Category: ZT & PC

… may be less stressed than those who obsess on it.

Cronaca, which focuses on historical and archaeological stuff, weighs in on the restitutionist debate, and its latest iteration — the demand that the Lindisfarne Gospels be returned to the north of England whence they were snatched by agents of Henry VIII during the Reformation. They currently reside in the British Library.

Nice thought, but if the Gospels are to be handed over to anyone, shouldn’t it then be the Roman Catholic Church?
[…] Seriously, this is pushing the restitution issue beyond the bounds of absurdity. There is room for reasonable persons to disagree over what should be done with objects removed by colonial powers in the modern era. But trying to undo (selectively, at that) the Dissolution nearly 500 years later? Where will it all end? I know one Byzantinist colleague who is still outraged over the Venetian-led sack of Constantinople in 1204. Perhaps the Fourth Crusade loot that adorns San Marco should now be sent back — but where? Istanbul? Greece? Russia? And the various Viking hoards that have been found in northern Europe, Britain, and Ireland over the years — should they be sent back to Scandinavia, or put into trust for the descendants of the victims of Viking raids?

Warning: bringing a legally-available sports magazine to school could get you in hot water.

Justin Reyes, 12, was suspended for three days after he brought the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition to his public school.
A teacher confiscated the magazine and officials recommended time at an alternative school.

Huh?

Other sources suggest that the suspension came because he refused the alternative school time.

Superintendent Tim Swarr says Reyes was suspended for defiance of authority after refusing to go to alternative school as a punishment.
Swarr says the pictures inside the magazine are a violation of school policy as set in the school handbook.

Ah. He wasn’t suspended as a punishment for bringing the magazine, he was suspended for not going to alternative school as a punishment for bringing the magazine. Well, that makes everything clear —

Oh, give me a break.

Let us posit that school policy forbids the bringing of Sports Illustrated (the swimsuit issue in particular) to school.

As a former teacher, the correct course of action seems clear:

1. Confiscate the magazine.
2. Sit the kid’s ass down in the school office for some period of time.
3. Explain sitch to kid, advise him that a repeat will lead to repercussions.

Alternative school doesn’t even enter into it. Yeesh.

Other stories provide more details:

Justin Reyes had the magazine in the gymnasium at Belpre Middle School before classes Feb. 18, and Principal Kathy Garrison cited him for violating school’s policy on nonverbal harassment and possession of lewd or suggestive material

I can imagine a situation where it could be considered “nonverbal harassment,” but I suspect this is just a CYA term. As for SI being “suggestive,” well, yes, that’s sort of the point — but that’s probably going to be true for any number of magazine and magazine ads, even apart from the Swimsuit Issue.

She ordered the 12-year-old boy to spend two days at an alternative school where students from several area districts are sent when they get into trouble.

Good Lord. Do they sing re-education camp songs and grow sustenance crops out back for the school cafeteria?

But Superintendent Tim Swarr said Justin and his mother, Nicole Reyes, refused to accept the punishment, so the penalty was increased to three days of out-of-school suspension. “Last time I checked, we were in charge of running the schools,” Swarr said.

Swarr then started rolling some large ball bearings in his hands in a noisy and irritating fashion.

Now, again, we don’t know what the conversation was like between the Reyeses and Swarr. Both seem, from quotes, not the most compromising of individuals.

Then, of course, there’s this gem:

[Swarr] said he had never seen SI’s swimsuit edition before. “I was shocked,” he said. “It doesn’t belong in public schools.”

I am not someone who buys the annual swimsuit edition (and, had it been available when I was in sixth grade, I probably couldn’t have afforded it), but, jeez, I’ve at least looked at it. (Yawn. Bored now.) I find it — incredible, in the underlying sense of the word, that Swarr has never seen it before.

Do I think the SISE is, in fact, appropriate fare for middle school? Maybe not. But, again, the punishment is, you confiscate the thing and impose some immediate, short-term punishment — picking up trash out in the yard, sitting in the principal’s office, staying after school. You don’t shuffle the kid off the the Big House, or, when you get into pissing matches with his mom, suspend him for three days. Nobody wins in that case — except the media.

Just a gentle reminder that it’s not just the Secret Service and the Bushies who pull this sort of crap:

Protesters at this summer’s Democratic National Convention in Boston may be confined to a cozy triangle of land off Haymarket Square, blocked off from the FleetCenter and convention delegates by a maze of Central Artery service roads, MBTA train tracks, and a temporary parking lot holding scores of buses and media trucks.
Under a preliminary plan floated by convention organizers, the “free-speech zone” would be a small plot bounded by Green Line tracks and North Washington Street, in an area that until recently was given over to the elevated artery. The zone would hold as few as 400 of the several thousand protesters who are expected in Boston in late July.
[…] The disappointment in the preliminary plans is likely to be the start of a protracted battle that has the potential to end up in court, as did a similar dispute at the 2000 Democratic convention in Los Angeles. Relegated to a parking lot blocks from the convention arena, protesters sued, and less than a month before that convention began, a federal judge ruled that the designated area was unconstitutional. Organizers were forced to move the area to a parking lot directly across the street from an arena entrance, in keeping with earlier federal court rulings that any legal demonstration be allowed within “sight and sound” of its intended audience.

(via InstaPundit)

I’m not as hep into the “Nanny State” meme as some libertarians are. I think there are times when it is appropriate for the state, as an expression of the public will, to take some decisions out of the responsibility of individuals in the state. My list of appropriate instances has narrowed over the years, but I don’t think it would have ever included this sort of thing.

Some [New Mexico] state lawmakers are convinced they have the answer to solve the D.W.I. epidemic and want to require everyone on the road to take a breathalyzer test before they can start the engine of any vehicle.
Today, the proposal is one very large step closer to becoming law.
A bill requiring an ignition interlock device be installed on every car, truck, bus or motorcycle in New Mexico passed the state house today and is on its way to the senate.
Representative Ken Martinez introduced the bill and says he was pleasantly surprised with today’s vote. “I think it’s an opportunity for N.M. to lead on this issue and be a solution state and not a problem state,” says Martinez.

You heard it: every vehicle in the state would have to have a breathalyzer on it, and you couldn’t start the vehicle without passing the test. Presumed drunk until proven sober, so to speak.

And it’s passed at least one house of the New Mexico state legislature.

Granted, alcoholism and DWI is a serious problem, in New Mexico in particular. But doesn’t seem a wee bit … condescending? Paternalistic? Insane?

Because, remember — it’s not enough to “raise awareness about women’s issues” and to make sure that “all proceeds went toward fighting violence against women” from your college production of The Vagina Monologues. To be a truly virtuous production of the feminist play, you have to make sure that every vagina is well-represented.

In flyers handed out to audience members at the show, University graduate Nicole Sangsuree Barrett wrote that while there was “diversity” in the show, it was minimal. Women of “a variety of skin colors, body sizes, abilities and gender expressions” were not adequately represented, she said.
“I would just like to call attention to the fact that this could have been a more diverse cast, but a safe and welcoming environment was not created for people that I consider to be underrepresented,'” Barrett said in the statement.
[…] Senior Melissa Ballard, one of the demonstrators, was originally part of the cast, but said the directors asked her to leave a week before the show started because she was “hostile.”
“The Vagina Monologues is a very good cause but not all women were represented in this production of the monologue,” Ballard said. After her dismissal, she said only one other woman of color remained in the show. “Plus size” and queer women were also not well-represented, she said.

Not that the directors had a lot of choice.

Mays said about 85 people auditioned for the show and there wasn’t a large pool of “visible” people of color to choose from. She said it is also not always possible to tell one’s ethnicity or sexual orientation just by looking at the person, adding that she does not usually ask people what their sexual orientation is at an audition.
Mays, who is part Native American herself, said she mainly wanted strong women with passion and dedication when she made the casting decisions. “I’m not just going to put someone in my show because of the way they look,” she said, adding that to do so is in itself a form of discrimination.

Yes, but that’s good discrimination, not bad discrimination. Silly person. Back to the education camps with you …

Hey, look — my alma mater‘s in the news. Though not, perhaps, as it would like to be.

An e-mail from group leaders [of OAD, a quasi-fraternity] suggested that members snap “a photo with 10 or more Asians,” an ethnic group that makes up about 13 percent of students.
Rumors about the photo scavenger hunt, which also asked members to photograph themselves doing things like standing on a roof, mooning fellow students, or blocking traffic, soon passed from students angered by its racial overtones to college administrators.
Ann Quinley, the dean of students, sent an e-mail to all students denouncing the incident, quickly making it the buzz of Pomona College’s 1,500 students.
“The potential of having numerous students run around campus trying to snap photographs with 10 or more Asian or Asian American people is racist, offensive, and in violation of shared community values,” Quinley wrote on behalf of the Incident Response Team, a committee that responds to “bias-related incidents and hate crimes.

Um, at the sake of sounding insensitive, it sure sounds like the incident is being blown out of proportion. If instead of “Asians” the suggestion was “women” or “men” or “people wearing blue” or “blondes” or “atheletes,” I don’t think it would be garnering the sort of reaction it’s getting.

Not that the whole scavenger hunt idea isn’t goofy, but I’d be more worried about encouraging folks to block traffic …

I am opposed to censorship. Let’s get that straight off the bat. For the government to tell someone that they cannot tell me something (or vice-versa) is personally offensive and philosophically dangerous. Only in a few exceptional cases (national security being the most obvious) do I accept such restrictions.

Censorship is deadly serious — which is why when I see people bandying about the word loosely, it seriously irks me. Private restraint of private speech (ABC deciding to not let people talk about a particular topic, or particular slant on a particular topic) is not censorship. It may be stupid, oppressive, despicable, or otherwise worth boycotting them for (or not), but it’s not censorship.

Nor is this issue, even though, in this case, the government is involved.

The Department of Education has apparently changed the processes by which it decides how to offer grant money to organizations that pay for closed captioning. Previously, these organizations had their own consumer boards that expressed an interest in what shows to caption; the DoED has evidently done some preliminary review (behind somewhat closed doors) and identified shows that it considers acceptible (and non-acceptible) for grant money to caption.

Some observations:

1. Transparency in government is desirable. If there are criteria used to make determinations of this sort, or a group put together to do so, the proceedings should be public. In this case, the DoED seems to be making decisions without a clear, public definition.
2. Public input to governmental processes and decision-making is almost always desirable. There are times when it is not, but those are the exceptions, not the rule. Certainly something like this is inconvenient to have have public input, if only because everyone has a favorite show, and every show has its fans. Inconvenience and controversy, however, are no more legitimate a reason to hide a decision-making process than they are to avoid making decisions.

3. The DoED obviously has only so much money. It’s not the government’s job to caption every TV show. I’m as much a fan of Samurai Jack as the next person (and maybe more than most), but I don’t think my tax dollars are best spent on its captioning (vs. other purposes to which they could be put), any more than it should be spent on generating audio CDs to be put on comic books for the blind. That’s not insensitivity (I would be really unhappy were I to lose the ability to read comic books), but I don’t think that’s the government’s primary responsibility with my tax dollars.

4. The DoED’s list is not censorship. The government is not banning captioning of the shows involved, simply declining to pay for it. The rights of the disabled are not infringed by the DoED not giving grant money to pay for captioning of I Dream of Jeannie any more than my rights are infringed upon by their not picking up Firefly for another season. Any third party who wants to pony up to CC Ed, Edd ‘n Eddy, or Hollywood Rocks the Movies (The 60’s), or Law and Order, or Justice League — more power to ’em.

Would I like to see every show on TV captioned? Sure. For that matter, I’d like to see an alternate audio track describing the action for the blind. Heck, I’d like every show on TV to be available on basic cable and broadcast, so that poor people don’t face a financial burden if they want to see CNN or the Golf Channel or HBO.

But I don’t necessarily think it’s the government’s job. And crying censorship over it only makes criticisms of true censorship weaker. It’s the Boy Crying Wolf thang, y’know?

And, heck, I enjoy and benefit from closed captioning, too — in restaurants and the like where the sound is turned down and I can follow along what’s being broadcast. That doesn’t make it a responsibility of the Federal government to be sure I can following along ESPN while queued up at Tokyo Joe’s at lunch.

There are some oddities on the lists, to be sure — the sort of strange judgment calls that prove the first points above. Why, for example, is Angelina Ballerina eliglble for grant money, but Stanley isn’t? Is Chalkzone really that much more educational than Sheep in the Big City? Is Max and Ruby better than Time Squad?

But those are, ultimately, judgment calls (though ones that there should be accountability for). The basic idea that the DoED should be paying for educational TV, vs. entertainment TV (even if one can argue that entertainment TV can be educational) seems pretty clear to me. Paying money to make sure that deaf people can follow along ABC World News seems a lot more important — or at least more tax-worthy — than that they can follow along ABC Sports coverage of the NBA, regardless of claims that cutting off federal funding of captioning of sports events will isolate deaf adults and kids.

I don’t think that makes me a censor.

So, if you were going to come up with the most unnecessary, insulting, or jaw-dropping warning labels on the following products, what would they be?

1. A smoke detector
2. A fishing lure
3. A tall CD storage rack
4. A sled
5. A bottle of drain cleaner

Check out this year’s Wacky Warning Labels from the Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch, and see how you scored.

(Warning: Contest void where prohibited. No macaques were harmed in the writing of this post. Do not do a celebratory spike of your PC if you score well; parts may fly up and lodge in your throat. No responsibility is taken by this site for any throat-lodging that occurs. Loose lips sink ships. Blog contents are inert; do not eat.)

We’ve heard of “hostile work environments,” where employers are obliged to take disciplinary action against those whose speech and actions offend other employees based on sex, national origin, disability, etc.

But are landlords similarly liable to take action against tenants who create a “hostile housing environment“? Evidently so.

In defense of “freedom of speech,” Al Franken body-slammed a heckler from behind and threw him to the ground at a New Hampshire Dean campaign stop.

“I got down low and took his legs out,” said Franken afterwards.
Franken said he’s not backing Dean but merely wanted to protect the right of people to speak freely. “I would have done it if he was a Dean supporter at a Kerry rally,” he said.
“I’m neutral in this race but I’m for freedom of speech, which means people should be able to assemble and speak without being shouted down.”

Hmmm. Wonder if he’d have done it if it were a Dean supporter at a Bush rally.

Or for that matter, I wonder what the headlines would read if it had been, say, Sean Hannity knocking down a heckler at a Bush rally. Or, for that matter, a Secret Service agent doing the body-slamming.

I have no great fondness for Lyndon LaRouche supporters (whose candidate sort of epitomizes the idea that if you go far enough to the fringe, both the Left and Right circle back together). But I find the idea that assault is a reasonable defense of free speech, or an acceptable way to deal with hecklers, to be more than a bit dubious.

(via Command Post)

The RSPCA is now Officially Concerned about the cruelty and demeaning being done to … maggots, cockroaches, and ants.

Oh, and rats, too, though I can at least have some glimmer of desire not to see rats unnecessarily mistreated (though “unnecessary” covers a very thin territory with me when it comes to rats).

But ants? Roaches? Maggots?

I mean, does the RSPCA really have so much time and money on their hands that they can afford to go beyond protecting, say, cats, dogs, and horses (to name three animals that often face cruelty, demeaning actions, and suffering) and extend their benificent hand out to ants, maggots, and roaches?

To be sure, some of it seems to be the sense that mistreatment of living things (e.g., roaches) on Reality TV shows creates an atmosphere where other living things (e.g., cats and dogs) might be more prone to abuse. But not only is that not demonstrated (I suspect that most people draw a distinction between ants and cats — though, perhaps that’s part of the “problem,” too), but it also makes the RSPCA look like a bunch of goofballs on the subject.

Which, for courtesy’s sake, I’ll assume they’re not.

(via ASV)

… like vegan condoms and bondage gear.

Because, remember: it’s okay to whip your lover, but not your cow.

(via Andrea)

Oh, excuse me, the Scottish police officers in question are probably not allowed to use the word “crook,” lest it indicate a prejudgment as to guilt — along with all sorts of other new words and terms that British police are now warned not to use, including “old” (as in people), “homosexual” (since it historically implies a mental disorder), “rule of thumb,” and “nitty-gritty.” The latter two are particularly entertaining in their banishment, since it’s based on bogus etymology.

Oh, and don’t even think about using the term “manhole cover” (sexist). Or about asking people (suspects or witnesses alike) if they’re married (potentially offensive to gays).

Maybe they should just shoot first and ask questions later, when the questionees aren’t around to be offended.

War. Terror. Crime. Drugs. Poverty. Injustice. Abuse. Bigotry. Disease. All horrible things that certainly would seem to be high on the list that any congresscritter would be devoting his or her time to combat.

Or, on the other hand, they can just try to ban dirty words from TV. After all, we all know that’s where the true threat to humanity lies.

Rep. Doug Ose of Sacramento has seven dirty words very much on his mind, courtesy of such free speakers as U2 singer Bono and Nicole Richie, the rich kid co-star of “The Simple Life.”
Fed up with recent repeated instances of broadcast TV networks allowing language that many people would deem offensive to be aired live, the Republican House member has introduced a bill that spells out the seven awful words that would be banned from the public air waves in all their forms and all their meanings — “including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms,” as the bill says.
Among the words are such swear-word standbys as those used for excrement, fornication, urine and parts of the body. The list includes one word, a — h — , twice, as one word, and in its compound form to leave no doubt Ose wants it banned.

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to hear Katherine using that kind of language because she heard it on TV. (I don’t want to hear her using it because she heard it from me, either, but that’s another tale.) But that’s why we control what TV she watches, and that’s why we monitor her language and correct her when she (so far inadvertently) uses improper language.

Parental responsibility. What a concept.

But Ose says such oversight frequently isn’t possible today, because of changes in family life. “There are a lot of latchkey kids,” said the congressman, who has daughters ages 11 and 9, referring to the number of children home alone after school while their parents work.

So instead of having parents make these sorts of decisinos, we’ll let the US Government do so. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea.

There’s any number of ways around that problem, of course. Including not having a TV in the house, having one with parental controls over what channels can be viewed, and, well, deciding which is more important, being able to monitor and oversee your child or running the risk your child will encounter some Naughty Words.

Or, heck, maybe Rep. Ose could consider ways to encourage parental care of kids, ways to reduce the latchkey children population (which has ramifications a lot more potentially dire than hearing a few bad words on TV). That would require effort, and wisdom, and other statesmanlike qualities, of course.

[Ose continues,] “I don’t want to be sitting there when a guy blurts something out over the TV and have my daughters ask me what those words mean.”

First off, if your daughters are 9 and 11, chances are they’ve already heard all or most of the listed terms. They probably know what many of them mean. And, regardless, they should have an idea already of the propriety of using them (if you’ve been doing your job as a parent, as opposed to simply pontificating about it).

Secondly, if your kids ask what they mean and you don’t want to tell them, simply tell them the truth — They are very rude words, and polite people don’t use them in public, and if I ever hear you using them, you will be in a world of hurt.

And, finally, if you’re finding a channel or show (or even TV in general) is letting material you consider offensive into your house — turn it off. If you think that a live broadcast of a rock music award ceremony might feature someone who will use offensive language, don’t watch it. It’s a radical idea, of course — sacrificing something you (or the kids) want to see for a principle — but, hey, that sounds like what a good parent do.

And let the local channel know you turned it off, let the national network know, let the production company know, and let the sponsors know. They can control the content of what they provide a lot better (and with better justification) than the Feds can.

Of course, the question is, where does this all lead? If these eight particular words are particularly offensive and thus deserve special attention in US law … what other words can or should be so defined? Will we maintain an exhaustive list of words which offend or are considered profane, and on what basis? Ought racial or other epithets be barred? Why is one slang word for excrement permissable and another isn’t?

Surely the House Energy and Commerce Committee has something better — perhaps even productive — to do with its time.

(via A Small Victory; tip o’ the title nib to Adam)

For the interest of those with sensitive constitutions, the pertinent section of the proposed bill (go here and enter “HR 3687” as the bill number) is stored in the extended entry info below. If you’re interested.

Continue reading “Words mean things”

Moving all folks who want to wave around signs and not be subjected to strip searches to “Free Speech Zones” far away from where the President is speaking is draconian, but possibly understandable in a time of war.

Moving just folks who are protesting against the President, but leaving sign-waving folks who support the President, is pretty clearly unconstitutional, since it discriminates on the basis of criminal speech. Claiming it’s a security measure is ludicrous. (Hint: Mad suicide bombers and shooters can pretend to be supporting the Pres.)

Stopping a public disruption once it starts is one thing. Preemptively doing so by trying to single out protesters, is counter-productive. And those who support it need to realize that it can and will come back to bite them (even if it doesn’t get worse) in other administrations that they may not care for. (For example, similar free speech zones occured at various times during the Clinton years.)

Lots of discussion on the blog circuit, most of it negative on the idea.

The US Supreme Court is considering hearing a case against the Mississippi state flag, which contains the Confederate battle emblem. Unlike most such suits against Confederate symbols, though, the suit is being brought by a Muslim, claiming that the flag is a religious symbol, based on the St Andrew’s Cross (like the Scottish national flag), and thus violates the Constitutional boundary between church and state.

While that argument seems to rest on dubious historic grounds (the designer of the Confederate battle emblem never referred to St Andrew’s cross in its description), there are other states where the connection is far clearer. The Hawaiian state flag, for example, has a Union Jack in the corner — a combination of the crosses of St George, St Andrew, and St Patrick (a triple threat!), and thus much more clearly of religious origin.

But, I mean, yeesh, guys. While it’s sometimes way too easy for folks to slip particularly obvious religion into governmental workings under the guise of “historical and cultural heritage,” this is a case of that being a legitimate excuse if ever there was one. I suspect that that not one in ten thousand Americans realizes the original religious symbolism of the Union Jack, for example — the union of the banners of the patron saints of the three countries involved. It’s hard to argue prejudice when we’re talking ignorance, instead.

It’s even worse with the Mississippi case, since I would argue that virtually nobody looks at the Confederate battle emblem and says, “Hey! Christian symbology!”

Except, it seems, the person bringing the suit.

Heck, Maryland would be a more obvious target, half of its flag containing clear crosses (the arms of the Crossland family). The official flags descriptions of New Jersey and New York both refer to the “goddesses.” And let’s not talk about how eagles, bears, stags, and even stars and, ahem, crescent moons have been used as religious symbols, and feature prominently on various state flags.

Yeesh.

(via Technoptimist)