 13, an eighth-grader. "That was freaking the guys out."

Student Juan Sandoval, 14, said he shared a fourth-period algebra class with the suspect, whom he described as a calm, smart student who played on the basketball team. "I didn’t think he was that kind of kid," Sandoval said. "I guess you never know. He made a big mistake."

"Their lives are both destroyed now," said student Hansley Rivera, 12

Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you…

If you were wondering why the Archbishop of Canterbury has a sudden fondness for Muslim sharia law, maybe this can help explain it to you…

I have no problem with the argument that liberal, secular law should not be seen as universal. However, Williams is saying something else. He does not want the "conscientious disagreement" that a faith community has with state law to be "overruled by a monopolistic understanding of jurisdiction". What this means is that faith communities should be allowed to opt out of laws that go against their teachings. This, I would suggest, is a recipe for compromising notions of equality and equal treatment before state law.

A telling example shows where all this is leading. Roman Catholic adoption agencies, the archbishop suggests, should have the right to reject gay men and lesbians as adoptive parents. The corollary is that the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches should have the right to stop gays from taking senior positions in church ranks. Ditto for women. The archbishop’s attempt to redefine the relationship between religious conscience and law turns out to be about Christian churches and their position on such issues as gay rights and abortion. The sharia is a distraction.

I am all for enlarging the religious space in a secular state. However, it seems to me that on the issue of equality it is not just the sharia that needs reform, but all monotheistic faiths.

I have a hunch we’re going to be seeing a lot of new found respect for sharia law being declared from ersatz Christian pulpits in the coming years…

Here’s the last batch of finalists for our Valentine’s Day Poster Contest!   What a great group of entries we had this year!   Let’s give them all a big hand and a Valentine’s Day Consolation Prize…

The winner will be on display starting at midnight, Valentine’s Day!   You should probably have something else to do that day…

Here’s another batch of worthy finalists.   They didn’t quite make the grade…but all deserve honorable mention….

I think I have time for just one more batch of finalists.   The winner will be declared at the stroke of midnight, Valentine’s Day!   You may want to be busy with something else just then…

Well at least I’m not to this point yet…

Valentine’s Day — it’s not so much about love

LONDON (Reuters) – Eight million Americans admit they send themselves Valentine’s Day gifts — they may feel lonely and unloved but at least they will get something nice.

Swell.  But I can get myself something nice any day of the week too, and I already know that I love me.  I bought myself a nice Mercedes-Benz back in October and if that’s not a proof of love I don’t know what is.

I’ll buy myself a nice birthday cake when I have to, and that’s about it.  I did that for years until last year, when my friends give me a really nice birthday party, and I’m here to tell you a cake from your friends, beats out one you bought for yourself by light years.  If I can’t have the real thing on Valentine’s Day, then I reckon I’ll just stew in my juices and sulk.  I’m an artist…I do a good sulk.

Which reminds me…it’s almost time for me to post another round of finalists in The First Annual Casa del Garrett Valentine’s Day Poster Contest!  Stay tuned…

Jamaica has a bit of a PR problem…

Gay Men in Jamaica Attacked by Mob

Last week, in the Jamaican town of Mandeville, three gay men were attacked in their home by an angry mob of approximately 20 people who had threatened them with violence days before if they did not leave the community.

After the incident, two of the attacked men were hospitalized, one with serious injuries including a severed ear, an arm broken in two places and a damaged spine, while another man is still missing and feared dead. This is only the latest in a wave of attacks on gay men in notoriously homophobic Jamaica.

According to a Human Rights Watch press release, the attack on these men echoes another incident in the same town on Easter Sunday, April 8, 2007 when approximately 100 men gathered outside a church where 150 people were attending the funeral of a gay man.

According to mourners, the crowd broke the windows with bottles and shouted, “We want no battyman [gay] funeral here. Leave or else we’re going to kill you. We don’t want no battyman buried here in Mandeville.”

Several mourners inside the church called the police to request protection. After half an hour, three police officers arrived but did little to calm situation, opting instead to commiserate and laugh with the menacing mob until several gay men among the mourners took knives from their cars for self-defense.

Jamaica to tap into religious tourism

Jamaica plans to tap into the thriving market for religious-oriented tourism to invigorate the island’s sagging economy, government officials and business leaders said.

A new convention center, to be built by 2009, will attract some of the millions of travelers who attend religious conferences outside of their home countries, said Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett. The global religious tourism market is an $18 billion-a-year industry with some 300 million travelers, according to the Colorado-based World Religious Travel Association.

Hey mon…I have a plan…you know…let’s go after the hate market…

Of course, the flaw in this grand plan is that the hate market, at least here in America, doesn’t much like darkies either.  But if you shine their shoes and call them "Massa" they’ll at least tip decently. 

Good for them!

Danish Papers Reprint Muhammad Cartoon

(AP) Denmark’s leading newspapers on Wednesday reprinted a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad that sparked deadly rioting in Muslim countries two years ago.

The papers said they wanted to show their firm commitment to freedom of speech after Tuesday’s arrest in western Denmark of three people accused of plotting to kill the man who drew the cartoon, which shows Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse.

The drawing by Kurt Westergaard and 11 other cartoons depicting Muhammad enraged Muslims two years ago when they appeared in a range of Western newspapers.

It’s worth remembering that the cartoons in question barely got noticed until a Lebanese-born Muslim living in Denmark, Ahmad Akkari, began waving them around the middle east, in a dossier into which he’d inserted a number of cartoons that the Danes didn’t print, including one that portrayed Muhammad as a pedophile, and a photograph of a Danish man wearing a pig mask, taken during a Danish pig calling contest, that Akkari had re-captioned as being a photo taken of a Dane mocking Muhammad as a pig.

Akkari’s activities in the middle east arguably helped get the Danish embassy in Lebanon burned down.  When Israel later began attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon Akkari decided the Danes weren’t such bad folks after all and he hot-footed it back to the nation he helped rouse passions against, via his Danish residency and passport. Nice guy.

The sweet irony of angry mobs rioting and burning down embassies over a bunch of cartoons depicting Islam as a violent fanatical religion was, of course, lost on the protesters.  That kind of thing will reliably go past zealots of any faith, or none.