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July 31, 2007
Spelling Lesson
Brina likes how I explained to her how to remember how to spell the word "Berkeley". I said, "Just put an 'e' everywhere you think there might be one."
Posted at 03:30 PM | Comments (1)
July 17, 2007
Postcards from the Edge
For the past couple of weeks I've been receiving a lot of spam emails with this type of subject line: "You've received a postcard from a Friend!" Or: "You've received a greeting from a Family Member!" The From line usually says greetingcards.com or postcards.com, etc. Going on the assumption that if these were legitimate they'd have more accurate, personalized subject lines, I've just been deleting them.
Today I got one from greetingcards.com with the subject, "You've received a postcard from a Worshipper!"
Pshaw. My worshipers never send me postcards.
Posted at 01:18 PM | Comments (3)
July 03, 2007
President "Getting In To" Executive Privilege
WASHINGTON, DC (AP) -- Late Monday night, claiming executive privilege, President Bush ordered that the heads of the twelve jurors in the Lewis "Scooter" Libby trial be brought to him on silver platters. Early this morning, the heads were seen on wooden stakes on the White House front lawn. During a brief press statement at 9:00 am, President Bush said, "They were warned... I mean, had they been warned, they would have known that returning a guilty verdict in this trial was just plain stupid."
In the past week, President Bush has cited executive privilege for numerous reasons ranging from requiring Nancy Pelosi to cut the crusts off of his sandwiches to changing Iraq's name to "Americaraq".
Asked if he is nervous about punishment for crimes he may be committing, the president stated, "It's not a problem. I'll just commute my own sentence. I don't know why they didn't tell me about this executive privilege thing during my first term."
Posted at 09:01 AM | Comments ()
July 02, 2007
Diversity
Forced desegregation of schools is supposed to ensure that the racial mix of a particular school reflects the racial mix of the neighborhood it's in. Isn't it? That makes sense to me, but I feel like that's not actually how it's defined.
It seems to me that if students were allowed to attend any school they want, and not be barred because of their race, then schools would automatically take on the racial mix of their neighborhoods. And I think that's a good thing. Forced segregation was a problem because black children were not allowed to attend certain schools because they were black -- even though they may have lived in the school's neighborhood. Clearly wrong.
But I think it's too big of a task to force schools to have more ethnically and racially diverse makeups than their surrounding neighborhoods. The real issue is that neighborhoods are rarely diverse. If we want to have truly multicultural schools, then we need to solve the problem about where people live. The school thing is just a symptom of that problem.
Posted at 01:39 PM | Comments (1)