Primary school cancels Halloween celebration

As a country, we are loosing the battle for our schools. No longer revered as places of learning or preparatory stages for adulthood, we make them places where children can be safe: safe from having to face rejection on being hit with a ball during dodgeball, safe from having to celebrate holidays. Student ghosts unmasked. While I like the idea of having a school not actively celebrate Halloween, I find the reasoning to be dangerous. The principal made his decision based on the reports of some students boycotting school that day. Which begs the question: how many students (parents) boycotting school does it take to get school policy changed. Are we to end up with 3 school holidays (fall, winter, spring) because people will boycott Veterans Day? What about Memorial Day? Surely we can't have Thanksgiving or Christmas, those are already enough laced with religious ideals. Better tell Hall-mark to get ready.

If schools will capitulate to the parents soley on the fact that some people will not attend the school, then the school will cease to exist. It will become a glorified day care. Don't like what school policy is? Boycott. The policy will change. Don't like what the school is teaching? Boycott. Eventually, if it hasn't happened already, the needs of the students (to learn) will be secondary to the needs of the school officials (to not offend). And we wonder why other countries produce children educated enough to compete economically on a global scale while the US languishes toward the rear of the pack.

Christian girls beheaded in Indonesia

If anyone ever tires of getting up, heading to school and dealing with traffic, think about these three. They were walking to school and never made it there -- just because of their belief in Christ. While our days are spent passing opportunities to share with those around us because of our fears of rejection, others in the world have to face possible war. While the US and the rest of the world was focused on 9/11 and Afghanistant, people in Indonesia were dealing with a religious war that killed 1000 people. Christian girls beheaded in grisly Indonesian attack

RFID Chips in US Passports

I find the idea to embed RFID in passports a foolish one. The technology is too new to be a great benefit, and too exploitable to be a great threat. This ignores the underlying scheme to require, world-wide, a single identification system. U.S. Passports to Receive Electronic Identification Chips

War on Christmas

One of the many books coming out that I plan to read. I just found out about this one today. The link is to an interview about the book. http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/gibson200510270839.asp

Handing over control

During the last century, humans have consistently been giving control of their pleasure time to others: specifically radio, movies, television. The withdrawal into a lack of human contact or active thought has been warned against. The fears have now started to become reality. A device can now "remote control" human actions. Remote Control Device 'Controls' Humans