RIP Heddy, er, Hedley Lamarr

Harvey Korman died today.

Good Day to You, Sir

Out of Wright's frying pan and into the Pfleger

Up until now, Barack Obama's other "spiritual advisor", a Catholic priest named Michael Pfleger, has been flying under the radar. No more. Check out this so-called sermon that guest speaker Pfleger gave before the infamously rowdy congregation at Barack Obama's infamously racist Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. This stuff is truly over the top:



What an ignorant racist tool. Are we starting to note a pattern concerning the people that Barack Obama considers his friends and associates? Are we starting to get the picture on how truly radical are the politics of Barack Hussein Obama?

None of the Above in '08!

Good Day to You, Sir

They're so ignorant, they can't even insult you correctly

These students of mine make it oh so easy...

I ended 6th period a few minutes early so I could sign the many permission forms that are due tomorrow so the 8th graders can go on their end-of-year trip. While I was busy signing forms, a student wrote "Mr. Chanman is a faget" on the whiteboard on the other side of the room.

I looked up from signing to check on the class, and that's when I noticed what the student had written. Naturally, the rest of the class was waiting with part trepidation, part anticipation to see what my reaction would be. Without missing a beat, I said, "Uh, Moron, you misspelled that last word," and then I went right back to signing more permission forms. Instead of laughing at me, everyone looked at the student who obviously had written the spelling-challenged insult and made fun of him instead.

Moron.

Good Day to You, Sir

I don't mean to brag but...

...sometimes I think my son, who will be four at the end of next month, is a friggin' genius.

Tonight, I was putting him down for bed. I was about to turn out the light, when he asked me to put a blanket over his lamp instead (he has been getting more and more scared of the dark lately).

I told him that I couldn't do that because the light bulb is very hot and the blanket could catch on fire. The ensuing conversation went like this:

Budding Genius: Daddy, what is that cloth called that firemens' suits are made out of? You know, the kind that protects them from the fire?

Daddy: You mean Nomex?

Budding Genius: Yeah, Nomex. Why don't you get a blanket made out of Nomex, and then you could put that over my lamp, and then the blanket won't catch on fire.

Daddy: *Mouth drops open in amazement*

Meanwhile, my two-year-old daughter is obsessing on this CD we got of a woman singing children's songs, and my daughter has big chunks of the song lyrics memorized. It all makes for some interesting times in the Chanman household!

Good Day to You, Sir

Does the Internet make us "dumber"

I get irritated to tears every time I have to listen to some sanctimonious do-gooder - usually a leftist - tell me how I am receiving such a limited world view because I don't get the "right"kinds of information or "both sides of the story" from my news and media sources.

It is from this mindset that their justification for the so-called fairness doctrine rears its serpentine head. As usual, they know what's best for us, including what information we receive and where we receive it.

Case in point is this column from, of all places, the FoxNews website. According to this joker,

When you pick up The New York Times and look at the front page, you get a general perspective on world events. As you page through the newspaper, you see all sorts of interesting articles that you might not have read if you were merely surfing the Net for news.

Over time, this sort of happenstance approach to information gives a reader perspective on things. You have a sense as to what the economy is doing. You know if some international disaster has occurred. You are more tuned in.

This is going away...

So the audience goes to the Net to get information — most of it without perspective, and, thus, the days of a wide public perspective of the world are almost gone....

I swear, for some people the sun rises and sets with the New York Times. I don't listen to Rush Limbaugh much anymore, but he always did have a saying that totally resonated with me. He had a wonderful answer to his critics who complained that his show was so one-sided and didn't provide "equal time" to opposing points of view. Rush would always say - and I presume still does say - "I AM equal time!"

What the author of this column doesn't seem to understand is that if newspapers like his beloved New York Times actually gave both sides of the story and an equal perspective, I wouldn't find it necessary to check with my "biased" news sources on the Internet. Besides, the worst part about the establishment press is not so much the bias in what they report, it is the bias in what they choose NOT to report.

A case in point is the series of rhetorical gaffes that Barack Obama has been uttering lately in his speeches, such as telling a Memorial Day crowd that his great uncle helped liberate Auschwitz, even though it was the Soviets that did that. If his goofs had come out of the mouths of Dan Quayle or George W. Bush, the establishment press would be having a field day. Instead, you find nary a word from the New York Times, or other establishment media sources. If you do find any mention of it, it is prefaced by the qualifier that Obama's gaffes are currently the fodder of the Republicans or the right-wing blogs; as if it is a big deal only because those nasty right-wingers are making it a big deal.

When then-Vice President Quayle misspelled "potatoe", you didn't see the press talking about how the "left-wing media" was abuzz with Quayle's gaffe, now did you?

Note to you lefties out there: there are more sources of information available than just your own. Do us all a favor, and quit bellyaching that we aren't all drinking from the same vat of Kool-Aid as you are.

Good Day to You, Sir

A solid effort... and that's about it

On Friday, I left work as early as I possibly could so I could catch the 3:45pm showing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at a nearby theater. After reading all the positive reviews and hearing the positive buzz, I was really revved to see this flick.

Two hours later, I walked out of the theater a bit underwhelmed. It was a good solid effort that hit all the markers and showed proper homage to the series. Therein lies the problem. Throughout the movie, I was hit with this feeling that the director (Steven Spielberg, no less) was just going through the paces, along with many of the actors - to include Harrison Ford. This installment lacked that fire, that intensity, that I sensed in the first three films. And the script? When the movie ended, I felt as if the screenwriter, along with everyone else involved in the project, couldn't decide how to end the movie, so they just thought up this amalgamated mish-mash that didn't make any sense.

Believe me, there was plenty to like about this movie, and when it worked, it worked. But the whole time I was watching, I kept waiting for the old Indiana Jones movies that I know and love, but it never happened. Instead, it seemed like I was watching a cheap imitation trying to pass itself off as the real thing.

Please don't let my disappointment dissuade you from going to see this film. I still recommend that you watch it in the theater. But just prepare yourself for something a little different than what you are used to when watching your favorite archaeologist in action.

Good Day to You, Sir

Hate the sin, love the sinner

Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy has a malignant - most likely fatal - brain tumor. If he were a conservative or Republican or both, the leftists out there would be cheering with ghoulish glee at Kennedy's misfortune. They would be condemning him to the depths of hell and hoping that he would be "turning crispy brown" like left-wing psycho cartoonist Ted Rall wished for Ronald Reagan upon the former president's death in 2004.

I hope Ted Kennedy beats this cancer and recovers. I hope his family has the opportunity to spend many more blessed years with their beloved. I wish Ted Kennedy all the best in his fight to beat this brain tumor and fully recover. Does this mean that I want him to remain in the Senate? Does this mean that if Kennedy ends up dying from this tumor, I will lament the fact that he is no longer in the Senate? No, and no.

Ted Kennedy the man is a creature of God and God gives us all the gift of life and worth. Ted Kennedy the politician is a detestable abomination who would do anything to stay in power - including allowing a young woman to die a horrible watery death - and has done more to ruin this country than few other politicians that come to mind.

I could give a laundry list of his execrable accomplishments, but I only need mention the Immigration Act of 1965, which was essentially Teddy's baby. He guided it through the halls of congress and lashed out at critics, whose predictions about the bill's future negative consequences turned out to be correct.

Kennedy's most memorable quote while defending this travesty of a law on the senate floor is this:

"First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same ... Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset ... Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [the bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia ... In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think ... The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs."

So, after reading that, how much of what Teddy said wouldn't happen, ended up happening? The biggest change that this law effected was a switch in our influx of immigrants into the United States from one of a limited number of mostly educated Europeans to one that includes an unmanageably large amount of dreck from the third world, to include family members via chain immigration. We have previously been able to absorb the poor and uneducated before - Eastern Europeans during the early 1900s - but that is because our new arrivals were willing to assimilate into our country's culture, and the period of restricted immigration that lasted between 1924 and 1965 allowed this influx and their offspring a chance to fully grasp the opportunity to become Americans. I am all in favor of legal immigration when the number of immigrants is kept at a manageable level, when the new arrivals are expected to adopt our common language and common culture, and when they do not arrive with the expectation that they will live off the taxpayer's dime.

Today, many of these third-world imports - both legal and illegal - that flood and overwhelm our nation's borders every year either don't get the opportunity to fully assimilate into our culture, or they don't wish to. Our obsession with multiculturalism in this country helped cause that. Additionally, the rise of our entitlement mentality, where immigrants and natives alike look to the government as the great provider, has emptied our coffers of the taxpayers sweat and blood.
We have you to thank for that Ted Kennedy. Now get well soon.

Good Day to You, Sir

New "Che" movie is a mess

Steven Soderbergh's four-hour-plus biopic of Communist murderer Ernesto "Che" Guevara was compared to Heaven's Gate in this article. That can't be good. Apparently the movie meanders all over the place and is rather disjointed.

Of course, how do you make a movie about a detestable cold-blooded killer when, in good Hollywood fashion, you are trying to romanticize the detestable cold-blooded killer? It would be rather hard to get to the point without making the audience root against the protagonist.

I must give props to the movie's casting director. Benicio del Toro is a dead-ringer for the real Che Guevara.

Good Day to You, Sir

End Hiatus

We are now comfortably ensconced in our new abode (new to us; it was built in 1966)! My better half spent much of her time unpacking the bedrooms and the kitchen, while I tackled the garage and back patio. It took me two nights of staying up until 1am and a good part of a couple afternoons to turn the middle of the garage floor from a sea of boxes into an empty space where we can park our cars.

One of my favorite things so far about the new house is that it is near a small creek (or slough, if you will), and when the sun goes down, you can hear frogs all night long. The sound of that, or crickets, will knock me out like Judy Garland on a barbiturate bender.

Yesterday, the Internet/Phone guy arrived and worked his magic - drilling a hole in the floor here, a hole in the wall there, running wire in the foundation under the house. When he was finished, Voila! We were wired to the world once again. It was only then that I found out that Teddy Kennedy will most likely sooner rather than later shuffle off this mortal coil from a brain tumor. I'll have more to say on that situation very soon.

In the meantime, I am running quite the sleep deficit from unpacking during the last several days, which made me rather grumpy today on my first day back with my short-timing students. I better hit the hay. The bottom line is that I am back in the blogging game!

Good Day to You, Sir

Time for a short hiatus

It's time to move! Our current house is a shambles, with boxes - packed and waiting to be packed - lying everywhere, shelves bare, and our garage freezer is sitting on our back porch. Escrow closes tomorrow morning, so my wife and I will begin carting the fragile and personal stuff to the new house tomorrow after work. Grami will be watching the kids. The movers arrive Saturday morning take away the majority, and I will be taking Monday and Tuesday off from work to continue unpacking and to be home for all the technicians who will be scurrying about our new house, setting up the Internet, phones, electricity, Dish Network, and installing a new garage door opener

This means that I will be sans-computer and Internet access for a few days. As soon as the Internet provider guys wire our new house, I'll be back in business. Until then, keep your powder dry.

Good Day to You, Sir

Classroom misbehavior applied to a driving lesson

One of my favorite edubloggers is British scribe OldAndrew, who writes at Scenes from the Battleground (see blogroll). OldAndrew just did a followup post on a classic example of the day-to-day resistance we get from our students that wears us teachers down and just makes us want to scream.

In this hilarious - but frighteningly accurate - post, OldAndrew imagines what life would be like for a driving instructor if the instructor had to put up with the same crap that we teachers face every day in our classrooms. Here are a few lines to make you thirsty for more:

I had a driving lesson recently. My years of teaching have helped me understand how to be a receptive and eager student.

“Hello, Andrew. You have a lesson.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I’ve been waiting outside for ten minutes”
“Yeah, I know”.
“Well why didn’t you come out”
“Couldn’t be bovered”

“Well I’m going to have to charge you for the time I was waiting outside.”
“What? You’re charging me for NUFFINK!”
“Well I think that’s only fair as you’ve left me waiting.”
“Racist!”
(We go to the car)
“Okay, lets get started. I think …. Andrew?”

“What now?”
“Why have you sat in the back seat?”
“I like it here. I can see the road better.”
“Look, you aren’t going to learn anything from the back of the car.”
“Why do I always have to sit in the front? My last instructor let me sit in the back. And he let me drive at whatever speed I liked. He was a solid teacher.”
“Just get in the front”
(He waits)
“Come on.”

“I am getting in the front....”

To read the whole thing, click the link above.

Good Day to You, Sir

For all you hardcore historians out there

I have had the following article stored in my Favorites for a couple of years now. In Rivers of Blood, author Phil Andrade does some gruesome arithmetic by breaking down the numbers and percentages of dead, died of wounds, wounded, and missing that accompany the aftermath of a battle. His ultimate aim is to answer the question of which war of the 19th Century was the deadliest? Your choices are the Napoleonic War, the Crimean War, and the American Civil War.

For me, Andrade's most shocking revelation is the upgraded numbers of dead from battles of the Civil War. If you peruse the common history books on the subject, you will see the same numbers repeated. Let's take the Battle of Gettysburg as an example. From that largest of Civil War battles, fought in the first three days of July, 1863, the common number given for the Union dead and wounded is 23,000, while Confederate dead and wounded were 28,000. First off, notice I said dead and wounded. I have read articles that talk about 23,000 Union soldiers being killed at the Battle of Gettysburg. Wrong. Actually the official tally after the battle's end was 3,155 Union soldiers killed. Estimates of Confederate dead range from 2,600 to 3,900. What Andrade has done is to account for deaths that were not accounted for that would end up almost doubling the number of dead from both sides of the battle. The 3,155 Union dead were the soldiers splayed out on the battlefield; their lifeless, bloated forms appearing in so many famous black and white photographs you have probably seen. But what about the wounded soldier who was taken off the battlefield alive, but died a few days later from his wounds? Those deaths were often not counted towards the battle's final toll. Neither were the so-called missing, which usually comprised a huge number of the listed casualties. Along with the 3,155 killed, the Union army at Gettysburg officially suffered 14,529 wounded, and 5,365 missing. How many of those 14,529 died of their wounds? How many of those 5,365 missing were dead or dying of wounds rather than being marched to a prisoner of war camp? After doing a detailed count of regimental rolls, the actual number of Union soldiers who were killed at the Battle of Gettysburg is not 3,155; the number is more along the lines of 5,291! After applying the same research to the Confederate side, the number of dead who were wearing gray or homespun butternut was not the previous high of 3,900, but more like 5,779. Added together, the number of dead from the Battle of Gettysburg exceeded 11,000 men!

Andrade gives this mathematical treatment to several other battles. He also compares losses from various battles according to the percentage of total number of men engaged. It's a long read and your head will be swimming with numbers, but I find the article to be a highly fascinating historical read.

Good Day to You, Sir

Jolt Cola, eat your heart out

When I was a freshman in high school, Jolt Cola hit the market. Their tagline was Twice the sugar, all the caffeine! I have a feeling that the intensity of Jolt pales in comparison to the so-called energy drinks that students consume today; down to and including elementary-age.

Yesterday's Sunday edition of the Sacramento Bee had an above-the-fold front page story about these energy drinks that our utes are drinking in vast quantitites. The headline reads High-caffeine controversy: Youth embrace energy drinks - and some pay the price.

The article is accompanied by a few pictures of pampered, smart-ass middle school kids whose quotes in the article tell us bucketloads about the lack of parental involvement and/or control in their lives. My favorite part of the article was this gem:

By 9:15am, classmate Jake Spinks, also 13, said he already had consumed a Rockstar Juiced Guava and a Red Bull (for a totoal of about 240 milligrams of caffeine), the equivalent of about three cups of brewed coffee.
"I'm feeling great," Spinks said with a grin.
The seventh-grader acknowledged, however, that the drinks can make him jumpy and unruly in class.
"I get obnoxious; really hyper," he said. "My parents get mad because I get sent to the office a lot."

So the next question I would ask is that if your parents are mad because your hyper butt gets sent to the office, do they get mad enough to take away your monetary means by which you attain said energy drinks? Just wondering.

Good Day to You, Sir

Be skeptical. Be very skeptical.

For a classic case of sheer fear-mongering, few examples can top the cover of Time Magazine for their issue of April 3, 2006. This "SPECIAL REPORT GLOBAL WARMING" tells you to "BE WORRIED. BE VERY WORRIED." Once you get past the scary capitalization and the requisite polar bear in peril, the finer print paints Time Magazine into some rather uncomfortable and contradictory corners. It says: Climate change isn't some vague future problem -- it's already damaging the planet at an alarming pace....

First, is it "Global Warming" or is it "Climate Change"? The Church of Global Warming seems to be unable to make up its mind. That is to be expected when record cold hits during a time of "Global Warming!" The best part of the fine print is where it says that climate change isn't some vague future problem. Time Magazine has experience in that department - that is, reporting about future changes in the weather and the climate. The problem for Time Magazine is that the last time they wrung their hands about the future end of the world, they were wrong. Read some of these choice excerpts from an article that appeared in the June 24, 1974 edition of Time:

In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims. During 1972 record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries. In Canada's wheat belt, a particularly chilly and rainy spring has delayed planting and may well bring a disappointingly small harvest. Rainy Britain, on the other hand, has suffered from uncharacteristic dry spells the past few springs. A series of unusually cold winters has gripped the American Far West, while New England and northern Europe have recently experienced the mildest winters within anyone's recollection.

Oh no! Bad weather!

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.

Oh no! The bad weather is being caused by Global Cooling!

Sunspot Cycle. The changing weather is apparently connected with differences in the amount of energy that the earth's surface receives from the sun. Changes in the earth's tilt and distance from the sun could, for instance, significantly increase or decrease the amount of solar radiation falling on either hemisphere—thereby altering the earth's climate. Some observers have tried to connect the eleven-year sunspot cycle with climate patterns, but have so far been unable to provide a satisfactory explanation of how the cycle might be involved.

No way! You mean the sun might have some role in affecting the fluctuating temperature of the earth?

Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin's Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.

EEEEK! You mean we parasitic people might be helping to cause this cooling trend? We better change our behavior and radically alter our economy and industry if we are going to stop this climatological cooling nightmare from happening! Who knows how cold this planet could be by, say, the year 2008, if we don't act now!

Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.

Oh my! I guess it's a good thing that the temperature has warmed up. After all, 34 years ago, they were talking about an onset of another Ice Age.

If the scientists and experts got it so wrong then, why should we listen to them anymore today? Face reality, all you members of the Church of Global Warming: The climate is going to change no matter what we puny humans do. So get over yourselves, and stop giving us humans so much credit.

Be skeptical. Be very skeptical.

Good Day to You, Sir

Two weeks to showtime!

"Snakes... why did it have to be snakes?"

Good Day to You, Sir

The Goracle speaketh with a forked tongue

That cyclone in Burma that killed tens of thousands of people? Global Warming, so sayeth the Goracle.

Out of curiosity, I would love for him to tell us all what caused the great hurricane of 1900 that wiped Galveston, Texas off the map. Or how about Hurricane Camille, which devastated the Gulf Coast in 1969? The stupidity and dishonesty of this blowhard knows no bounds.

Good Day to You, Sir

If I say it enough, maybe it will come true?

A sure sign of desperation is when you project your opinion onto the rest of us:

Obama says public tired of hearing about his former pastor

WASHINGTON - Democrat Barack Obama and his wife said Thursday the public is tired of hearing about incendiary remarks by their former pastor, as they sought to put the controversy that has rocked his presidential campaign to rest.

"We hear time and time again voters are tired of this," Michelle Obama said in an interview the couple gave to NBC's "Today" show.

"They don't want to hear about this division, they want to know what are we going to do to move beyond these issues," she said. "And what made me feel proud of Barack in this situation is that he is trying to move us as a nation beyond these conversations that divide..."

Which "voters" would that be, Michelle? The ones that support you? That's a scientific sample ya got there. Of course, although voters are supposedly "tired of this" and want to "move beyond these issues", even Barack Obama himself admits that the Wright controversy has hit him where it hurts:

Barack Obama acknowledged the Wright controversy, as well as his own remarks about voters clinging to guns and religion in economically-depressed Pennsylvania towns, have hurt his campaign and the damage is beginning to show in polls...

The best line of the night comes from that shrew of a wife of his:

In a separate interview with CNN taped Wednesday, Michelle Obama said her husband's denunciation of Wright's comments was "a tough thing for him to do."

"Yes, it was painful. Yes, it's been difficult, but I think that the more difficult thing that this country is facing is trying to move politics into conversations around problems and problem-solving, and that's what we're going to be pretty determined to do," she said. "I think that this is about all I'm going to say on this issue, and I think we're going to close this chapter and move into the next phase of this election. With that, I'm hoping that we'll talk about something else."

Oh, I bet you want us to talk about something else, Michelle. I bet you do.

Good Day to You, Sir

Fascism at Smith College

I haven't seen a disruption of a speech this severe since the Minutemen were silenced at Columbia University in 2006.

An author named Ryan Sorba was invited to speak at all-female Smith College in Massachusetts about his book entitled The Born-Gay Hoax. About 15 minutes into his speech, lesbian activists began climbing through windows (am I the only one who finds that a little creepy?) and started shouting "We're here! We're queer! Get used to it!" Roll the tape:



I don't really care whether you agree or disagree with Mr. Sorba's premise that homosexuals are not born that way; that is not the point. The point is that he was an invited speaker who was brought there to give his point of view. These smug, self-righteous, cheering little fascists prevented Mr. Sorba from doing so.

More information about this travesty can be found here.

Good Day to You, Sir

You tell 'em Mr. Freeman!

Every year around this time, my 8th graders have arrived at the point where we study the American Civil War/War Between the States/Second American Revolution. I always show the movie Glory, which chronicles the ordeal of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, and stars Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, and Morgan Freeman. It is a wonderful movie that I consider to be in the top three of the best movies ever made about the Civil War.

There is a particular scene in the final third of the movie between Morgan Freeman (Rawlins) and Denzel Washington (Trip) that I relish giving the opportunity to my students to watch - particularly my students who call each other "Nigga" and all the other variations thereof. Here is a transcript of that scene:

[Trip and Searles are about to fight when Rawlins steps in]

Rawlins: Look, goddamn it! The whole world gotta stomp on your face?

Trip: Nigger, you better get your hands off me!

Rawlins: Ain't no niggers around here! Understand?

Trip: Oh, I see, so the white man give you a couple a stripes, and suddenly you start hollerin' and orderin' everybody around, like you the massa himself! Nigger, you ain't nothin' but the white man's dog!
[He starts to walk away, Rawlins stops him and slaps him]

Rawlins: And what are you? So full of hate you want to go out and fight everybody! Because you've been whipped and chased by hounds. Well that might not be living, but it sure as hell ain't dying. And dying's been what these white boys have been doing for going on three years now! Dying by the thousands! Dying for *you*, fool! I know, 'cause I dug the graves. And all this time I keep askin' myself, when, O Lord, when it's gonna be our time? Gonna come a time when we all gonna hafta ante up. Ante up and kick in like men. LIKE MEN! You watch who you call a nigger! If there's any niggers around here, it's YOU. Just a smart-mouthed, stupid-ass, swamp-runnin' nigger! And if you not careful, that's all you ever gonna be!

There is always a thoughtful silence in my class after that scene ends, and I always like to hope that I reached at least one student and made him think the next time he wants to gratuitously throw that infernal word around. I am also pleased that the scene points out the sacrifice that whites in America made for the blacks in this country during the Civil War. When talk of reparations for slavery begin to arise, I always point out the 300,000+ Union soldiers whose deaths hastened the end of that "peculiar institution."

Good Day to You, Sir

Got it bad, got it bad, got it bad - I'm hot for teacher

My regards to Van Halen. Meet high school biology teacher, Tiffany Shepherd. She says she was fired for wearing this outfit during her weekend job as a fishing guide that she does for extra income. Her school says she was fired for missing too many days at work. Read the article and you decide.

Meanwhile, I will leave to you my dear readers the job of coming up with all the possible punchlines about the fact that this woman is of all things, a biology teacher.

Good Day to You, Sir