Live 2 Learn

Senator Larry Craig REPUBLICAN from Idaho resigned from the Senate after his fellow Republicans basically drummed him out, once it was revealed that he plead guilty to lesser charges attempting to make an arrest "go away" after he was caught soliciting gay sex from an undercover cop in a Minneapolis airport men's room. Whew! Long sentence. Not as long as the "sentence" former-Senator Craig will now serve - the rest of his life. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/washington/02cong.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1188833432-HihlfGKMg0zSlrXLeG3DbA I was not familiar with Craig until all this happened. He was just another stereotypical Republican homophobe voting against adding sexual orientation to the Hate Crimes Act, voting for the so-called Protection of Marriage bill, sanctimoniously condemning Bill Clinton as a "nasty, naughty, boy" when the Monica story broke. He was actively anti-gay like many Republicans and like many persecutor

I'll start this entry by saying that I don't know exactly where I am going with it - it hasn't been thought through like my other entries but by the time I finish I hope that I understand a reaction I had a couple of weeks ago and maybe both of us can learn from it? It was my birthday and to celebrate my partner invited four of our friends to dinner at Sampaio - my favorite Brazilian restaurant in Austin. We all know each other, some better than others, so I was looking forward to a nice, relaxing, fun conversation. We are all gay, fairly liberal politically, literate, educated, well-read and skilled conversationalists - what could go wrong? Religion. Maybe that's the biggest source of difference for us and in hindsight perhaps something we should have avoided. It started innocently enough; we were talking about relationships - the six of us constituted two single guys and two couples. One of the single guys, let's call him Jay, said that he made a pact with a singl

Last week I had to travel to Mississippi for my Aunt Virginia's funeral. I haven't traveled in a while (2 months) because we are under travel restrictions at work but it hadn't been long enough for me to forget my friends at the TSA and their restrictions to make us safer. :-) So I got to the airport with plenty of time to spare and things were going smoothly until I was third in line to walk through the magnetron and send my stuff through XRAY. The line stopped because the TSA person staffing the XRAY saw something suspicious in a bag and stopped the belt. It must have been serious because when he signaled that he needed assistance all three lines were stopped - not just the one I was in. TSA agents stepped in front of the magnetrons and turned their back to the people in line (I think this is kind of strange don't you - shouldn't they turn and face the people in line in case something is up?). If a terrorist was trying to pull something they could knock the T

After three hours in the sweltering Texas sun doing yard work or what I'm sure my friend Jeremy would call "gardening" which sounds so much more classy and elegant than the sweaty, dirty work I was doing…I had an epiphany – well maybe that's overstating it or me trying to make some hair brained thoughts I had sound more intellectual and classy and elegant. But here's what I was thinking… Diversity is a good thing. Maybe that's ironically a black & white, or an absolute statement but it has always been dogma for me – "always" meaning since I first joined a diversity team in 1991. We had a whitepaper that said that in every scientific discipline diversity is a positive factor – a good thing. Homogeneity loses to heterogeneity in the long run. So with that background in mind I'm in the "garden" pulling all these damn weeds and "volunteer" plants and I had a "moment" (I think a moment of "clarity," you m

I have sleep apnea which means that for the last seven years I have slept with the assistance of a C-PAP (I can't even remember what the initials stand for other than "Continuous Pressure..."). The C-PAP maintains pressure in my throat via a mask I wear over my nose so that my air passage remains open all night. Without the C-PAP I wake up hundreds of times a night gasping for air because my air passage has closed and I am unable to get air. When I first was diagnosed with Apnea the doctor told me that I should never check the C-PAP but to always pack in my carry-on when I traveled and that every security person in the world knew what the C-PAP was so it wouldn't be a problem. That of course was before the September 11 terrorists attacks. Actually even with all the restrictions on carry-on luggage after 9-11 the most I ever got was the question, "Do you have a C-PAP in your backpack?" and when I said "yes" I was told to "go ahead" - no pr

Last September the TSA "adjusted" the ban on traveling with liquids, gels, and aerosols as stated on their web site... http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/prohibited/permitted-prohibited-items.shtm Specifically they said... 1. Air travelers may now carry liquids, gels and aerosols in their carry-on bag when going through security checkpoints. With certain exceptions for prescription and over-the-counter medicines, baby formula and breast milk, and other essential liquids, gels, and aerosols, the following rules apply to all liquids, gels, and aerosols you want to carry through a security checkpoint. All liquids, gels and aerosols must be in three-ounce or smaller containers. Larger containers that are half-full or toothpaste tubes rolled up are not allowed. Each container must be three ounces or smaller. I get the needing to limit amounts of liquids, gels etc. because someone might mix up explosive chemicals but the size of the container regardless of the amount included m

I travel a lot - I have 1.7 MILLION frequent flyer miles on American Airlines alone! So I bitch and moan about travel hassles to everyone who will listen and frankly people in my life are tired of hearing about it so I'll blog about it and hopefully get it out of my system. At the San Jose airport one time I was inline behind a very elderly couple. She was in a wheel chair and he was pushing her at a very slow shuffle using the chair as much as a walker as a mode of transportation for his wife. When they got to the front of the line about to go through the metal detector the TSA person said, "Mam you'll have to walk through." The woman raised herself out of the wheel chair with great difficulty and was holding on to the counter when the agent added, "Those shoes will need to go through X-ray." She had on little pink slippers - the sole was maybe an eighth of an inch thick and was cotten! The little old man had to get down on his hands and knees while s