They are having a walk-a-thon downtown this weekend and I am torn about participating. The charity that will benefit is all about helping the victims of sexual abuse. I would like to support an organization that helps primarily women and children. Walking in a walk-a-thon is something that I do three or four times a year. But the organizers are calling this a “Slut Walk.” Well, that offends me deeply. I don’t want a teeshirt that says I walked in a “Slut Walk.” I can’t understand why they picked such an offensive name. I want to help, but not with a name like that.
New Movies
I love the way Redbox sends me an email every week with a list of all the new movies that are coming out. I read over the email and decide which movie I want, then I reserve it online. It works like a charm! I’m so glad my girlfriend Robin told me about Redbox last year. I had no idea it was so easy!
What is the Texas Virtual Border Watch?
One of the most innovative programs in preventing illegal immigration and protecting the borders of the US is the Texas Virtual Border Watch program. Texas Governor Rick Perry enacted the program in conjunction with the Texas Border Sheriff’s Coalition and Blue Servo ?, a privately held company. The program is designed to allow the public to participate in monitoring crime along the Texas-Mexico border.
Under the program, anyone with Internet access can become a “virtual deputy” by creating an account and logging on to the Blue Servo network. Once you have created an account, you can monitor the Texas-Mexico border 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The virtual deputies are able to see what’s going on at the border thanks to cameras that stream live from the border continuously.
When virtual deputies spot suspicious activity, they are able to report their findings to local country sheriffs via email. Emails coming in to the county sheriff’s are anonymous. Local authorities have responsibility for checking out all emails sent in, conducting investigations and taking appropriate actions.
The Texas Virtual Border Watch is like a community watch program on steroids. Since it’s inception in 2008, the program has had mixed reviews. As of April, 2010, just 26 arrests had been made as a result of information obtained through the program. At this point in time, just 29 of the projected 200 cameras had been installed. In order to defray costs, the plan for funding the program called for installing the cameras over a period of time.
Mixed Reviews
Those who criticize the program say that it is too expensive, considering a cost of $2 million just to get the program up and running. Proponents of the program say that the real benefit is in its ability for the cameras to deter criminal activity, which is difficult to measure.
In the first year, one major drug bust was completed because of the program, netting 540 pounds of marijuana and the arrest of a suspected drug smuggler. However, this appears to be the only significant arrest to come from the program.
Of course, any program like the Virtual Border Watch faces the inherent problem of timeliness. By the time law enforcement officers can retrieve emails sent by the public, and act on them, the suspicious activity is likely long over.
The program has also suffered from a waning interest by the public. When the site was initially launched, the website got millions of hits. It appeared that people from all over the US, and even abroad, were calling themselves virtual deputies. But, over time, interest in monitoring the site has fallen off.
There has not, however, been serious talk of discontinuing the program. When Blue Servo began working with the Texas government, they had plans to offset costs by selling advertising on the website. The site has continued to have benefits beyond those of the virtual border program, since it allows other groups, such as neighborhoods, to create their own virtual watch programs at no cost.
Phyllis T. Zerkle particularly likes to write about issues surrounding homeland security and the various courses studied when earning a homeland security degree online.
Reposting Scams
An uncomfortably large number of my Facebook friends seem to be extremely gullible and naive. I am going to have to give this some serious thought. They are way too willing to repost false statements on their walls without checking them out first. The one that really ticks me off are all the self righteous faux christians reposting the lie that Pepsi or dr. Pepper have cans with the Pledge of Allegiance on them and theat they deliberately left off the words “under God.” This is not true and yet I see this reposting almost ever day for weeks now.
If people judge you by the friends that you keep, I do not want other people to think that I am this stupid, too. I am seriously thinking about unfriending anyone who reposts these and just thinning out my list.
Who Sang That?
It is getting harder and harder to hear a song on the radio and find out who sang that song. The vocalists and bands almost never get introduced by a live disc jockey anymore. In fact, I rarely hear a live disc jockey on any of the local radio stations.
What ever happened to having radio personalities? They were half the fun of listening to the radio. And I want to know the name of the artist and the title of each song when it is played. What is so hard about that?