No Physical Contact In School? Huh?

No punchline here, because it’s not a joke.

A middle school in Fairfax County, Virginia has banned all physical contact.

That’s right, ALL PHYSICAL CONTACT!

That means no hugging, no kissing, no handshakes, no high-fives, no group huddles, no hand-holding, no pats on the back, no bloody knuckles, and no poking. Did I forget something?

Why you ask? Well, let’s take a look…

According to the school officials at Kilmer Middle High School in Vienna, the ban “helps keep crowded hallways and lunchrooms safe and orderly, and ensures that all students are comfortable.”

No, it’ll teach kids that physical contact is frowned upon. What happened to raising kids to be normal?

If you tell kids that they can’t show affection physically, it’ll end with them either hiding their emotions, exhibiting them in private, or considering physical contact as a negative characteristic.

Now I’m not a psychologist, nor do I have any scientific facts to confirm my thoughts. Nevertheless, I do have common sense on board with me.

Teenage years are possibly the most important years of a child’s life, so restricting them from doing things which are completely normal and healthy in adult life might not be such a good idea.

So let’s look at the possible implications of a no contact ban on middle school kids.

Hand shaking
Hand shaking is in integral part of working life. Not just then, but also all through their social life.

Displays of Affection
I understand not wanting middle schoolers to go around at school making out and kissing. But middle schoolers are at the age where they are getting curious about relationships and affection, so banning such trivialities as hugging and holding hands is just going to make the kids more likely to actually act upon their new-found feelings. You remember back when you were small, and were told not to do something? What did you do? Yeah, you did it. Because you were curious.

Group Huddles, High-Fives, Pats On The Back
All three of these things are very normal behavior. And wait, don’t they all appear in sports? Come to think of it, so does hugging. And shaking hands with the opposing team after the game. I thought schools embraced sports. Wait a minute, don’t sports have a lot of physical conduct? Ok, ban sports while you’re at it, why don’t you…

Deborah Hernandez, Kilmer’s principal said that the rule makes sense in a school that was built for 850 students but houses 1,100. She said that students should have their personal space protected and that many lack the maturity to understand what is acceptable or welcome.

“students should have their personal space protected and that many lack the maturity to understand what is acceptable or welcome” Great, let’s downplay their intelligence while we’re at it, why don’t we? School is a place to learn, not just academics, but also about social interaction. It does no good banning them from doing something and then saying that they don’t understand what is right or wrong.

Here’s a thought: teach the kids what is the correct way to behave, instead of banning everything.

The Washington Post had an article on the school rule, highlighting how a seventh grader broke the rules by getting out of his assigned lunch room seat, sitting down next to his girlfriend, and putting his arm around her. Read it here.

Which brings me to my closing thought… Assigned lunch room seating?!

Apparently, physical contact is not the only thing the school board considers to have negative outcomes. Social interaction seems to threatened as well. Assigning lunch room seating is getting close to ludicrous.

Socializing is as important of an aspect of school life as say math or chemistry, maybe even more important. You aren’t allowed to socialize during class, which leaves you with recesses and lunch. Being assigned a seat, most likely next to someone the school randomly picked, instead of your closest friends, trumps the possibility of hanging out with you friends.

Sure, I can understand that the school officials wish to keep the cafeteria from turning into chaos, but too many rules is never good.

What do you think? Should schools be allowed to enforce these kinds of rules on kids? Or has it gone too far? If you have any personal stories of similar stupid rules from school, share your experiences in the comments section below.

Sources:
Washington Post (via Digg)

Stupidity Is All Around You

Here, read this quote from Raw Dogma. On one hand I can’t believe it, on the other hand it is completely fathomable.

“American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century.”

I’ve said before that stupidity is universal. But some things (such as mentioned above) go above logical understanding. There’s stupidity, and then there’s idiotic ignorance…

Read the full article for some reasoning behind the data…

Sources:
Raw Dogma: 1 in 5 Americans believe Sun revolves around the Earth

Lockheed Martin’s $27 Million Oops!

Lockheed Martin finally admitted that their almost $30 million unmanned prototype aerial vehicle (UAV) P-175 Polecat crashed at the Nevade Test and Training Range in December. And they only had one prototype…

Lockheed Martin disclosed that the cause of the crash was “an irreversable unintentional failure in the flight termination ground equipment, which caused the aircraft’s automatic fail-safe flight termination mode to activate.” Translated (loosely) into layman’s terms: “some jackass on the ground pressed the wrong button. Oops!” Lockheed Martin also said that the flight termination system performed exactly as expected, causing the crash. Um, really, Captain Obvious?

So it’s back to square one for the Polecat program…

[Check out the Danger Room post for their hilarious take on the matter...]

Sources:
WIRED Blogs: Danger Room [Oops! I Blew up the Secret Drone!]
Aviation Week: Polecat Crash Sets Back LM UAV efforts

Let’s File It Under "Oops"; FBI Misplaces Laptops

Several days ago it was reported that the FBI had lost 160 laptops in the last four years, some 51 of them containing sensitive information. Before that, the FBI had misplaced over 300 laptops in a space of just over a few years. Every newspaper article in print and online that I’ve come across this story in (and that’s not too many), not a single one mentions any kind of punishments for those responsible for the losses or thefts. Better yet, the situations where the agents have lost these laptops as well as weapons are in a few cases ridiculous; unlocked cars, leaving them behind at restaurants, grocery stores, restrooms, etc… With reports of identity thefts in the news frequently due to mishandling of laptops, data, or just plain human stupidity, I haven’t heard of any punishments for those responsible. It’s always either an announcement of the fact that they’ve been lost, with little or no information or apology, or in some cases just a simple “oops, we were stupid. Sorry, we’ll try not to do it again” statement.

In England, on the other hand, The Nationwide Building Society was fined £980,000 (€1,464,000/$1,922,000) for the theft of ONE laptop from an employee’s house, a laptop which contained banking information from some 11 million of the corporation’s clients. Now how many people have the FBI and other institutions, universities and corporations compromised due to their “mishaps”? The BBC article mentions that it is not known whether Nationwide fined, fired or disciplined the employee in question or not, but one would think the company might wanna do that, considering the cost of the ordeal to the company, in terms of money and image. Guess the FBI didn’t feel the need to, seeing as people’s view of the bureau is already tarnished, and it’s just another instance of a big OOPS!

[Note: The BBC website has some pretty good information to turn to in case of Identity Theft. CNN, not so much...]

Sources:
FBI loses laptops with classified information – CNN.com ( http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/12/fbi.laptops/index.html )
FBI still losing laptops, weapons – Homeland Stupidity ( http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2007/02/13/fbi-still-losing-laptops-weapons/ )
BBC NEWS Business Nationwide fined for stolen laptop ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6360715.stm )

Town Asks For Firetruck, Gets $665,962 Homeland Security Grant; Not Allowed To Buy Firetruck

Here’s a lovely example of idiotic budgeting, decision making, and bureaucracy. With billions going into Homeland Security spending each year in America, why exactly can’t the money be put to good use throughout the system, instead of throwing it to communities in ridiculous quantaties, whilst stipulating what they can and cannot use the moeny for? Here’s a perfect example of money thrown into the wrong jar:

The fire departmentof Cheshire, Massachusetts, needed a new fire truck, and turned to the government to lend a hand, and ended up getting a lot more than what they expected: a $665,962 homeland security grant. That amount is 26 times the annual budget of the volunteer fire department in the town of 3,500. And here’s the best part: Under the terms of the grant, the department is not allowed to spend it on a fire truck.

So, instead of getting a bit of money to buy a new firetruck or refurbish an old one, the town of Cheshire won a grant to fortify the ranks of its volunteer brigade. I guess one can see this from the bureacraut’s point of view: more men equals more carriers of water. No need for a truck, especially as it’s a small town and all…

But wait a minute, how does a small town in Massachusetts receive such a sizable amount of money out of the budget of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)? Their website, (www.dhs.gov) gives little answer to the question.

Maybe the Department of Homeland Security can better explain why. A spokeswoman for the DHS said that the money comes from the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grants, a program that was absorbed into the DHS after the agency was established follow Sept. 11th. The spokeswoman said that the town “presented a multifaceted project proposal“, and that the grant could be spent over four years. How it will be spent, there was no elaboration. Except, that they can’t buy the truck firetruck.

The Cheshire Fire Department wrote two grant requests, one for the $175,000 fire truck and the other for upping the ranks of its 29-member volunteer force. Still, $665,962 sounds a little too much. And, wasn’t this supposed to be about National Security? The town does have the Cheshire Cheese Monument, a sizable concrete sculpture of a cheese press commemorating a 1,450-pound cheese hunk given by town elders to Thomas Jefferson in 1801. But I doubt anyone has yet studied its value as a terrorist target yet, or is there something we don’t know?

And why exactly is more and more money going into the mainland and small towns, whilst the towns which might need it, such as Boston, New York, and Washington. These cities complained last year that their homeland security grants were lowered, whilst the small town got more than they bargained for. Cheshire, the smallest town in Massachusetts to get a grant (it also ranks 266th in the state in terms of population), but received the largest grant in Massachusetts. And the story continues all around the country…

The money will now be put to use to hire more volunteer fire fighters, especially from amongst high schoolers, and to reimburse the volunteers lost wages whilst on duty. The town council is to meet to decide just where the money will end up. Still, even with all that excess money and possibilities, there are still pressing matters in Cheshire, according to the firechief;

“We really needed the truck.”

Sources:
Homeland Security spending: idiotic pork – Boing Boing
Firefighters’ windfall comes with a catch – The Boston Globe
U.S. Department of Homeland Security | Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program |

Sanitizing High In Prison

I’m actually surprised this case came from an inmate within prison walls, rather than from a 13-year old kid in Suburbia.

The story here is that a 49-year old inmate in Maryland was submitted to the hospital in a drunken and delirious state. Seeing as the prison bars don’t serve alcohol (I appologise for the ridiculous play on words…), this inmate had assumed that drinking alcohol-based hand sanitizer would do the trick. Well, it is 70% alcohol (some sources say it’s “only” 62% alcohol, can’t confirm, mainly cuz I don’t have a bottle of Purell in my possession…), and alcohol gets you drunk. Really drunk, in this case, as the typically calm inmate was described as “loony”, “red-eyed”, and “combative”, like your average “garden-variety drunk”. His blood alcohol level was 0.33, so I guess we’re not talking about just a slight buzz… By the way, this is not an isolated incidence. There are more medically documented instances of this happening. And who hasn’t as a joke suggested drinking, say, cologne, cuz it contains alcohol. Here in Finland, there are many instances of people drinking something with an alcohol content that isn’t meant for drinking. I guess the number one source of a “cheap buzz” in Finland amongst the common sense-deprived alcoholics is Lasol, a window washing liquid for cars. I hope this is a joke, or then just a horribly ironic case, but Lasol has just come out with a Lasol Six-Pack, a great gift!!! See the picture for yourselves… Can’t wait to come across a hobo in Finland carrying one of these babies around!!!

Oh, and going back to the original story, Meghan Marschall, a spokeswoman for Johnson & Johnson, the maker of Purell, said: “When used as directed, Purell is safe and effective.” (source) I guess there’s a reason no bartender has created a cocktail with Purell as an ingredient…

I’ve added the picture to give you visual aid in avoiding a repeat of this stupidity. It works well as it is intended, as a Hand Sanitizer, just don’t try to sanitize your innards…

Read the Washington Post and BodyHack articles on the matter for further information.

Sources:
Washington Post Article
Wired.Com Bodyhack Article

Zappa’s Law

There are two things on Earth that are universal: hydrogen and stupidity.

2006 Darwin Awards Winner(s)

Two 21 year old Florida residents, Jason and Sara took themselves out of the gene pool this summer with the aid of helium. Who of us hasn't inhaled helium from a balloon for a few kicks…? Breathing helium can be lethal as it depraves the bloodstream of oxygen, leading rapidly to a loss of consciousness. These two brainiacs pulled down an 8 foot advertisement balloon and climbed inside, ending their existence on this earth with presumed hilarity and giggles… See the Darwin Awards website for more information, along with the 2006 Darwin Award Runner-ups.

Source: http://darwinawards.com/