Archive for May 2007
"Did y'all just leave the faggot bar?"—Hate Crime in Mobile, Alabama
Last Saturday there was a hate crime in Mobile, Alabama. Or, rather, there would have been if Alabama recognized crimes borne of hatred against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, or transgendered persons as hate crimes.
From a friend:
Last night (5/26/07) myself and 3 friends witnessed what can only be called a crime of hate against 2 of our other friends who had thankfully already made it into their vehicle. Their car was facing Conti Street in the parking lot at Conti and Joachim and as they were walking to their vehicle, they were approached by a man who asked, “did y’all just leave the faggot bar?” My friends didn’t react, but rather, got to their vehicle as quickly as possible. They got into the car and locked the doors as the man began kicking the car in the back and in the passenger side while screaming other obscenities and slurs. He was trying to break the glass in the windows. He ended up putting large dents in the back and on the passenger door before they were able to reverse from the parking spot and drive away.
Our friend was renting this vehicle so we didn’t recognize it but watched as the crime occurred. We hurried to our own car, not knowing what was going on, and pulled out of the parking lot when we got the call from our friends who informed us that they were the ones in the car being attacked by the man. We followed them to their home and made the decision to call the police.
The police officer from the 3rd precinct arrived and gathered the information he needed. We were all surprised when he began asking us why we left the parking lot and telling us that if it had been him getting his car kicked in, he’d “have gotten out and kicked some a–.” He said that the city wouldn’t spend time trying to find the man nor did he offer hope for future protection in the commonly used pay-to-park lot. Not only are we certain that our friends and we had done the right thing by leaving the lot, but we are certain that the damages could have been much worse had we stayed. We asked him to call to see about checking the cameras in the lot and when he did, he found out that the cameras in that lot haven’t worked in some time. The lot attendant had gone, and there is no type of security in the lot. I believe that if we pay the city or the owner of the parking lot to park in that or any parking lot, we should be assured that the city or owner of the parking lot will protect us accordingly.
I felt it necessary to send this email to my friends and others and I recommend that you spread the word about this to anyone you know who spends time downtown in Mobile. It could have been anyone and there is a need for awareness. This isn’t the first time something like this or something worse has happened in or near that same parking lot for similar reasons. Again, it could have been anyone; a female walking alone, a couple, or even a group. Our friends and we were lucky despite the damage to their rental car but it could have been much worse. I’ve been on Dauphin Street and seen many police officers in plain sight at any given time and I don’t understand why there aren’t more in other parts of downtown. If city regulations allow that an establishment may stay open, or private establishments are allowed to be open, it is my opinion that the city or those private establishments should also be aware of these issues and do something about it to protect their patrons or make us feel safer once we walk out their doors.
Alabama will give special protection to a house of worship, public monument, or even a US or Alabama flag, but not a human being who happens to be gay. In fact, on May 11 they voted not to add crimes against people based on sexual orientation to Alabama’s hate crimes law.
Infectious diseases and the no-fly list
With the news that a man infected with a resistant strain of TB was allowed to fly to Europe and back, I’m wondering why this man wasn’t put on the TSA‘s no fly list. ABC News reported on World News with Charlie Gibson that the man was advised by the CDC that he should not fly, but he decided to anyway.
The public health officers of the CDC have the authority to have a person who they believe to be a threat to public safety arrested and confined but they didn’t. The reason: they didn’t know that the strain that he’s infected with was as resistant then. Apparently, they didn’t see the need to confine him. They do now, though.
I guess the question I have is that if he was infectious at all, why was he just given an “advisory” not to travel. If people critical of Bush can find their way onto the no-fly list, why can’t people who pose not just a health hazard to others but also a genuine security threat to America and other nations?
Memorial Day 2007 – How many more kids will Bush’s war kill?
In the past year, Bush’s war has killed at least 980 982 985 soldiers. 6,883 have been reported wounded. How many more will his war kill and wound before the next Memorial Day?
Source: Iraq Coalition Casualties
Update: Two U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq – Yahoo! News
Two U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq, the U.S. military said on Sunday, pushing May to the brink of becoming the deadliest month for U.S. forces this year.
Update 2: I just saw a graphic on “ABC’s World News with Charlie Gibson” that said there have been 985 casualties since Memorial Day 2006.
Browser homepages and validation
Interesting yet possibly completely trivial discovery: Both Opera.com and Mozilla.com validate to XHTML 1.0 Strict. The Camino homepage tries for XHTML 1.0 Transitional, but fails because someone failed to close a line break, using <br> instead of <br />.
Safari’s page does pretty good, but comes out with 3 errors when trying for HTML 4.01 Transitional. It also has a lot of warnings because of their use if ’ in place of ' or apostrophes and — instead of —
The IE 7 homepage doesn’t even try to come anywhere near valid and succeeds wonderfully at that with 208 errors including not even including a DOCTYPE declaration.
Is The View still worth watching?
With Rosie O’Donnell’s early exit from the show, is it worth watching anymore? I have never watched an episode on television, but I do catch clips on YouTube and then only after O’Donnell joined the panel.
Even with a Democratic majority, Bush is still leading us down the wrong path
More Americans — 72 percent — now say that “generally, things in the country are seriously off on the wrong track” than at any time since the Times/CBS News poll began asking the question in 1983. The figure had been in the high 60’s earlier this year.
Sixty-one percent of respondents now say that the United States should never have taken military action against Iraq, up from 51 percent in a CBS News poll in April and 58 percent in the same poll in January. Seventy-six percent say that things are going badly in the effort to bring stability and order to Iraq, including 47 percent who say they’re going very badly.
A large majority of the public — 76 percent, including a majority of Republicans — say that the additional American troops sent to Iraq this year by Mr. Bush have either had no impact or are making things worse there. Twenty percent think the troop increase is improving the situation in Iraq.
U.S. Opposition to Iraq War at All-Time High, Poll Shows | NYTimes.com
And it’s only going to get worse now that the Democrats have caved in and given Bush his blank check for Iraq.
What are they teaching kids at Liberty University?
ABC News: EXCLUSIVE: Bomb Plot Thwarted at Falwell’s Funeral
Virginia authorities arrested a Liberty University student in what officials said was a bomb plot intended to disrupt protesters at the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s funeral service.
“Protesters are bad, bomb them”?
Nerd rant: Star Trek: Fluidic Space
I’m watching the Voyager episode “Unimatrix Zero, Part II” and in it, the Borg drone Axum tells Seven of Nine that he’s on “a scout ship patrolling the border of fluidic space. On the other side of the galaxy.”
Ever since I saw this episode this line has bothered me. Fluidic space doesn’t have a border. It’s a “realm” accessed via quantum singularity. How on earth does that have a border?
iChat, iTunes, and status updates
When I tell iChat AV to use my current iTunes track as the status, it should change the status to “Paused” when I pause iTunes. Right now if I pause a track it stays as the status for hours sometimes and it’s just annoying.
iChatStatus used to do this but now that app is mostly redundant since Tiger was released.
Damn you high gas prices!
I had to stop and get gas last night. I put $35 in the tank and it still didn’t fill it up. Gas was $2.94/gal. I guess the good news is that I was able to go 380 miles before refueling.
JeffSay... 
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