The Blog of Lon

As if anyone with a brain needs any more evidence that the average spider monkey has massively more intelligence than the average school administrator, today’s news brings the story of a current Supreme Court case: School administrators in Arizona force a 13 year-old girl to undergo a strip search due to the accusation by a fellow student that she might have some Motrin.

Warning: This post contains adult language and childish insults because quite frankly, most school administrators nowadays do not deserve any better. Willingly putting any child under their care is arguably child abuse, no matter how wonderful (or not) the teachers who work for them are. Read the rest after the jump. (more…)

From a semi-recent posting on Very Important Stuff, I see that a Republican strategist, Christine O’Donnell, made a claim on The O’Reilly Factor that scientists were “cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains”.

The scary part isn’t that some random talking head on a political show misunderstands current scientific research (especially that particular political show), although it should be noted that Christine is a product of the same educational system as millions of the people who heard her speak. A system that quite obviously doesn’t instill any level of critical thought to be applied to things you hear. One doesn’t have to be the sharpest tack in the box to realize that even if one could put human brains in animals, there’s a little space issue going on with the human→mouse thing. But this isn’t a rant about education in the USA.

The scary part isn’t that someone involved in career politics is this clueless about science, although there’s plenty there to be afraid of. The sins against science under this administration are Legion, and we absolutely cannot stand for this demon to continue to possess our government. But this isn’t a rant about politicians’ ignorance of science.

The scary—and exciting—thing is that given time, this isn’t as laughable as it sounds, and humanity as a whole is preparing for a long period of moral issues that makes things like the death penalty and abortion seem quaint. (more…)

So much to blog about, so little time to blog. Here’s a roundup of interesting links that I’d considered writing about, but they’re beginning to back up (I’ve currently got 21 firefox instances running on my computer, each one having 4-8 tabs open). So here’s the latest roundup of stuff to frustrate, annoy, enrage, and enjoy:

• First, here’s a very cool list of frequently confused words. Wish the schools taught this stuff.
• Google’s Blogger has a neat little thingy called Blogger Play that will threaten to consume too much of your time; it’s basically a website which presents random photos from the blogs they host. Very addictive.
• Which way do you see the dancer spinning? I see her spinning clockwise, and can’t for the life of me see it in any other way…even after utilizing the spinning dancer hack site, which includes helpful lines drawn for perspective. A fun experiment, even if Scienceline.org discredits it.
• While poking around for good Christmas/Advent messages on the net, I encountered a piece by Marcus Borg on beliefnet.com, entitled Christmas in the Present Tense.
• The government is at it again, looking to avoid the need for pesky search warrants, and pressing civil servants, in this case firemen, to report people who express discontent with the government. Remember kiddies, thoughtcrime is bad.
• The putrid debate over teaching creationism in the schools reached a new low as the Texas state director for science curriculum is forced to resign simply because she forwarded an article thought to be critical of creationism.
• A new report arrives saying that Iran suspended the nuclear weapons program four years ago. A dismayed GW Bush says it doesn’t matter.
• Christopher Hitchens continues to prove he’s atheism’s smartest evangelical prophet a rhetorically skilled idiot by assuming there’s only one meaning to Hanukkah and using his dimwitted interpretation to bash the entire concept. Fortunately, in stark contrast to my last post on this blog, he gets called on it.
• What is it with Texans? My theory is that since some of the prettiest girls in the USA are grown in Texas, it makes everybody turn into blubbering fools. Anyway, an Austin police officer, in accordance with his departmental policy, refuses to taser an elderly man. His reward was to get fired.

I often make a point that one of the reasons the Christian religion gets a bad name is that we/they allow such incredibly ignorant, stupid, crazy, and/or hateful people to form the general public’s perception of Christians and Christianity as a whole.

Recently on The View, we get an prime example of the laughingstock that we’re allowing Christianity to become. They were discussing Epicurus, an ancient Greek philosopher who lived three hundred years before Christ. One of the hosts of the show began talking about Christians, arguing that Christ came before the ancient Greeks and that there definitely Christians around in Epicurus’ time. See for yourself:

Society raises a big fuss about role models for women; you can bet cash money that if a skinny fashion model was an anchor on a show like The View, the airwaves and blogosphere would be clogged with high-pitched righteous indignation about her being a poor role model for women, regardless of how intelligent she happened to be. But we evidently have little problem with allowing ignorant and stupid women to anchor TV shows marketed as intelligent discussion. There is no excuse for Sherri Shepherd obtaining even a high school diploma at her level of ignorance, let alone being selected to be on the panel of an “intelligent” TV show. She should’ve stuck with comedy shows. (more…)

Here’s one for the “School Administrators are Idiots” file: A 14 year-old, honor-roll student gets suspended, and then expelled, for accidentally bringing a butter knife to school. (Note: for fun, read my post first, then go back to the article if you’re interested. In my post, I refrain from indicating the student’s race and gender while presenting the case so as not to contaminate any conclusions based on irrelevant things.)

This one goes a little deeper than the “does a butter knife actually reasonably qualify as a weapon” debate. I’ll get to that in a moment, but even if we accept that strict, literal claim, it can still be easily argued that the administration of Goose Creek High School and the wannabe leaders of the Berkeley County School District are mentally challenged simply by examining how they interpreted their own policy in light of the facts of this issue. (more…)

Here we go again, another fine example of a irrational zero-tolerance policy being applied by some brainless wonder who happens to be in charge of a school.

Executive summary (because, once again, this post qualifies for the tl;dr tag): Seven year-old boy draws a sketch of a stick figure holding a water gun. This drawing is judged to be in violation of the school’s zero-tolerance policy for guns, and the boy is suspended. (more…)

Here’s the first installment of what will become a regular feature around here. The precise reason that education in the USA is in a major decline compared to the rest of the planet is that the administrators we allow to reign are insipid, vapid, stupid assholes. Some have good intentions, to be sure, but when an idiot approaches you with the intention of helping you, I’d advise a flight response. Run away. Quickly.

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