There is always a lot of heroes and dorks in the news, but every week I’ll pick who I think are the biggest.
Hero: This week, we heard about a Toronto police detective who just plain got fed up. Sergeant Paul Gillespie works in the sex crimes unit and specializes in cases involving child exploitation, specifically child porn on the Internet. Sergeant Gillespie sent an e-mail to a high-ranking manager at Microsoft, asking for help in designing software to bust those who traffic in the child porn net.
The e-mail landed on the desk of Bill Gates. The result, Microsoft is now working at no cost with the Toronto Police Department and is ready to roll out the first trial of a sophisticated search tool to help in the fight against the hundreds of thousands of child porn sites on the Internet.
Sergeant Gillespie, because of your efforts to fight the proliferation of child porn, you are making this world a better place. And you are my hero of the week.
Dork: You know, when you play with wild animals, you run the risk of being bitten by the hand that feeds you. No, I’m not talking about the tragic event in Las Vegas. Siegfried & Roy are professionals. This week’s dork is not a professional animal handler. Our dork is an Antoine Yates.
Doesn’t appear six days a week on stage with his tiger. Mr. Yates appeared with his tiger seven days a week in a public housing apartment in New York. Not only did he keep a tiger as a roommate, he kept a five-foot-long alligator.
Yes, he’s a dork, but the people who lived in the apartment complex are also dorks. Can the super please send me the addresses and names of these people?
People, here’s a note: Anything outside of a dog, cat, gerbil, bunny, rabbit, guinea pig, hamster, turtle, or goldfish is not a household pet.
You can nominate a hero and a dork by dropping me an e-mail at [email protected].