Saturday, September 20, 2003

Surely John Ashcroft has something to do with this...

A Beaver County judge dismissed a mother's claim that a school district violated her 13-year-old daughter's constitutional rights when it suspended the girl for having oral sex with a boy on a school bus.

The woman also claimed it was not clear in the South Side Area School District's written policies that oral sex on a bus was unacceptable behavior.

Beaver County Judge George E. James, however, dismissed the mother's appeal Aug. 29, saying the district's decision to suspend the girl and the 13-year-old boy was legal and supported by substantial evidence.

The district suspended the students in May after classmates reported the teenagers' acts. South Side Middle School Principal Thomas Ralston said the students admitted they had consensual oral sex on the bus during a field trip.

Officials suspended the students until Oct. 29. The teenagers can attend the school district's alternative-education program in the meantime.

Kurt Winter, the attorney for the girl's mother, did not return a phone call left by The Associated Press today.

Unconventional agriculture

Fritz Schrank on Delaware's little-known cash crop. And there's probably no better place to go for a snipe hunt either.

Via the ultimate source of wisdom on all things economic, Jane Galt.

Civil discourse

Clarence Thomas as Scalia puppet.Shack making a fist
This cartoon would be offensive even if it were accurate. IMO the cartoonist Don Wright should be fisted by Shaquille O'Neal.

Wednesday, September 17, 2003

Blix Says Iraq Probably Destroyed WMDs

Right here, thanks to Drudge.

Interesting.

Overheard on "Extreme Dating"

"You don't like toys. You don't do threesomes. You don't do cybersex. What do you do?"

"Extreme Dating" is a TV show that doesn't seem to have a website. In it a contestant is competing with two exes while out on a date with a 4th person on camera. The exes are watching and feeding commentary and suggestions to #4 throughout the date. Based on all of this #4 decides if there will be another date. If so, the contestant wins and the couple gets a date paid for by the show. Otherwise the exes win a prize.

And now for the question you must be asking: why on earth am I watching this? Details to follow...

Target rich environment indeed

I have often disagreed with Paul Krugman. But now he has lost his @#$!@#$ mind.

Tuesday, September 16, 2003

WOW

As in Women of WalMart. Playboy wants to run a pictorial on this theme. Far be it to insult the pulchritude of the legions of ladies who work at Wal Mart, but I'm thinking Playboy has really run out of ideas.

Maybe they need suggestions. How about Women of Waffle House? Women of the Department of Motor Vehicles? Women of the Salvation Army? Candy Striper Girls?

Solar power info in Mother Earth News

The August/September issue of Mother Earth News has a big section on solar power.

Well so what, you say - even if I wanted to mess with this I couldn't, because I live in the burbs and the zoning people wouldn't let me do anything. Maybe, maybe not. The cover story shows a family of 5 outside their exurban Washington DC home which teams solar power, passive solar and general purpose conservation so well that they have zero net power usage. They have 6 kW of capacity, which is expensive, but the resulting increase in their mortgage payments was just about equal to their presumed energy cost savings.

Another interesting project involved a man who got tired of his very hard, overchlorinated city water supply and decided to start trapping his rainwater. At first it was just for toilets, washing clothes and other such, but eventually he added components so it could supply his drinking water too. The auxiliaries such as storage tanks cost him some yard space, but he's very happy with the results.

In both cases the corresponding utilities are available locally, so there is always a backup.

Projects like these aren't cheap, require a fair amount of involvement after completion, and typically make little economic sense outside very specific circumstances. But solar panel prices are coming down, so the scope of applicability is increasing.

Music and politics

By Jay Nordlinger in another of his terrific Impromptus on NRO.

Monday, September 15, 2003

Animal sex roundup

Relax, what follows is confined to one species at a time. Most of the time, anyway.

Click here for the longest bird penis ever. Yes, there's a picture. I'll never look at ducks the same way again.

Dawn Olsen points to some guidance from the Ayatollah Khomeini on sex. This does involve animals. The four legged kind, even. There's more here and elsewhere on the site.

I think I've mentioned Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice for All Creation before. The shtick here is that various species write in to Dr. Tatiana to ask for advice about dealing with their dysfunctions. And they have some unique, uh, situations, such as species of fruit fly with sperm longer than they are themselves.

Long lost cousin?

We already have White Glenn and Black Glenn. I guess that makes me White Bowen, and here's the Black Bowen.

I've been known to do a bit of genealogy. I can trace the Bowen part back to Wales, but most of the rest is unknown.

The unknowns include a great grandfather who I assume had dark skin, which you wouldn't ordinarily associate with his Dutch name. Allegedly he was abandoned at an early age. Near as I can tell much of his blood was American Indian, based on the skin tones of his descendants and the fact that they all had straight hair. Apparently it all bleached out by the time it got to me.

Then again, the typical racial categories are almost arbitrary. Black Americans certainly have African blood potentially from all over that huge continent, but so do many "whites" and "Hispanics". Hispanics would be muddled enough merely by lumping Puerto Ricans, Cubans and Mexicans, and it's even worse when you look at how much mixing there is within each of those subgroups. American Indians aren't exactly homogeneous, but they get a category of their own along with "Asian/Pacific Islanders".

The gang at Gene Expression has lots more to say about race issues, and lots of other stuff besides.