Load of Bollix

Whereas his Brittanie Majesty, in conjunction with the Lords and Commons of Great-Britain, has, by a late Act of Parliament, excluded the inhabitants of these United Colonies from the protection of his crown: And whereas no answer whatever to the humble petitions of the Colonies for redress of grievances, and reconciliation with Great Britain has been or is likely to be given; but the whole force of that kingdom, aided by foreign mercenaries, is to be exerted for the destruction of the good people of these Colonies; And whereas it appears absolutely irreconcilable to reason and good conscience, for the people of these Colonies now to take the oaths and affirmations necessary for the support of any government under the Crown of Great-Britain; and it is necessary that the exercise of every kind of authority under the said Crown should be totally suppressed, and all the powers of government exerted under the authority of the people of the Colonies for the preservation of internal peace, v...

This travesty brought to you courtesy of George Washington University's Master of Education program and Richard and Jo Ann Vacca (see left-no suprise here) in their masterpiece Content Area Reading: Literacy and Learning Across the Curriculum ( that is to say, I am not making this shit up): “Suppose a high school teacher overheard two friends, Lily and Sugar, talking in the school cafeteria during lunch: Sugar: How was your weekend? Lily: I had a money time! The bomb and me put on our finest bling bling and went partying Saturday night. Let me tell you, Suge, he’s no chickenhead. He’s a real fly. Sugar: No kidding. I bet you two looked really cizool. Lily: We had a crunk time until we ran into Jasmine and her do boy. Sugar: What happened? Lily: Well one thing led to another. Jasmine started hissing and her do boy stabbed the bomb. So we decided to jet and click up with some classier folks. Lily and Sugar are using language and slang expressions that have made their way from rap mus...

I am currently reading a study of a program whose participants show a “reduced rate of hitting children with objects…” There are several burning questions in my mind, the least of which is: what exactly constitutes an object? Are we talking wooden spoon or car door? The object of choice notwithstanding, the sad fact is that lots of people smack their children. I’d just like to know when humanity got to the point where soooo many of us are smacking our kids around that the only logical remedy is to have our government shell out millions of dollars to figure out why people smack their kids around and how do we make them stop. (Here it comes. Brace yourself). (Are you braced?) Here are the just-published results of the Steinberg Study on Beating Kids. My sources are common sense and decency: Don’t beat your goddamned kid. You beat your kid, you are a bad parent. Full stop. It’s not the TV’s fault. It’s not your parents fault for whacking you. It’s your fault and you should know better. Wh...