In this case, both are at fault, as I said above.

But, seriously. Do you think there should be NO display of affection allowed at school at ALL? That doesn't teach kids to be responsible. It is just crowd control, like so much of our broken school system.

I'm with you, firefly. I wish homeschooling were for me - but it's definitely not (which is why our kids are in private school - something I NEVER though I would do).

But not everyone has the privilege of educational choices. We need a functional public school system in this country, and it is so dysfunctional I don't even know where to start. But I do know that buiilding those little Bob Evans storefronts on the DOE wasn't it.

All you are convincing me of is that there is NO way to control bullies once they have already become bullies. I was verbally tortured in high school, and not one of those girls touched me. Should we stop people from speaking to one another too?

I wonder if it has occurred to you that a system that always, everywhere, in every single school CREATES the conditions for bullying just might have something inherently wrong with it? By middle school, we have already taught large groups of children to be near-sociopaths, and now we're going to make it worse by not letting anyone touch each other?

I can see the practical point you are making, and I sympathize with the teachers and administrators who have to deal with the monstrosity our government hath wrought. But an environment that cannot allow touching between humans is a crazy, dysfunctional, crazy-making, horrible place not suitable for children.

We do not "ban all religions from the public square." We categorically restrict the government from establishing a national church or religion. There is a difference, and the fact that you don't seem to see that difference makes me understand why you would so strongly endorse zero-tolerance rules.

Your argument comes down to "because people can abuse other people by hugging them, we have to ban hugs." Perhaps you should consider a job with the TSA. I don't like our schools for children at all. But the way they are designed to prepare the citizenry to be adults under an authoritarian regime scares the hell out of me. Does this bother you?

Actually I AM furious about those things. Because they are on the same continuum as the no-affection policy. They have utterly dehumanized the classroom, but the students still appear to be human! Oh dear! Let's see if we can dehumanize the hallways too! These are not separate issues.

If we had small, mixed-age classrooms, most of the institutionalized problems of public schools would go away, and we wouldn't need standardized anything. Emphasis on "institutionalized."

but like most quantified representations of qualitative realities, it's only grossly representative of how things really are. Which is fine, but quantifying things gives people the impression that you can do fine statistical analyses of them and magically spit out scientific answers to unscientific questions. Economists are notorious for this. Trouble is, there's really no known way around trying to quantify happniess. We just have to keep in mind that this is only one kind of indicator and that anecdotes, impressions, and common sense are ALSO valid indicators. If common sense and stats support one another, then we just might have something. And in this case, they might. However, we have such a long and rich feminist tradition here in the U.S. that I'm reluctant to claim status similar to that of "nations that have far shorter histories of democracy or feminism." Political conditions in these countries may be such that they are trying to reform things with top-down laws to increase gender parity. While I don't think this is a bad thing, the U.S. historically resists that kind of measure, waiting for immense public pressure to build from the 'bottom' before making major legal reforms. So comparing the two might not be as easy as the numbers make it look.

And, even worse, so unsurprised.

which is why I didn't find it that funny. But it was a good point anyway.

There are certain things it is not appropriate to lighten up about. This song is more like a political cartoon; you don't read it for the titters and belly laughs as much as for the almost-too-painful experience of truths you don't want to think about.

I didn't even understand the slogan until you explained that they made the shirts for infants as well. It sounds like she is proud that she survived her most recent abortion unscathed. Oo la la!

only if it's intended as one.

Isn't your name kinda ... girly?

My reaction to every ultrasound I have ever seen - all of which were of fetuses in my own uterus (and I was rather attached to them at the time) - was, "what the heck is THAT blob"? I don't get how blurry gray masses projected onto a TV screen could convince a person to become anti-choice after years of being pro-choice.

More to the point, I don't understand how his attachment to his fetal daughter has anything to do with the fetuses in other people's uteruses.

Try it yourself; "proofread" is not a noun. And his name is "fetboy."

Please. Get it through your head that a minor typo is not indicative of a person's intelligence. But you can easily lose the respect of intelligent people when you try to use name-calling as a form of debate. It makes it seem almost as though you don't have an actual ... argument.

Hmmm.