Shootings at South Mountain Community College

Kat saw multiple police cars on her way home and now we hear a bunch of helicopter action nearby, and it appears there has been a shooting incident at South Mountain Community College, with three victims and a suspect in custody.

UPDATE (5:08 p.m.): The shooting apparently took place at the campus Technology Center around 4 p.m., and the campus was quickly locked down, but the suspect had already left. The suspect was arrested at around 23rd Ave. and Grove, near his home. The news is reporting four victims admitted to the Maricopa Medical Center, two men aged 17 and 19, one 20-year-old woman, and one possible additional victim not confirmed. At least one male victim was aware and speaking as he was admitted, and the woman spoke with her father, Otis Williams, by cell phone after she was shot.

One news report claims the suspect was known on campus, and that was apparently why he was quickly apprehended.

Students are now being permitted to leave campus. Classes for the rest of today and tomorrow are cancelled.

UPDATE (5:22 p.m.): Apparently the suspect, a black male driving a white truck, drove home where his father persuaded himself to give himself up to police, which he did. Police and fire department officials were on site at the campus within about five minutes after the first reports of a shooting (both police and fire stations are quite close by).

UPDATE (6:04 p.m.): The ages of victims have been changed--the woman, a pharmacy student, from 22 to 20, and the 25-year-old male to 19. The 17-year-old has been identified as Christopher Taylor, by his brother Jay. A student reports that the shooter was one of two men who had been fighting in the computer center. The 19-year-old victim is reported in critical condition, while the other two victims are in stable condition. (Yet CNN reports that the woman was shot in the abdomen while the other two victims were shot in the leg. It describes the males as aged 17 and 25.)

The alleged fourth victim apparently didn't exist, and was incorrectly reported by one of the news reporters on the basis of watching people being brought in to the hospital. Or perhaps there was a 25-year-old shot in the leg and a 19-year-old who received more serious injuries?

UPDATE (8:24 p.m.): CBS News 5 reports that there was a long-running dispute between the shooter and one of the victims, and police say that the shooting was gang-related.

UPDATE (July 25, 2008): The shooter has been identified as 22-year-old Rodney Smith, a former SCC student and known as a regular at the computer lab, who came to campus to pick a fight with 19-year-old Isaac Deshay Smith, who was shot in the leg and was still in critical condition last night. The other two victims caught in the crossfire were 20-year-old Charee Williams, who was shot in the hip, and 17-year-old Christopher Lee Taylor, who was also shot in the leg. Five family members and friends of Rodney Smith were also taken into custody last night for interfering with the investigation and disobeying police officers. The most recent report does not mention gangs, but only a long-standing feud between the two Smiths.

UPDATE (July 26, 2008): Rodney Smith has apologized to his "innocent victims" in court, and it has been reported that Isaac Deshay Smith and two others were involved in a fight last year in which Rodney Smith was punched and kicked while lying on the ground and his jaw broken in two places.

P.Z. Myers has desecrated a cracker

P.Z. Myers has eloquently described what he did, after a bit of history from 1215 to the present. There's so much well-described in his article that I resist the urge to quote from it at all--go read the whole thing, "The Great Desecration," at Pharyngula.

UPDATE: Bill Donohue has used the occasion to issue yet another apoplectic press release.

UPDATE (July 30, 2008): The Confraternity of Catholic Clergy has demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the First Amendment in their condemnation of Myers' action. They seem to think it means that you can't make fun of a religion unless you're a member of it, and that everybody has to be a member of some religion.

Klingenschmitt: Intellectually dishonest or merely lazy?

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars reports on his recent exchanges on a religion law mailing list with former Navy chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt, in which Klingensmitt repeatedly makes false statements and attacks straw men.

UPDATE: After reading more about Klingenschmitt, I'm going with dishonest.

Medical marijuana in California

There's an interesting article in the July 23, 2008 The New Yorker by David Samuels, "Dr. Kush: How medical marijuana is transforming the pot industry." It describes the current state of medical marijuana business in California, where the operators of small dispensaries, which are fully compliant with state law but not federal, are not prosecuted despite occasional fed harassment. That harassment will no doubt continue until either Raich v. Ashcroft gets overturned (it was a terrible Supreme Court decision) or the feds decide to decriminalize marijuana themselves, one of which I expect to happen in the next decade.

Oldest complete manuscript of Bible to be available online

The Codex Sinaiticus, a fourth-century biblical manuscript that includes the oldest complete new Testament and a partial Old Testament in Greek (the Septuagint), will be available online at http://www.codex-sinaiticus.net/ beginning tomorrow, July 24. The site is currently live with a few page images from the manuscript, which was written over 1600 years ago (between 330-350 C.E.). Tomorrow, you will be able to look at images of the pages, see the Greek text in a window next to it, and translation into another language in a window below that--English, German, Russian, or Greek (presumably modern Greek).

Mexican suicide aid

The New York Times reported Monday about Mexican pet shops selling pentobarbital, which is being purchased by international visitors for euthanasia purposes. The pet shops sell it for pet euthanasia, and were apparently surprised to hear that their recent sales have been for use on humans.

Car dealer strategies

A few years ago, people were using their homes as ATMs to purchase all sorts of consumer goods including cars. More recently, desperate home sellers were offering to throw in a "free" car with the purchase of a house. Now at least one auto dealer is offering to pay your mortgage.

This morning I heard a commercial for one of the local Phoenix Nissan dealers (one that receives frequent complaints from people who appear to not pay very close attention to what they are purchasing). The ad offers to make your mortgage payments for the rest of the year when you buy a car from them, even if your mortgage is as much as $2,000, without changing the sale price of the car. I suspect that means without lowering the sale price of the car below the point of profit.

It doesn't strike me as a sensible way to avoid foreclosure.

Nice article on Camp Inquiry

There's a good article on Camp Inquiry in the Buffalo News:

Deep in the Holland woods, D.J. Grothe wowed a group of kids at summer camp with a series of magic tricks. Seemingly impermeable steel rings were combined and separated again; rubber bands were melded into each other; coins vanished and returned in the unlikeliest of places.

Then, Grothe, national field director for the Council for Secular Humanism, did something even more amazing: He gave away the trick, detailing exactly how anyone can do magic.

It was another day at Camp Inquiry, where instead of swapping ghost tales or learning Bible stories, children take a critical look at claims of magic, the supernatural and even religion.

The camp's mission: Help young people "confront the challenges of living a nontheistic [or] secular lifestyle in a world dominated by religious belief and pseudoscience."

The unusual camp, now in its third year, brings together curious children from across the country to hone their skills as skeptics and critical thinkers.

Twenty-seven campers spent the past week following in the footsteps of Charles Darwin, digging up fossils and learning how to face moral dilemmas.

See the full article here. I'm glad to see it's not just a camp for atheists, but is open to theistic freethinkers as well:

Organizers don't specifically address faith or religion in their planned programming, which also includes a variety of art, music and leisure activities.

But the topics arise frequently in casual discussions among campers. Some profess to be atheists, others refer to themselves as secular humanists, and a few say they believe in a higher power.

Much better than Jesus Camp.

UPDATE: I originally referred to Camp Inquiry as Camp Quest, a different set of camps with similar aims. Thanks, Carol, for the correction.

UPDATE (August 9, 2008): NPR has also done a good story on Camp Inquiry.

Skeptics Society 2008 conference

The Skeptics Society has officially announced its 2008 conference, and the topic is not the one that was first suggested, war, terrorism, and security. Instead, this year's conference is on "Origins: The Big Questions," and is co-sponsored by the Templeton Foundation.

The conference will be held at Caltech on October 3-4, and the speaker lineup includes Sean Carroll (the Caltech theoretical physicist, not to be confused with Sean B. Carroll, the University of Wisconsin at Madison professor of molecular biology and genetics), Paul Davies, Stuart Kauffman, Christof Koch, Kenneth Miller, Nancey Murphy, Donald Prothero, Hugh Ross, Victor Stenger, Leonard Susskind, Michael Shermer, Philip Clayton, and Mr. Deity.

It's an interesting mix of speakers for the subject matter, and I suspect I will attend, but I'd really rather go to a conference that brought critical thinking to the subjects of war, terrorism, and security.

Best run city in the world?

A month or so ago, we got a mailing from the City of Phoenix, which bills itself as the "best run city in the world" on the basis of an award it won in 1993, telling us that our garbage and recycling pick up days would be changing. You can see that mailing here (PDF); the announcement is on the right hand side of the first page. The flyer states that pickup days will change the week of July 14, but notice that it doesn't say when or how they are changing. Instead, it says "Watch your mail for additional information." It didn't say to call in, and it didn't say to check the city's website. In fact, it says "Residents impacted by these changes will be notified through multiple mailings identifying the specific changes to their homes." That turned out to be false.

A week or so later, a second mailing came from the city. It also didn't say how the pickup days were changing, and it also said to watch for a further notification in the mail. It didn't say to call in, and it didn't say to check the city's website.

No further notification came. Everyone in my neighborhood apparently continued to put out recycling and garbage bins on the same days, and they didn't get picked up. Kat called today, and the person answering the phone for the City of Phoenix waste disposal said that they did no specific mailings, rather, they expected people to "get curious" and either look online or call them.

Well, we did indeed "get curious" as to why our garbage wasn't picked up, so I guess their expectation was valid. My initial assumption was that we had a new garbageman who didn't know my house was on his route, since I've had to call a few dozen times in the past about garbage and recycling not being picked up for that reason.

I've put out the recycling bin for pickup tomorrow--next to the full garbage bin that will be sitting out there until next week. So far, none of my neighbors have done the same.