American Madness

Mrs. WineHazard and I find ourselves in New Hampshire this weekend. Travelzoo ran a special off season rate for hotel rooms on Lake Winnipesaukee, and we decided to take advantage of the opportunity to leave the city for some Americana.

Inside of our quaint room at the inn was a copy of the local newspaper, Weirs Times. The local paper is mostly filled with pieces by the locals talking about snow and their pets, the usual fare for such an endeavor. But it also includes a letter to the editor section (Letters From the Mail Boat). One piece in particular caught my attention, and I share it with you, the loyal AmericanMadness reader.

A labor of love, I retyped the following, warts and all:

Pre-School Terror

To The Editor:

Kindergarten has nothing to do with education and everything to do with tyranny.

This is the first step in children’s rights and the otherthrow of parental authority. The state insists that the parents are not qualified to raise children, only the state is qualified.

Russia puts their children in school at the age of three. Get them when they are young and vulnerable and brainwash them.

The authorities have already promised us pre-kindergarten. Schools for two-year olds will follow pre-kindergarten it is reported.

It is also reported that for the first two years of a child’s life agents will make regular visits to the home. I assume they will come unannounced. I believe that they will always find fault in order to seize. They will be authorized to remove children for any reason or no reason. In some cases it is reported that the parents will never see the children again. It is my opinion that the liberal fascists will control our lives from cradle to the grave with terror.

In New Hampshire there is a movement to axe the (no new taxes) pledge. This is about an income tax and a sales tax. This will not lower property taxes. We are instructed that we need new taxes to pay for our new education obligations.

Campaigning in Iowa, Hilary promised to give us pre-kindergarten. Hilary must have a lot of money.

Barack Obama, in a TV speech in Iowa, informed that “Children two months old are intelligent, they can learn and I will educate them. I am not going to waste that talent.”

William Gibbons
Canaaan, NH.

So to recap. Liberal fascists (?) seek to imbed their political agenda on our children, in an initiative to raise taxes in New Hampshire. Got all of that?

Just remember, this state often decides who represents your political party in the run for U.S. President. Daniel Webster, I weep on your behalf.

It’s worth zooming ahead to see the chart breakdown. Basically, he offers a choice (do something/do nothing) based on the premise that global warming (if not fought) will devastate humanity. It’s an absurd argument because we can’t predict how awful global warming will be.

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I get such glee about reading about idiocy, usually while thinking “You must be f#cking kidding me!!”

And today we have a two-fer:

First up we’ve got a school district in Atlantic City, NJ that has suspended a seven year-old due to “the school’s zero-tolerance policy for guns.”

Now, guns in school are generally considered a bad thing, and I won’t argue with that. Even toy guns can send the wrong message, so I get the idea behind a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to guns.

And I mean, a seven-year-old, right? That’s just scary. Except, the seven year-old didn’t have a gun, or a toy gun, or pretend to have a gun, or even an have an imaginary gun. He drew a picture of a gun.

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Well, neither of these are particularly recent stories, but I was just going through a list of things I meant to blog about last month and never got around to.

I figure posting them together with some related topic will work for now. As for the others, I figure there is a reason I didn’t write about them then, and, well, they are kind of old news now. Moving right along…

First up, let’s look at what New York has decided not to spend money on anymore: As a state we will no longer receive nearly $4 million of federal funds for abstinence-only sex ed programs.

While we are losing out on $4 million from the government, conversely we will be teaching a sex-ed program that might actually be beneficial in the real world, focusing on teaching good sexual health and about how to avoid getting pregnant (and while I am guessing abstinence will be one such suggested method, it will no longer be the only one taught).

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I just came across an article I missed from the middle of September. Newsweek reported on a website called MarryOurDaughter.com. The site appears to be under construction right about now, but here is what it had offered (according to Newsweek): “a matching service for followers of ‘the Biblical tradition’ of arranged marriages.” It allowed people to look through profiles of girls… and when I say girls, I mean girls, the majority were apparently around 15… whose parents wanted to marry them off and were asking for a price for their hand in marriage, a dowry if you will, usually something in the low to mid- 5 digit range.

Seems like an obvious choice for Newsweek to write about. Mail-order brides are not a new thing to the internet, but usually hey are from foreign countries and they are not underage girls. The thing is, Newsweek was not ‘exposing’ this site and telling us about the dangers of the internet, instead they were discussing the true mission behind the site.

According to MarryOurDaughter.com the site was not exactly a hoax, but rather an attempt to educate folks through something they call ‘viral politics’:

Call it an experiment an experiment in Viral Politics. That children can marry down to twelve years old in America, which they can do, is Not Right. That the age of consent is higher than the age of marriage is Not Right. That parents can marry off their children for money or for any other reason is Not Right. Railing about it on the web, as many do, wasn’t making a difference. Thinking outside the box led us to marryourdaughter.com.

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Each year some Nazi-like parents in the middle of the country feel that some fantastic book is offensive and should be banned from libraries. Pretty much it depends on the community to decide whether to follow through on this parents request and ban the book or to allow freedom of speech to prevail and make all books available to the masses.

Unfortunately there are a number of books that have been banned from public schools and libraries across the country. Last year the book at the top of the list for banning was “And Tango Makes Three” by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell about a pair of male penguins that raise a baby penguin.

Why do I bring this up now you ask (and I’m glad you did)? Well, this upcoming week, starting tomorrow (sept. 29th) and going through October 6th, is Banned Book Week, sponsored by the American Library Association. The motto for the week is “Free People Read Freely.” Accoridng to the website:

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, this annual ALA event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. This year, 2007, marks BBW’s 26th anniversary (September 29 through October 6).

BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.

To take part in banned book week all you need to do is pick up a banned or challenged book and read away. Do it in public, don’t be afraid to let people see you reading it, after all, that is the point, isn’t it?

Oh, also related, USA Today reports that the Federal government, after receiving enough pressure has decided to put banned religious books back into prison libraries.

For a list of banned books you can check out the ALA website, the site Banned Books, or just do a quick Google search for them. Or if you are too lazy for any of that you can just pick up Fahrenheit 451 or To Kill a Mocking Bird.or all the Harry Potter books, so, you’ve got some options.

In choosing a picture for this post there were so many good different images to choose from I decided to put a link to the Google Image Search here.

The human-controlled robot dances and interacts.

From http://beatbots.org:

Human social behavior shares much in common with dance. Our speech, as well as the movement of our body, head, and hands, is periodic and rhythmic. The goal of the BeatBots project is to develop robots that can interact with people by synchronizing with these social rhythms. We believe that rhythmic synchrony is as important for establishing engagement, rapport, and comfort between a robot and a person as it is between people.

Finally, I have a hater. A recent comment by “Steven” on my post about a recent Pizza Bar debacle left me pondering the utility of the ad hominem attack. “You need to grow up,” he wrote. “Your behavior was childish, and your blog post underscores your immaturity.”

Sandwiched in between that high praise was Steven’s point: that my gripe was ill-founded for x and y reason. I can agree with Steven’s point, but I do wonder what his real purpose was. If he wanted to change my mind, his method was curious. If he just wanted to make me feel bad, he should probably find a better hobby.

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First I would like to thank all of our readers and glancers- Yesterday we passed 200 page views in a single day (219 to be exact)! Yeah, go us. Now let’s see if we hit 300 posts or 300 viewers first.

Next up I am going to post a quick follow up to the Google Maps new Street View function, a couple of folks have been wondering (including myself) how they actually go about getting those photos. Apparently it isn’t a man with a camera and a tripod taking a panoramic photo every 15 feet, but rather a van that does that, Engadget has a photo and a brief write up on it.

Next we have another Graffiti piece (don’t ask how you write a follow up to a piece you posted less then an hour ago, sometimes ti just happens) I am just going to post the original article and the follow up, there was a reason I didn’t really get into this one, but basically a school on the Lower East side had to paint over a wall twice due to Graffiti and posted a note to the writer/community about the damage that writing on walls does to the school it was written on. After learning the meaning of the graffiti, they followed their message up with a second note to the community posted on the wall. Definitely shows a social consciousness and works on building a stronger community up around the school. The original note is here and this is the follow-up from Gothamist

And for those of you looking for Kool-Aid Pickle Recipes I am working on locating one, or just giving it a whirl myself. Hopefully it won’t be too long before we have a real Kool-Aid Pickle recipe up here.

Okay, so since I have posted “Oh By The Way” I have received a number of comments about compact fluorescent lights (CFL) ranging from drying out your eyes, to containing mercury, to not really being more energy efficient then incandescent bulbs because they use so much more power in their start up. Well, I am here to settle some of this. To debunk some of these myths I have hit the web in search of some “trust worthy” sources and also tried to find a second source when possible to back up claims. So, after the jump find out the truth about fluorescents… (more…)