Posts Tagged ‘News’
Rattlesnake Roundup is Real-Life Whacking Day
Some of you may recall the Whacking Day episode of The Simpsons, in which residents of the town of Springfield whack snakes with sticks. It’s a tradition. Turns out there is a real-life version of Whacking Day called Rattlesnake Roundup.
Here’s a link to the script of The Simpsons’ episode at snpp.com. The TV Guide synopsis, also via that site: “The soulful sound of Barry White and a key discovery by Bart—who was expelled from school—help Lisa in her efforts to save Springfield’s snakes from the annual Whacking Day.”
It happens to be an awesome episode, in no small part due to the presence of Mr. Barry White. The fact that there is an actual event that is even remotely similar to what was on The Simpsons is awful. Wendy Townsend, writing for CNN.com, agrees.
Again, in case you missed it the first time:
Oh. So. Creepy.
Opinion: ‘Rattlesnake Roundup’ teaches cruelty is fun – CNN.com.
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Boy Brings My Little Pony Backpack to School; Boy Gets Bullied; School Blames Backpack
It’s the same old story you’ve heard a thousand times before. Boy brings My Little Pony backpack to school. Boy gets bulled. School blames backpack, calling it a “trigger for bullying.” Story gets picked up by national media. Internet explodes.
Oh wait. The old story is “Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back.” This one is actually new. Sort of.
Bullying is a serious problem that is finally being taken seriously after countless years of being explained away by adults who would prefer to look the other way and/or actually didn’t/don’t give a crap about the kids who were/are being victimized by small-minded jerks.
Ten years ago, this story might not have made national news. Twenty years ago it absolutely would have been ignored. The kid would be called a fag, a queer, gay, been beaten up, and his school would have done nothing to stop it.
In this particular case, school officials decided that the way to solve the problem was to tell the boy to stop carrying around his ‘My Little Pony’ backpack. Get something more butch, like Spider-Man. (I made that part up; as far as I know no one offered him any specific backpack suggestions.)
In general, the Internet hive mind is horrified by the notion of blaming the backpack. But school officials are not wrong that the backpack makes the kid an easy target for bullies.
What is wrong is the way they handled the situation. Telling the boy that the solution is to leave the backpack at home sends the message that being different is a bad thing, and that if you are different it’s OK for people to taunt you and beat you up. This is especially important because we are talking about a very young kid. He’s only nine and already equates colors with gender; he was pleasantly surprised to find a blue ‘Pony’ backpack because “most of the [‘My Little Pony’] toys are girly,” he told a reporter from People magazine.
The behavior “triggered” by the backpack is indeed bullying in the truest sense of the word. According to the article on People.com, kids at school were “taking it a little too far, with punching me, pushing me down, calling me horrible names, stuff that really shouldn’t happen.” That’s remarkably articulate for a 9-year-old. It also makes me cry man tears. The school has to stop the behavior immediately. Focusing on the backpack is wrong.
The boy’s mother is quoted thusly: “Saying a lunchbox is a trigger for bullying is like saying a short skirt is a trigger for rape. It’s flawed logic, it doesn’t make any sense.” I respectfully disagree with her. A lunchbox, in this case a backpack, is in fact the trigger for the bullying. Bullies see backpack. Bullies commence bullying. That doesn’t mean the school handled the situation appropriately. But we should stop saying things are “like rape” because the only thing that is “like rape” is rape. (I have no wish to knock the mother of the bullied boy. Note that I’m not using either her name or his.) There’s no need to compare bullying to something else in order to make it more terrible. Her son is/was being beaten up at school. Why? It doesn’t matter. He should be able to go to school and feel safe, actually be safe. The bullies should be punished immediately. Suspensions, expulsions if the bullying continues. Any parent of a bully who tries to defend their child’s behavior is flat out wrong.
The article on People.com has a link at the end that I won’t click because I know it will only make me more sad.
RELATED: 11-Year-Old Boy Attempts Suicide After Being Bullied for My Little Pony Passion (People.com)
That’s where it goes if you keep blaming the victim. The victim is the 9-year-old boy, not his backpack.
Since the word bullying has become a bit watered down — Justin Bieber claims that when people call him names on Twitter that’s “bullying”, which is bullshit — maybe we should start calling the behavior what it would be called if these were adults.
Assault and battery.
Grayson Bruce Prohibited from Bringing ‘My Little Pony’ Backpack to School : People.com.
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Keith Richards Is Writing A Children’s Book
Keith Richards is writing a children’s book. With his daughter. It’s about the first time he played the guitar, according to the BBC.
Here’s a bit more of a description:
“Gus and Me: The Story of My Granddad and My First Guitar is a “rare and intimate look” into his early years.”
I’d read it. Here’s a bit more from the BBC:
Richards was introduced to music by his grandfather, jazz musician Theodore Augustus Dupree.
It will be published as a hardback and ebook later this year.
“I have just become a grandfather for the fifth time, so I know what I’m talking about,” said Richards.
“The bond, the special bond, between kids and grandparents is unique and should be treasured. This is a story of one of those magical moments. May I be as great a grandfather as Gus was to me.”
That’s nice. Isn’t that nice? Good ol’ Keith.
Here’s a video of Keith onstage in Abu Dubai in February of 2014. He’s still got it, fans still love him… grandpa Richards was wise to introduce lil’ Keith to the geetar.
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BBC News – Keith Richards to write children’s book with daughter.
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Baby Poop Bacteria Makes Healthier Sausages?
Here’s a phrase I didn’t think I’d hear today. Baby poop bacteria. Apparently what winds up in your baby’s diaper could help make healthier sausages.
Note: there is no baby poop in the above product. As far as we know anyway.
Sausage in general does not fall into the category of “health food” to the best of my knowledge. Phrases like “how your Fox News sausage is made” are meant to be a pulling back of the curtain, showing you things you don’t want to know. For example, a “beef sausage” contains beef. What kind of beef? You don’t want to know. And so on.
A friend of mine sent me a link to this story on FoxNews.com, via LiveScience. It’s not that anyone wants to eat baby poop. (At least I hope not.) It’s the bacteria, probiotics in particular, that scientists were looking into.
The two kinds of bacteria used most often in probiotics, Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, are far more abundant in infant poop than in adult excrement. In addition, “infant feces are natural samples, easy to obtain,” Jofr said.
“Easy to obtain” indeed. Babies are poop machines. Extracting the healthy bacteria from the baby poop is not something that everyone knows how to do, though. Isn’t it marvelous that we have scientists to do these things for us?
I guess. If you’re a scientist, this is the sort of thing you do. Are there poop scientists? Poop-ologists?
Personally I avoid sausage. But that’s me. I do take probiotics (as opposed to ANTI-biotics, a connection I only recently made). And I eat non-dairy yogurt, which has the live bacteria this article talks about. Not necessarily the same live bacteria, or as much of it. I’m not an expert on these matters. This should not be considered health advice. See your doctor if you have an erection lasting more than four hours. Sorry, wrong sausage.
Anyway, it is unlikely you will see baby poop sausages on store shelves anytime soon. And as gross as the topic is, it did make me think about my overall gut health, which is important.
Baby-poop bacteria help make healthy sausages | Fox News.
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Let’s Get More Excited About Space Travel
Here’s an idea. Instead of endless reports about Justin Bieber and other mindless crap, let’s get more excited about space travel.
(This isn’t a picture of real space travel. It’s Captain Video and His Video Rangers. Old TV show.)
Live streaming video by Ustream
(By the way, the latest Bieber news, as of this writing, is that Usher flew to be by Justin’s side and offer emotional support or something. In case you’re curious. Who says this isn’t the DaddyTips age of having your cake and eating it too?)
On January 23, 2014, three days ago, NASA launched a Next-Generation Relay Satellite. No, not Star Trek: The Next Generation. Something real. The TDRS-L Satellite. Launched by NASA. Frickin’ NASA! And they broadcast the launch live on Ustream! And I didn’t even know! (The video is archived and embedded above. I was wrong. The video embedded above appears to be NASA’s live Ustream channel. Sorry. Here is a link to the video of the launch.)
Nobody cares. Why doesn’t anyone care? We should really care about this a lot more than we do.
Why should we care? Read more »
No Vaccines Means We Get Diseases Back
This NPR article is upsetting, and not only because looking at the constantly moving graphic is giving me a headache.
(This isn’t a full-on rant, but me expressing my opinion tends to lead to someone feeling like I’m ranting. Hence the graphic.)
I used to write a lot about the anti-vaccine folks. Here’s a post from 2010 that links to a piece I wrote for AOL ParentDish about the retraction of the Lancet study linking vaccinations to autism. And here is the very first Babble Podcast I did way back in October of 2008.
In that podcast I discussed how perhaps Jenny McCarthy is not the person to whom we should be looking to for medical advice of any kind. (I also wrote and recorded the theme song. I’m very talented.) McCarthy was very vocal about the link between vaccines and autism. Her proof was debunked. More on that in a moment.
Ante Up For Autism (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In addition to being the year when I recorded a podcast, 2008 is also when the Council on Foreign Relations began “tracking news reports” of disease outbreaks. Diseases that had been all but wiped out, if not wiped out entirely.
From NPR.org:
Since 2008 folks at the think tank CFR have been plotting all the cases of measles, mumps, rubella, polio and whooping cough around the world. Each circle on the map represents a local outbreak of a particular disease, while the size of the circle indicates the number of people infected in the outbreak.
As you flip through the various maps over the years, two trends clearly emerge: Measles has surged back in Europe, while whooping cough is has become a problem here in the U.S.
Whooping cough is back? Seriously? Preventable diseases should stay prevented. So much of the anti-vaccination information has been proven to be 100% false. (It’s possible that all of it has been debunked; I don’t know and therefore am not going to make such a broad statement.) What’s left is parental fear. Statements like “I believe vaccines are bad” don’t have any basis in scientific reality. Are doctors always right? Of course not. I don’t have a gall bladder because a certain doctor couldn’t be bothered to examine me for six months. Eventually the thing grew to the size of a football, became gangrenous, and I needed immediate emergency surgery or I would have died. Does that mean I no longer go to the doctor? Well, I no longer go to THAT doctor. But I haven’t thrown out all science, or the scientific method. Nor do I pretend that I am a scientist.
We should all be able to agree that whooping cough is bad. Whooping cough was gone. That was good. Now whooping cough, which is bad, is back. That is bad. Why is whooping cough back? Because some parents, based on bad information disseminated by a number of people, Jenny McCarthy being one of the more famous ones, are afraid of vaccinating their kids. That’s not good. At all. Stop it.
Here is a Public Health Report document from 1916. The text is as follows:
PATERSON, N. J.
Whooping Cough — Prevention of Spread — Affected Children Under 10 Years of
Age Required to Wear Arm Bands. (Reg. Bd. of H., Mar. 7, 1916.)1. No parent or guardian of any infant under 10 years of age suffering from the
disease commonly known as whooping cough shall permit any such infant to appear
in the street or in any other public place within the city of Paterson, N. J., unless
such infant shall wear and expose upon the arm a band of yellow material bearing
upon it the words “Paterson health department — Whooping cough.” The band
shall be in a form to be prescribed and supplied by the board of health, and shall
be worn for a period beginning with the earliest recognition o” the disease and con-
tinue until danger of infection is over, but in no event less than six weeks.2. No parent or guardian of any infant under the age of 10 years suffering from
whooping cough shall permit any such infant to board any street car or other public
conveyance or to visit any house other than the house in which such infant resides,
or any store, school, Sunday school, or building of public assembly.3. Any parent or guardian violating any of the provisions of this ordinance shall
be subject to a fine of $10 for each offense.
(Source: Internet Archive/JSTOR)
Armbands for kids! Doesn’t that sound fun? That was the best we could do in 1916. It is now 2014. We’ve come a long way, baby. Get vaccinated.
Zero deaths. That’s the goal.
(Above image from The Prelinger Archives.)
How Vaccine Fears Fueled The Resurgence Of Preventable Diseases : Shots – Health News : NPR.
This Is Why You Have Passwords
I object to the use of the term “hacker” in this story. I prefer “schmuck.” That said, I suppose it’s not unfair for CNN to call the schmuck who… OK, fine. Someone HACKED into a baby monitor and said nasty things to a little kid. This is why you have to password protect everything.
I don’t want to be unkind to the parents involved; the above image is meant to be a little joke. According to the CNN story, the family whose monitor was hacked (I wish I could think of a better term) did have passwords turned on. I don’t know what that means. Is it possible that the alleged schmuck/hacker was so desperate to insult this little kid that he (I believe the CNN story said it was a he) worked extra hard to crack the codes and deliver his foul-mouthed message?
Perhaps there is more to this tale than meets the eye. Or not. Either way, have good passwords.
Foul-mouthed hacker hijacks baby’s monitor – CNN.com.
