[Jake]

Edit: I screwed up the title. It's supposed to say Our Children are Going to Die, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
DO YOU GET IT IT'S A DR. STRANGELOVE REFERENCE.





OH GOD, PROTECT THE CHILDREN!



I, as well as the majority of you here, live in America. To be more specific, I live near Houston. In Texas.

I don't know about the rest of the country, but the public schools I went to had a silly "Zero tolerance" policy. This means that we had drug dogs in our parking lot every week or two. That any student that drove to school, or had any sort of affiliation with any school project (sports, clubs, whatever) was subject to "random" p­iss testing.
My 4 year old little brother has to wear clear fu­cking backpacks to preschool. From my understanding, lots of schools do this. I've just never seen one.
Yes, preschoolers have to wear clear backpacks*. I guess this is so he can't sell other 4 year old kids cocaine or something. Or maybe it has to do with the illegal Lunchables market. H­ell if I know.
The administration of the school I graduated from even had a habit of going through the text and picture messages of confiscated cell phones. Presumably this was for our safety or something. I don't know what their official excuse for that was for since I never heard of anyone's parents being called over the contents of a text message. They did give us some vague threats of having us prosecuted if they found out we had any "naughty" pictures of an S/O on our phones one time. That was nice of them.


For the past year or two I've been reading stories about young girls being prosecuted for taking pictures of themselves and sending it to a boyfriend, or the internet.
Seriously. Why do we try and "protect the children" in this way? Protection from what? Themselves? Protection from squirt gun wielding 10 year olds by expelling the horrible, malicious, little {expletive run over by Cspace}s? Protection from my meth dealing 4 year old brother?

A few months back in Arizona School officials strip searched a 13yr old girl because a student accused her of having ibuprofen. Back home in good 'ol Texas my old Elementary school tried like hell to get my mom to put me on Adderall because they claimed that since I was bored in class and that I would.. *gasp* talk to other students during class that I must have the hyperactive form of ADHD. About 10 years later it turned out I'm more of the inattentive type of ADHD than anything else, since I can't focus for s­hit. But that's another story.
We suspend kids for simple medicines, yet we gladly give them amphetamine analogs to shut them up. Granted, adderall and other medicines like it aren't terribly dangerous, but there's a hell of alot more potential for "abuse" with it than a birth control pill. If I crush up and snort an adderall I'm going to be tweaking for a few hours. If I rail birth control I'll just look retarded.


Is this our only solution for these "problems"? Oh, sorry kid. Our drug dogs found a dimebag in your back seat, so we're going to have to expel you for the protection of both yourself, and the other students on campus. Oh, and we took the liberty of calling a squadcar to pick you up for processing at the station. At that point you will be formally charged with a class B misdemeanor and given up to 180 days in jail and a $2000 fine. However, if you act like a good little boy in court the judge will let you off with a year's worth of probation, a suspended driver's license, court ordered rehab, and maybe some community service. This is all to protect you.

Why the fu­ck do people do these things? Is it like this in other countries too? Is it just us down south who put up with this rampant idiocy?


*Cspace, you're a web designer right? If you're reading this, please offer to make a new site for the DaytonISD. Their current one looks like the Highschool P.E. coach did it on MS Frontpage while drunk.

[Troll]

Best post this place has seen in a long time.

[Atilla]

I would suspect there's even harsher standard operating procedures regarding adolescent indecency/drug possession in middle eastern countries.

It's ultimately back to liberty vs. security; both parties since 9/11 seem to be strongly in favor of the latter and could care less if it infringes upon the former. If you don't support Homeland Security and defeating the terrorists, you must be "unamerican" or worse, a terrorist yourself! This isn't as bad as it was in 2003 of course, but I still get hit with it occasionally.

Anyway, I just don't like the government violating my right to privacy, which does extend to children thanks. The only people that have the right to police children are their parents, and then they are going to rebel in one way or another. The examples you gave are fairly typical, and the only one that does any potential harm is the Myspace example, which they could simply just force her to take down and/or close her account. Also I understand extending the definition of "adult" to a lower age if the kid is sixteen and goes on a killing spree, but having a thirteen year old strip-searched is outright ludicrous. And on top of that for Ibuprofen? Hell I had a small bottle of that in my backpack nearly every day of high school.

If it's continuously bad behavior and it can be proven that the parents are genuinely trying to control their kid to no avail, well there are these things called boarding schools, and for really extreme cases juvenile detention centers.

And don't even get me started on the prohibition of marijuana.

[Jake]

Best post this place has seen in a long time.

Oh my god, Jake can write more than a two sentence post?

I would suspect there's even harsher standard operating procedures regarding adolescent indecency/drug possession in middle eastern countries.

It's ultimately back to liberty vs. security; both parties since 9/11 seem to be strongly in favor of the latter and could care less if it infringes upon the former. If you don't support Homeland Security and defeating the terrorists, you must be "unamerican" or worse, a terrorist yourself! This isn't as bad as it was in 2003 of course, but I still get hit with it occasionally.

Anyway, I just don't like the government violating my right to privacy, which does extend to children thanks. The only people that have the right to police children are their parents, and then they are going to rebel in one way or another. The examples you gave are fairly typical, and the only one that does any potential harm is the Myspace example, which they could simply just force her to take down and/or close her account. Also I understand extending the definition of "adult" to a lower age if the kid is sixteen and goes on a killing spree, but having a thirteen year old strip-searched is outright ludicrous. And on top of that for Ibuprofen? Hell I had a small bottle of that in my backpack nearly every day of high school.

If it's continuously bad behavior and it can be proven that the parents are genuinely trying to control their kid to no avail, well there are these things called boarding schools, and for really extreme cases juvenile detention centers.

And don't even get me started on the prohibition of marijuana.

No offense to anyone here who might be from one, but the majority of middle eastern countries are festering s­hitholes for a variety of reasons I'm not going to go into. Infact, some of the reasons they're so terrible are the same reasons I have things like this to b­it­ch about.


Anyways, these self-destructive policies aren't even about security vs. liberty.
Security vs. liberty would be metal detectors at school entrances that are there to confiscate weapons. There is nothing harmful at all about taking birth control at lunch, Nobody is going to get hurt because some dumba­ss kid thought squirt guns are funny. What is, arguably going to get people hurt are a bunch of thug wannabe 16yr olds with switchblades.
Security Vs. liberty is me having to take my shoes off at the airport. It's not having security harass me because there's a crushed beercan in the back of the truck I borrowed.
Security vs, liberty is gun control, it's speed limits, it's vehicle inspections. You can argue about how effective those things are at making us secure all you want, but there is no sane person who is going to argue that suspending kids for OTC pain meds keeps them safe.
Oh, and denying an asthmatic an emergency inhaler on the grounds that he might spray it on an allergic kid doesn't make anyone safe. At all.

Now, in -theory- going through schools with drug dogs and making all your students piss in cups can potentially make them safe.
In theory.
Now, the reality of it is that all of the "dangerous" drugs are water soluble. Meaning you piss them out of your system in about 1-5 days. Meth, other amphetamines, coke, opiates, etc. All of them gone in just a few days. This means that unless the kid in question is snorting lines every day, the chances of him testing positive at a random drug test are practically none.
The other problem with this is that nobody at that age really uses any of these (except certain prescription drugs) anyways. I've only seen someone busted by the dogs once too.
No, the only thing that happens is the occasional kid tests positive for marijuana, and gets sent home for a week or two. I think the policy over here is to also kick you out of any school activities you may be in, and remove your driving privileges for a year.
Yeah, we spend ungodly amounts of money, and waste the local law enforcement's time for that.
We also have a hard time affording books, or paying teachers.


There is no evidence at all that any of this will make anyone secure. Oh no! Sarah sent a.... *gasp* NUDE PHOTO OF HERSELF to Steve! Arrest both of them!
For what? A picture? Chances are that if they're sending naked photos to eachother that they're fu­cking anyways, so who cares? Or wait, is the solution to make that illegal too?
Hell, that brings me to another thing. What the everloving fu­ck is with the logic behind abstinence only education? We have easily double the rate of any other industrialized nation because of this. Why? Because some evangelical christian nutbags with a puritan streak say that if we teach our kids how not to become pregnant that they'll wind up as a prostitute or whatever? Things are pretty bad when you talk to an 19yyr old girl who thinks if you have sex in the water she can't become pregnant. It's even worse when her 19 year old pregnant friend backs her up on that.








Oh, and Bryce. This is a bit old, but you'll love this. I'm glad the blind nationalism fad is dying too, I just wish this kind of thinking would too.
http://blog.norml.or...uana-offenders/



edit: Like I said earlier, is this stupidity unique to us?

[Atilla]

This is random, but I just wanted to say I'm so {expletive ninja'd by Cspace}ing tired of hearing the phrase "in these tough economic times" or any similar euphemism every five {expletive ninja'd by Cspace}ing seconds. YES I KNOW ALREADY. YOU CAN ONLY MAKE IT WORSE BY FEARMONGERING THANKS. I'm starting to think the media's shoving it down our throats for a reason. I'm not exactly sure what that would be though. You'd think they'd want it to upturn like everyone else, but then again they do seem to do better when they've got a sad story I guess.

Anyway yeah. That article agitated the hell out of me as well. But he's from Georgia so what can we expect really.

I saw Moore's new movie tonight and I believe I've lost all hope in our political system.

[x..]

This is random, but I just wanted to say I'm so {expletive ninja'd by Cspace}ing tired of hearing the phrase "in these tough economic times" or any similar euphemism every five {expletive ninja'd by Cspace}ing seconds. YES I KNOW ALREADY. YOU CAN ONLY MAKE IT WORSE BY FEARMONGERING THANKS. I'm starting to think the media's shoving it down our throats for a reason. I'm not exactly sure what that would be though. You'd think they'd want it to upturn like everyone else, but then again they do seem to do better when they've got a sad story I guess.

Anyway yeah. That article agitated the hell out of me as well. But he's from Georgia so what can we expect really.

I saw Moore's new movie tonight and I believe I've lost all hope in our political system.

They're doing it for one reason:

Money.

News about 'poor economy', shops and media companies 'lower prices' to 'save your cash in the recession' - more people buy their {expletive hax0rd by Cspace} for 'much less' = they get more cash.

[Darkness]

Money, money, money, money... Must be funny... In a rich man's world!

[Jake]

This is random, but I just wanted to say I'm so {expletive ninja'd by Cspace}ing tired of hearing the phrase "in these tough economic times" or any similar euphemism every five {expletive ninja'd by Cspace}ing seconds. YES I KNOW ALREADY. YOU CAN ONLY MAKE IT WORSE BY FEARMONGERING THANKS. I'm starting to think the media's shoving it down our throats for a reason. I'm not exactly sure what that would be though. You'd think they'd want it to upturn like everyone else, but then again they do seem to do better when they've got a sad story I guess.

Anyway yeah. That article agitated the hell out of me as well. But he's from Georgia so what can we expect really.

I saw Moore's new movie tonight and I believe I've lost all hope in our political system.

They're doing it for one reason:

Money.

News about 'poor economy', shops and media companies 'lower prices' to 'save your cash in the recession' - more people buy their {expletive hax0rd by Cspace} for 'much less' = they get more cash.

Stores and companies being misleading about their prices has been going on since the dawn of time.
Go into a clothing store some time. Notice how everything is always 20-50% off?

Edit: While I'm at it, global economic meltdown helps nobody. The reality of it is that the television news outlets have learned long ago that they generate more rating, and more profit, through bad news than through anything else. This has been going on since the dawn of time.


edit2: Hey mommie look what I found!

[Master Of Stuff]

Is it like this in other countries too? Is it just us down south who put up with this rampant idiocy?

As a fellow texan, I would like to say:

If you don't already think that the majority of people down south are a bunch of tards who like to think that they are following a set of righteous values, yet do not care to follow them, but have no problem invoking said values when it involves anyone else but themselves

Then you haven't lived here long enough.

Stores and companies being misleading about their prices has been going on since the dawn of time.
Go into a clothing store some time. Notice how everything is always 20-50% off?

If those stores are "Misleading", then anyone who ever made money is a sellout. Everyone knows about the upsell, everyone should know that these stores are trying to make a profit.

The reason for the 20-50% discount is because the usually minimum upsell is 1.2x of the manufacturer's price. If it sells, then you gained back the investment + .2x. If there is a 20% off sale, then they break even. If 50%, then they only get back .2x and they probably wont carry the item or as much as they had to begin with the next time they buy it.

[Dragonman]

It can be very ridiculous how secure the administration gets with younger and younger students. I'm guessing they think that if they ingrain safety measures into them early they won't be as likely to cause any mishaps later on? They have to consider rebellious factors though, if kids see so much control, they may want to do things they don't normally do, just because it isn't allowed.

It's like the whole drinking age debate. Why should a kid be able to go to war but not have a beer? And college students (and many high school students) party with alcohol like its their mission. So many people I know are like this. And it's because it's illegal. If kids could have cracked open beers back in high school when they were still living with their parents, then they could certainly be more responsible about it, especially with their parents around. But now, many kids will be drinking behind their parents backs while they're still living at home, which can nastily create a barrier of mistrust before they go off to college, during which drinking is almost always the only way to socialize. I have friends who joke around a lot that they're alcoholics. It's a common remark I hear a lot. No one gives any heed to the fact that alcoholism is actually real. And the way it can work is interesting and dangerous. Sure, it's not addicting like drugs, once you're out of college you can just stop altogether or cut-down a lot on your heavy drinking. But what happens when you hit your first snag in the real world? You're probably not going to have your buddy's apartment to hide in, the people you're with probably won't congratulate you on a good night because you vomited on everything in sight. But this isn't that common.

What is interesting to me is when I talk with students at my school who are in their 5th year for an engineering program or masters. These kids are around 21-24. Once they're actually legal to drink, or have been for a while, they're just not that pumped about it anymore. There's no more thrill when you're legal to do it, it's then that you start realizing what you're actually doing.. drinking heavy amounts of usually nasty-tasting drinks (college students are poor, 98% the stuff they buy tastes like {expletive hax0rd by Cspace}), losing consciousness, rolling around with other people laughing at nothing, getting sick and puking, and so on.

My whole point is that when so many rules are laid down, especially over things that should be controlled so much, kids will rebel. The experts just want to look at their statistics and dish out more safety measures, codes, and laws to make those statistics look nicer. But there are other problems arising that won't show up in the statistics.

[Jake]

Is it like this in other countries too? Is it just us down south who put up with this rampant idiocy?

As a fellow texan, I would like to say:

If you don't already think that the majority of people down south are a bunch of tards who like to think that they are following a set of righteous values, yet do not care to follow them, but have no problem invoking said values when it involves anyone else but themselves

Then you haven't lived here long enough.

That's pretty much everyone, everywhere. We just have a bunch of Southern Baptists and random batsh­it churches that think it's their [urlhttp://www.121musicblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/blues_brothers_most.jpg]Mission From God[/url] to be America's moral police. The worst part of it all is that their morality involves some pretty scary things. I'm pretty sure that if we were to allow these crazy {expletive run over by Cspace}s free reign over this place we'd look like some middle eastern s­hithole in 50 years. (Theocracy is the BEST form of government!)
Also, Texas secession bumper stickers. Those people are perfectly fine with supporting treason with a bumpersticker, but I know that none of those dumbasses will ever do anything about it.

Stores and companies being misleading about their prices has been going on since the dawn of time.
Go into a clothing store some time. Notice how everything is always 20-50% off?

If those stores are "Misleading", then anyone who ever made money is a sellout. Everyone knows about the upsell, everyone should know that these stores are trying to make a profit.

The reason for the 20-50% discount is because the usually minimum upsell is 1.2x of the manufacturer's price. If it sells, then you gained back the investment + .2x. If there is a 20% off sale, then they break even. If 50%, then they only get back .2x and they probably wont carry the item or as much as they had to begin with the next time they buy it.

I was referring to the common retail practice of "We're going to sell this pair of pants for a little over $40, and then claim we normally sell them for $60 and say they're 30% off". Everyone knows they do it, but I'd still say it's misleading.

Despite stores putting MSRP tags of anywhere from $50-$70 on a pair of Levi's, I have never, ever paid more than $40 and some change for a pair of pants.

It can be very ridiculous how secure the administration gets with younger and younger students. I'm guessing they think that if they ingrain safety measures into them early they won't be as likely to cause any mishaps later on? They have to consider rebellious factors though, if kids see so much control, they may want to do things they don't normally do, just because it isn't allowed.

It's like the whole drinking age debate. Why should a kid be able to go to war but not have a beer? And college students (and many high school students) party with alcohol like its their mission. So many people I know are like this. And it's because it's illegal. If kids could have cracked open beers back in high school when they were still living with their parents, then they could certainly be more responsible about it, especially with their parents around. But now, many kids will be drinking behind their parents backs while they're still living at home, which can nastily create a barrier of mistrust before they go off to college, during which drinking is almost always the only way to socialize. I have friends who joke around a lot that they're alcoholics. It's a common remark I hear a lot. No one gives any heed to the fact that alcoholism is actually real. And the way it can work is interesting and dangerous. Sure, it's not addicting like drugs, once you're out of college you can just stop altogether or cut-down a lot on your heavy drinking. But what happens when you hit your first snag in the real world? You're probably not going to have your buddy's apartment to hide in, the people you're with probably won't congratulate you on a good night because you vomited on everything in sight. But this isn't that common.

What is interesting to me is when I talk with students at my school who are in their 5th year for an engineering program or masters. These kids are around 21-24. Once they're actually legal to drink, or have been for a while, they're just not that pumped about it anymore. There's no more thrill when you're legal to do it, it's then that you start realizing what you're actually doing.. drinking heavy amounts of usually nasty-tasting drinks (college students are poor, 98% the stuff they buy tastes like {expletive hax0rd by Cspace}), losing consciousness, rolling around with other people laughing at nothing, getting sick and puking, and so on.

My whole point is that when so many rules are laid down, especially over things that should be controlled so much, kids will rebel. The experts just want to look at their statistics and dish out more safety measures, codes, and laws to make those statistics look nicer. But there are other problems arising that won't show up in the statistics.

What? You didn't know that ethanol has a 50% chance of literally melting your liver if you drink it before your 21st birthday?
I haven't met anyone who hasn't had a drink before they hit 21. Nobody.

The problem we have with these laws is the naive belief that if we make something against the law™ that nobody will do it except for the disgusting criminal scum of society™. Then everyone likes to fool themselves into thinking that if we repeal the dumba­ss law we'll end up with even more harm occurring than before. Whatever that harm may be. I'm pretty sure that if the drinking age was set to 18 tomorrow nothing would happen. People would party for a week then it would become normal.

[Phieta]

Stores and companies being misleading about their prices has been going on since the dawn of time.
Go into a clothing store some time. Notice how everything is always 20-50% off?

One of our local silver shops always has a 50% sale.

Like literally always. 50% off on 50% of the store, and when you walk in they'll say "well this week it's actually 50% off on 100% of the store."

The tourons love it, at least.