I found an article on Wired today about clothing designer Benetton's plans to weave radio frequency ID (RFID) chips into their clothing.  The claim is that this will reduce costs for the company, and they're right.  The issue is not whether Benetton will save money, though, but instead is whether or not people will appreciate having a tracking device implanted in their clothing when they buy it.  I suggest you read the article.  I believe you'll see my point.

Had the US Supreme Court not issued a last-minute stay, Texas would have carried out its 300th execution since the death penalty was reinstated by the state in 1982.  300?  I thought that number was wrong when I first saw it.  There have only been 835 executions in the whole United States since the US Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976.  If Texas accounts for more than one-third of all executions out of the whole country, that leaves little room for other states to even fit into the statistics.  Virginia is the second-highest state with only 87 deaths.  Where do I live?  Oh, Texas…

Although I was once a supporter of the death penalty, I have had much time to contemplate the immolation of convicts in the hopes that their deaths would sway someone else from committing a crime.  At this point, I must say that it's no longer acceptable.

A perfect example of "do as I say and not as I do," state-sponsored and executed murder must stop.  Let us not kid ourselves into thinking it can't be called murder simply because the state does it as punishment.  This is indeed murder, no matter what wrapping paper you put around it.

Taking a life is never acceptable, regardless of the circumstances.  I realize those who have suffered through some capital crime would argue that point with me, but hear me out before you rush to judgment.

We teach our children that murder is wrong.  We explain murder as the taking of one human life by one or more other humans.

Are you following?

Given the most basic definition of murder, how can it be said that capital punishment is not murder?  Because it is murder, we are expected to accept that the state has every right to kill people?

I can almost hear the resounding "yes" coming from death penalty proponents who believe it deters others from committing the heinous acts that lead the state to kill.  That logic is terribly flawed because you have assumed that those committing a crime intended to be caught and therefore would avoid that which would lead to the death penalty.

The flaw in that logic is that no one intends to get caught when they commit a crime.  In the heat of the moment, premeditated, temporary insanity, or criminally negligent murder is never committed by someone planning their crime around the punishment they will receive.  The only way a deterrent works is if they believe they will be caught and, if they are, what punishment will they receive.

Even supplied the assumption that someone believes they may be caught, very few of those willing to commit murder clearly understand the law well enough to know when homicide becomes a capital crime.  This is the second flaw in the logic.

It cannot be said that the death penalty is a deterrent, then, since we all should know better than to assume that people plan their crimes around the punishment.

More importantly, however, is the state-sponsored killing itself not a crime — clearly premeditated and acted out to the final detail.

At what point do we as human beings evolve beyond the "eye for an eye" mentality that makes us kill in response to truly offensive crimes?

We tell our children they cannot kill, but the state is allowed to do just that.

We tell our children that forgiveness is an absolute must in all things, yet the death penalty overrides forgiveness by making it clear that we only forgive when the crime isn't so offensive that we can't forgive.

We tell our children that revenge is wrong, yet we pride ourselves when we as victims get our final revenge by the death of the perpetrator.  The death penalty is the ultimate form of revenge.

Are we not killing someone in an attempt to say that killing someone is wrong?

Closure is what it's called, I believe.  If you truly receive closure by ensuring the death of another human being, then you are far from human yourself.

When do we stop state-sponsored killing?  It's barbaric.  It's also cruel and unusual punishment regardless of how you try to explain it away.  In my opinion, that makes it unconstitutional.

Oh, and it's permanent.

And that permanency is of the utmost concern, as we've seen many cases recently when those on death row have been exonerated and set free by new evidence which clearly showed they were not guilty.  Permanent solutions are only good if the system which dispatches them is infallible.

The criminal justice system is anything but infallible.

In the end, we as human beings must take responsibility for our actions and stop this horrific, unjustified, unwarranted murder by the state.  We must remind ourselves that we have just supported the very act that we were punishing the criminal for.

In the end, we must remind ourselves that we are better than that.

Napoleon Beazley, executed in Texas on May 28, 2002, for a murder committed when he was 17 years old, said, "…I'm sorry that it was something in me that caused all of this to happen to begin with.  Tonight we tell the world that there are no second chances in the eyes of justice.  Tonight, we tell our children that in some instances, in some cases, killing is right…  No one wins tonight.  No one gets closure.  No one walks away victorious."

Did someone miss the news about September 11, 2001?  Did someone not hear about new restrictions on what you can carry on to commercial airline flights now?  Did someone just pull their head out of the sand?

There are times when the words "ludicrous" or "stupid" or "dumb" simply don't convey a harsh enough representation of how cranially dense some people really are.  The recent report on items confiscated by TSA personnel from people trying to board commercial flights is a perfect example of when words just don't seem harsh enough.

In the 13 months since the Federal Government (via the TSA) took responsibility for security screening of airline passengers, more than 4.8 million restricted items have been confiscated.  Despite reminders and news reports and common sense telling us that potential weapons of any kind are now restricted and cannot be taken into the cabin of commercial airline flights, TSA authorities have confiscated all manner of ludicrous carry-on items.  Here are just a few examples.

Nearly 40,000 box cutters.  You heard me correctly — box cutters.  It's as if these idiots slept through September 11 and the more than 17 months of news covering it since then.

A machete.  OK, perhaps a pocket knife or a letter opener would not be so surprising, but there's no way you can convince me that someone didn't know you couldn't take a machete on the airplane.

A trailer hitch.  This one might be a little more difficult to berate, as one does not normally carry such items around on one's person and — as luck would have it — trailer hitches haven't been specifically covered in the list of items restricted from planes.  There's still that nagging question of common sense…

1,101 guns.  Simple solution to this one — shoot the idiot with their own gun.  It's difficult to believe anyone could be so stupid, but the numbers are too simple to get confused.

1.4 million knives.  Have these people been on another planet?

15,666 clubs.  I think those caught with such things should be beaten with their own clubs.  It's too late to hope you could knock some sense into them, but there is hope you might hinder their ability to procreate.

125,000 incendiary devices.  I suppose the restriction on taking such items is new…  No, you dolts.

A 15-piece cutlery set.  OK, I'll let this one slide — NOT!  Cutlery is cutlery is cutlery.  Did the understanding that a box cutter is cutlery (it cuts, right?) totally escape these people?

A kitchen sink pipe.  This is almost ludicrous.  What dimwitted moron thought that would be acceptable?

Horseshoes.  Undoubtedly someone from Texas.

A circular saw.  Have you ever heard of anything quite so insane?  Why don't I carry my nail gun with me as well?  You never know when you might have to perform emergency repair work on the plane itself.

Transportation Security Administration spokesman Brian Turmail made it clear when the report was released that further education was necessary to reduce the number of banned items that continue to be caught at security checkpoints.  Luckily he found the right balance when he continued by saying, "If you don't know by now that box cutters are inappropriate, no amount of public education is going to make a difference."

Out of all of this, 922 people were arrested for attempting to carry such items through security checkpoints and to their plane.

Arrested?  They should be shot.  If they have no common sense (the only possible shortcoming that could explain this level of stupidity), they should be removed from the gene pool so we don't pass that level of ignorance on to children and a whole new generation of boneheads.

Of course, there's not much humor in all of this when on considers the results of the TSA's test last spring which showed that screeners only found 70 percent of knives and missed one in four guns.  Given the numbers above, it makes you curious about what they didn't catch.

Still, I have to wonder WTF these people were thinking.  More importantly, WTF are their counterparts thinking out there right now as they try the very same things?

The argument about how the dinosaurs (and more than 70 percent of Earth's species) were wiped out of existence has taken a clear step in the direction of a massive asteroid or comet strike 65 million years ago.  In new images released this week by NASA, a new radar image of the Yucatan Peninsula taken from space clearly shows a 180-kilometer-wide (112-mile-wide) impact crater — evidence of a geologically devastating event.

The release of the new topological radar image taken by the space shuttle Endeavour three years ago has significantly bolstered the theory of a devastating cosmic impact that brought about the extinction of the dinosaurs and significant numbers of other species.

In the new image, the crater itself is still difficult to see due to the limestone sediments which has settled over it during the past 65 million years.  Despite being visually difficult to identify, the crater is easily identified by the elevation readings returned by the radar imaging.  It is in these radar images that the crater becomes obvious.

The idea of a cosmological event being the catalyst for extinction of massive numbers of Earth's species at the time was first offered up in 1980 by physicist Luis Alvarez and his son Walter Alvarez, a geologist.  Since then, mounting proof has driven the scientific community in that direction with increasing speed.

The Chicxulub crater is now the the focus of intense scientific study as evidence continues to mount which points to this being the flashpoint of the dinosaurs' demise.

As with all things scientific, however, there is no guarantee that a meteoric event is truly to blame for wiping out the dinosaurs and paving the way for humans.  Until we're certain, we're never sure, and even then we keep our minds open to the possibility that we're still not sure.