Happy Halloween, Except for You

Happy Halloween, Except for You
What the hell is wrong with the parents of the next generation these days?  Look at this laundry list of stupidity that is banned in our public schools: A special thanks to my colleague Ross for writing this horrorshow.

Read the entire article here. 

All the Things Schools Have Banned This Month

A whole slate of schools have discipline and behavioral issues this week, as students harness both new and old strategies for doing stupid things, as well as ruining everyone's fun.

Here's what schools have been fighting this week:

1. Halloween: Inglewood Elementary School, in Lansdale, Pa., has done something particularly spoooooky for this year: Ban Halloween. Or so it seemed. The principal sent a note home saying that some people view Halloween as a spiritual holiday, and celebrations would therefore be limited due to the possibility of appearing to support Halloween. The school district, though, released a letter saying that Halloween was OK. This brings us to ...

2. Bad communication about Halloween: The North Penn School District, which controls Inglewood, released a statement in response to the local uproar, clarifying that Halloween would indeed be celebrated, but in a way that doesn't cut entirely into instructional time.

"One of NPSD's educational goals is to advance students' knowledge and appreciation of the roles that religious and cultural heritage have played in the social [and] historical development of our civilization. NPSD complies with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that school districts may not endorse, prefer, favor, promote or advance any religious beliefs. Unfortunately, the school communication inaccurately confuses the two issues."

If anyone wants to talk to the school's principal, you can find her by the bus that NPSD threw her under.

3. Tag: "Tag, you're it!" "Tag, YOU'RE EXPELLED!" Tag is a game reserved for the school of hard knocks, which does not describe Charlotte Avenue Elementary School, in Nashua, N.H., where tag is not allowed. The school principal, Patricia Beaulieu, posted a letter to the school website on Oct. 4, reminding the community that tag can be dangerous, and in comments to the Nashua Telegraph, noted the school's no-contact rule. Apparently, Charlotte Avenue students have tallied eight injuries this year, including multiple concussions and broken bones. Instead, kids can play nice, safe sports like soccer and basketball.

4. The "Knockout Game": This is the only paragraph you really need to read, from the Ledger-Enquirer, about the Muscogee County School District in Georgia:

"At least six students reportedly have taken turns playing the 'Knockout Challenge,' when a person takes multiple quick breaths until feeling dizzy. Then another person presses the participant's chest for several seconds until the participant passes out. The game also is called the 'Passout Challenge.'"

5. Cellphones: Two Iowa students have been given three-day suspensions for multiple violations of a new cellphone ban at the Bondurant-Farrar Community School District. Students are allowed to carry them, but can't look at them during the day. In other news, Bondurant-Farrar plans to put chocolate cake down in front of students and tell them not to eat it.

6. Brazen hazing: Garfield High School, in Seattle, suspended 11 students suspected of hazing at a gathering of 100 drunk students in a nearby park. This would be the same Garfield High School, by the way, where teachers staged a vocal protest of district assessments last year. Likewise, students likely protested blood-alcohol tests.

7. Handshakes: As my colleague Bryan Toporek writes over at Schooled in Sports, the Kentucky High School Athletic Association recommended Tuesday that teams "not participate in organized postgame handshake lines/ceremonies beyond that interaction that is required." The KHSAA quickly issued a clarification that they were just making a recommendation, not a rule, but the backlash had already started. A state representative said he would work on a bill to prevent the KHSAA from enforcing their recommendation, but he might not be giving the organization (wait for it!) ... a fair shake.

These aren't all supposed to be indicative of some trend about schools banning fun—schools are constantly out to ruin the party trying to protect students from themselves. It's just a hefty amount of proof over a particularly short time span that monitoring students is a constant struggle. A lot of these schools' actions—particularly the tag prohibition, and less so the hazing incident—brought a swift community backlash, however. Together, the incidents show how schools can handle their messaging about expectations for conduct, and what happens if there is poor communication.

Children: Perpetually difficult.

Correction: An earlier version of this post should have referred to the MAP test as a district test.

Follow Rules for Engagement on Twitter @Rulz4Engagement.

Woman of the Ghetto

As you may recall from my earlier post, Marlena Shaw is a hidden American musical treasure. In the 1974 she produced an album called  "Who is This Bitch, Anyway?" I cannot tell you just how incredible cool this singer is. Her vocal skills aside, her politics are red hot.

Or at least were. I'm on a mission to see her in concert, so I can get up close and see what she's like now that she must be seriously old now.

It's quite a thing to find a singer of this calibre after all these years of not having any idea she ever existed. Her ability to create mood, memory, and political awareness in a single song is exceptional.

There are few singers who achieve this. I can think of The Jam (“Going Underground”), The Clash (“¡Sandanista!”, and Nina Simone (“FourWomen”). Janis Ian had a brief brush with brilliance with "Society's Child," and there was always Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit." But "Woman of the Ghetto" has an urgency that you cannot mistake.

With lines sung to an unnamed "legislator" about just what he needs to know when passing laws that impact her, a woman of the ghetto, she just tears it up.

How do you raise your kids in a ghetto?

How do you raise your kids in a ghetto?

Do you feed one child and starve another?

Won't you tell me, legislator?

—Marlena Shaw

To a moment to enjoy this musical interlude: "Woman of the Ghetto."

I heard this for the first time and thought about Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and his remarkably un-Christian remarks about poor folks who use foodstamps. I mean with the recession of 2008, it’s as if he had complete and total amnesia, and didn't even realize WHY a spike in the use of foodstamps might occur.

Thanks to Shaw, I couldn't help but see through the haze of his "pro-American" chicanery:

“No program in our government has surged out of control more dramatically than food stamps,” said Sessions. “And now, nothing is being done at it, about it. Nobody is looking under the hood. It had doubled in the last three years. It had quadrupled from 20 billion to 80 billion in the last 10 years.

“When it started,” he said, “it was one in 50 people on the food stamp program. Now, it’s one in 7. Lottery winners, multimillion-dollar lottery winners are getting food stamps because that money is considered to be an asset, not an income.”

—Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) Oct 20, 2011

50 people, Mr. Sessions? Really? Oy vey.

At any rate, one of my favorite electro-lounge groups, St. Germain sampled "Woman of the Ghetto" (from Live at Montreux) in "Rose Rouge" on Tourist (2000), and her voice in that sample has resonated with me for over a decade. Then one day, I’m on Spotify and there the whole song was.

My aural life shifted, and now, I can barely get her out of my mind. The funny thing is that her version of Diana Ross' “Touch Me In the Morning” was a huge disco hit in the late ‘70s, and I cannot even compare these songs. That’s just how versatile Shaw is.

News in Briefs

Sent  by my Coworker
to the Entire Staff Today

You gotta keep on your toes where I work. Too many overeducated people with too much time on their hands. And today was no exception.

In response to this email from her boss who sent an inadvertently provocative email to all staff, my colleague Catherine sent this "artwork" back to the entire staff.

This email got a personal thank you from me in return.

Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2013 10:22 AM
To: Reporters; Editors
Cc: Art
Subject: Potential Chart/Graph Material

Please let me know if you have any material for charts or graphs that could go with the briefs. Thanks.

(Just so you know, briefs are shorthand in our office for "news in brief" a section of the paper!)

American Exceptionalism

Thanks to you, my work colleague Ross Brenneman, I have lost 5 minutes of my life that I can never get back. Now, I bring you this treat.

He sent around the office an images from "Heidi Hits Children" (@heiditron3000, which linked me to this guy's blog on Tumblr. Which let me to this:

Isn't this like a sign out of "Mad Max?"

Which in addition to reminding me of why I kinda hate my hometown—because it was covered in stripmalls with signs like these—sent me to the good people at Google to look up "The Decorative Diaper." I mean, for godsakes, what could that be, except for what a child does to the insides of a diaper? 

From the pages of the
Decorative Diaper,  a diaper trike

But no. It led me to this Facebook page for the Decorative Diaper business (I mean #1, not #2).

You need to "like" this page, because the lady taking the time to create monstrosities like these needs support. It scares me what kind of time suburban moms have on their hands. I cannot believe that women with full time jobs create things like this.

But the fun doesn't stop there, oh no, I want to encourage you to look up sports lingerie.

Frankly, now that I think of it…is sports lingerie…jockstraps? What exactly could the creator of that shop have been thinking? This is American exceptionalism. Exceptionally, exhaustively innovative.

Maybe this is what my right wing friends mean when they say,

"America better innovate or die."

 I think I understand now. I hope you find the time to look up these other stunning suburban businesses in Burbank, California, including Nana's Catheteria. Youch!

Empty Gestures Mean so Much

Remembrance of Things Past?

Um...sometimes there comes a time when you just have to "call a spade a bloody shovel," as my ex used to say. So it is that today.

On the one month anniversary of September 11, 2013, I bring you a vision of our idiocracy that apparently appeared in an unnamed city's Courtyard Marriott. Photographed by @eclectrica, this little treasure shows us all how ridiculous we can be, when we try hard enough.

It's my pleasure to bring you what happens when we live our lives through our mobile phone cameras, and not through our own two eyes.

Let's hope this was Marriott-wide policy and that you could have gone to the Marriotts in downtown NYC and seen signage like this. Man-oh-man, I can hear the New Yorkers now:

"What the hell, Fred. Get a load of this! The terrorists killed over 3,000 people, and we got free mini-muffins for 30 minutes in remembrance. Mini-muffins?! Where are the friggin' bagles? This happened in New York for chrissake!" 

Be sure to open your purses, there's more mini-muffins from where those came.

Wow...dear lord. One friend replied: " If that offer from 8:45-9:15 was supposed to correspond to the window of time when the towers were hit than this is just as tasteless as those muffins likely were."

1. J Crowley ‏@jdcrowley11 Sep

   @eclectrica @Cheesegod69 "My husband died in the WTC and all I got were these lousy muffins."

   Details
   

   •  Reply 
   •  Retweet 
   •  Favorite 
2. J Crowley ‏@jdcrowley11 Sep

   @eclectrica @Cheesegod69 "It's 9/11, we should do something, but what?" "Half an hour of mini-muffins in an awkward time slot?" "Brilliant."

   Details
3. chrisna ‏@chrisna11 Sep

   @eclectrica We eat mini muffins for those who cannot.

   Details
4. Pierce Cavanaugh ‏@JPCIV11 Sep

   Thanks, Marriott. RT @eclectrica: What pic.twitter.com/HI9yggeOco

   Details
5. Bart Smith ‏@bart_smith11 Sep

   But just for a half hour. —RT @eclectrica What pic.twitter.com/X159Yp8r23

   Details
6. Derek Schultz ‏@Schultz126011 Sep

   What a touching tribute. Seriously, how clueless are some companies? RT @JPCIV Thanks, Marriott. RT @eclectrica: What pic.twitter.com/in5JNfirVY

   Details

PRC or U.S. House of Representatives?

Falun Gong as Realized by Giotto

Received the most beautiful Renaissance-inspired rendering of a live organ transplant in China today.  Just had to share. That nutty Falun Gong group is alleging that the PRC had nothing better to do than rip open the chests of live people and rip out their vital organs.

While far-fetched, we have to remember, the U.S. House of Representatives is toying with letting the U.S. economy default on its debt and cause the dollar to crash all in an effort to let their constituents know that they did what they were elected to do.

Maybe Chinese officials were elected to do this to Falun Gong members. "Hey lady, I don't wanna rip out your vital organs, but the voters made me do it."

____________________________________________________________________

Just so you don't think I'm nuts, this is the actual email from "Andy" that came into my work inbox. Oy vey, why can't Microsoft ForeFront come up with a better way to block spam?

Dear Sir / Madam, we really need your help.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) performs the second-highest number of organ transplants per country per year, yet there exist no sufficient public organ donation program or organ distribution system in China, and the Chinese population has a cultural aversion to donation.

It is understood that medical professionals in the People’s Republic of China began conducting organ transplants with the use of organs that were harvested from executed prisoners in the 1980s. In June 2001, Chinese Dr. Wang Guoqi testified before the House International Affairs Subcommittee that hospitals worked in collusion with state security agencies to extract organs from executed prisoners without written consent of the donors. These transplants became a lucrative source of income for Chinese hospitals.

The practice of sourcing organs from nonconsenting prisoners is a violation of medical ethics and has been condemned by international medical organizations, such as the WMA, TTS and the transplant community.

In order to protect their families and associates, while in detention, many Falun Gong prisoners refuse to provide their real names or other identifying information. This makes them more of a target for transplant abuse.

In 2006, Canadian researchers human-rights attorney David Matas and former Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific David Kilgour conducted an investigation into allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners. Based on extensive circumstantial evidence, their report concluded that the allegations were true, and that tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners may have been killed for their organs.

In their book Bloody Harvest, Messrs. Matas and Kilgour quote a 2006 phone recording of a doctor from a Chinese hospital:

Caller: I want to know how long [the patients] have to wait [for a liver transplant].

Dr. Dai: The supply of organs we have, we have every day. We do them every day.

Caller: We want fresh, live ones.

Dr. Dai: They are all live, all live…

Caller: I heard some come from those who practice Falun Gong, those who are very healthy.

Dr. Dai: Yes, we have. I can’t talk openly to you over the phone.

Caller: If you can find me this type, I am coming very soon.

Dr. Dai: It’s OK. Please come.

After 1999, an exponential increase of transplantations in China coincided with the onset of the unlawful and brutal persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. In the absence of a public organ-donation program and a decrease in the number of executions, detained Falun Gong practitioners became part of a living pool of donors, ready to be organ harvested on demand. They have been contributing to the more than 10,000 transplants per year in China.

Falun Gong practitioners are subject to medical examinations while in detention, such as blood tests, urine tests, X-rays, and physical exams. These examinations are unlikely to be motivated by health care concerns since detained Falun Gong practitioners are subject to persecution and torture. It is implausible that the detention centers would go to the extra expense for the exams unless there were financial returns.

There is a significant discrepancy between the number of organ transplants performed in China and the number of identifiable sources of organs, including death row prisoners. The PRC government has failed to adequately account for the sources of these organs.

Senior Chinese Communist Party officials are complicit in the forced organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners. In 2012, David Matas said at the annual conference of the International Association of Genocide Scholars in San Francisco:

“On Nov. 30, 1999, the ‘610 Office’ [in China] called more than 3,000 officials to the Great Hall of the People in the capital to discuss the campaign against Falun Gong, which was then not going well.  Demonstrations were continuing to occur at Tiananmen Square. The head of the ‘610 Office’, Li Lanqing, announced the government’s new policy on the movement:‘Defame their reputations, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically.’

A call to destroy Falun Gong physically is a call to genocide. It is not admittedly a call to genocide through sourcing their organs. Nonetheless, when that sourcing occurs, in the context of a call for physical destruction, the two should be linked. Organ sourcing is the means. Physical destruction is the intent.”

Under the format of “executing prisoners”, killing people to harvest their organs for transplantation is a crime against humanity and a breach of medical ethics. The demand for transplant organs must not justify the means.

Falun Gong practitioners, the largest group of prisoners of conscience in China, are the main targets of this crime against humanity.

-----

You can help by signing the petition to the UN Human Rights High Commissioner Calling for an Immediate End of Forced Organ Harvesting From Falun Gong Practitioners in China.

Click here : http://www.dafoh.org/petition-to-the-united-nations/

And please forward this email to your friends or relatives, so this persecution can be ended soon.

Your help can save many lives.

Thank you.

Urgent Email About Victor From Tariq

  

From: Tariq Khalil Badran [mailto:abudhabi.branch@cbd.ae]
Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2013
To: A Thing That Makes Me Go Hmmmmm...
Subject: Please can we talk?

Hi,

I need to discuss with you about Victor.Please contact me.

Tariq K.B

Tariq,

OMG! So great to hear from you. 

Just so you know, I'll be on vacation until well into next month, so I can't really email right now. Mai Tais by the pool, and all. 

But really super to get your message. Do let Victor know we all love him, and hope that his family can find the money to cover the ransom.

 

Speak with you when I get back from Turks and Caicos. 

Enjoy the sunshine!

—A Thing That Makes Me Go Hmmmmm...