According to the Guardian and the Press-Enterprise, the Menifee Union School District in southern California has pulled all copies of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary off class shelves, and is considering banning the book entirely. Because it provides a definition of "oral sex" that a parent considered "age-inappropriate." (For those who don't want ( Read more... )

Ian, Shannon and I just found leaflets stuck under the windshield wipers of our cars, attributed to the National Socialist Movement. They are not written very clearly, but they seem to assert that the Auschwitz concentration camp wasn't really a concentration camp, or it was but it didn't really kill as many people as you think, or something. It ( Read more... )

Apparently this is not a joke.

Someone has invented a "study ball:" a 20-pound ball and chain - you know, the eponymous shackle of ancient prisons, which was in fact used only as a punishment even within a prison - with a manacle controlled by a timer. The idea is to attach this to your child's leg, to compel them to study more effectively ( Read more... )

Something rather weird just happened ( Read more... )

This afternoon I got a call from my landlord, Joann. She told me that she was giving me and all the other residents of the house 30 days notice to vacate as of the first of the month - even Tara, who lives in a separate sort of apartment in the basement, and used to live there even when Joann was there herself ( Read more... )