Holy Prepuce! Is 1, but So 2.0 / Concerns of Police Survivors

This week marks (more or less) the first anniversary of Holy Prepuce! I like to think that the blog has evolved over these months; that it has become less about Deaf pageant winners hit by trains, and more a forum in which my views on habeas corpus and remote control internet sex toys are equally at home. Whatever this space's raison d'être, I thank you, faithful readers, for being along on the ride.

In honor of the anniversary, I have upgraded the joint to take advantage of some Blogger 2.0 features. (Having been honored as Person of the Year for my contributions to Web 2.0, it seemed a fitting way to mark the occasion.)

In addition to making cosmetic changes, I have retrofitted previous posts with "topic" designations, and provided a handy sidebar roster of these categories. So if, for instance, you want to skip over everything to do with Religion or Culture and get right to the Smut, just click on the appropriate link and Smut you shall have.

Blogger 2.0 also generates a stand-alone comments feed, which is http://holyprepuce.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default

If you add this feed to your home page or feed reader, you can follow the lively comments discourse as it goes down. You can also add the feed to Feedblitz, and receive the comments daily by email. (If you don't already receive Holy Prepuce! posts by Feedblitz, you can set that up by clicking on this link -- check out a preview here.)

As always, the main blog feed is http://holyprepuce.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default And of course you can still read the blog at http://holyprepuce.blogspot.com, but that is so Web 1.0.

As my blogging time has been devoted to these administrative concerns, my actual content this week will be limited to this slim slice of the Prepuce:

The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund recently held a news conference to kick off its fundraising drive for the planned National Law Enforcement Museum. On hand for the press to play with was a planned exhibit, a device known euphemistically as a "use-of-force training simulator." This is basically a more sophisticated version of such arcade favorites as Hogan's Alley and Police Trainer 2.

The Washington Post described the simulator experience as follows:

You're a cop. You've been summoned to an alley behind a strip mall that's a known drug hangout. You hail a man and two women lounging by an old car.

The man, a beefy guy in a plaid work shirt, gets belligerent and starts toward you. One of the women grabs his arm to hold him back, and as you focus on them, the other woman slips a pistol from her pocket and opens fire.

Bang. You're dead.

Now, I enjoy a game of Virtuacop 3 as much as the next man, but wasn't this news conference put on by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund? Is is possible that contributors to the fund might have become such owing to a "bang, you're dead"-type scenario involving a close family member?

Indeed, the Post reports that

Also present was Jean Hill, president of Concerns of Police Survivors, which supports families and friends of slain police officers. Hill is the mother of Barry Hill, a 38-year-old Harris County, Tex., deputy sheriff, who was shot seven times and killed while trying to arrest a car thief Dec. 4, 2000.

I wonder how Ms. Hill felt about the demonstration?

Museum planners also used the news conference to announce that the project "will feature a table bearing a manikin on which a simulated post mortem will be projected from overhead cameras."

I'm guessing they did one of those on Barry Hill, too.