Back From Vacation

An Orca at Marineland in Antibes, France. From my Flickr page.

Back from a hell of a vacation, but I won't bore you with the details. I will be playing catch up here for awhile. Here's a few things from the past couple weeks that may have slipped by you. I have not had enough time to comment fully. In no particular order:

- A former jihadi who was used in a suicide bombing attempt speaks out against Al-Qaida with the backing of the Saudi government. Saudi Arabia seems to be finally recognizing their problem of home-grown terrorism.

- Apparently, it's legal to burn a flag or desecrate a Bible, but not the Koran! A student at Pace University in New York was arrested on hate-crime charges for flushing a Koran down the toilet.

- Pope Benedict XVI made an atypical but much needed speech in Italy, explaining that there is no reason why evolution needs to be framed as the enemy of God, and visa versa. He also makes a plea for people to be better caretakers of the Earth.

- "Wrongful Birth" - A Florida couple has the temerity to go to court and claim their child is a "mistake", and therefore, they require compensation. They were awarded an incredible 21 million, but it's unlikely they will get anything near that amount.

- Bizarre Justice from Missouri: I don't like to be put in the position of defending a man who is guilty of armed robbery and shooting at a sheriff's deputy. But an additional charge of second degree murder is so insane and disturbing it needs to be known. The suspect was convicted of the additional murder because 40 miles away, a highway patrolman crashed his vehicle and was killed while on a manhunt for the suspect. The jury reasoned (I put that loosely) that the defendant was to blame because the patrolman would not have been on the road at that time if the defendant had not committed his earlier crimes.

- Truly disgusting: In Ohio, a mother has decided to file an age discrimination suit against a condominium association because they will not let her one year old son (or anyone under the age of three) use the community's swimming pool. Incredibly, the Fair Housing Advocates Association agrees. Someone forgot to tell them that babies and swimming pools are a very, very bad combination. As a parent myself, I can testify to this. If she wins, this lawsuit may have a ripple effect on other public swimming pools, the first one being that people will be far less likely to want to use them from now on... Other blogger's thoughts here and here.



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