I have added one additional weapon in the arsenal against spam here at Patrick’s Place.  It’s an extra plugin that will require comments it deems as “questionable” to be validated with a captcha function.

Captcha is that system that shows distorted letters or numbers and requires a user to type what they see.  But wait…it’s not as bad as you think!! 

It will only require you to do so if it sees something in your comment that it thinks might be spam.  So for those of you who normally comment, you should have no problem at all.  If it does think something is amiss, it’ll give you the additional test, and then your comment should make it to my moderation cue.  And in most cases, I’m fairly quick about moderating comments.

I’ve added this for two reasons:

First, I have discovered recently that some perfectly legitimate comments from perfectly real people were being thrown into the spam filter for reasons that didn’t seem clear to me.  Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal, because I could just click over and scan through the crap and pick out the good ones.

Second, the amount of crap piling up in the spam filter has reached an unmanageable point.   I had to scan through 21 pages of spam comments — more than 1000 individual pieces of spam, with any number of “interesting” references to various body parts, just to salvage 2 legitimate comments.

Sorry, kids…that’s just no fun.

If you leave a comment and it gets flagged and you have to do the captcha thing, I apologize in advance.  I hope that the system will quickly recognize you so that you don’t have to do it a second time.  If you think you’re not getting through, click the Contact tab at the top of the blog and send me a note — that goes just to me, not as a published comment.

Hopefully, this will make sure that you get through quicker and that spambots don’t.

I was flipping around the stations this afternoon and landed on CNN’s live coverage of the DNC delegation dispute proceedings just in time to hear one of Michigan’s senators say this to one of Hillary Clinton’s senior advisors:

“You’re calling for a ‘fair reflection’ of a flawed primary.”

If that doesn’t qualify as a line of the week, I don’t know what does.

They have reached a compromise in Florida already: the state’s delegates will be seated, but with half the number of actual votes. The result will be the addition of 19 delegate votes for Clinton.

Michigan is a different story. Prior to the actual voting, when it was clear that Michigan’s primary wouldn’t be counted, the candidates were given the opportunity to remove their names from the ballot in a show of support of the DNC ruling that penalized the state for scheduling its primary early. Barack Obama and others removed their names from the ballot. Hillary Clinton did not, but a representative of the Obama campaign quoted Clinton in an NPR radio interview saying that Michigan would not count, and that she was only keeping her name on the ballot so as not to offend Michigan voters in November.

This representative makes an excellent point about the options left for Obama supporters in Michigan’s primary: they could either vote for their likely second choice, Hillary; write in Obama, which wouldn’t have counted; or vote in the Republican primary for their least favorite choice there, the only primary they were assured would actually count. Some, disgusted that their candidate wasn’t on the ballot, just stayed home. But in all cases, they made their decision with the understanding that the Democratic primary wasn’t going to count in mind, one that Clinton herself supported at the time.

Now Clinton wants to change the rules. Because she’s behind. And she wants Michigan’s votes, even though her chief opponent’s name wasn’t on the ballot. She thinks that’s fair. Her supporters think that’s fair. No one else, with any reasonable degree of common sense, can possibly think so. Not when Clinton herself was in support of the DNC ruling way back when.

Linda Hansen’s newest post over at Huffington Post says it very well:

“Whether he liked them or not, Senator Obama played by the DNC’s rules in Michigan and Florida. Senator Clinton thought the rules were just fine so long as she was front runner and destined to win the nomination. The specter of losing compels Hillary to change the rules.

Of course, she’s not playing this bait and switch game only because she has to win this thing any way she can–she’s the new, improved populist who cannot bear the thought of a single vote not counting for all it’s worth. Not a one.

Unless it’s a caucus state vote.”

They should either declare Michigan a draw, and give both candidates an equal number of delegates, or not seat the state. Even in grade school, when the results are too close to call, or there’s some big controversy that makes it harder to pick one clear winner beyond a shadow of a doubt, they call it a draw and everyone gets a ribbon as a “participant.” You can’t rewrite the rules of the game after the players have gone home.

This week’s set of questions is about charity. It’s a topic that some of you might be comfortable with and others may not. This week’s quiz is from a religious-oriented website, and the answers you get might raise your eyebrows.

Sounds like an interesting set coming up, right?

• First to play last week: Adalea of Adalea. Congratulations!
  (According to the rules, “First to Play” requires you to be the first to include the link to the specific entry in which you answered the questions, not just the general link to your blog.)

Here are this week’s “Saturday Six” questions. Either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your journal…but either way, leave a link to your journal so that everyone else can visit! To be counted as “first to play,” you must be the first player to either answer the questions in a comment or to provide a complete link to the specific entry in your journal in which you answer the questions. A link to your journal in general cannot count. Enjoy!

1. What was the last organization you gave a monetary donation to?

2. What was the last charitable thing you volunteered to do?

3. Someone you know comes to you in a bad situation and asks to borrow $10. Do you give them the money even if you think they might not give it back?

4. Take the quiz: How Charitable Are You?

5. Do you agree with the quiz’s results?

6. Should the United States do more to help its own citizens before helping people in other countries?

If you have a Reader’s Choice question you’d like to see asked (and answered), send me an email! I’d love to be able to include it in a future edition of the Saturday Six.

I was doing a Google search for a plug-in option that would further assist my spam filter so that I could weed out spambots without having literally hundreds of suspected spam comments to sift through to make sure no legitimate comments were misdirected.

I came across a website with a plug-in that wasn’t really what I was looking for, anyway, but I couldn’t help but notice the big bold message at the top of the page:

“This plugin project is on hold. Why? Because hundreds of people asked for this plugin, so we created it. However, when we asked for donations to fund further development we gathered a whopping $20. So, it seems that while people are chomping at the bit to make money with our code almost none are willing to share their revenue by making a reasonable donation. Therefore we give the existing code away only to those that deserve it. For the rest of you, write the code yourselves.”

Wow.  So somebody is surprised that in this day and age, a large number of people want something for nothing?  Particularly when many of Wordpress’s users don’t pay a cent for Wordpress itself?

I wonder if they get that “asking for donations” is like asking for a favor, and that a request, or even a plea or demand, does not force someone else to hand over a donation.  A donation, the last time I checked, refers to something that is given voluntarily, usually in the form of a gift.  There may be a moral obligation that some people feel, but if it’s voluntary, it’s a little unfair to get bent out of shape if everyone chooses not to take part.

We do live in a lazy world, after all.  And with gas prices about a dime away from the $4.00 mark, we’re beginning to live in a stingy one, too.

There’s no question in my mind that this this person made a very wise decision in limiting access to the product…especially if there’s that much anger that donations haven’t rolled in faster.   But with a message like that, I can’t admit that I’d feel generous enough to make myself one of the “deserving,” either.

More power to ‘em.

You know all of those rabid Clinton supporters who have been whining about how unfair the coverage of their candidate has been? A just-released study that scrutinized the coverage paints a quite different story.

“…Sen. Hillary Clinton did not get tougher press coverage than Sen. Barack Obama when it came to the main themes about their character, history, leadership qualities and overall appeal.

In fact, it was just the opposite starting after Clinton criticized the media for being too soft on Obama.”

Clinton’s supporters have also been trying to encourage everyone to boycott MSNBC, the cable network they feel has been most unfair to their candidate.

Wrong again, according to the study:

“For example, 69% of the assertions about Obama on Fox News Channel were positive, versus 54% for Clinton. And both far outdistanced Sen. John McCain, with only 45%.

On CNN, Clinton was the clear winner, with 70% positives versus 59% for Obama and 49% for McCain.

The most even-handed, at least toward the Democrats, was MSNBC, the researchers concluded, with 72% positives for Clinton and 70% for Obama (McCain got 53%).”

It isn’t clear from the report exactly what constitutes a “positive assertion” versus a “negative assertion.” It is most likely that this refers to stories like Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s controversial comments, which — I’m just guessing here — would go in the “negative” column for Obama. It’s also not necessarily realistic to say that these networks are biased towards one side or the other; it’s possible to cover the news of the day, including whatever the controversy du jour happens to be, present fair coverage, and still have the overall tone of the story fall into either the “positive” or “negative” side.

Still, it’s quite interesting that Clinton, who has beaten her “experience” down out throats much the way John Kerry touted his Purple Hearts, and who has complained about being so mistreated by the press (when she wasn’t), managed to get more negative coverage going for her opponent, and still finds herself in such a desperate fight for the nomination she’s not likely to get anyway.

And it also appears to demonstrate that Obama, who got a rougher ride after the media allowed itself to be influenced by the senator from New York’s complaints, has still survived the added scrutiny.

Clinton supporters who have had a hand in this should be ashamed of themselves. And they should rethink their temper-tantrum threats to vote for McCain out of spite if Hillary. The only person making Hillary the underdog is Hillary.

The lesson for the media here, it appears, is to stop listening to candidates who say, “You’re nicer to the other guy.” The lesson for the politically-charged media haters is, perhaps, “Look a little more closely before you complain.”

I found this over at Madwriter and figured it might make for a nice Friday diversion. Here goes:

Who was your FIRST prom date? Julie. I only attended one prom in my life.

Do you still talk to your FIRST love? Yes.

What was your 1st alcoholic drink? Wine. My dad used to make his own. I’m very pleased that he stopped. Wine enthusiasts should be as well.

What was your FIRST job? As a cashier at K Mart. And I can still scan and bag faster than anyone they’ve hired since. (And don’t get me started about some of the snails working the registers at Wal-Mart!)

What was your FIRST car? A 1973 Olds Cutlass S. I still miss that car.

Who was the FIRST person to text you today? I don’t do text messages.

Who is the FIRST person you thought of this morning? A friend of mine who’s about to move away.

Who was your FIRST grade teacher? I had two: Baker and Price.

Where did you go on your FIRST ride on an airplane? In circles. The first time I rode on a plane, it was at some air show where people could take brief rides on twin-engine planes. The first destination I actually flew to was in school, during a field trip that taught us everything we wanted to know about airports, planes and transportation, and we flew from Columbia to Charlotte.

Who was your FIRST best friend & do you still talk? Troy and just recently we’ve had several conversations.

Where was your FIRST sleep over? At Scott’s house. He lived about three blocks away from my house, and I somehow was very sad not being at home when it came time to go to sleep. Never saw that coming.

Who was the FIRST person you talked to today? Mom.

Whose wedding were you in the FIRST time? I was the ring bearer of my next door neighbor’s daughter when I was about 7 or so.

What was the FIRST thing you thought this morning? “Is it Saturday, yet?”

What was the FIRST concert you ever went to? I don’t like concerts. It’s too damn loud. The first major live performance I ever saw was at a marketing convention in Chicago in 1997, and the performer was none other than Tina Turner.

FIRST tattoo or piercings? None and never.

FIRST foreign country you went to? Canada.

FIRST movie you remember seeing in the theaters? It was probably a Peanuts movie with my dad. I miss summer vacations from school.

When was your FIRST detention? Never had a detention.

First state you lived in? South Carolina.

Who was your FIRST roommate? Chip.

Who was your FIRST? Oh, come on.

Who do you think will be the next person to post this? Sorry, I can’t answer this question because it has nothing to do with “firsts.” After all, I hate to break up a set.

“It takes a certain type of person to be a television star. I didn’t have whatever that is. I come across as kind of snobbish and maybe a little too bright. … Give me something bizarre to play or put me in a dress and I’m fine.”

—Harvey Korman

One of the main reasons I loved watching the TV classic The Carol Burnett Show was the pairing of Tim Conway and Harvey Korman. Whenever those two shared a scene, you knew it was going to be funny…not only because of the performance itself, but because of Korman’s usually-failed attempts to keep a straight face as Conway did his schtick.

Korman has died at age 81.

From voicing the Great Gazoo on The Flintstones to his portrayal of the egomaniacal Hedley Lamar in Blazing Saddles, he has left a legacy of decades of good humor for kids of all ages.

Years ago, Korman explained his inability to refrain from laughing at Conway by pointing out that a fellow performer never knew what Conway was going to do next. He would do things one way in rehearsal and apparently a completely different way at the actual show taping.

Somehow, the audience never seemed to mind Korman’s breakups. In fact, it made already-funny material all the more enjoyable.

Back in January of this year, he was operated on for a brain tumor. The operation was successful, but just days after returning home, he suffered the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm and was given just hours to live. He proved his doctors wrong, but after several major operations, he was just too weak. His daughter, Kate, said he fought until the very end. “He didn’t want to die. He fought for months and months,” she said in an AP article.

Carol Burnett is said to be devastated by Korman’s passing. Understandable. The world has lost part of its sense of humor.

I’ll wrap up this sad news with a clip of one of Korman and Conway’s most famous moments: Conway is playing a novice dentist who is a little too careless with a needle full of Novocaine.

Thanks for the many, many laughs, Harvey.

It’s Thursday…just two days away from the weekend.  I don’t know about you, but I’m already ready for one!

But before we can get to the weekend, we have to get through 10 more miscellaneous items that I hope will surprise and entertain.  If you are inspired to come up with a list of your own, not that I’m expecting anyone to start now, please leave a link to your post in the comments!

1. HOW COOL IS THIS?: My birthday’s in November, and I hope to be a good bit lighter by then…but if all goes well, then I might have to take a break from the diet and invest in one of these cakes. Imagine the fun of pretending to be a Klingon or Romulan and slicing up Captain Kirk’s bridge as his valiant crew runs for their very lives. Of course, they would all survive; they’d have to make it to the first motion picture ten birthday cakes later.

2. GOODBYE, MR. HAGEN: What makes a composer successful? Is it a big bank account, the respect of his peers, or having created a tune that is practically everyone not only knows, but can hum (or whistle along with). Earle Hagen was just such a composer, and he passed away Monday at 88. Hagen composed the legendary themes of That Girl, The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Spy, and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. Then there’s that little tune that Hagen himself whistled as a father and son walked to their favorite fishing hole: the theme to The Andy Griffith Show. If any music could put a smile on your face, his was it.

3. THE ONLY THING WE HAVE TO FEAR (ON TV): NBC is developing a new horror anthology series. Fear Itself will debut on June 5th, as part of the network’s push for year-round original programming…something all networks should have been doing for decades now. Will you watch?

4. DIET DNA: Diet Coke, easily the best diet soft drink ever invented, is in the process of dropping an ingredient that has been linked to DNA damage and hyperactivity in children. If the damage the DNA received affected the body’s ability to store fat, I bet no one would have complained.

5. FORGOT SOMETHING?: I love this story. Really. It’s hilarious and outrageous at the same time and it goes like this: a Customs drug screening team was working to make sure their drug sniffing dogs could correctly sniff out the luggage with 124 grams of hashish. The only problem is that they misplaced the luggage with the hidden hashish. Apparently, whoever owned it — one of 283 passengers on a plane traveling from Hong Kong to Narita — got to their bags before the dogs did. What makes it even worse is that the owner of the bad had no idea the illegal stash is there. Can you imagine getting stopped somewhere else and having another set of customs officials find what the first set lost? Think they’d buy the hapless passenger’s plea of innocence?

6. COUNTDOWN TO DIGITAL: Nine months and all’s not well for television households in America. In February, as you probably have heard, television broadcasting is switching from analog to digital. If you subscribe to cable or satellite, you have nothing to worry about, as long as your service doesn’t go out. If you depend on an antenna or receive a signal over the air without one, and your television set doesn’t have a new digital tuner, you’re going to be out of luck. No picture. No sound. Nada. A new report by Nielsen Media Research, (the ratings people) predicts that 25 million homes have at least one television set that will stop functioning and that 10 million are “completely unready” for the switch. Go to dtv2009.gov to read up on what you need to do to make sure you’re not one of them.

7. THE BIG COMEBACK: You knew it had to happen sooner or later. The recession — or whatever euphemism the current administration is coming up with these days — is being blamed for increased sales of Spam. Not the unwanted email, that ham-like lunch meat in the can. The butt of jokes for decades, its new gains in sales is proof of one thing: when money’s tight, shoppers are not willing to put their money where their mouth is.

8. BUT SHE HAD NO POCKETS!: A nude maid is accused of really cleaning up at a Florida man’s home, while his wife was away. The man allegedly hired the woman from the internet and paid $100 an hour for her to clean in the buff. When the man’s wife got home, she discovered $40,000 in jewelry missing. Talk about hubby being in the doghouse!

9. RAY RAZZED: A commercial featuring hyper Rachel Ray pitching Dunkin’ Donuts coffee has been pulled after a controversy over what she’s wearing. Ray is shown in an outdoor setting wearing a gray V-neck top and a cream, black and silver scarf with tassels along the edges. A commentator on Fox News remarked that the scarf looked like a kiffiyeh, a Middle Eastern accessory popularized by Yassir Arafat and Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos. Dunkin’ Donuts pulled the ad, and actually assured the public that no symbolism for terrorists was intended. As if anyone should be stupid enough to believe otherwise.  Seriously, people: it’s Dunkin’ Donuts. They’re trying to sell a cup of coffee. Who comes up with this stuff?!?

10. WARDROBE MALFUNCTION?: A new political commercial for John McCain shows a voter wearing a Barack Obama shirt. I’m sure Fox News will label her a terrorist as well.

That’s my 10. Do you have 10 of your own?

What would it take for you to buy a hybrid?

A few of us were having that discussion today in the newsroom.  Some car dealers are saying that customers who want the gas efficient vehicles are winding up on waiting lists.  One local dealer says he’s had potential car buyers from several states away calling in search of a hybrid.

Funny thing is, when you visit the car dealers, you quickly learn something disturbing:  hybrids are in no way affordable.

Take Toyota.  Their lowest-priced car is the Yaris, a two-seater that measures just over 12 feet in length.  It starts at a modest $11,550.  For gas mileage, it offers 29/35 mpg fuel efficiency in the city and highway.  Respectable, but not hybrid-level efficient by any means.  Toyota’s most popular hybrid is the Prius, which I have nicknamed the iCar.  It has a 45/48 mpg fuel efficiency and starts at $21,500.

Let’s do a little quick math, courtesy of Toyota’s own payment calculator.  Let’s assume that you have an older car, that’s not in the greatest shape, and that gas prices and this lovely economy have depleted a considerable amount of your savings.  So between the trade in and what you have managed to save, you have a total of $2500 to work with as a down payment.  You may have considerably more than this; many have considerably less.

So you decide on the Prius, because you care about reducing your dependency on oil, and because you want to save money at the pump.  With a 60-month loan at 7.0% interest, you’re looking at a $376.22 car payment.  If you’re already struggling with the rising prices of everything else, that’s likely a deal breaker.

But what about that Yaris?  At under $12,000, a 60-month loan means payments of $179.20.  Less than half of the payment.

Compare Honda’s lowest-priced car, the Fit, starting at $13,950; with their lowest-priced hybrid, the Civic Hybrid, at $22,600.

Then there’s Ford, with a $14,755 Focus, and a $26,640 Escape Hybrid.

I think you can see the pattern here.

So the car makers aren’t making hybrids that are affordable.  And that’s keeping many drivers who really want them from being able to buy.  It’s also keeping the demand for gas higher, which, in turn, is keeping gas prices high.

It’s time for the car makers to do a bit of soul searching:  if they’d lower the prices of their fancy hybrids, they’d sell a lot more of them.  They’d reduce the demand for gas, which should lower the price we pay at the pump.  Since they have to buy oil and plastics that are made with oil products, they’d be lowering their costs, too.   And I just bet that even with lower prices, the increased demand for their cars would still leave them laughing all the way to the bank.

Worse things could happen.

So I am trying my best to adopt a new attitude starting today.

I’ve been quite frustrated lately in a variety of directions. So I am making a concerted effort to just “get over it,” a trick that does not come easily to people who suffer from various anxiety disorders that make it something of a challenge to let go of things.

There has been a slight change — although I’ve not let it feel so slight much of the time — at the old workplace involving one of my responsibilities. It was one that I enjoyed, but one that was admittedly taking a little too much of my time. I feel silly saying this, but I think I actually experienced the five stages of grief when the task was reassigned. Maybe I didn’t hit all five; I don’t recall bargaining for anything other than to go on doing what I was doing without any change (which isn’t much of a negotiation, unless you’re George W. Bush). It’s entirely possible that I hit anger before denial. (And likely after as well.)

But I know that I have reached the final stage: acceptance. It’s okay. It’s less stress for me to have to deal with on a daily basis. That’s a good thing. (And no, I’m not just saying that to convince myself: I’m convinced already.)

I’ve also been dealing with other frustrations, including one of my biggest pet peeves: broken things that remain unfixed. Things change, I am often reminded. Old systems that are no longer efficient get replaced by newer systems that promise to be at least as efficient. Sometimes, newer technology isn’t so efficient because it means jumping through additional hoops to get the same things done.

I hate that. If it slows me down, it’s not better. It’s only slower.

But there comes a point at which the old systems become too expensive to fix. There are few things that get me more fired up than having the same problems continue because a problem everyone knows about just keeps right on going. Fix it! Now!

I’m trying to get over that, too.

Some things aren’t going to get fixed. They’ll be replaced. By things that aren’t as efficient in certain ways.  But by things that generally have a better chance of getting the task accomplished in the end.

And as much as I’d like to wallow in the aggravation, because we anxiety sufferers tend to find some perverse pleasure in wallowing in such things, I have to move forward. I have to learn to embrace something different. Even though it will certainly cause a new set of problems. (New things always do.) I have to accept the fact that some things won’t be able to be done as easily or quickly. So I will have to be the one to adapt. (Technology always makes us adapt to it rather than the other way around.)

My friend Archie, a pastor at my church, has recently started a blog, and his latest post is called “Here’s to new beginnings.” Archie and his wife, Rebekah, are moving to California later this year, and in that post, he talks about the thought of looking forward to making changes he wants to make and a move as an opportunity to make them:

“But then the thought hit me… If I’m not starting that stuff now, I’m probably not going do it out there; just because I’m in a new place doesn’t mean that I change on the inside. BUT on the other hand- why wait to start out there? God tells us in scripture that his mercies are new EVERY DAY. So here’s to a new beginning on life… today.”

Here, here.  I’m trying.

Today.

Just heard on Today: Katie Couric is returning to the Today show tomorrow, according to Matt Lauer. She’s coming back, apparently, for a single appearance and to make a “major announcement.”

Is she announcing that she’s giving up the anchor chair at the CBS Evening News? Probably not. It seems like CBS wouldn’t allow her to go announce such a thing on her former show at NBC.

Meredith Viera even joked, upon hearing the news, “Permanently?” Viera, of course, replaced Couric on Today when Couric left for CBS.

Is it some cheap marketing ploy designed to make people just curious enough to watch? Yep.

I’m curious enough, and I’m sure I’ll be disappointed by whatever the “major announcement” turns out to be.

UPDATE:  I found out what the “major announcement” is, and wouldn’t have spoiled the details until I realized that all of the networks were doing a fine job of spoiling it on their own.  And it’s not just Katie Couric appearing on Today.  NBC’s Brian Williams is going to appear on ABC’s Good Morning America.  And ABC’s Charlie Gibson is headed to CBS’s The Early Show.  In fact, all three anchors are appearing together on all three morning shows.

The reason?  To announce a new initiative to fight cancer.  More here.

See?  Not knowing was a lot more exciting.

As if South Carolina ranking #1 in text messaging while driving, we’re also getting national attention because a high school principal has decided to resign after being asked to allow the formation of a club he says goes against his “professional beliefs and religious convictions.”

The club in question is a Gay/Straight Alliance. His resignation will take effect in June of 2009, at the end of the 2008-2009 school year. I can’t help but wonder, if he’s so offended, why he didn’t set his date of separation to be June of this year.

The organization that creates such clubs nationwide describes its vision of the future as “a world in which every child learns to accept and respect all people, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity/expression.”

Doesn’t sound so terrible, does it?

The principal in question says his school focuses on abstinence-based curriculum, and feels that a Gay/Straight Alliance would imply “that students joining the club will have chosen to or will choose to engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex, opposite sex, or members of both sexes.”

¿Que?

First, let me get the abstinence issue out of the way. Abstinence-based curriculum stresses the importance of waiting for sex until after marriage. It’s what most Christian organizations like to push for in our schools, because it allows parents to sit back and feel that kids are getting the “right” message. But as everyone who has ever been a teenager knows, being told that you should wait for something almost certainly guarantees that you don’t want to wait for it. Add to that the typical peer pressure students face, and a curriculum that urges abstinence with less-than-realistic instruction on protection for those students who choose not to wait, and you have a scenario that is basically facilitating the real possibility of unwanted pregnancies and sexually-transmitted diseases. It doesn’t take a college degree to see that.

The opposite of abstinence-based sex ed is comprehensive sex ed:

“There is good evidence, from studies of programs implemented in the US, UK and other European countries and countries in Africa and Asia, that comprehensive sex education can reduce behaviors that put young people at risk of HIV, STIs and unintended pregnancy. Studies have repeatedly shown too that this kind of sex education does not lead to the earlier onset of sexual activity among young people and, in some cases, will even lead to it happening later.”

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s move on to the rest of the quote:

“…that students joining the club will have chosen to or will choose to engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex, opposite sex, or members of both sexes.”

I can guarantee that every student in this principal’s school will choose to engage in sexual activity with the same sex, opposite sex, or members of both sexes at some point…whether there is a Gay/Straight Alliance or not. The only exceptions will be those who decide to be celibate for life, or those who prefer relations with something other than humans, and I’d as soon think no more of that. If he could just figure out what needs to get said to make the members engage in sexual activity one day with members of the opposite sex only, his little “problem” would be solved, wouldn’t it?

If the formation of a Gay/Straight Alliance is enough to make people want to have sex, shouldn’t even abstinence-based sex education be banned as well? After all, if just the mere mention of the topic — which is apparently this principal’s concern — is enough to send students over the edge, isn’t sex education itself also a danger? Even if students are pressured not to have it until later, they’re still telling them something about having it, and that must be asking for trouble!

Maybe sex education in his school should be replaced by good old Home Ec. Baking chocolate chip cookies and sewing on buttons probably wouldn’t get anyone all that hot and bothered. (Unless they got too close to the hot oven.)

The executive director for Faith in America, a group that fights religious bigotry against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Americans, issued a statement that read in part:

“We truly believe it is unfortunate that this principal cannot see the immense harm that is caused when a social climate of rejection, condemnation and violence is justified with misguided religious belief. To make such a choice over simply allowing gay youth a forum to meet and talk, alludes to the apparent deep-seated prejudice that must exist in the religious mindset of this person.

“It is unfortunately very similar to the time in our history when segregation in schools was once allowed to flourish because of the deep-seated prejudice that existed in our institutions and the religious mindset of many people during that period.”

Or, to put it another way, discrimination is discrimination, no matter what makes the targets of it different from the “rest.”

The article from Columbia television station WIS-TV also quotes the parent of a student at the school:

“We are not putting them like, ‘ugh. You know you’re lepers.’ But we have to stand for what our foundation of our nation was about.”

Huh?

I might have to go dig up my history book, because I don’t recall reading that our country was founded to discriminate against gay high school students. I do, however, happen to vaguely remember something about the desire for religious freedom being a motive.

Religion does play a big role in this. There are plenty of Christians who refuse to call homosexuality anything other than an abomination. Many of them latch on to issues like this so that they can deflect their own sins that they don’t like to talk about. It’s human nature, after all. Rather than take the blame for something you’re doing that’s wrong, it’s so much easier to point a finger at someone else you feel is worse.

They also are convinced that homosexuality — and heterosexuality for that matter — should be the classifications of one’s sexual preference, not sexual orientation. As if anyone really wakes up one day and chooses which he’ll be.

Think about this for a second.

How old were you when you decided to which gender you were attracted? How many long days and nights did you labor over the decision? How long was your list of pros and cons for each gender?

Surely, if it was solely a function of choice, you must have spent a long, long time carefully considering which “team” you’d be “playing” for.

I can’t help but wonder why these religious zealots who are so against a club designed to open dialog wouldn’t welcome it. They should want straight students talking with gay students. They should want gay students — or in their minds, students who are choosing to be gay — to be exposed to straight students, those who are doing the “right” thing, so that they may see how happy and perfect the straight students’ lives are, and be positively influenced to rethink their “choice.”

That is to say, they should want those “good, sinless” straight students to rub off on those gay students. (No pun intended.)

Dialog, they should believe, could make all the difference in turning these gay students’ lives in the “proper” direction, right?

If they’re so convinced that it works for abstinence, then what’s the hang-up about homosexuality? They should be eager to quash two “problems” at once.

That is, if they’re giving it any real thought at all.

If you’re reading this through a feed reader, then you might want to click the link and come to the actual blog.  I’ve made a switch to a new template, that was fairly close to the previous one, but added some modifications that I like a little better.

In particular, the main content column is a lot wider.  It bothered me that there was so much wasted space on either side of the old template.

The main thing that bothers me about this new template is the weird red weeds that hang down from the header to mark off the start of the sidebar.  There’s another collection of red weeds at the bottom of the sidebar.  I’m not sure what that’s about, but as soon as I find the cyber lawn mower, they’re going to be taken care of.

In any case, I hope you like the modifications.  I’d love to hear your input.

Here is an excerpt from one of Andy Rooney’s essays.  The topic, appropriately enough, is Memorial Day.  This was from a segment first broadcast on May 29, 2005:

“Tomorrow is Memorial Day, the day we have set aside to honor by remembering all the Americans who have died fighting for the thing we like the most about our America: the freedom we have to live as we please.

No official day to remember is adequate for something like that. It’s too formal. It gets to be just another day on the calendar. No one would know from Memorial Day that Richie M., who was shot through the forehead coming onto Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, wore different color socks on each foot because he thought it brought him good luck.

No one would remember on Memorial Day that Eddie G. had promised to marry Julie W. the day after he got home from the war, but didn’t marry Julie because he never came home from the war. Eddie was shot dead on an un-American desert island, Iwo Jima.

For too many Americans, Memorial Day has become just another day off. There’s only so much time any of us can spend remembering those we loved who have died, but the men, boys really, who died in our wars deserve at least a few moments of reflection during which we consider what they did for us.

They died.

We use the phrase “gave their lives,” but they didn’t give their lives. Their lives were taken from them.

There is more bravery at war than in peace, and it seems wrong that we have so often saved this virtue to use for our least noble activity - war. The goal of war is to cause death to other people.

Because I was in the Army during World War II, I have more to remember on Memorial Day than most of you. I had good friends who were killed.

Charley Wood wrote poetry in high school. He was killed when his Piper Cub was shot down while he was flying as a spotter for the artillery.

Bob O’Connor went down in flames in his B-17.

Obie Slingerland and I were best friends and co-captains of our high school football team. Obie was killed on the deck of the Saratoga when a bomb that hadn’t dropped exploded as he landed.

I won’t think of them anymore tomorrow, Memorial Day, than I think of them any other day of my life.

Remembering doesn’t do the remembered any good, of course. It’s for ourselves, the living. I wish we could dedicate Memorial Day, not to the memory of those who have died at war, but to the idea of saving the lives of the young people who are going to die in the future if we don’t find some new way - some new religion maybe - that takes war out of our lives.

That would be a Memorial Day worth celebrating.”

I don’t know that a new religion is the answer.  I suspect that if more religious people actually behaved as if they were, that in itself would be a good place to start.

“Age is catching up with us and time is running out.”

—William Paynter, 91
World War II Veteran

A front-page story in Sunday’s Post and Courier covers several groups’ efforts to preserve the personal stories of veterans before they are lost forever.

Once there were 16 million U.S. World War II veterans. That number has shrunk to about 2.5 million. Some estimates predict that by 2020, there will be no more WWII veterans still alive.

There are only 12 verified World War I veterans* still alive, and just two of them live in the United States. Both are 107 years old. The oldest of the dozen lives in the UK and is 111. He is also the oldest verified man in Europe.

These men have had a lifetime to relive the horrors of war that they witnessed long before there was a condition known as “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

They have spent a lifetime trying to suppress the painful memories of watching their comrades, their friends, die in service of the country.

I suspect even the passage of decades doesn’t make that a great deal easier when those memories come rushing to the surface.

There’s no practical way to tabulate the human story of each and every loss this country has suffered in every war ever fought. Reciting a bunch of numbers seems almost inhuman.

Because it isn’t about numbers; it’s about people.

Do you think you can spare a few minutes today to think about those fallen soldiers yourself? It isn’t the least you can do, but it’s pretty close.

* This is information according to Wikipedia, so it may or may not be completely accurate. Take it as you will.