Archive for the 'Outbound Links' Category

I find this perplexing:

A former teacher at Early High School turned herself in to police last week and was charged with having an inappropriate relationship with an 18-year-old male student.

Joy Blackstock, 23, was indicted May 1 by the Brown County grand jury. The indictment was sealed until she turned herself in May 8. Blackstock, who used to teach chorus at Early High School, was released on a $15,000 bond.

Logs at the Brown County Jail show Blackstock was charged with improper relations between an educator and student, a second-degree felony. If convicted, Blackstock faces two to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

I don’t really understand how in the case of sodomy laws, the behind-closed-doors sexual acts of two consenting adults is found to be too private to be regulated, but when one of them is a teacher all bets are off. I mean, honestly, he was 18 years old.

Also? Ms. Blackstock is kinda hot. The “victim” is going to be bragging about this for the next 80 years.

It’s always good to be prepared.

…you never know — it could happen.

(Via: Kristin Hoppe)

So, the Navy shot down an errant spy satellite today. The story they gave was concern over the toxicity of the fuel… and the media seemed to lap that up.

Why is it that nobody has mentioned the fact that this satellite probably has millions of dollars worth of classified technology on it that other nations would love to get their hands on. Doesn’t it seem more likely that that was the Department of Defense’s primary concern, and the fuel was a convenient excuse to blow the thing up?

XKCD is always pretty funny.

Not my baby, of course. I took a little drive to Illinois yesterday (hence the lack of posting) but I did take a whole lot of pictures. She’s such a tiny little thing. Observe:

Click for more pictures of Reese

Scout also got to meet some ferrets, which was pretty funny.

So the anti-war nuts in Berkeley have been spending their time (do they have jobs?) protesting a Marine Corps recruiting station. Their city council voted on a resolution to voice their displeasure for the post and said “If recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders.”¹

Typically, when I hear something like this, I roll my eyes and remember that tolerance includes tolerating people like those.

A far more appropriate response, though, is this one:

In Washington, a group of Republican lawmakers have introduced the Semper Fi Act of 2008 — named after the Marine motto — to rescind more than $2 million of funds for Berkeley and transfer it to the Marine Corps.

“Like most Americans, I really get disturbed when taxpayer money goes to institutions which proceed to take votes, make policy or make statements that really denigrate the military,” said Sen. David Vitter, R-Louisiana, a co-sponsor of the bill.

He told CNN he believes the bill will pass. “I think it’s going to have significant support.”

The bill’s co-sponsor, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina, said in a written statement, “Berkeley needs to learn that their actions have consequences.”

This is pretty much the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard. While I doubt it will go anywhere, it would certainly send a message: don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

1. As if that’s ever stopped them before.

Call the racism police… ‘Jena 6′ teen arrested after another school fight.

A member of the group dubbed the “Jena 6″ is facing misdemeanor assault charges after a fight at his Texas high school Wednesday, police said Thursday.

Everyone knows you can’t arrest a black student for attacking someone. That’s racist.

You cannot even imagine how shocked I am that Purvis, one of the guys who ganged up on a kid and beat him unconscious, choked a kid for letting the air of his tires. At least he had the balls to attack the kid one-on-one this time. Maybe that qualifies as “improvement”.

Lileks has a great column today about how it’s un-PC to love America unless you temper your comments with sufficient criticism.

But. Someone somewhere is a practicing Baptist and someone somewhere else is eating a hamburger larger than you’d prefer, and other people are watching cars go around a track at high speed. As your skinny unhappy friend said the other night: people are just too fat and happy. He bites his nails and plays WoW six hours a night, but he has a point. It doesn’t matter that these fascists-in-fetal-form never quite seem to accomplish anything; it’s not like they drove the gay Teletubbies off the air or had Tony Kushner drawn and quartered in the public square. But they’re preventing something. Something wonderful. And they’re driving large cars to Wal-Mart and putting 18-roll packs of Charmin in the back and they have three kids. Earth has withstood a lot in its four billion years, but it cannot withstand them. And even if it does, who wants to live in a world where these people don’t care that they’re being mocked by small, underfunded theaters in honest, gritty neighborhoods? (Which are being gentrified by upwardly-mobile poseurs who have decided it’s a great place to live because the theater is good and the restaurants are cheap. F#$ing interlopers. But we’ll deal with them later.)

Excellent from beginning to end. Then again, if you didn’t pick up on the sarcasm in the quoted passage (or are mildly offended by it), you probably won’t like what you find on the other end of that link.

(Via: Kristin)

Say what?

According to this week’s Fire Cracker school newsletter though, the joke’s on the boys as the penalty for “intentional farting” is now a detention.

“Strange, but true, thanks to a bunch of 8th grade boys, intentional farting has been banned from CRMS,” the newsletter said. “It started out as a funny joke and eventually turned into a game. This is the first rule at CRMS that prevents the use of natural bodily functions. The penalty for intentional farting is a detention, so keep it to yourself!”

So does this mean that students have to try to hold it, or they’re just not allowed to make a production of it? What about accidental farts that, nevertheless, give the boys a strong sense of satisfaction? How on earth is the teacher going to know whether it was intentional or not?

The best quote from the article was from one of the students who said “It’s a natural occurrence and we all do it 16 times a day.”

16 times? Not even Scout farts 16 times a day. At least not every day.

(via: Kristin Hoppe)