Last summer the Mayor of Ft. Lauderdale, Jim Naugle, went on an anti-gay rampage, first accusing the gay community of rampant use of the public bathrooms at the beaches for sex. This despite his own police chief saying to the press that there was no such problem. Naugle called for special toilet stalls to be installed at the beaches with doors that would fly open after a few minutes, theoretically to discourage their use for sex. As the controversy grew, Naugle became more deranged in his attacks on the gay community.
I could cite a lot of newspaper articles for this, but I thought I’d show you this, from Peter LaBarbera’s Americans For Truth About Homosexuality. It pretty well captures the…flavor…of the atmosphere Naugle relentlessly worked to create (and which let it be said, LaBarbera constantly works to create…)…
TAKE ACTION: Watch yesterday’s Sun-Sentinel video of Ft. Lauderdale MayorJim Naugle’s press conference in which he apologizes for not doing more to stop homosexual “sex” in the city’s public and beach restrooms. Naugle also opposes housing a homosexual library collection containing hard-core pornographic items in a public library. E-mail Mayor Naugle at mayorjames@aol.com, and thank him for refusing to be intimidated by a vocal fringe and the liberal media. And contact the Ft. Lauderdale city commissioners and urge them to support the Mayor’s push to protect children and uphold decency.
A note on the Naugle story: will the day ever come when LEADERS of the proud “gay” lobby apologize for their community’s own excesses — e.g., tolerating or encouraging men to commit anonymous sodomies with other men in public restrooms, parks, and bathhouses (sex clubs)?
Kudos to Mayor Naugle. I almost fell off my seat watching this video. Finally, a public servant with the courage to stand up to the homosexual militants and their fellow travelers in the media. Imagine: a big-city mayor tries to stop gross perversions from occurring in public places — and the pro-”gay” lobby says HE is the problem and is embarrassing the city! — Peter LaBarbera
Fort Lauderdale mayor issues apology, but not to gay community
FORT LAUDERDALE — Mayor Jim Naugle issued a public apology on the steps of City Hall Tuesday afternoon, but it wasn’t the apology the gay community was looking for.
Naugle apologized for underestimating the problem of men having sex with each other in public restrooms, and urged people to call police to complain when they come upon it. He also said Broward County leads the nation in the incidence of new AIDS cases involving men having sex with men, and questioned whether the county tourism office should be welcoming them here.
Naugle alerted the media that he was holding a news conference that would include “an apology.”
Gay activists and others have been calling for a public apology form the mayor, and for his resignation, since the South Florida Sun-Sentinel published Naugle’s comments earlier this month about gays. In article about a proposed self-cleaning, automatic toilet the city was going to buy for the beach, Naugle said an added benefit would be that it would deter men from using it for “homosexual activity,” which he said was a problem in public restrooms.
Naugle, you may recall, capped his performance with a news conference of several anti-gay black ministers from the area, who spoke of fighting a war, and of cleansing Ft. Lauderdale of sin. One of them even came to the news conference, dressed in military fatigues…
People said blood would be spilled because of climate of hate Naugle was creating. People tried to get him to at least tone it down. Instead he gleefully fanned the flames. Well…looks like Naugle, and all those black ministers who came to support him, who came to declare they were fighting a war, got the blood they were calling for…
(Ft. Lauderdale) Today, Equality Florida and the coalition Transgender Equality Rights Initiatives (TERI) expressed outrage over the murder of Simmie Williams Jr., a gay 17 year-old who was gunned down this past weekend on a street corner in Broward County. Police are investigating the murder as a possible hate crime based on the words witnesses say were exchanged before the shooting.
…
A memorial is being planned for 4:30PM Thursday, February 27th at the 1000 block of Sistrunk Boulevard, Fort Lauderdale where the murder occurred. A town hall meeting will follow at 6:30 at the Gay & Lesbian Community Center of South Florida 1717 N. Andrews Avenue, Fort Lauderdale, FL to discuss the issue of hate crimes in Florida.
Meet the enemy in the splended little war of the black ministers of Ft. Lauderdale … The kid who had to die for Mayor Naugle’s fifteen minutes of fame…
“We can be horrified, but we cannot be surprised,” said Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida. “Just 10 days ago, 15 year-old Lawrence King was gunned down in California.
Ah yes…Lawrence King. Let us avert our gaze now, toward the west coast…and the pulpit of the Antioch Bible Church…
Personally, I have no problem with the effort to make church work better for men or challenging men to step up and do something with their lives. I do have a problem with it when it means, as it sometimes does, putting down women or insisting women play only secondary roles in church or family. And I have a big problem with the guy emphasis when it relies on making gay men objects of derision and ridicule.
Such appears to be the case in remarks made by Ken Hutcherson, pastor of Antioch Bible Church in Kirkland. Hutcherson has gotten headlines for his efforts to pressure Microsoft on gay issues. He has a right to his views — views he supports with texts from Scripture. Reasonable people can disagree over whether gay marriage is a good idea.
But Hutcherson goes beyond reasonable, at least to judge by the report of Seattle psychologist Valerie Tarico. Tarico, a former staffer at Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center, was raised in a fundamentalist church. In recent months, she has made it her business to attend services at many of the large, conservative churches in the Seattle area, including Hutcherson’s, to see what’s going on.
On a Sunday when Tarico was present, Hutcherson was preaching on gender roles. During his sermon, Hutcherson stated, "God hates soft men" and "God hates effeminate men." Hutcherson went on to say, "If I was in a drugstore and some guy opened the door for me, I’d rip his arm off and beat him with the wet end."
"That was a joke," Hutcherson said Friday, when I asked him about the comment. But it’s not really funny, is it?
Trust me…they all laughed when he told it. Every single self-righteous man and woman of god in those pews. And you can tell that Hutcherson was only joking by their laughter. If they’d seen him actually doing it to some poor man who had politely held a door open for him, they wouldn’t have laughed. They’d have applauded.
I’ve never been so busy in my life over a weekend, which is why I haven’t been posting. But it’s been exhilarating. And these people, these decent, good-hearted courageous people, have provided a much needed tonic to my chronic anger. To witness so much pain and emotional anguish, so many raw wounds, and still see such essential human decency shining though it all, is astonishing at times. I could never loose my belief in the human status after this weekend.
John Holm, Jacob Wilson, Peterson Toscano, Daniel Gonzales and Brandon Tidwell,
before entering the Love Won Out Conference. All five are survivors of various
forms of ex-gay therapy. John, Peterson, Daniel and Brandon are holding collages that
depict their individual journeys through the ex-gay movement, which they presented
to Exodus conference organizers. They were able to talk briefly with some of them,
before being ejected from the conference building.
Peterson, Branden, Jacob and John on their way back from presenting their
collages to the Exodus conference organizers. No…Daniel didn’t get eaten…he
just walked quickly ahead of the others so he could get back to his video camera
to record the others walking back.
I feel so privileged to have been allowed, encouraged even, to photographically document the weekend events. Yesterday, after the action at the Love Won Out conference, there was a gathering of ex-gay survivors at the Memphis gay community center. My cameras were only conditionally allowed inside, as there was a real need to create a safe space there for people to basically spill their guts about what had happened to them. (This is why I never made it as a newspaper photographer…I always ask permission first…) But I was allowed to witness the event and I’m here to tell you what I saw and heard would make a brick cry, if not a fundamentalist.
One wall inside the center was covered with paper, for the survivors to write little notes on, in an exercise called a "chalk talk". It was a way of helping them get their feelings out into the open and to acknowledge them…something that is excruciatingly difficult for people who have been emotionally battered to do. I was not allowed to photograph the process, for I think obvious reasons, but afterwards I was asked to record the little writings on the wall. I actually had to get up and leave the room twice as, one after the other, the survivors stepped up to the wall and started writing, and I began to see it all coming out, so overwhelming was it. If I can get permission to put some of what they wrote on that wall here I will.
This is tough to watch, and all the more if you’ve ever met Peterson and know what a good heart he has and how much he loves his parents. Never in his life would he have ever wanted to hurt them. What happened wasn’t his fault. But all of that…what happened to Peterson and what happened to his parents…all of that is part of the horrible trail of scar tissue these ex-gay outfits leave behind. There is little enough love in this poor world. To leave the world poorer for it is crime enough. To leave people so wounded inside they have trouble for the rest of their lives finding love and intimacy, to then also drive a stake between them and their parents and family…it is a crime against humanity.
These outfits would largely whither and die almost overnight from lack of money, were they not being bankrolled by the religious right for purely political ends. The ex-gay movement gives them rhetorical ammunition for the Kulturkrieg, and it gives their politicians political cover to oppose basic civil rights for gay people. The war on gay people drives voters to the polls. And…it brings in money. That is why Peterson Toscano, and his parents, and many many others like them over the years, had to bleed. And that is why people are gathering this weekend in Memphis, to shout love into this heart of darkness. Enough is enough. No more wounded people. No more wounded families. No more bleeding hearts. Enough.
I’ll be leaving for Memphis early tomorrow. The last weather forecast I read for Memphis is calling for possible freezing rain around midnight, so I want to be in my hotel well before then. They’ll probably be no blogging tomorrow. But I’ll be posting updates on the events over the weekend as much as possible.
Via Andrew Sullivan’s blog… From the National Review’s blog, ring wing crank John Derbyshire actually gets a few things right about Intelligent Design proponents…
I’ve said before here, and repeated as politely as I could in panel discussions with creationists: they’re not just wrong, they’re shifty. In my opinion, they wandered off the straight and narrow when they started pushing this "intelligent design" stuff. My advice to them — frequently offered but, for reasons that are baffling to me, never taken up — is to drop the i-d b-s and go back to good old Biblical creationism. At least that’s an honest point of view founded in Scripture. I understand why the move to i-d was made: to try to get out from under current church-state jurisprudence (not all of which I agree with). However, the constant strain of keeping a straight face while insisting that theirs is not — no way! absolutely not!! — a religious campaign, and talking about the mysterious-but-definitely-not-supernatural "Designer," has corrupted them irredeemably.
No. What corrupted them irredeemably was idolatry. These people worship the bible, not God. And it’s forced them to turn away from everything God actually created, and treat Gods own handwriting in the matter that makes up the water in the sea, the sand on the shore, and the beautiful whirls and colors of sea shells as evil, whenever it contradicts what the idol says. The first thing you give up when you turn away from the world as it really is, is your integrity. After that, comes you honor, your self respect, and eventually everything you could have been. Yes they’re shifty. That’s what you become when you turn away from the world. That’s what you have to become.
When the bird and the bird book disagree, believe the bird. When reality slaps you upside the head, say "thank you". Don’t tuck your tail between your legs and run away toward the comforting embrace of an idol, because you’ll never stop running until there is nothing left of you but the idol. The empty, soulless idol.
Wilson, then 19, was a part of Love In Action’s adult program, housed in a former Episcopal church in Raleigh, at the same time that a Bartlett teen was forced into since-closed LIA’s youth program, Refuge.
LIA catapulted itself into the national spotlight two years ago when the Bartlett teen wrote about his angst on his MySpace page.
…
The gay community’s outrage was instantaneous, as the saga of the then 16-year-old, whose first name is Zach, spread across the blogosphere.
Zach’s supporters protested outside of LIA, but Wilson says the men and women inside were told not to make eye contact with the protesters and not to read their signs.
After Wilson left LIA, he found out what the protesters had wanted him to know.
"These people weren’t doing it to be activists, they were doing it to show that we weren’t alone, that we were loved … It crushes me that that message was cut from us."
Crushing you was the point. Separating you from the love of your neighbors in this life is how they do it.
His parents promised they’d pay for his stay at LIA, but reneged when Wilson decided he would live as God made him.
…
For Wilson, the cost has been strained family relationships, mountains of credit card debt to pay off LIA’s charges and emotional damage from which he’s still healing…
I see John Smid still isn’t giving out any money-back guarantees.
Here, from Beyond Ex-Gay, is a list of scheduled events this weekend in Memphis. If you can make it, I urge you to come and stand with the survivors. Let them see the love they weren’t allowed to while inside. Show them what Love In Action looks like…
NEW! Friday 2/22 noon Press Conference (Press only) at the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center MGLCC (892 S. Cooper). Ex-gay survivors, local leaders and experts release statements about the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered community in response to Focus on the Family and Exodus promoting an inaccurate picture about LGBT people.
Reverend Ken Hutcherson, founder and senior pastor of the Antioch Bible Church near Seattle Washington, and one of the three leaders of the hate group, Watchmen on the Walls, is on the warpath over the Gay-Straight Alliance in his daughter’s school…
This poster is hanging in the window of a classrom at Mt. Si High School!
It’s time we wake up and realize we are in a culture WAR!
When teachers are allowed to hang posters like this in our local school, we’ve got a big problem. It’s time to take back our schools.
Pastor Hutch
Timothy Kincaid, over at Box Turtle Bulletin, has more. Apparently Hutcherson is upset that his daughter is being called a stressful presence while "monitoring" those GSA meetings. I can’t imagine why, other then that those kids probably know full well that everyone who attends those meetings, and everything that is said, is being reported right back to Hutcherson, and for all anybody knows, other members of The Watchmen on the Walls. They might as well be holding their meetings in Hutcherson’s church.
The Goths in their black T-shirts were there. So were the punks with fluorescent hair and multiple piercings.
There were even a few adolescent boys carrying skateboards among the nearly 1,000 Oxnard youth and other supporters who turned out Saturday for a hastily organized peace march to pay tribute to Lawrence King, 15, the Oxnard student shot to death in a classroom last week.
"Larry, Larry, Larry!" the crowd chanted before marchers clasped hands in a moment of silence for the fallen student.
There were no bullhorns, no speeches and no politicians. Just a mass of mostly adolescents wearing bright clothing, carrying signs and singing John Lennon’s "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance."
The size of the turnout surprised police, school officials and even the two Hueneme High School sophomores who put the event together just three days ago, spreading the word with fliers, cellphone calls and MySpace bulletins.
"We were expecting maybe 100 or 200 people," said Courtney LaForest, 16, as she gazed at a broad "peace circle" formed by march participants at Plaza Park in downtown Oxnard. "This is incredible."
Courtney said the turnout reflected a community’s anguish over a senseless shooting that has destroyed the lives of two young men. It was also a public plea for tolerance on school campuses for those who are different, she said.
However, "Pastor Hutch" and his friends think it’s time people realize they’re fighting a WAR! And The enemy…? Right here…
And…here…
And…here…
Children are being shot by children. Parents are burying their children. Their friends are being torn apart by shock and loss and grief. And Hutcherson says we’re in a WAR! No shit Sherlock. Two bullets to the head killed a sixteen year old boy and took away from this poor world everything he might have given to it, every moment of friendship and joy and love, every laugh, every smile. Gone. All gone. In an instant. And Ken Hutcherson’s words, and those of his fellow KulturKriegen, were the gunpowder.
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
When I get to California,
Gonna write my name in the sand
I’m gonna lay this body down
and watch the waves roll in
and when the city spreads out
just like a cut vein
Everybody drowns, sad and lonely
well everybody drowns, sad and lonely
well everybody drowns, sad and lonely, alright
Sweet dreams and color and sound
Highways in the fog waiting to be found
I’ll start gold mines in the sky sky sky
They were clouds just waiting to cry
And with the wind
I’m dancing drift drift drift
in the shapes of the place that I miss
When I get to California,
Gonna write my name in the sand
I’m gonna lay this body down
and watch the waves roll in
I’m gonna rest this weary head
on someone who I think will care
When the stars and the sky start falling
I think you’ll understand
That the city spreads out
just like a cut vein
Everybody drowns, sad and lonely
well everybody drowns, sad and lonely
well everybody drowns, sad and lonely, alright
Yeah I’m waiting for something to give
Well I’m waiting, I hope it’s not me
Yeah I’m waiting…
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.
Why I Spent Eleven-Hundred Dollars To Install Backup Sensors
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.
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 Lifestyletm 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.
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…
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…
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Mayor Naugle is pictured above to the direct left of President Bush (he is facing the camera). At left, homosexual activists’ “Flush Naugle” website mocks his stand against homosexual public bathroom sex.
