Dumbasses parking trucks with (hunting) guns in them was a near-weekly problem at my last GA high school (cf. the first GA high school, where the guns came into the school with them). Was always happy to see these morons get popped for that. But if you’re parked off property? Step off, school board.

Posted by MB on 23 November 2009 @ 6pm

I love the link posts and I have a suggestion. Sometimes one of the links will be especially good and I’ll want to share it (with your description) through Google Reader or some other RSS reader. Any thoughts about posting the links as separate posts so they show up as separate items so and are therefore easier to share, email or “like” individual ones.

Posted by JJ on 23 November 2009 @ 8pm

Also there are definitely ones that I would paste on facebook or elsewhere, which I could see being appealing as it might bring additional people to your site.

Posted by JJ on 23 November 2009 @ 8pm

You know, I’ve been wanting to do that, JJ, but it hadn’t bubbled up into my forebrain until you mentioned it. :) Lazily, I’ve just been using Delicious‘ native “post this to my blog” function, but I should really look at breaking them up. Thanks for the suggestion!

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 23 November 2009 @ 9pm

That’s going to be a very expensive dumb move by the Chico school.

I wonder if they thought this fit in with some dumb ass ‘zero tolerance’ policy.

Posted by Mark Brooks on 23 November 2009 @ 9pm

I wonder what the ramifications of mandatory at-birth paternity tests would be.

Posted by Tim McCormack on 24 November 2009 @ 12am

We create a bureaucracy and give it huge control over a population of people who have no recourse against it, and it’s no surprise when it oversteps its bounds. Our school systems are set up like the Standford prison experiment, and they encourage and attract the sorts of people who enjoy having that sort of power over people.

That’s not to say I think many teachers are like this, and even most school administrators I’ve dealt with aren’t, but there are enough to be a serious problem. We need to work harder to design our institutions intelligently.

I wish I had time to write about (and think more about) the offshoring tax avoidance story and the paternity test story, but for now, I’ll just say thanks for the interesting links!

Posted by Ben C. on 24 November 2009 @ 9am

I salute those men who decide to keep paying child-support for their non-biological children that they nonetheless love. Their predicament is heartbreaking, though. I’m not surprised the courts are all turned around on how to handle cases like these, but it seems to me that the law has got to catch up with the complexity of modern life. They’re working from these centuries-old definitions of and assumptions about paternity.

Regarding mandatory at-birth paternity tests: it’s an interesting idea, and there are probably really good reasons for the state to pursue such a policy. It would go down hard, though, I think. I know I would have been insulted if my husband had to submit to such a test when our kids were born. That’s not necessarily rational of me, but there it is. I think you’d have a lot of outraged women who felt they were essentially be accused of infidelity.

Posted by Cecil on 24 November 2009 @ 9am

Check out how insulated Virginia is for the most part in that animation. While the rest of the east coast turns dark, VA stays relatively okay.

Posted by Got no name on 24 November 2009 @ 10am

I’ve been making vanilla that way since I saw this blog post awhile back. (http://tinyurl.com/2y8d3m) Even using top quality organic beans from Madagascar, I get the most amazing vanilla extract for cheap, cheap, cheap!

Posted by Malena on 29 November 2009 @ 4pm