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not only does it not work, it will never work. for anything, not just in the glaringly obvious cases, such as a 12yr. old being arrested for doodling. yes, that’s right, a 12yr. old kid wrote a silly 12yr. old girl message on a desk:

“I love my friends Abby and Faith. Lex was here 2/1/10 :)”

for this she was sent to the principal’s office, who then called the fucking cops and had her arrested. not a detention. arrested.

i’m not that old. high school was over a decade ago, sure, but damn, it would have taken a fucking lot to get arrested. even if you got in a fight, you’d just get detention and maybe suspended for a few days. maybe if you were selling drugs in the school, but even then it was iffy. if you fucked up in school you got punished according to the severity of the infraction. detention, kicked off a team, parents called in: all the normal stuff. yes, i know there is now DANGER! in schools, and yes, there are schools that are rightly concerned about weapons and violence. there are plenty of parents who don’t give a fuck about their kids (part of the problem, of course). none of this, however, justifies “zero tolerance” policies. why? here is the single most telling quote from the article:

Kenneth Trump, a security expert who founded the National School Safety and Security Services consulting firm, said focusing on security is essential to the safety of other students. He said zero tolerance policies can work if “common sense is applied.”

that statement should be enough to convince anyone with half a brain that zero tolerance policies are fatally flawed and that mr. trump is either dishonest or just stupid.

zero tolerance means just that: zero tolerance. if one starts to apply the ever nebulous “common sense” to interpreting said policy, it is no longer zero tolerance. you’ve just introduced tolerance. you are making distinctions between the severity of infractions. you are taking a person’s background and prior behavior into consideration. you are admitting there is a marked difference between writing a) “i’m going to kill my friends” and b) “i love my friends” and responding to the intent behind the infraction, not the simple physical action. sure, good old common sense tells us that a) is a cause for concern and means the kid’s parents should be called, as well as the school psychatrist and, as a last resort, the cops. whereas b) means you stay after class and clean all the desks.

we continue to see these stories: kids suspended for bringing nail clippers to school, honor roll student suspended for giving a friend an advil, etc.. they all end the same way: school apologizes, says it was a mistake and the parents wind up suing. as long as we continue to have zero tolerance policies they’ll keep showing up in the news. considering our laws for adults allow for tolerance, to such an extent that we recognize there are situations where it is justifiable to kill another person, it make little sense to have no leniency for children. after all, there is a reason we do not try children as adults. as a society, we seem to recognize that kids are, well, kids. even the best kid is going to fuck up, particularly once they hit their teens. certainly we should keep an eye to security, but let’s try and avoid turning schools into psuedo-prisons and let kids make ordinary mistakes.

i don’t understand anymore. 

lose a bid for the olympic games to come to chicago = hooray! 

win the nobel peace prize = this is terrible!

what the fuck?  seriously, i don’t understand anymore.  not that certain lunatics hold idiotic opinions like this.  more that such blatherings are picked by the media and treated as valid, rational and representative of public opinion. 

times like this, repeatingly banging my head against a brick wall seems the only sensible thing to do.

a poor member of the blogosphere i’d be, were i remiss in weighing in on yesterday’s historic election (yes, yes…would have been historic regardless.  shut up).  actually, i’ve already been docked 150 blogging points and an additional 50 general internet points for waiting till the afternoon.  as opposed to posting at, say, 1AM EST.

 so, let me just say: thank the god, goddess, ancestor spirt, nature spirt or ineffable, undefined universal spiritual being of your choice the election swung to obama.  you may notice i’m not fervantly political.  however, given the state of the nation right now, had the vote gone republican, again, i’d have given expatiriation a serious consideration.  policies, ideologies, theologies, philosophies and any other -ology and -sophosy aside, the current ruling party has fucked up.  seriously fucked up.  whomever breaks it does not get to fix it. 

so, we leave steering through what are surely the darkest times of my life: war galore and the global economy imploding (to give the highlights), to a new captain.  i say good.  the onion sums it up nicely, as usual. 

in other news, residents of CT remained sensible and did not vote to let a mob rewrite the state’s constitution (mostly because the idea of gays marrying and having some measure of happiness freaks them out).  good news as well.  true democracy is neither efficient, nor particularly desireable.  that’s why we have a representative republic.  works better.

even if you aren’t a boston (or new york) fan, if you follow baseball, you’ve probably heard about the highly amusing hijinks at the still-under-construction yankee stadium.  that is, that a construction worker and red sox fan buried a sox jersey in the cement of the visitor’s dugout, in hopes of cursing those damn yankees.  frankly, hilarious.

the initial, offical response was: “so what, we don’t believe in curses”.  sensible, since, despite its long and charming history in the sport, superstition is, well, superstitious.  on sunday, however, they reverted to a “better safe than sorry” philosphy and dug the jersey up.  thus making the prank even more hilarious.

now, though, it seems the yanks are taking this thing way too seriously, in that they are considering criminal charges against the guy who buried the jersey.  beyond being petty and vindictive, this also implies they really do believe the whole curse thing.  again, hilarious.

look, there aren’t any curses in baseball.  the “curse of the bambino” was made up by dan shaughnessy.  after all, why would babe ruth be so pissed at boston for trading him to new york (where he was actually paid what he thought he was worth and became damn famous and developed into the greatest ball player in history) that he’d curse the sox to never win the world series again until they did?  eighty-six years is rather arbitrary, don’t you think?  no, the actual curse of the bambino is this: bad trades and signings will fuck you over.  the cubs “curse of the billy goat”?  c’mon, it’s the cubs.  hell, they hadn’t won the series for nearly 40 years by the time that curse came around.  and the lesson from that is simply this: don’t let people bring farm animals to the ballpark in the first place.  these “curses” are brought to us by the same people who can’t seem to counter sabermetric bloggers with anything beyond anti-intellectual rants and cliches about nerds, basements and never watching games.  these are the same people who would rather have a scrappy, hustling david eckstein on their team, than a lazy, distracted manny ramirez.  despite the fact that manny’s worst season in a decade (last year) was still better than most player’s career bests.  the same folks who think being able to steal a base is more important than being able to get on base, despite the painfully obvious fact that you can’t steal second if you can’t get to first.  and so on.

there are no curses.  not if you don’t give them any credence.  the yanks have just done so and it’s funny as hell.  play ball!

for insanity.  apparently, the firm that recruits australian santa clauses has recommened their santas to say “ha, ha, ha”, instead of “ho, ho, ho”.  why, you may ask?  because, it seems “ho, ho, ho” may be offensive to women.  i’ll give you a moment to compose yourself after the fit of laughter that’s just wracked you.

the reasoning is fairly typical of these sorts of things:  “ho” is an american (though not australian, and remember, we are talking about events in sydney) slang term for whore.  since we all know that context has absolutely no bearing, whatsoever, upon the meaning of a word.  particularly homonyms.  for instance, if one walks into a hardware store and asks to buy a hoe, it is absurdly obvious they are looking for a prostitute.  it is obvious, then, that allowing santas to loudly proclaim that all women walking past are whores is unexceptable.

or it could just, maybe, possibly, be yet another example of ridculously sensitive overreaction.  what worries me though, is all too often crap like this occurs because someone made a complaint.  i can only imagine so woman tracking down the mall santa’s boss:

woman: “sir, i’d like to make a complaint about santa.”
boss santa: “yes, what happened?”
woman: “well, i was walking through the mall, minding my own business, when i heard someone call me a ho! i looked, and it was santa! i was going to ignore it, but then he called me a ho again! and then, wouldn’t you know, the fat bastard called me a ho a third time! i want him fired.”
boss santa: [blinks, incredulously]
woman: “or i’ll sue.”
boss santa: “er, yes, we’ll take care of that. have a merry christmas…ho, ho, ho!”
woman: “you fucking bastard, i’m not a ho!”

yes, it’s a scary world we live in folks. just remember, when you gather round the tofurkey next thursday, that the pilgrims were genocidal cultists! in fact, remind your family of that just before tucking into eat. it’ll put everyone in the true holiday spirit.

the chungs, though recent immigrants from korea, may be unique amongst americans. why? because common sense reigned in the end when they got sued. seriously, did this man think he could get $54 million because the dry cleaners lost his pants? i mean, i suppose the odds are better than, say, powerball. but not much. at least they shouldn’t be. this bit is particularly pleasing:

In a 23-page finding of fact, Bartnoff wrote: “A reasonable consumer would not interpret ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed’ to mean that a merchant is required to satisfy a customer’s unreasonable demands or accede to demands that the merchant has reasonable grounds to dispute.”

it’s nice to know there is still some small measure of justice in the world.

accidents happen. rather often, actually. generally, it is taken as a good thing to actually stay at the scene of an accident and make sure everyone is okay. it seems, however, that is not the case in austin, tx.

now, i’m of the mind that, upon hitting a child with your car, getting out to check on him and make sure you didn’t kill or seriously hurt him is laudable. no one wants to run over a kid (well, usually). so, upon seeing a driver get out and check on said injured child, what is the reaction of bystanders? to try and beat the fuck out of the driver. and to then beat his passenger to death, for the sin of trying to prevent them from beating the fuck out of the driver. nice going folks. way to insure no one will ever stop again, if they think they hit someone.

meanwhile, the kid is hurt, but not too badly.

perse sent me this link, after she was abushed/interviewed on the subject outside of starbucks this morning, by a local man-or-woman-on-the-street reporter. apparently, the vatican has issued a document containing the 10 commandments of driving. i wonder if it will be adopted by the “what would jesus drive” folks?

anyway, my favorite is commandment #2: “The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm.” most excellent. it’s no longer just a way to get from point a to point b (hell, trains can do that!). now it’s damn near a sacrament.

and once again, on the subject of iraq 7 terrorism, the statement that “we fight them over there, so we don’t have to fight them here” has been tossed out by our prez. i’m sure this has been mentioned before, but doesn’t that just translate, directly, to “we don’t care about iraqis, and would rather they die than any americans”.

and people wonder why we’re not universally loved.

at least according to the brits. but you know, they would claim that, wouldn’t they? i wonder if the east india company sponsored this report…