I’m not sure how I feel about this story from CNN.  Especially in light of the Scottish Government releasing the Lockerbie Bomber.  What do you think?  Here is the story:

(CNN) — Former “Manson Family” member Susan Atkins, who stabbed actress Sharon Tate to death more than 40 years ago and now is terminally ill, was denied parole Wednesday, prison officials said.

Susan Atkins, shown here after her indictment in the Manson murders, was denied parole again Wednesday.

The parole hearing was the 13th for Atkins, 61, who is battling terminal brain cancer. Held at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, California, the hearing stretched to more than nine hours.

The panel set another hearing for Atkins in three years, said Michele Kane, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Atkins was 21 when she and other followers of Charles Manson participated in a two-night rampage that left seven people dead and terrorized the city of Los Angeles in August 1969. She and the others — Manson, Leslie Van Houten, Patricia Krenwinkel and Charles “Tex” Watson — were initially sentenced to death in the slayings of five people, including Tate, and two additional deaths the following night.

Their sentences were automatically commuted to life in prison when the Supreme Court struck down the nation’s death penalty laws in 1972.

By her own admission, Atkins, known as Sadie Mae Glutz within the Manson family, held Tate down as she pleaded for mercy, and stabbed the actress 16 times. Tate was eight months pregnant. In a 1993 parole board hearing, Atkins said Tate “asked me to let her baby live. … I told her I didn’t have any mercy on her.”

After killing Tate, according to historical accounts of the slayings, Atkins scrawled the word “pig” in blood on the door of the home Tate shared with her husband, director Roman Polanski. Polanski was not home, but three of Tate’s house guests were also slain by the killers, as was a teenager who was visiting the home’s caretaker in his nearby cottage.

In an interview scheduled to air Friday on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” Linda Kasabian, a former Manson follower who was the prosecution’s star witness against Manson and Atkins, recounted the Tate slayings.

“I started hearing like horrible screaming and I started running toward the house and Sadie came running out and I just looked at her and I said, ‘Sadie, please make it stop,’” Kasabian said. “And she said, ‘I can’t. It’s too late.’ … It was unreal. It was so real that it was unreal.”

On whether she asked Atkins and the others why they were killing, Kasabian said, “It wasn’t that kind of a scenario. All that I said was, ‘Sadie, make it stop.’”

For her safety, Kasabian asked to wear a disguise during the interview, which was conducted last month.

As of earlier this year, Atkins was paralyzed over 85 percent of her body and could not sit up in bed or be moved into a wheelchair, according to a Web site maintained by her husband and attorney, James Whitehouse. She has been described as a model prisoner who has accepted responsibility for her role in the slayings and now shuns Manson.

But Tate’s sister, Debra Tate, told CNN in an e-mail in March that she does not think any Manson family member convicted of murder should ever be set free, saying the slayings were “so vicious, so inhumane, so depraved, that there is no turning back.”

“The ‘Manson Family’ murderers are sociopaths, and from that, they can never be rehabilitated,” Tate said. “They should all stay right where they are — in prison — until they die. There will never be true justice for my sister Sharon and the other victims of the ‘Manson Family.’ Keeping the murderers in prison is the least we, as a society who values justice, can do.”

In a manuscript posted on her Web site, Atkins wrote that “this is the past I have to live with, and I have to live with it every day.”

“Unlike the reader, or the people who seem to think Charles Manson was cool, I can’t think about it for an hour or so and then go on with my life. Just like the families and friends of the victims, this is with me every day. I have to wake up every day with this and, no matter what I do for the rest of my life and no matter how much I give back to the community, I will never be able to replace what my crime took away. And that’s not ‘neat,’ and that’s not ‘cool.’”

Atkins’ brain cancer was diagnosed in March 2008, Whitehouse wrote on his Web site. On May 15, doctors predicted she would live less than six months. But she passed that deadline, he wrote, and celebrated her 21st wedding anniversary on December 7.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/03/california.manson.atkins/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn

I guess my question is this, “Where does mercy meet justice?  Has this woman met the requirements of justice? Is she deserving of mercy?  Does the parole Board really think this woman is a risk to re-offend?  What are your thoughts?

Personally, I think she should be released and allowed to die with dignity…. but maybe that’s my leftist softie heart….

Arrrrr!  I’m a Pirate today!   I took me a Ferry Boat ride to Vancouver Island!  It went wrong when I wore me pirate uniform… parrot on me shoulder… eye patch… and I think me plastic sword was too much fer the captain of teh Ferry boat.

The scummy limey threw me overboard when I called to a sailboat and told teh captain to prepare to be boarded!  I had to swim fer it, but, ye will be glad to know, i made it to land!

I am proud to be Canadian.  I think I live in the best country in the world.  However, I would like to relate an experience that I recently had that causes me great concern. Last week, I came down with a major kidney infection.  I tried to ignore it for 3 days, drank lots of water, and hoped it would just “go away.”  I was wrong.  Last Tuesday, (a week ago today) I had to call an Ambulance, since the infection had gotten completely out of control, and was spreading through my system.  In Canada, we have nationalized health care, something which Americans are debating at this very moment.

If I were an American, I would be VERY concerned about implementing this policy.  Here’s my story of the horror of Canadian Nationalized Health Care:

I placed a call to 911 requesting an Ambulance at approximately 7:45 AM.  The Ambulance arrived at my home within 5 minutes. As I was talking to the 911 operator, I could hear the siren approaching.  The Paramedics assessed me, made sure that it was not life threatening (I knew it wasn’t).  Since I could not walk, and was in terrible pain, I was placed in a carrying chair.  My apartment happens to be on the second floor of an awkward building with no elevator, and I am a bigger guy, so they thought it would be wise to get back-up to help negotiate the stairs. Back-up arrived within 10 minutes. (Again, this was not life threatening). I was promptly loaded into the Ambulance, and arrived at the Hospital ER by no later than 8:15 AM.

Upon arrival at the Hospital, I was immediately assessed by nursing staff and within 5 minutes of that assessment seen by the ER doctor.  He quickly prescribed IV antibiotics, and admitted me to the Hospital, where I would stay and be treated for 48 hours.  Within an hour of being brought into the ER, I was assessed, treatment was begun, and I was admitted to the Hospital.  In fact, the longest anything took during this time was finding a vein in my arm so that the IV antibiotics could be administered.

You may be tempted to say, “Well, you were lucky.”  In fact, I have had numerous medical issues related to spinal cord damage over the years, and have a disabled child (ironically, now in the States), and have never had a problem getting the treatment needed.  Granted, no system is perfect, and yes, tragedies do happen.  But those happen even under the best of circumstances, unfortunately.  The fact is, millions of Canadians enjoy medicare that may never be able to afford coverage otherwise.  The majority of us have had no major problems in acquiring the services we need to get world class treatment.

I am so very pissed right now!  I have a daughter with Down syndrome that lives with her mom.  Imagine my shock when I saw this:

GULBARGA: On Wednesday when the world witnessed the longest solar eclipse this century, some parents walked to the Saath Gumbaz in Mominpur, near

Kids buried in the mud during the July 22 solar eclipse in the hope of curing disabilities. (TOI Photo)

Gulbarga, clutching their disabled children and burying them neck-deep in mud. They believe that as the mud is holy it will cure the children of their mental and physical disabilities.

North Karnataka has unique traditions like dropping babies from temple tops and putting them before the wheels of speeding chariots.
Before sunrise, the men began digging small pits. Then, the children, some just a year old, were lowered into the pit neck-deep. Nearly 60 children were so buried. They were kept there for six hours and taken out after 10 am. The children were seen crying as they couldn’t move their limbs.

Mohammad Moinuddhin from Manvi in Raichur district had brought his six-year- old physically challenged granddaughter. He said she was unable to move her legs and hands since she was born, but had miraculously recovered after she was buried in the mud during an eclipse last year. He hoped her condition would further improve if she got treated this way again. Till last year, he had taken her to various doctors but none of them seemed to understand the girl’s problem, he claimed. When he was desperately looking for a cure, he was told about the eclipse-day-mud-treatment in Gulbarga.

Mohammad Patel, a resident of Saath Gumbaz, said his son was physically challenged as he was born during solar eclipse. However, after he buried the child in the mud, the child got better. Some parents believe that their children were born disabled because of the negative effects of an earlier solar eclipse. So now, the only way they can wash off this sin is to expose the children to a solar eclipse.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/India/Solar-eclipse-Kids-buried-neck-deep-to-cure-disabilities/articleshow/4809750.cms

I realize I risk the wrath of a billion people, but COME ON! This was a solar eclipse, where the Moon transits in front of the sun, and because of the comparative sizes of the 2 stellar bodies, (the moon being much closer to Earth), the Moon blocks the light from the sun.  This is a natural, astronomical phenomena.  There is nothing mystical, magical or supernatural about it! I am sorry that you have disabled children, as do I, BUT, a celestial event like an eclipse had nothing to do with causing such a disability (It has everything to do with genetics).  Nor can burying your child up to the neck in fucking mud CURE your child!  What the hell is wrong with you people!?  Are you completely insane!?  If this would have happened in my country (Canada) your child would have been taken away from you, and rightly so!

This is outrageous, yet, here in North America, thousands of people will do similarly insane things, such as pouring “holy” oil onto the heads of the sick, or carting them off to a Benny Hinn meeting to receive a “Touch From The Lord”.   What happens to these people?  They leave exactly the same way they arrived: With the same sickness or disability.  I was part of the so called charismatic/pentecostal movement for 20 years, and not once did I see a genuine miracle, even though I was surrounded by people that believed this stuff!

Oh, and my daughter?  She overcame many difficulties in her first years, but this was attributed to the advances in science and medicine, and not divine intervention!

It’s hard to believe that 40 years ago today, 3 men, Neil Armstrong, “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins set out on the greatest journey ever undertaken by mankind.  On this day, in 1969, Apollo 11 roared off the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, into the heavens, and the history books.  On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human beings to touch the soil of an alien world.  Another 6 Apollo Lunar Missions would follow, five of those landing upon the Moon, and one, Apollo 13, failing to land, but termed a success because the crew returned home after an explosion in space.  Apollo 17 closed out the Apollo Lunar exploration program in 1972, and we have not been back since.

Many people argued, at the time, that sending men into space was pointless, a huge waste of money, especially with so many problems here at home that we need to take care of.  That argument is still made today.  That argument has been brought forward in every human endeavor to explore and push the boundaries.  I can imagine primitive hunter-gatherers sitting around their camp fires many thousands of years ago in Africa, arguing over the merits of pushing farther and farther out into unexplored territory.  In Columbus’ day, many people thought there would be no benefit in finding a new route to Asia (his intention).  He discovered (or re-discovered) a New World.  The first settlers to arrive in the New World (America), found it a harsh and difficult place.  Many died before they even got here. Many died within the first year of arriving here.  But, they persevered, and, eventually the New World prospered.  (Yes, many tragic things were done along the way with those that were already here, but, hopefully, we can learn from those mistakes).

Today, we humans face 2 choices, and I believe that there are really only 2 choices: Continue to explore and reach out; or stagnate and eventually die as a species.  The argument can be made that we cannot afford to keep sending people on flights of fancy to other worlds.  We have so many problems here at home.  We need to alleviate human suffering before we go out “there.”  I agree.  We have many problems here at home.  But, here is something to consider: those problems have been with us always, and no matter how advanced we become, we will always have problems here at home.  There will always be excuses to “stay home.”  This does not alleviate our responsibility in making this world a better place for our fellow man.

Every human endeavor to explore has been incredibly hard.  Seemingly insurmountable obstacles needed to be overcome, but in almost every instance, the eventual benefits and rewards far outweighed the risks, and costs.  New discoveries were made.  New resources were acquired. This is the promise of exploring new worlds. As we look to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, what new discoveries will we make? What new resources will we uncover? What new technologies will be developed to benefit all mankind.  Maybe, just maybe, the answers to many of the pressing problems we face here at home can be found out there.

That’s why I believe we must reach out into unexplored territory.  Happy 40th Apollo 11!  Let’s not wait another 40 years to go back!

Check out this link for a list of how space exploration had benefited mankind in these six areas:

1. Computer Technology

2. Consumer/Home/Recreation

3. Environmental and Resource Management

4. Health and Medicine

5. Industrial Productivity and Manufacturing Technology

6. Public Safety and Transportation

http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html

Space exploration has given us far more than Tang and Velcro!

A Blonde decides to try horseback riding for the very first time. She mounts the horse unassisted and the horse immediately springs into motion.  It gallops along at a steady and rhythmic pace, but the blonde begins to slip from the saddle.

In terror she grabs for the horse’s mane but cannot seem to get a firm grip.
She tries to throw her arms around the horse’s neck, but she slides down the side of the horse anyway. The horse   gallops along,
seemingly impervious to its slipping rider.

Finally, giving up her frail grip, she leaps away from the horse to try and throw herself  to safety. Unfortunately, her foot has become
entangled in the stirrup and she is now at the mercy of the horse’s pounding hooves as her head is struck against the ground again
and again. As her head is battered against the ground, she is mere moments away from unconsciousness when……..

……..the Wal-Mart manager runs out to shut the horse off.

Did he ever have one to begin with?

I simply cannot describe the awesomeness of this video!  (NSFW)

I remember waaaaaay back in the late late ’70’s or very early ’80’s, visiting the one and only video arcade in Squamish, and playing the hottest video game evah! (at the time).   That game? Asteroids! The object of the game was to take your triangle shaped spaceship and blast the “blobular” shaped asteroids, and, well, blast them into smaller shaped “blobular” asteroids.  It was AWESOME!!!

So, imagine my excitement at this news:

http://www.sliceofscifi.com/2009/07/02/asteroids-movie-optioned/

OK, so maybe not.  Seriously, how does a movie studio executive think that a low tech video game can translate into an awesome movie? Hollywood is in serious trouble if they have to sink to this level to find a way to make money!  Are we really that short of new ideas that we have to mine simple video games to make a buck?

In October of 1984, I “gave my life to Christ” at a Billy Graham Crusade in Vancouver. I attended various churches, went to Bible College, pastored for a few years, and held positions of leadership over the 24 years I followed Christ.  In the early part of this decade, I began to have some serious doubts and questions about my faith. (I will blog about that at a later date). This led to, what I call my, de-conversion in 2005-6. I now consider myself to be an agnostic.  The long and short of it is, “You do not know if there is a God, and neither do I.”  In saying that, I would argue that the evidence is overwhelmingly against the existence of such a deity, at least one that takes a personal interest in our lives.

As I moved back to the West Coast, where I grew up, and reconnected with some old friends, one in particular was quite stunned that I had abandoned the faith. I will never forget the first rather smug, condescending question out of his mouth… “So, what is it like to live your life without God?” My answer was very simplke and to the point:

“Well, it’s actually very liberating to not have to live my life in fear that I am going to piss off some god because I fail to please him in some way.”

Another friend of mine made the comment about how, that now, since I no longer believed in God, I must have no morals to govern my life.  The question he was really asking was this:

“How can one be a moral person without God in his/her life and why would you be motivated to live a moral life if there is no accountability for your life anyway?”

Morality is about more than not killing others or stealing, or messing around with your co-workers spouse.  I would argue that those things are simply common sense.  Personally, I believe that a lack of belief in a God makes one a more moral individual that someone who is a religious person. “What!?”, you may say. When I was a Christian, many of my moral choices were made out of fear – fear of eternal damnation and punishment. Fear of losing rewards in heaven. Fear of not measuring up to other believers. Today, that is no longer the case. As an unbeliever, I have no reason to have “good” morals.  However, the flip side of that is this – I have no excuse for bad morals either. I do not believe that there is a devil whispering in my ear leading me to make bad moral choices.  The responsibility rests solely upon my shoulders.

I recently came across a list that sums up my feelings very well:

1. I don’t have a religious justification to not see a doctor when I’m sick, so I see a doctor when I’m sick.
2. I don’t have a religious justification to hate someone for having the “wrong” religion, so I don’t hate people because they follow a certain religion.
3. I don’t have a religious justification to deprive my children of truthful, frank sex education and the knowledge of safe and effective birth control use; so when I have a teenage daughter, she will be less likely to have sex too young, get pregnant, or get an STD.
4. I don’t have a religious justification to hate someone for being a member of the “wrong” race, so I am not a racist.
5. I don’t have a religious justification to support certain wars due to a belief that it will fulfill some sort of ancient prophecy, so I oppose needless death and destruction.
6. I don’t have a religious justification to strap a bomb to my chest and blow myself up in a crowded market, so I don’t strap a bomb to my chest and blow myself up in a crowded market.
7. I don’t have a religious justification to not care about climate change because “God would never let it get that bad before the end comes.”
8. I don’t believe that I have an eternal, joy-filled life waiting for me after I die, so I appreciate the value and sanctity of this one.

9. I have no religious justification to hate gays, so I do not hate gays.

10. I have no religious justification to believe women are inherently inferior to men, so, I believe women and                     men are equals.

Contrary to what ‘True Believers’ may think, an atheist/agnostic person is not a person filled with hopelessness.  We do not need to brow beat ourselves and wallow in self pity and misery because we do not measure up to some deity. We try to live our lives to the fullest, enjoying and savoring each and every moment.  We learn from our mistakes, and, yes, I’ve made spectacular ones.  The difference is, we do not blame others, or some imaginary devil. We also try to make this world a better place for our fellow man. Hopefully leaving this world in a better state than when we arrived for those who come after us.