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Source: boston.com
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An 18-year-old Mississippi lesbian student whose school district canceled her senior prom rather than allow her to escort her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo said she got some unfriendly looks from classmates when she reluctantly returned to campus Thursday.

The district announced Wednesday it wouldn’t host the April 2 prom. The decision came after the American Civil Liberties Union told officials a policy banning same-sex prom dates violated students’ rights. The ACLU said the district not letting McMillen wear a tuxedo violated her free expression rights.

Ridiculous to cancel an entire prom because of an issue with two homosexual students that wanted to be each other’s dates. Besides the obvious violation of civil liberties, it sets a terrible example for the students. It also encourages students and parents to point blame at this one family, when it is in face the school district’s fault that the prom was cancelled. People need to be accepting of these kind of things.

Yeah, there was a memo sent out saying that dates had to be of the opposite sex, but Daryl Presgraves, a spokesperson for GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) says that this kind of rule “sends a message that these students shouldn’t be treated the same.” I agree with him, and I feel like most people I know do as well.

Source: boston.com
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A bill that would ban the sale of sugary drinks and junk food in school vending machines and school stores is gaining momentum in the Legislature, as Massachusetts combats a troubling rise in childhood obesity rates.

The House passed it in January, after nearly a decade of debate on similar bills that went nowhere. Now, Senate President Therese Murray has thrown her support behind the effort and is optimistic that members will embrace it in a scheduled Senate vote today.

Removing junk food offered in schools will not completely solve the problem. The bigger problem is that some schools spent so much time cutting physical education classes because of budget deficits. What we need to do, some way, somehow, is bring those classes back. If we get students moving for 45-60 minutes a day, childhood obesity rates will go down because they’re burning off all that food they’re eating while simultaneously having fun. I remember physical education being cut at my high school past 8th grade because of budget deficits – this left the high schoolers at Latin Academy with no movement of any sort – just six straight hours of either sitting in chairs, moving toward the next class, or eating lunch.

We need to encourage parents to engage their students in healthy exercise and also provide classes for students to exercise as well. Exercise should especially be stressed at the elementary school level (of course, the necessary accommodations and modifications will be made for children on IEPs) and classes containing such should be offered throughout grade school. Exercise is how we get students in shape.

Source: Boston.com
Two sports articles today, both related to the Patriots:

No New Defensive Coordinator for Pats
So apparently, Belichick won’t hire a defensive coordinator this year. It is true that Belichick is a defensive mastermind. But is it really to the team’s benefit if Belichick puts more work on himself? A boss or a manager is supposed to find talented people and delegate tasks to them, not take it all on himself. Is it that he trusts no one else to do this job? Or is it that he believes so much in his own system that he will not take any diversion of opinion? Either way, I think that Belichick or anyone putting that much extra work on themselves is a bad idea and, if not the cause of an eventual burnout, will be the reason the person would end up becoming the team scapegoat should things go wrong.

Manning > Brady?
Dan Shaughnessy thinks so. To be honest, I don’t think I ever believed that Tom Brady was better than Peyton Manning. I like the Patriots, but I don’t hate the Colts like most Pats fans do and I also respect Manning’s talent and awareness of his situation. And I’m not oodling over Brady like a lot of Pats fans do, either; Matt Cassell came in a year ago and put up some pretty good numbers himself. It was almost like we didn’t really need Brady to have a good year, as long as we had good coaching and good talent in the receiving corps and the offensive line. Brady is indeed an important player and he is the face of the team, but at the same time, he isn’t quite at godly status.

Source: The New Republic (tnr.com)
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Reid’s comment suggests that he associates Black English with lack of polish and low intelligence, okay. But before we burn him in effigy for it or ask “What’s that all about?” as if we don’t know, let’s admit that most Americans feel like Reid does. He wasn’t being a benighted “racist” holdout; he was speaking as an ordinary American person. We have caught him in nothing we don’t most of us feel ourselves.

John McWhorter delves into Harry Reid’s “no Negro dialect” comment. I love this analysis. While it is true that he should not have said this, we shouldn’t act like we don’t think this way ourselves. I had an argument over whether the African American Variant of English (as it’s officially called) should be discouraged. I really don’t think it should be. The problem isn’t that people speak this way; it’s how we react to it. AAVE has some very interesting, systematic constructions. For example, stated later in the article:

…Black English is as systematic as standard English, and what we hear as “mistakes” are just variations, not denigrations. Try telling a French person that double negatives are “illogical.” The “unconjugated” be in a sentence like Folks be tryin’ it out is used in a very particular way to indicate habits rather than current events, making explicit something that standard English leaves to context.

Constructions like this are quite interesting from a linguistic perspective (and having taken a linguistics class before, I definitely find it interesting myself). The proper English we speak today, of course, is the form accepted in regular society and formal interactions, and there’s no problem with that. But when people who speak AAVE are amongst themselves in informal settings, should we really look down upon their method of speech? Should we really judge them for it? Or should we try to understand their speech and see where they’re coming from? It’s controversial for sure.

Source: Boston.com
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ROME, Ga.—Planning to drink and drive this New Year’s? A north Georgia funeral home has a deal for you. Between now and noon Thursday, drivers can visit McGuire, Jennings and Miller Funeral Home in Rome to sign a contract stating they plan to drink or take drugs and then drive on New Year’s Eve. If they die in a wreck that day, the funeral home will give them a free burial.

Are you kidding me? Just give them an excuse. So they’re signing a contract saying that they will break the law on New Year’s Eve and will put other drivers and pedestrians at risk. How is this at all lawful? A free burial is nice, but like this? More than a little ridiculous, don’t you think?

The article also states that “funeral home officials said the program is designed to save lives by making partygoers think twice about drinking and driving.” My question is, how could it possibly do this? The person is getting a reward, i.e., less family financial hardship after death, for getting themselves killed in a DUI. I don’t see how this saves lives at all. If anything, it puts innocent drivers at risk. I’d stay off the road in this town during New Year’s Eve if I was in Rome, Georgia and this kind of thing catches on. Hopefully, people find it as ridiculous as I do.

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