Maricopa County Trustee's Sale Notices for May 2007

May's total was 2009. The graph needs little comment this month, I think.

M.C. N/TR Descriptive Stats
Mean	939.6912752
Median	822
Mode	746
Standard Deviation	323.391527
Range	1527
Minimum	482
Maximum	2009
Sum	140014
Count	149

How conservative opposition to gay marriage has undermined straight marriage

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars reports on how gay parents have relied on the development of new methods to ensure their ability to adopt and serve as guardians of children. Second-parent adoption and visitation rights to adopted children by non-custodial parents (the two examples Ed provides) are also available to unmarried straights. The result is that unmarried couples who previously married solely to obtain such legal protections don't need to do so.

Origin of the term "enhanced interrogation techniques"

Andrew Sullivan reports on the origin of the term "enhanced interrogation techniques," as well as justification for their use that directly parallels those of the Bush administration.

Answers in Genesis Creationism Museum

P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula has put together a carnival of blog responses to the Answers in Genesis Creationism Museum, which includes a photographic tour of the museum. The museum's content is as bad as you might expect.

Contrasting Christian responses to Clark Adams' death

When I wrote my tribute to Clark Adams, I included this paragraph:

Suicide always provokes questions about the cause. Given Clark's activism in support of atheism, I won't be surprised to see opportunistic speculation on the part of some advocates of religion that Clark's atheism was why he killed himself, but there's no evidence to support that.

Patrick Trotter has now commented on Clark's death, exemplifying exactly what I was referring to, under the heading "When One has no Hope...":

This is what happens when someone has no hope or faith. Nothing to Believe in...Nothing or No one to turn to. It's a shame that a life this young was wasted. It's also a shame that he spent his whole life, dedicated to waging war against God.

I hope he found peace and salvation before he went.....but with his resume, I doubt it.

Patrick, who I'm sure never met Clark, is making a number of erroneous assumptions--that Clark believed in nothing, that Clark had no support, that his life was "wasted," and that he was "waging war against God." He's made no attempt to find out anything about Clark, what his life was like, what he thought, what he did, or the effects he's had on other people. Patrick Trotter here demonstrates the offensiveness of a religious bigot who has no interest in understanding, and who can't resist making the suggestion that Clark is now burning in hell for his disbelief, an argumentum ad baculum to try to keep his fellow believers in line.

Clark believed in many things--he was a fan of science, of magic, of comedy, of music, of a good argument and a good joke. He was a funny man who had many friends. He lived a productive life that had positive impact on everyone around him. And he didn't believe God existed--he no more waged war on God than on Santa Claus. He opposed religion and didn't care for religious ritual (even in secular form)--his statement that has been most repeatedly quoted is "If atheism is a religion, then health is a disease."

A contrasting Christian commentary on Clark's death comes from Anne Jackson, who ponders the extent to which Christian stigmatization of atheists helps reinforce their negative impressions of Christianity:

Aside from the extreme “turn or burn” preachers in our day, we “modern, contemporary” Christians probably do an equal part of stigmatizing those of different (or no) faiths. The “unchurched”…the “lost souls we must save!!”…I have far too often encountered the almost immediate and disapproving looks and attitude that so many of us habitually carry around when discussing someone who is a “wayward child” or “bless his heart, he’s just so lost.”

I am ashamed that I have not made it a bigger priority in my own life to be more sensitive and less prideful in my faith. And as the title of this post says, I pray for mercy and forgiveness because we know not what we do.

The only thing is…we should.

We should know. And we should love.

Anne shows herself to be a more thoughtful and open-minded person than Patrick--somebody that an atheist could possibly even productively interact with, to gain mutual understanding.

Foul smell at elementary school turns out to be dead body in air duct

It's not often that an event right in my neighborhood makes the front page of CNN's website, but it did today when a foul smell at Sierra Vista Elementary School in Phoenix turned out to be a dead body in the cafeteria air conditioning ductwork. Classes were dismissed for the day.

Apparently the guy was trying to break into the school and became trapped and died (presumably of thirst).

I've submitted this one to Fortean Times, which regularly prints accounts of stupid criminals and strange deaths.

The Arizona Republic covered the story earlier today.

What kind of atheist are you?

You scored as Scientific Atheist, These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future. Scientific Atheist 75% Apathetic Atheist 50% Militant Atheist 33% Spiritual Atheist 33% Agnostic 25% Angry Atheist 8% Theist 8% What kind of atheist are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Ron Paul is Bill Maher's "New Hero"

Bill Maher criticizes the Republican presidential debate and does an excellent job of re-contextualizing Ron Paul's position on Iraq and doesn't let the idiotic politician he's speaking with continue to misunderstand:

He wasn't saying that we were "asking for it." What he was saying was, "We should listen to our enemies and maybe the reason they're mad at us is because we've been meddling in the middle East." We were in Saudi Arabia. That's what Bin Laden was mad at us for. Now we're in Iraq and we're screwing up that country. Maybe if we listened to them instead of saying, "We're always the good people" we would actually make ourselves safer.

It's nice to see this position finally getting some serious consideration. Better late than never, I suppose--but dammit if the libertarians haven't been saying this crap all along!

Bogus voter fraud complaints from a bogus voter fraud think tank

Salon.com has an interesting article about how the American Center for Voting Rights, which was front-and-center in convicted felon ex-Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH)'s congressional committee hearings on alleged voter fraud, has disappeared.

The Republicans were attempting to crack down on alleged voter fraud in locations that had high Democratic voter turnout, despite the fact that no prosecutable cases of such fraud have turned up. The American Center for Voting Rights was an apparent think tank (which formed right before the hearings started) which offered sound bites and alleged research documenting the putative problem.

Several of the fired U.S. Attorneys were individuals who had refused to go after weak voter fraud cases against Democratic candidates in locations where the Republicans and ACVR were also trying to make it more difficult to vote and reduce Democratic voter turnout.

Check out the Salon.com article.

National Police Week rampage

Last week was National Police Week in Washington, D.C., which prompted D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier to attempt to prevent problems (as reported in the Washington Post):

D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier put out fliers yesterday warning officers in town for National Police Week that they must obey city laws covering disorderly conduct, public drunkenness and other "unacceptable behavior."

Lanier ordered the fliers distributed around downtown in hopes of curbing complaints about officers drinking in public, playing loud music and causing other trouble.

This did not, however, prevent some abuses from occurring:

I am actually the citizen, who filmed 48 hours of misconduct out my window during police week.

The visiting officers did not have any problem drinking in public, howling, screaming, yelling and playing bagpipes until 2, 3 and 4 am below our window. They were taking open conatiners of beer into the Irish Channel. They were urinating on the church steps across the street and left behind half empties for the homeless, when they staggered back to the hotels.

I also have video, which has not been released, of DC MPD sitting in their cars, standing by their cars, while these guys started a bagpipe parade at 12:45 AM on Tuesday morning. For them, I have close ups of the car numbers and the officer's faces as much as my camera would allow.

I called a total of 9 times, which I documented with times and which officer answered the phone and sent an email to the Mayor, the City Council Members, Chief Lanier and NBC 4.

Chief Lanier showed up at my door 4 hours later and has thus far, at least tried to show some interest in making positive changes.

In fact, I have been asked to meet with Commander Burke, Commander Groomes, representatives from DCRA (permits), ABRA (Alcohol Regulations) and EMA this week to further address the problem.

I had the video posted on youtube.com. My account was hacked after I received threats from a self identified "DC police Officer" warning me about the size of the "Brotherhood and airing dirty laundry."

I have started trying to get the video back up and should have it put together again by tomorrow.

I ask that if you have specific complaints about National Police Week, you please forward them to me. I have set up an anonymous e-mail to collect those complaints. As of today, I have 57 pages of comments, complaints and threats.

I have not had much support and in fact do fear for my safety. I signed my name to the complaint to the Chief, and am not 100% certain that information will stay confidential.

Any input, help, support or even a few kind words at this point, would be appreciated.

You can look up the videos on youtube.com by searching Inthepubliceye. The e-mail account is a gmail account using the same name.

Here's one of the videos, which shows a number of laws being violated--drinking alcohol/having open containers on the public street, operating a Segway on the street while drinking alcohol, leaving empty bottles on church steps, and so forth.