The World According to Greg » General

It’s Time to Let Go

ghile — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:49:16 +0000

Word has just come down that Susan Atkins, one of the women convicted in the Tate-LaBianca murders along with Charles Manson, has been denied compassionate release by the California Board of Parole. Atkins is dying of cancer, cannot sit up in bed, has had a leg amputated, is paralyzed on one side and cannot even snap her fingers. The cost of keeping her in a special prison hospital under guard has cost the state of California $1.4 million just since March. She has only about three to four months to live and, at that rate, will cost the state another million.

There is no question that the murders back in 1969 were horrible and that those that committed them deserved punishment. But enough is enough. It is time to grant compassionate release to Susan Atkins, if for no other reason than the cost to the state of guarding her. But there are other reasons. As people of God, we must hold out the hope for redemption for even those that appear to deserve it the least. Susan Atkins is no longer a threat to society. It is time for society to do the right thing.

Life in the “Contacted” Amazon

ghile — Sat, 31 May 2008 05:23:18 +0000

Having been to that part of the world in 2005, I read with interest stories about the “uncontacted” tribes in the Amazon (of course, they are not “uncontacted” at all, having got close enough to take pictures and be shot at with arrows, as the story relates, but that’s beside the point).

I’m not really sure whether having further contact with them is a good thing or not, but when I visited a village that was roughly eight hours by powerboat from the nearest town in the state of Para, here’s what I found. Ostensibly, the satellite dish is there to permit the government representative living in the village to communicate with the government offices far away. What the village does every night, however, is gather in the building where a single television exists and watch TV.

Houston, We Have a Problem …

ghile — Sat, 03 May 2008 21:48:03 +0000

Okay, my bad, I know, and I’m not really very happy about it. I changed web hosts yesterday and I have lost all of the blog files, like archived posts, categories, links, etc. Hopefully, this is only a temporary thing, but stayed tuned. We’ll work it out. Really …

UPDATE (May 5, 2008): Well, so it turns out the backup files really are gone. So we’ll start over. It could be fun — together again, for the first time.

UPDATE 2 (June 4, 2008): Actually a few of the previous posts have been located, and they appear below.

Heroes of the Planet, British-Style

ghile — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 05:46:10 +0000

It is understandably biased in favor of Brits, but the Environmental Agency (the British version of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency) has come out with its list saluting “the 100 people who’ve done more to look after our planet than anyone else.”

While it’s hard to argue with their number one choice, Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, the other rankings are quite interesting. Included on the list are a number of religious figures, e.g., Buddha (number 92), St. Francis of Assisi (47), Ghandhi (81) and the Dalai Lama (89). Al Gore comes in at number 9 and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (29) beat out Henry David Thoreau (49) and David Brower (31) but didn’t fare quite as well as John Muir (27).

Coming in at 100, dead last in the rankings but still number one in the hearts of many: Father Christmas aka Santa Claus, who keeps an incredibly sleek “no carbon” operation while on the road.