the world is your acorn

as we all know, the two most important things NOT to do after drinking heavily are
1. telecommunicating
2. cooking (esp deep frying)
and, of course, a third is driving but that is a given.

Anyway, I read about this alcohol sensing device which can check your alcohol consumption through your skin. So it could be stuck onto steering wheels or gloves, or more importantly your telephone, keyboard, stove dials. Brilliant!

Steering wheel alcohol lock [engadget]
Steering wheel checks alcohol consumption [USA Today]

Nashville’s News Channel 5+ has begun a gay news program in conjunction with the newspaper, Out & About.

Each show will air four times a month on NewsChannel 5+, featuring a format of news, business, and entertainment segments geared especially toward the gay and lesbian audience. [Out & About Nashville]

Apparently some conservatives are not so pleased about it. I wrote a quick email thanking News Channel 5+. You should feel free to as well:
MBonnett@newschannel5.com
news@newschannel5.com

Out and About Today [News Channel 5+]
Nashville gets get gay television show Out & About Today [Queer Day]
Out & About Today hits the airwaves on NewsChannel 5+ on June 11 [Out & About Nashville]
Fundies Frothing at the Mouth Over Upcoming Gay TV Show [Tennessee Guerilla Women]

The Tennessee Guerilla Women blog sums up a recent poll conducted by/for some media organizations about the gay marriage issue. While a majority of Tennesseans (65%) are in favor of the amendment, 53% of democrats in the state do not.

The interesting points that the blog entry make concern media and government representation of people’s opinion. Why does everyone cater to right-wingers and the religious sector so much, even when the numbers don’t indicate the need to? As TGW says,

Yet more evidence that the roughly 97% of all Democratic lawmakers in this state – who are anti-gay marriage – do about as good a job representing their constituents as the Tennessean does covering the diversity of viewpoints in this city, county, state, nation and world.

At the same time, it is good to know that, despite what government officials and news publications will have us believe, the people may not be quite so scary.

Four state senators and a few others were arrested this morning by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. They are accused of taking bribes to sponsor and push a bill in a sting operation set up by the FBI.

Seven arrested in statehouse bribery sting [tennessean.com]

In January a federal judge in Atlanta ruled that stickers placed on textbooks in Cobb County, GA are unconstitutional because they violate the separation between church and state. The stickers let all unsuspecting young readers know that evolution is a theory, not a fact. This week, fourteen temp workers have been hired to scrape the stickers off. The school system is appealing.

Evolution Theory Temporarily Not Harmful to Your Health [Wonkette]
Anti-evolution stickers on schoolbooks removed [Boing Boing]

A beer truck overturned this morning in Nashville where I-65 and I-40 meet near the downtown area. Everyone grab your straw!

Beer truck wreck shuts down I-65 in Nashville [wmctv.com]

via Slashdot:
Over 670,000 customers at Bank of America, Wachovia, and other banks have had their account numbers and balances illegally sold to collection agencies. I guess the banks are offering free credit monitoring for a year to customers who were “affected”. Clearly that’s enough to make up for the breech.

Bank security breach may be biggest yet [CNN]

I took a little break from work this morning to eat a slice of cold leftover pizza in the staff room, and flipped through someone’s discarded Time Magazine while chewing. I came across this interesting article about how people are using the super-sized gay marriage bans in Ohio. A lesbian woman is denying her ex-partner rights to their child, using the gay marriage ban to say they were never married. Of course no one cares about this because it is just a fight between two dykes, but here’s one that does concern folks: men accused of domestic abuse are claiming that it isn’t actually domestic abuse since they are not married to the women that they abused. Which allows them to “get off” with a lighter assault charge. Ohio’s answer? Redraft the domestic abuse laws. Because clearly there is nothing wrong with the gay marriage ban.

Gay-Marriage Bans: The Boomerang Effect [Time Magazine]

Here’s some good news for B:
The average working Nashvillian takes more vacation time than almost any other metropolitan worker in the country, and works fewer hours per week.

You So Lazy [Nashville Is Talking]

It looks like the T (oldest subway system in the country?) in Boston is finally catching up to the 21st century along with Washington D.C., and Chicago. They began by implementing the new “Charlie Ticket” system today at Airport Station on the Blue line. This automated fare system will free the poor folk from their tiny token booths and allow them to walk around and help travelers in need of support. It will also just make much more sense. No longer do we have to keep a bunch of tokens in our pockets along with loose change in case we want to get on the train. One card, which works on a debit system, will take care of us. The T wants for it to be usable at T kiosks like Dunkin and newsstands as well. Too bad it won’t be more widely implemented until 2006, when we will be in Nashville, home of … well, no underground public transportation.

The CharlieTicket/New Customer Service and Station Enhancements on the Blue Line [mbta website]
New MBTA fare system debuts at Airport station [Boston Globe]