(Columbia, S.C.) Drug users and prostitutes are turning up their noses at the condemned buildings they once frequented in Richland County. Deputies here have begun using a chemical spray that makes the places smell like a skunk has come calling. “There’s nothing cool about sitting around drinking beer when it smells like a skunk,” said Lt. Shaun Mathers (Los Angeles County sheriff’s department).

Skunk Gel Repels Drug Users, Prostitutes
July 24, 2004. Associated Press – Strange News

Comment: Sin loves to hide itself in darkness. God’s law pierces the darkness with the light of his truth concerning morality. It shows how much the darkness stinks, in the hopes to drive the evildoer to seek refuge elsewhere. Then the gospel gives that elsewhere.

(New Haven, Conn.) This city is among the first in the nation to use infrared scanners that read license plates on moving and parked cars, giving officials immediate access to a database of police and tax records in their hunt for criminals and tax delinquents. The scanners cost about $25,000 apiece and come with laptop computers, an infrared scanning gun and other equipment. The system takes two people to run in the field — one to drive and the other to aim the gun, which can be aimed out a car window.

The city will use the scanner to determine if property taxes are owed on the car, or if the car is stolen, has a stolen license plate or is not registered or insured.

In a four-hour test run in the spring, tax collectors identified 25 cars that collectively owned $10,000 in taxes. A two-hour test by the police turned up 11 cars with stolen license plates and two stolen cars. Two people were arrested.

Scarponi, Diane. Conn. City Uses Scanners to Nab Criminals
September 9, 2004. Associated Press – U.S. National

Comment: Everyone has a history with God, but we can’t tell by just looking at someone what that history is. With time, we can begin to see by the fruits who a person is and where they stand with God. The Law is like that scanner which reveals the ‘crimes’ that a person has committed. Knowing both an individual and God’s word helps us apply law and gospel to settle that individual's debt… in Christ… before God comes to settle the fines permanently… without Christ’s free gift.

Happy New Year everyone!

In an article about Internet Dating Services, the writer warns that outdated pictures might be used: “Experts say you should assume the people are 20 percent worse looking in person than they are in their picture.”

Molly Thompson, Online Dating: Everybody’s Doing It
February 13, 2004, 4:04 p.m. CST; WISC Channel3000.com

Comment: We always try to present ourselves better than we are, especially to someone who doesn't know anything about us. God's Law exposes us to how well God really knows us. What an eye-opener. Suddenly we see a picture that looks even more than 20% worse than our own conception of ourselves.

Defense counsel was giving his summation in a case involving a client who had been charged with murdering his wife, even though her body had never been found. He tried to the best of his ability to sow the minds of the jurors with the seeds of reasonable doubt, dramatically proclaiming that nobody could demonstrate that the alleged victim was even dead. Every eye in the courtroom gazed in the direction indicated by his outstretched arm as he pointed to the doors at the back of the courtroom and thundered, “Why, she might walk through those doors any second now!”

It was a masterful technique. When the jurors realized that they themselves had been expecting the supposedly dead woman to burst through the courtroom doors just then, how could they possibly maintain they were sure beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had killed her?

The prosecutor was undaunted. Slowly rising from his seat behind the table, he too gestured towards the courtroom doors. But his voice was calm as he looked the jurors in the eye and began to speak: “Every head in this courtroom turned toward that door just now -- every head except one, that of the defendant. He didn’t bother to look because he knows she’s not going to walk through that door. He killed her.”

The “defendant doesn’t look” giveaway was used as a plot point in the 1987 courtroom spoof From the Hip and an episode of TV’s Homicide: Life in the Streets (“The Twenty Percent Solution,” original air date 30 October 1998).

snopes.com

Comment: The law of God speaks to all of our hearts and accuses, "You know the truth. You know that you are guilty. We can fool 'the jury.' We can even fool ourselves. But we can't fool God or his perfect law. Thank God, his Son has fulfilled that law for us and has justified us for mercy's sake!

(Clear Lake, Iowa) Lightning hit some Alliant Energy equipment and created a stink strong enough to wake up some residents. The rotten-egg smell was caused early Wednesday when lightning hit an odorizer, a device that mixes a chemical with a foul odor into the natural gas system.

Its purpose is to alert people to possible leaks, since natural gas itself is odorless.

…He said it “fried” the odorizer and allowed the system to be flooded with the stinking chemical.

Lightning Strike Raises Stink in Iowa
May 12, 2005. Associated Press – Odd News

Comment: The Law is God’s odorizer. “I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, ‘Do not covet.’” Romans 7:7. When God makes us smell sin the way he does, it's not enough to make you wake up from your spiritual sleep.