Too Stupid for Words category archive

Not if you are a student in Texas.

The Texas Republian Party opposes teaching “higher order thinking skills.” A nugget from Leonard Pitts, Jr.; click to read the rest:

The Texas GOP has set itself explicitly against teaching children to be critical thinkers. Never mind the creeping stupidization of this country, the growing dumbification of our children, our mounting rejection of, even contempt for, objective fact. Never mind educators who lament the inability of American children to think, to weigh conflicting paradigms, analyze competing arguments, to reason, ruminate, question and reach a thoughtful conclusion. Never mind that this promises the loss of our ability to compete in an ever more complex and technology-driven world.

Never mind. The Texas branch of one of our two major political parties opposes teaching critical thinking skills or anything that might challenge a child’s “fixed beliefs.” So presumably, if a child is of the “fixed belief” that Jesus was the first president of the United States or that 2+2 = apple trees or that Florida is an island in an ocean on the moon, educators ought not correct the little genius lest she (gasp!) change her “fixed belief,” thereby undermining mom and dad.

Guess they have figured out that “higher order thinking skills” are inimical to Republicanism.

No doubt this will work out well:

Facebook users in Washington state will have something else to brag about to their online friends: that they registered to vote on Facebook.

(snip)

Once it’s live, Facebook users will need to agree to let Facebook access their information, which will be used to prefill their name and date of birth in the voter registration form. Users will still need to provide a driver’s license or state ID number to continue.

Facebook, natch, is renowned for the security and respect with which it treats its users’ data.

At the San Jose Mercury-News, Mike Cassidy considers the case of a yoga instructor contracted to Facebook who was fired for giving someone a dirty look for using a cell phone during yoga class. According to her boss, she had been warned that cell phones are sacrosanct in Silicon Valley.

Cassidy comments:

And I hate to sound stubborn, but I’m not sure the policy of barring instructors from instructing students to behave as if there are others sharing the planet with them makes any difference to my bigger point: Smartphones have become a rudeness accelerant. Too often, too many use them to talk, type or text at times and in places where civility would dictate that they stop it, stop it, stop it.

Whether you view yoga as an integral aspect of a spiritual experience, as in its Hindu roots, or as a form of fitness regimen to release the “relaxation response,” as in the Western spin, it is difficult to see how cell phones contribute to mindfulness and meditation.

Click to read the rest.

The United States Olympic Committee has issued a cease and desist order to Olympic Gyro in Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market (where we nearly ate last Sunday, by the way, but we went to the Indian place instead).

The restaurant has used that name for three decades (that is, more than seven Olympiads).

A Greek restaurant can’t name itself after the mountain that was home to the Greek gods and has been a symbol of Greece for three millenia (as if someone is likely to confuse a sandwich shop in the corner of a converted railroad terminal with the quadrennial athletic carnival and sideshow).

This is stupid and evil.

I’m done with the Olympics.

They have turned into a marketing scam that makes a NASCAR driver’s suit look like a model of tasteful restraint.

As Harry Shearer says whenever he reports on news of the Olympics:

The Olympics.

It’s a movement.

And everyone needs one, every day.

Truth! They can’t handle the truth.

Scientists with a state commission in North Carolina will not be permitted to issue formal predictions of sea level rise based on climate change – at least for the next four years.

After enduring national ridicule for proposing a bill to outlaw any coastal sea level projections based on climate change data, the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature came up with a compromise Tuesday. Lawmakers effectively put the sea level debate on hold by asking for more studies – but none that involve climate change.

Next on the agenda: a law against thermometers because it’s not getting hotter, really, it isn’t.

From an article about the travel tribulations of midweek holidays, such as this week’s Fourth:

“The midweek holiday seems to have travelers confused,” said Anthony Del Gaudio, vice president of hotel sales for Loews Hotels, which isn’t seeing the normal July Fourth spike in bookings.

I doubt that “confused” is the correct word, and I doubt that persons considering whether and how to take time off this week appreciate being described as “confused” by some suit in a suite.

At Psychology Today, Stephanie Newman argues that twit cosplay–twitting as someone who isn’t–on Twitter is somehow a good thing.

Tweeting affords potential psychological benefits. It is a way for adults to flex different mental muscles and exercise a little used part of their brains. Twitter, with its opportunity to write playful messages, provides a play space for those who are mired in day-to-day stresses and challenges.

As near as I can interpret her argument, it seems to boil down to “if it feels good, do it.”

But I’m must a cranky old man.

A Massachusetts man is facing a felony assault with a dangerous weapon charge after allegedly tossing a batch of “hot and oily” McDonald’s french fries at his stepdaughter during an dispute last Friday in the family car, police report.

According to cops, James Hackett, 26, got into an argument about money with his wife after the couple–and the woman’s 11-year-old daughter–picked up food at the drive-thru window of a McDonald’s in Lowell.

Daughter was trying, as daughters can do, to get the parents to stop fighting.

No wonder Bruce wanted to get out of town.

If you step off the beach in Asbury Park and slide into a bar wearing a Speedo or string bikini, you’re technically breaking the law. And a former city councilwoman is trying to make sure you know it.

For decades, there has been a little-known ordinance in the Monmouth County city banning bathing suits on the boardwalk. “No person clad in bathing attire shall be on the boardwalk or the public walks adjacent thereto,” it reads.

Louise Murray, chairwoman of the local Republican party, said she no longer sees the law enforced and is worried skimpy attire at the boardwalk’s bars and restaurants is threatening to wipe away Asbury Park’s image as a “classy” Jersey Shore town.

At one time, there were changing rooms, probably like those cabanas you see in old movies.

No surprise that a Republican is behind this. It’s a party of the hung-up and their hang-ups and hangers-on.

So much for “Keep your eye on the ball.”

An Ocean County woman who was struck in the face with a baseball at a Little League game is suing the young catcher who threw it.

Elizabeth Lloyd of Manchester Township is seeking more than $150,000 in damages to cover medical costs stemming from the incident at a Manchester Little League game two years ago. She’s also seeking an undefined amount for pain and suffering.

Lloyd was sitting at a picnic table near a fenced-in bullpen when she was hit. Catcher Matthew Migliaccio was 11 at the time and was warming up a pitcher.

The lawsuit filed April 24 alleges Migliaccio’s errant throw was intentional and reckless, “assaulted and battered” Lloyd, and caused “severe, painful, and permanent” injuries.

Words fail me.

From El Reg, which notes that, whatever her ancestry and linguistic skills, the customer is American. Follow the link for the story accompanying the video.

An Apple Store in the US state of Georgia refused to sell an iPad to an American teenager because she spoke the Iranian language Farsi in the store. A student in the nearby city of Atlanta was also banned from buying an iPhone for the same reason, according to a report by local TV channel WSBTV.

“I just can’t sell this to you. Our countries have such bad relations,” 19-year-old Sahar Sabet was told after she tried to buy an iPad in her local Apple Store. She had been talking with her uncle in Farsi.

As my mother would have siad, just iGnorance, pure and simple iGnorance.

At Psychology Today, Susan Krauss Whitbourne considers the unfriended:

Psychology is beginning to discover the uses of Facebook for research on relationships as in studies of friendship networks. However, Facebook’s unique properties as a platform for relationships make it a phenomenon worth of study in its own right. In the case of unfriending, this is particularly true. Unfriending is perhaps the ultimate in passive-aggressive forms of rejection that doesn’t have a counterpart in the “real” world of relationships. On Facebook, no one tells you that you’re unfriended; they just uncheck you as a friend. They never have to tell you in person or even explain why, nor do they need your consent to do so.

It goes on (and on) with the comfortable assumption that Facebook somehow matters more than ice cream.

I can almost imagine things like this being written about MySpace seven years ago, as least about the teen set who were so enthralled by blinking lights and flashing icons.

I know persons whose world seems to be limited to Facebook; if you aren’t using Facebook, you barely exist for them. Trying to get their attention outside of the Facebook bubble is–er–quite an effort.

I suggest that, rather than investigating the horrible trauma of the unfriended, the writer research the irony of the Facebook bubble–how a server farm so big can create individual worlds so small.

Lord, please give me more important things to worry about than being “unfriended” by a Facebook “friend.”

New York Mayor Bloomberg’s crusade against Big Soda has been much in the news.

William Saletan wonders how Mayor Mike squares that with his curious fascination with gluttony for glory. A nugget:

The orgies take place every year in Coney Island. They’re broadcast live on ESPN. They’re known as the Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest. In 10 minutes, contestants stuff as many hot dogs down their throats as they can. During Bloomberg’s tenure, the record has increased from 50 to 68. It’s pornography for gluttons.

Year after year, Bloomberg officiates at the weighing-in ceremony, praises the contestants for gorging themselves, and brags about the millions of people watching on TV.

Bloviating twits.

Twits at 37,000 feet.

Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up (and, since the internet is a public place, you don’t have to).

No, not the one with the drunken New Yawkers.

The real one, which proves that the drunken New Yawkers have no monopoly on stupid.

It took Elyssa Glenn a week to transform the dull gray utility box that controls the lights at Atlantic and Dorset Avenues into a brilliantly colored totem pole designed to protect this Shore town from violent storms.

Using her own materials and volunteering her time (as part of a project initiated by the town–ed.), she gave the giant face waves for hair and fish for eyes, added a broad nose and piano-key teeth, then festooned its body with bands of green, red, yellow, and black.

Tuesday morning, it took city workers just five minutes to paint over her work.

Too Rastafarian, complained one neighbor. Promotes pot-smoking, another said.

“Too Rastafarian.”

Holy reggae, Batman, no undercurrents there, not at all, no indeedy.

It’s too late to protest. You have already been assimilated.

Debbie Piscitella snapped.

She was shopping with her daughter Monday afternoon when her daughter saw the boy near Sears. That’s the boy, the 13-year-old told her mother, the one who wrote on Facebook that the girl was so unattractive he wouldn’t even rape her.

Piscitella charged up to the 14-year-old high school freshman, grabbed his backpack and choked him. The assault was caught on a store camera.

She is now in jail. The foul-mouthed little br–oh, never mind.

Much more at the link.

The judge ruled that there was no “present” present.

A woman who texted her boyfriend while he was driving cannot be held liable for a car crash he caused while responding, seriously injuring a motorcycling couple, a judge ruled Friday in what is believed to be the first case of its kind in the country.

(snip)

Stephen Weinstein, the Kuberts’ attorney, has argued that Colonna should have known Best was driving and texting her at the time. He argued that while Colonna was not physically present at the wreck, she was “electronically present,” and he asked for a jury to decide Colonna’s liability in the case.

I have no sympathy for the driver, but this attempt to attach guilt by electrons was a bit much.

Twits unaware that the internet is a public place.

Via Balloon Juice.