Names, Bridges, and Other Oddities

I realize that some parents try to come up with unique names for their children--nobody wants to call, "Hey, John!" at the playground and have forty seven kids come running--but this one has to make me wonder, are you 4real?

By now, everyone has heard about the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, but I wanted to include some links to the news. The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, the Chicago Tribune , and the BBC. One of these things is not like the others... Also, Forbes reports that the state of Minnesote is putting the rebuilding project on the fast track-they hope to have it completed by the end of next year.

Al Sharpton has made a very reasonable demand...

A man was fished out of the sea at the Dutch resort of Zandvoort on Tuesday. I haven't figured out what "No Real Than You Are" means (of course, I'm still working on, "All your base are belong to us").

The Washington Times reports that Imam Didmar Faja (one of the Imams involved in a lawsuit against airline passengers who reported 'suspicious activity' by the Imams) has been attacked by someone throwing an 'acid bomb.' Apparently, someone driving by threw a pop-bottle filled with pool cleaner and aluminum foil at the Imam, who was standing outside of the Albanian American Islamic Center of Arizona at the time. They also note that they had no explanation as to why Imam Didmar Faja was standing on the sidewalk at 1:00 AM--three and a half hours before morning prayer. Of course, no one is suggesting anything nefarious about his being there (I can think of a number of reasons why he might have been there: He may have stayed late to finish up some paperwork and was just leaving, he may have had a late prayer, he may have had a meeting with other staff members that just ran really late--to be honest, I don't think that the journalist thought to ask that at the time), but, if the 'acid bomb' was directed specifically at him, how did his attackers know that he would be there? Is this part of his normal routine, or did they just happen to see him there, and happened to have in the car an empty pop-bottle, some pool-cleaning fluid, and aluminum foil, and said, "Hey, there's that trouble-making Imam who filed that lawsuit, let's pour some of this into there and see if we can throw it and splash some on him." I don't know; it sounds like kind of a stretch to me. I suppose it's possible, but I have to think that it was more like a couple of teenagers who had seen too many Mentos in Diet Coke videos on YouTube, and decided to try something similar. They probably set the thing up, but then had a limited amount of time to toss the thing, came around the corner, not expecting anybody to be standing there; probably didn't even notice him until after they threw it... Of course, being involved in the sort of legal action that he is, I can certainly understand his belief that this attack must be linked to the lawsuit. He probably has received threats because of it; there are a lot of crazies around. All in all, it seems like a lot of much ado about nothing, but the police are investigating it as a hate crime. The good news is, no one was hurt in the incident.

Stuff

A couple of points:

First, there's some news about a college student who desecrated a couple of Korans and is now facing felony charges. It seems that this young man snagged two copies of the Koran from Pace University's library and tossed them into toilets. Presumably he attempted to flush them, but they were too bulky. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is understandably upset. The student is being charged with two counts of criminal mischief (both misdemeanors) but with the added zing of New York state's hate crimes law, which makes both charges felonies, since they were crimes directed at a specific religious/cultural group. Personally, hate crimes legislation goes against my grain. It seems to me that if you beat the snot out of me because you don't like my color or you beat the snot out of me to take my wallet, that should be prosecuted the same way. Quite frankly, if you beat me up because you don't like my color, and then take my wallet, it would be pretty hard from the prosecutor to prove that it was a hate crime. I do think that, in America, where we have freedom of religion, that the freedom should include a responsibility to respect other religions. I don't buy into Scientology, but that doesn't give me the right to throw a copy of 'Dianetics' into the toilet--especially if it isn't my copy. Personally, I'm torn. I think this miscreant deserves to be punished, but I also think much more is being made of this than it really is.

Also, the US Senate has done some investigating into Global Warming, specifically, the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works. Their findings are very different from the findings of former Vice President Gore. Is this because it is convenient? Perhaps. One thing I can't get away from, though, is that we have created an awful lot of pollution (both air and water) and we've cut down a lot of trees. That can't be good for the environment, and we have to live here. Let's suppose for the moment that Global Warming is a grossly exaggerated threat. Maybe that's just the threat we need to do what we need to do, if only for the sake of our children and grandchildren. I'm not anxious for Global Warming to be proven wrong.

The FBI served a search warrant on a Senator from Alaska, to search his house for any evidence that he has been getting favors in exchange for advantageous considerations for Federal projects. In the meantime, the Senate is rewriting the law on 'earmarking,' to make it easier to do exactly what Senator Ted Stevens is accused of. Meanwhile, the House has approved a bill that would make it harder to earmark... I'm guessing neither one of those bills is going to become law anytime soon.

Also, a new study indicates that smoking marijuana is more dangerous than smoking cigarettes (at least, on an ounce-for-ounce basis--actually still less dangerous when you take into consideration that nobody chain-smokes pot). And another study indicates that working near an office printer poses similar risks to smoking (tobacco).