Dr. Helen has a post and a long discussion thread at her place about bullies in school and what can be done about them. Which reminded me that I had wanted to post about a small news snippet I found a couple of weeks ago.

Students To Be Punished For Rumors

Bellingham, Mass., is looking to shut down the often-nasty junior-high rumor mill.

Administrators at the town's middle school have rewritten the student handbook. Kids can now be reprimanded, even suspended, for starting a bad rumor. The Boston Herald reported that the target of the new crackdown is girls who often get revenge by spreading malicious stories over e-mail.

Psychologists like the plan. They said even the

When I first read this I was astounded - the number of things wrong with this attempt to suppress bullying in just 3 short paragraphs, boggles the mind.

First - this seems to concentrate solely on girls and verbal bullying... what about girls and physical bullying and boys and bullying? Are they under the delusion that using this method to try and stop a single type of bullying instance, will make life better for all?

Mind you, I do realize that trying to do something is better than doing nothing... but this particular method is doomed to fail. Oh they might maybe possibly stop one or two kids from using email to slime a classmate, but the chances of this are extremely remote. You will notice that they are aiming for email - a nice safe technical solution that means they don't have to get involved in actual conversation with the girls... just monitor the email. How easy is that!!!

Which brings me to point number 2... monitoring the email of these girls. How are they going to do that? They don't mention if it's school email or home email... and they seem to forget the legalities that come into play - unless they can get permission or a court order, how are they going to find out the email addresses used by the girls - are they school emails? It doesn't say.

Also, they would lose big time in court because... it's an electronic medium that is known for its insecurity! In other words, just because the email says it comes from Jane's email box, does not mean it was

a) written by Jane or
b) even sent from that particular email box

So, all the parent has to do is take them to court and make the school system "prove" that Jane sent the email. Unless they are using a camera - one that can read what she is writing to the screen and shows Jane actually wriing it, there is no concrete proof. Then Jane's parents can sue the school district for all kinds of nice reasons.

But the big problem here is that once again - instead of confronting a problem on a personal level - bullying in the schools. They are hiding behind a computer - let the computer decide who is doing what and who gets punished. (they are Idiots!)

Last of all, if their little crackdown does work and there is no protest by parents of such an egregious monitoring of their child's communications... what makes them think that the girls won't go right back to the tried and true - word of mouth rumor and notes passed around from girl to girl.

They solve nothing by this approach and may even make it easier for a real bully to get their victim in trouble by using the victim's email to spread rumors and then calling it to the attention of the Principal. Do they think that kids aren't clever enough to do this? Then they have NO business in the teaching profession!

Posted by: Teresa in Current Affairs at 10:49 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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I was over at Instapundit and he's got tons of links with reaction to the Oval Office address by President Bush last night. I just happened to catch it on ABC with Elizabeth Vargas and someone else whose name I don't remember... Brian Mulrooney maybe? (my apologies I'm bad with names and while they printed out her name several times, his only came up once and so it didn't really stick in my mind)

It seems that most of the blogosphere that I've read so far was concentrated on Fox and MSNBC... so they missed out on something remarkable. The two anchors doing the news talk around the speech by the President were on topic and not making outrageous statements about the speech itself! I was certainly amazed.

I didn't realize the President was going to speak. I hadn't been paying any attention to the news over the weekend, so it was sheer coincidence that I was watching at that time. It would be very fair to say that I was not expecting anything remotely complimentary from the ABC anchors. So, I must give credit where credit is due. They didn't pick on items that were not part of the speech, they stuck to the message as delivered, gave Mr. Bush credit for talking about WMD's, and (once again) laying out his plan for Iraq. They even went so far as to acknowledge that Mr. Bush has been making many speeches recently with all of these themes... this one being notable for being from the Oval Office and during Prime Time.

Fair and Balanced indeed. I'm not quite sure what to make of it, but this is an interesting turn of events.

Posted by: Teresa in Current Affairs at 06:35 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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There's a story in the USA Today that is loudly proclaiming poor literacy rates among US adults.

Survey finds 1 in 20 lack basic English skills

Wow - scary headline - so what does the article have to say?

Eleven million U.S. adults - about one in 20 - have such poor English skills that they can't read a newspaper, understand the directions on a bottle of pills or, in many cases, carry on a basic conversation, says a new federal survey that offers the first peek in more than a decade at the USA's "non-literate" adult population.

Well, I'm not surprised about the not understanding directions part... I'm not sure how much that has to do with literacy and how much is people being intimidated by medicine or even how much disdain they have for the directions on the package.

But let us continue...

Recent immigrants with limited or no English skills account for most of the group, adult education advocates say, but the survey suggests that even the average adult has low skills.

You see I knew we would get to the heart of the matter pretty quickly. Although there are legitimate US citizens who have literacy problems... this article eventually turns into an advocacy piece to get English lessons for illegal immigrants... don't believe it? Then let's skip down to this part...

"We remain concerned that the numbers are so high," said Leslie Burger, president-elect of the American Library Association. She and others said the high numbers of non-literate adults is a function of increased immigration in the past decade. Many new immigrants, advocates say, could benefit from adult education programs but worry that doing so could expose them to government scrutiny and even deportation. The non-literate population includes adults who may be able to read and write - even at high levels - in another language.

You will notice that the word "illegal" is never mentioned - they are simply called "immigrants" - like they are all here having come through legal channels and we're letting them down by not teaching them English.

Forget it! If they want me to take a survey like this with any seriousness, I want a survey of legitimate US citizens. The same citizens who pay taxes and are legally entitled to live here. I know too many people who have had to jump through all kinds of hoops and perform dog and pony shows not to mention writing a book size story of their lives... before they can get in the country. Now just because these people waltzed on in here without even bothering with that "legal" stuff - I'm supposed to feel bad and support English education for them?

We already educate their kids in public school... give them free medical care... among other things. I do NOT want to pay for adult English classes too. Because you see - people like me... we're the ones hit with the tax bills to pay for this junk. Someone has to pay the bill - you don't think these illegal immigrants will pay for it - do you? Then you've missed the point of the entire article. It's to make people feel guilty, feel like if they hand over a little more of their hard earned money, they'll be helping some poor soul learn a little English.

So, USA Today, let me know when you have a legitimate survey of American Adults - I'll be happy to listen to you then. But quit sensationalizing the people who are not supposed to be in this country anyway! Have their own country pay for English lessons for them!

Posted by: Teresa in Current Affairs at 06:17 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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I was over at Slashdot - and came across this post...

"Nature magazine recently conducted a head-to-head competition between Wikipedia and Britannica, having experts compare 42 science-related articles. The result was that Wikipedia had about 4 errors per article, while Britannica had about 3.

What struck me about this was not the Wikipedia vs Britannica aspect, but the number of errors per article! So, you go to do research and you are looking for an authoritative source, even they don't seem to be able to get it right.

Therefore, if you are researching something for a paper or book you are writing. I would guess you have to go to at least 2 or 3 sources to check the facts... while making sure the sources for these facts are NOT all coming from the same place!

That is actually much more difficult than it sounds. When reading the Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg, he showed that so much information about environmental studies is based on single poorly done works from long ago. He did this by digging backward using the bibliographies given at the end of each study he read.

Eugene Volokh in his book on Academic Legal Writing also talks about digging into the sources cited in various papers used in research. Eugene even gives examples of how a legal paper can use a cited source incorrectly which can then be propogated down the line by the next person using that legal article as a source.

Looks like they both have a very valid point - as noted in the Slashdot post. Even in what is considered to be an "authoritative" source - there could be at least one error possibly more. This could cause huge problems if you are trying to get accurate information. Meaning - we all need to check and check again - on facts that are presented to us.

I'll be the first to admit on to being very lazy in this regard. Then again - I'm not writing for an encyclopedia.

Posted by: Teresa in Current Affairs at 09:32 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I was over at Blackfive and saw his link to Smash's Call to arms!

Okay - so at the very least I can email people and I felt that my local congressman is the person of choice. Mr. Kerry and Mr. Kennedy - who I have no doubt want to turn tail and run - will be getting the same version of this letter - even though I know it will do no good. I want them to know that there are people in their state who do not support a pull out of troops.

In the extended entry is the letter I sent to my own congressman. I will be letting you know when I hear back from him. It is however, Friday at 5pm - I do not expect an answer until sometime next week.

(the letter would have gone out earlier today - but my internet connection has had some trouble) more...

Posted by: Teresa in Current Affairs at 11:54 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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No - I'm not talking about Howard Dean and his approach to fighting a war...

I'm talking about the latest news from the City of Boston and how they intend to evacuate the city in case of disaster. Looks like the big cities around the country don't want to end up looking like a bunch of morons without a clue if things get really bad.

The plan designates the major evacuation routes to which cars and buses would be directed by marked signs and traffic control.

But mindful of what went wrong in New Orleans, where people without cars were left stranded, the plan designates neighborhood emergency centers. There are 70 centers where people can be temporarily sheltered or board buses.

"So people who may not have a vehicle to drive out of the city, they will have these buildings in the neighborhoods, where they don't have to come downtown," Menino said.

Okay so far so good. Now - you must understand we are looking at a news story and a very short one at that. But, you would think the reporter might have put just a tad more detail into this... just for anal retentive people like me who like to know that there really IS a plan - they aren't just blowing hot air.

For instance.... I am assuming from the story (as noted above), that inbound lanes will become outbound lanes to allow faster egress. So, how far outside the City Limits will they extend the evacuation routes? How will they get in touch with the cities along the way to get to work closing down their sections to inbound traffic? Do the police in all the areas know how to go about this in an orderly manner? (Yes any project of this kind is MUCH harder than it looks! Order and method would save and enormous amount of time.)

How do they decide on the distance to evacuate? If they are stopping at a certain point - are the cities at the "end of the line" able to shelter and feed the influx of people into their area? Will every city have to set up emergency shelters of some sort and stock emergency rations? (they should... but poor cities will have a difficult time with this - if it's even fiscally possible!) Will there be different stopping points defined by different disasters?

Menino said that he's close to nailing down an agreement with the Convention Center in South Boston, and there are more arrangements to be made with towns and cities outside Boston for those evacuating the city itself.

Ah - so we see from this, while they have figured out some sort of routing system for the City of Boston - they aren't quite up to speed yet with the surrounding areas... Shouldn't there be old agreements with these surrounding towns? Surely old evacuation plans must have been in place... there must have been agreements with other towns and cities!

One big question - also not addressed in this article... ARE THEY GOING TO PRACTICE???

I would venture to say no. It's difficult and costly to practice disaster drills. And cost seems to be the big inhibiting factor in most operations. So, you will have a plan - and while it is rather fresh in many minds at the moment... this moment will pass, these people will move on... and you have to wonder if those coming into power in the future will take any notice of "the plan". (after all New Orleans had a plan... it was on paper... no one seemed to know about it! even the mayor who supposedly helped to write it!)

So far this entire article simply begs the question - Did they have NO PLAN in place until now? It certainly seems as if they are in the middle of finally drawing up a rudimentary plan right now. The mayor is "nailing down an agreement" with the Convention Center... and "more arrangements to be made with towns and cities" certainly has the feel of starting from scratch. That's a rather scary thing to contemplate.

Even scarier...

Not relying on media alone to alert the public, the plan adds an Emergency Alert Notification System, dubbed MEANS. The high-tech system will be ready by January

"To notify the public if there is an emergency in the city. We can notify 60,000 households in a matter of one hour," Menino said.

Oh lovely - they are going "high tech" - that's nice... what if "high tech" ain't workin' when you need it? Are there alternate communications plans in place? have they looked at their own communications to be sure they are as robust as possible? The NOLA police were stymied when their communications systems were flooded out!

Let's hope Mayor Menino has things under better control than this article indicates. If not, the citizens of Boston could be in for a very rude surprise if they need an evacuation plan.

I live in a very small town outside of Boston... I think I need to look into what their plans are in case of disaster - I wonder if they have any at all. I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised and find out they are very prepared. (one always has hopes)

UPDATE: A couple of comments bring up points I think need to be in the main post...

First Pam says:

Seriously, though... Why? Does Boston ever get hit by Hurricanes, because I can't imagine that many people can evac a city in time to escape a nuclear disaster...

While hurricanes and fires have been the historic major reasons for evacuating an area, just because a major city does not have these types of natural disasters does not mean that evacuation plans can be skipped. Remember the Titanic! It was considered unsinkable - no one who built it could envision a scenario where it might encounter a disaster that could sink it... not enough lifeboats and little to no evacuation planning resulted in many deaths that were most certainly preventable! Doing no planning because people can't believe that disaster of some sort will ever strike is completely irresponsible and will result in needless death and injury.

Stu says...

Remember, You are responsible for your own safety.... No one else!!

Very true - to rely on the government to get you out of trouble is never a good thing. OTOH this doesn't mean that a duly elected government should just sit back and tell people to take care of themselves! They must have plans in place - at the very very least - for police, fire, and medical personel. Not to mention being able to put up temporary shelters for those who have nowhere else to go. Planning traffic flow, preparing for rescue operations, all these things fall under the local government and they should be prepared.

With all the examples that have come our way in the last few years - for a local government of a major city NOT to have good plans in place... that is irresponsible!

Posted by: Teresa in Current Affairs at 05:38 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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