A Victim Treats His Mugger Right

Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner.

But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.

He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife.

“He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, ‘Here you go,’” Diaz says.

As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, “Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.”

The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, “like what’s going on here?” Diaz says. “He asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?’”

Diaz replied: “If you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me … hey, you’re more than welcome.

“You know, I just felt maybe he really needs help,” Diaz says.

Diaz says he and the teen went into the diner and sat in a booth.

“The manager comes by, the dishwashers come by, the waiters come by to say hi,” Diaz says. “The kid was like, ‘You know everybody here. Do you own this place?’”

“No, I just eat here a lot,” Diaz says he told the teen. “He says, ‘But you’re even nice to the dishwasher.’”

Diaz replied, “Well, haven’t you been taught you should be nice to everybody?”

“Yea, but I didn’t think people actually behaved that way,” the teen said.

Diaz asked him what he wanted out of life. “He just had almost a sad face,” Diaz says.

The teen couldn’t answer Diaz — or he didn’t want to.

When the bill arrived, Diaz told the teen, “Look, I guess you’re going to have to pay for this bill ’cause you have my money and I can’t pay for this. So if you give me my wallet back, I’ll gladly treat you.”

The teen “didn’t even think about it” and returned the wallet, Diaz says. “I gave him $20 … I figure maybe it’ll help him. I don’t know.”

Diaz says he asked for something in return — the teen’s knife — “and he gave it to me.”

Afterward, when Diaz told his mother what happened, she said, “You’re the type of kid that if someone asked you for the time, you gave them your watch.”

“I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It’s as simple as it gets in this complicated world.”

from… http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89164759

(apparently NPR… is the public radio network… it looks a bit like a radio only BBC in america)

what do people think about stem cell research?

i’ve read a bit about it on the bbc website. people have been getting annoyed with the catholic church for being vocal in critising the new bill that’s going through parliment that allows human embryos to be mixed with animal ones which could potentially help us get cures for some pretty nasty diseases.

but i wonder if the catholics are right. it makes me feel quite uneasy really… it sounds a bit nazish to me (harvesting some people for the sake of others). people want power and to play God… it goes right back to adam and eve and is stem cell research part of that or is it a legitimate way of searching for cures? do the ends justify the means?

i guess what it really comes down to is whether stem cells are people or not? because if they are then it’s obviously very very wrong. if they aren’t fully a person then it’s still a moral dilema but i guess it’s not as black and white.

like most things, because it’s hidden and doesn’t really effect us it’s easy to ignore and carry on with our lives… especially if it would cause conflict to bring up.

anyway just wondered if anyone had any thoughts.

perhaps i’ll write to my MP?

In the continuing tradition of great food at Aardvark, we will be having a meal as part of our evening on March 16th.

We will be starting Aardvark a bit earlier - at 7pm - so there won’t be muffins beforehand that week.

It would be really helpful for those involved if we have an idea of how many people are coming - and if you are bringing anyone.  So, please leave a comment here to say if you’re coming, or talk to me in person… preferably before next Sunday (March 9th).

March dates for Aardvark can be found over here!

We will be having a meal on the 16th - so watch out for details of that.

Also, on the 23rd it’s Easter Sunday, and there will be no Aardvark that day.

Aardvark is not happening in the evening of February 24th (this coming Sunday).

The reason is that a couple of people are getting baptised in the afternoon of the same day.

The baptisms are taking place at Hanham Baptist Church (click here for map) at 2pm.

If you’re going to the BCF morning meeting at the Grange beforehand, it’ll be a pretty quick turnaround, so we suggest you grab a drink somewhere and then head over to Hanham Baptist.
Then after the baptisms (3:30/4ish), we will be having a bit of food at our place in Kingswood (see me or many others for the address).  We’ll be doing baked potatoes, so if everyone could bring some sort of topping (that you like to eat), that would be great.  It would be helpful to have some vague idea of numbers, so if you are planning on coming, let me know or leave a comment here.

Pete Osborne

Probably a really obvious question but I can’t think of an answer and I guess it’ll take someone about 30s to give me a response so just thought I’d ask… why did there need to be three days between Jesus’s death and resurrection? I know it was to fulfill a prophecy but that prophecy must have been made for a reason in the first place.

This has been bothering me for a few days, I don’t know why  I haven’tthought of it before.

On Friday 29th Feb. and Saturday 1st March, Banks and I are doing our next two training walks. It would be really good if anyone is planning to walk with me/us in Summer if they can come on one of those days to see how they enjoy/cope with walking for a day. It won’t be a hard pace but it will be fairly long, it’s not as scary as some people think though…just ask Simon who came with us on the last walk and was running ahead most of the day!
So let me know if you want to come and I’ll give you more details. We’ll probably head North or West one day and South the other day but not far away from the city on either day.

I’m sure if you’ve been anywhere near the news if the past 24 hours, you’ll have heard the ‘uproar’ about the Archbishop’s comments about Sharia law.

What has caught my attention is not so much the subject, but the reaction to the Archbishop speaking about something that people deem to be ‘political’.

Here’s a quote from Conservative MP, Mark Pritchard:

“He should be concentrating on winning souls into the Church of England rather than getting involved in politics.”

A lot of similar comments on the BBC website.  Here are a couple:

‘He should stay out of business that doesn’t concern him.’

‘[Christians] should respect the government in place and not be drawn into politics’.

Firstly, so much for our allegedly tolerant society, which seems to be only so if you stay out of people’s way and don’t say something they disagree with.

Secondly, it’s amazing that people really think religion should have no influence on politics.  I wonder if anyone has really thought this through… look at some of the major movements of recent times (let alone through history) - ‘Jubilee 2000′, ‘Make Poverty History’, the ‘One’ campaign (started by Bono) - all started by and heavily influenced by people and organisations of faith.  And if anything is political, surely the campaigning for governments to take notice of those in extreme poverty, and countries trapped in debt that we gave them is!

Hello aardvarkers online…

jesse e. has asked me if i’d post up some information about up coming Transitions gig at the elim centre on the 23rd.

so here i am (on my new mac pro!) doing just that.

look at this first….

now you’ve looked at that we can move on… that was a flier designed by the lovely stefan roberts (incidently i had a look a look at his website t’other day… it’s different now, its got some very nice videos on it… clever chap!) anyway it’s transitions first gig as a three so things have been changed around somewhat. anyway the gigget is on jamaica street, which is near the BRI… (look below and you can see it on one of your earth maps…)

View Larger Map

doors open at 7.30 and it costs 10 of your humanoid pounds if your normal and 8 of them if your a subhuman student scum. you can get tickets from their website (transition.tk… as if you didn’t know) or seetickets.com or ‘bristol ticket shop’.

i hope i did it right… i probably forgot something important.

PS i was talking to roanna yesterday and she was saying that she thought Josh looked hot in this photo. (not that he doesn’t normally but especially so in this photo)

Imagine if Gordon Brown were to make a video like this:

Not sure it would work!