Actu­al­ly, the don’t want to know how you feel. They want a very care­ful­ly select­ed group of peo­ple to answer their loaded ques­tions as desired, so they can claim, as usu­al, that they did research that showed that “every­body” hates queers.

They ask:

Should cor­po­ra­tions be pro­mot­ing homo­sex­u­al­i­ty?
Sev­er­al cor­po­ra­tions are now sup­port­ing the homo­sex­u­al agen­da. These com­pa­nies have been con­vinced by homo­sex­u­al activists and the main­stream media that in order to be “fair and tolerant,” com­pa­nies must make spe­cial rules for homo­sex­u­als and pro­vide com­pa­ny mon­ey and resources to help pro­mote their lifestyle. Many com­pa­nies, at the urg­ing of these groups, have also begun to sup­port same-sex mar­riage.

What they’re ask­ing about isn’t “pro­mot­ing homo­sex­u­al­i­ty” at all. Have you ever actu­al­ly encoun­tered any­one pro­mot­ing het­ero­sex­u­al­i­ty or bisex­u­al­i­ty? No? Me nei­ther. Actu­al­ly, the only pro­mot­ing I know about is all that pres­sure to be het­ero­sex­u­al. Methinks the AFA doth protest too much.

What they object to is domes­tic part­ner­ship ben­e­fits. They object to the use of match­ing funds for pro­grams like Planned Par­ent­hood or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion that does­n’t agree with the rad­i­cal right’s agen­da. That’s what they mean when they say “pro­mot­ing homo­sex­u­al­i­ty.

So let’s reframe this a lit­tle more accu­rate­ly.

Do you believe that com­pa­nies should offer the same ben­e­fits to all employ­ees, with­out regard to their sex­u­al pref­er­ence or ori­en­ta­tion? Would you be more to do busi­ness with a com­pa­ny that treats all of its employ­ees fair­ly? Less like­ly to do busi­ness with them? Would it not mat­ter to you at all?

Now go vote: http://www.afa.net/petitions/businesses/businesses.asp

As Stre­ga point­ed out in a com­ment on my Live­Jour­nal, once again the AFA isn’t con­duct­ing actu­al research, or even a real sur­vey. The num­bers on the page nev­er change, no mat­ter how many peo­ple vote. They’ve set up a nice lit­tle graph­ic show­ing how they’d like the num­bers to come out in their fan­ta­sy world.

I won­der if Dri­veSavers hires any telecom­muters? Maybe I should get in touch with Kel­ly Chessen.

In any case, she has some very good advice in this Com­put­er­World arti­cle, How to calm some­one in a cri­sis

Chessen is alert for cer­tain words and phras­es that might indi­cate a per­son is in pro­found dis­tress. “Some­times I’ll hear some­one say, ‘If I can’t get my data back, I don’t know what I’ll do,’ and that’s a tip to me,” she says, as are oth­er state­ments such as “This is hope­less” or “My life is over.” In every case, Chessen asks the per­son direct­ly, “Are you con­sid­er­ing sui­cide?” Whether the sit­u­a­tion involves a life event or the loss of a crit­i­cal work prod­uct, it’s cru­cial to ask. “If they’re not think­ing about it, they’ll say no. And if they are, the fact that some­one asked them to talk about it will be a relief and a release for them,” she explains.

Her tech­niques sound very famil­iar, as I did sim­i­lar things to man­age calls when I worked in a call cen­ter. She uses dif­fer­ent ter­mi­nol­o­gy thank I would, which is understandable—she’s a for­mer sui­cide hot­line coun­selor.

But I’m not a video gamer, and I’ve nev­er been a Trekkie/Trekker.

Still, I’m curi­ous — which Star Trek race is it that has the most accu­rate hear­ing?

This Very Impor­tant Post brought to you cour­tesy of Exam Week!

Lots of fun to do and look at. Give your­self time to think, though!

They take out any apos­tro­phes used in your cus­tom descrip­tions, but you can put them back in by edit­ing the code before post­ing it.

From the Car­roll Coun­ty Times of West­min­ster, Mary­land:

Accord­ing to The Sacra­men­to Bee, a fam­i­ly in El Dora­do, Calif., is in trou­ble after spend­ing a fam­i­ly out­ing mak­ing pipe bombs and then test­ing them.… Accord­ing to the Bee, Justin Lee Brown, 29, was arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of sev­er­al felonies. He, his girl­friend and their two sons, ages 6 and 8, had one of the more inter­est­ing fam­i­ly out­ings ever.… When asked about the activ­i­ty, Brown said he learned how to make bombs from friends and “decid­ed to try it so he could show it to his kids.” … Brown is in jail and Tiffany Dean, the mom, is being inves­ti­gat­ed for what deputies call “unimag­in­ably stu­pid” con­duct.

I’m hold­ing my breath, hop­ing that no asso­ci­a­tion with the pagan com­mu­ni­ty or Spi­ral Scouts will come to light. That’s what came to mind first, hon­est­ly. If it had hap­pened in Alaba­ma instead of Cal­i­for­nia, though, I’d be rea­son­ably safe in assum­ing some degree of rela­tion to Dean and Brown. I’ve nev­er regret­ted mov­ing to Georgia—specifically, to metro Atlanta. I’d be quite hap­py to move else­where, but as this sto­ry shows, you can find red­necks any­where.

In the Podos­phere 6 degrees of sep­a­ra­tion I’m sure every­one is linked back to Joe Mur­phy of the Kick­Ass Mys­tic Nin­jas, Wingin’ It, Slice Of Sci­Fi, etc, Pod­casts. While today is April Fools day, no one that was ever touched by Joe will find humor today. This com­ic was writ­ten on the same day of Joes pass­ing — its per­fect. Good­bye Joe, you mat­tered!

Joe touched many lives. My thoughts are with his fam­i­ly and friends tonight.

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