Sunday Morning, Closing Some Tabs

If you could choose where to live based on the weather and you were here today you'd choose Montgomery County. Right now it is exactly what you want, warm, sunny, a breeze that seems carefree and appropriate for the season. Everything is green now or brightly colored with some kind of flowers. The little seed-wings are spinning down from the maple trees like snow, and it's snowing under the beautiful cherry and apple trees too, snowing flower-petals. We watched a deer in the neighbor's yard yesterday, eating their garden, and this week family members saw a fox and also a pair of raccoons crossing the street, both late at night. The dogwoods are in bloom, and our peonies have exploded, they're huge. We saw some pigeons doing their mating ritual in the park, the male puffing up and trying to get the female's attention, and everywhere I see sparrows with construction materials in their beaks, string and sticks and pieces of cloth. It is spring-time, big-time.

Look, I have a bunch of tabs open in my browser. I will be goofing around on the Internet and I'll see something, and I'll think, wow, that's interesting, I ought to put that on the blog, but sometimes they just don't quite rise above the threshold. So this morning, let me go through and shut some of those tabs. I'll tell you what's in them and then I can X them out. Which, by the way, is a beautiful new verb, don't you agree? To X. You know what I mean, right?

The big news in my neighborhood was the fire. A guy was killed and some firefighters got hurt fighting an apartment fire on my street. We drove down there at one-something in the morning, I haven't heard that many sirens since the snipers, helicopters were circling over it. We went down Twinbrook, and it was solid emergency vehicles. I told my wife, it reminded me of the ending of the Blues Brothers movie, when all those cops were there, remember that? They blocked off the street and it was like Las Vegas with all the lights blinking, with a big column of smoke rising up above it. In the morning I went down and it was still blocked off. Later I went by and looked, and it didn't look that bad, mainly one apartment unit seemed to be destroyed. Those apartment buildings have been there a long time. They say the third floor collapsed onto the second, and the firefighters had to dive out from the second floor.

The next story, this will get interesting. Kids are taking sexy pictures of one another on their cell phones and then sending them around. They call it "sexting," or at least a reporter did. From Portland Oregon:

Teens told Portland TV station KPTV that many of their classmates are using cell phones to take and send explicit photos. They said "sexting" is a major problem at most campuses in Portland.

Anton Bogan, a local high school student, said "9.7 times out of 10, it's a nasty photo."

By texting, students keep their conversations secret because they're not talking on the phone. They can even use their phones in the classroom.

"I'd rather text than talk on the phone," said 17-year-old Darrell Keyes. "I waste, like, 4,000 text messages in a month."

But texting inappropriate photos can turn into a criminal matter.

In Utah, "sexting" led to criminal charges when a parent had found an explicit photo and called police. Several students at one school were found to be texting inappropriate photos. Cell Phone 'Sexting' A Problem, Teens Say

OK, remember, we're talking about teenagers here, so this is legally child porn. It seems to me you could end up in a really bad situation here, not thinking. And "not thinking" is something teenagers are good at. You take a picture of your girlfriend flashing you or something, you send it to somebody, they go OMG LOL and send it to somebody else, somewhere there's an adult in the loop, who is now in possession of child porn, maybe they're eighteen. I don't know if the world can keep up with the implications of our new technology. How are you supposed to keep sex under control, when everybody has a camera on their phone? It's like The Onion last week had a story about someone putting a picture of a naked lady on the Internet, and authorities were concerned that soon there could be hundreds of imitators. Yes, there could be, really. Where is this going to go? You can't stop people from taking pictures and sending them. You can't stop teenagers from being obsessively interested in sex. I don't see how prudishness can win this one.

Oh, and here's a good story, a sign of the times. Air marshals are supposed to fly inconspicuously on airplanes to catch terrorists. The problem though is that there is a watch list of half a million potential terrorists who aren't allowed to fly on American airplanes -- including some of the air marshals.

Some federal air marshals have been denied entry to flights they are assigned to protect when their names matched those on the terrorist no-fly list, and the agency says it's now taking steps to make sure their agents are allowed to board in the future.

The problem with federal air marshals (FAM) names matching those of suspected terrorists on the no-fly list has persisted for years, say air marshals familiar with the situation.

One air marshal said it has been “a major problem, where guys are denied boarding by the airline.” Air marshals' names tagged on 'no-fly' list

Yes, it's the Washington Times and I don't usually quote them, but that's too good. We are so scared of each other now, we're scared of the guys who are supposed to be protecting us. You feel like turning around and walking away, but there's no place to walk away to. This crazy country.

Here was a good blog post: The Worrier's Almanac Guide -- Things You Should Actually Worry About. This person sat down calmly and thought about the world. There are things out there that can kill you. They aren't the things we spend billions of dollars protecting ourselves from, these are real things.

Staying with the theme here, it turns out Microsoft has made a program to make it easier for the government to go through your stuff.

Microsoft has developed a small plug-in device that investigators can use to quickly extract forensic data from computers that may have been used in crimes.

The COFEE, which stands for Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, is a USB "thumb drive" that was quietly distributed to a handful of law-enforcement agencies last June. Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith described its use to the 350 law-enforcement experts attending a company conference Monday.

The device contains 150 commands that can dramatically cut the time it takes to gather digital evidence, which is becoming more important in real-world crime, as well as cybercrime. It can decrypt passwords and analyze a computer's Internet activity, as well as data stored in the computer. Microsoft device helps police pluck evidence from cyberscene of crime

I'm just glad to know that no bad guys will ever get hold of one of those things. Oh, and I'm glad to know that the government will have to get a search warrant before they can use this. Because I'm an idiot and I believe things.

Okay, this was a good one. Akhenaten, the pharaoh who was married to Nefertiti, possible father or half-brother to King Tut, appears to have been intersex or something.

May 2, 2008 -- Akhenaten wasn't the most manly pharaoh, even though he fathered at least a half-dozen children. In fact, his form was quite feminine. And he was a bit of an egghead.

So concludes a Yale University physician who analyzed images of Akhenaten for an annual conference Friday at the University of Maryland School of Medicine on the deaths of historic figures.

The female form was due to a genetic mutation that caused the pharaoh's body to convert more male hormones to female hormones than needed, Dr. Irwin Braverman believes. And Akhenaten's head was misshapen because of a condition in which skull bones fuse at an early age.

The pharaoh had "an androgynous appearance. He had a female physique with wide hips and breasts, but he was male and he was fertile and he had six daughters," Braverman said. "But nevertheless, he looked like he had a female physique." 'Androgynous' Pharaoh Had Feminine Physique

You see, it doesn't quite rise to the level of getting its own place on the blog, not exactly breaking news that just happened three thousand years ago, but it is interesting, don't you think?

Ah, this one blog quotes somebody else. The question has to do with those Mormon polygamists that they have been going through out there in Texas. That. Is. A. Mess. What, are they marrying little girls and having sex with them? And molesting the boys too? I think everybody agrees there is some creepy stuff going on there. Anyway, here's a question from the Internet:

Where’s the outrage from the “marriage should be between one man and one woman” crowd about this nonsense in Eldorado? You’d think they would be up in arms about this. Aren’t these people DESTROYING all marraige for normal straight couples

It does seem funny that the Family Blah Blah groups are so scared about Adam and Steve moving in together, and don't seem to care about this. Doesn't it give them the uncontrollable urge to go out and propose to more women?

I think you understand that blog best if you see the title: Marriage Is…Er…Whatever It Needs To Be To Exclude The Gays.

And what do you think about the DC Madam committing suicide? Gee, she has a list of tens of thousands of customers of her prostitution service, including the most powerful men in Washington, DC, she says repeatedly that she would never kill herself, and then ... she does. It's a weird site to link to, but Prison Planet is putting the pieces together, with lots of links. If you believed the government's report on the Kennedy assassination you won't be interested in this.

Do you think there is anybody who believes the official account of the Kennedy assassination? I am thinking I have never met anyone who did, not that I ask everybody I meet.

There is one last thing, which I don't have a link for but you will want to watch out for this. Apparently Channel Seven is planning to run a story this week about how gay people can change. Normally, a responsible news source would find this story very easy to write: the story is, it doesn't happen. You grow up knowing you're gay, you stay gay, people have to get used to that. You can pretend otherwise, but there's no news story here. Channel Seven has had a recent history of taking the wrong side on some issues. You remember they were the only ones who publicized the hoax of the "man in a dress" going into the ladies locker-rooms at the gym in Rio. And to tell you the truth, the Channel Seven reporter who did that story is the only person in my life who has seriously asked me if I am gay. She interviewed me once in DC, near the Columbus statue outside Union Station, and she was so nervous. We talked after the interview, and she said these things just seem so controversial, at that time we were talking about adding some information about sexual orientation to the MCPS sex-ed curriculum. Then she glanced around and leaned forward, and in a hushed voice she said, "Are you gay?" Listen, gay-dar is not perfect, you can't always tell, but this lady was shooting in the dark. Only time that's ever happened to me, and now this channel is going to investigate whether homosexuality can be cured or whatever. Let's see, maybe they'll interview some intelligent people and not Regina Griggs, Reverend Grace, Peter Sprigg, Richard Cohen. I guess we'll have to watch.

Well this is a beautiful day, too nice to stay in. WPFW is having a pledge drive, so G-Strings is playing some good jazz guitar this morning, but I think I'm going to miss it. The puppy doesn't mind if I walk him more than he needs, maybe I'll do that. Maybe we'll see a bunny, like yesterday.