Schools And Authority Figures Contnue To Torture Teens Because What The Hell.

Aliya May, 14, left and her mother Karrie. Aliya faces
felony charges for throwing a baby carrot at a teacher.  

In the never ending quest of schools and authority figures to screw kids we have a few more examples:

CARROT TOSS VIOLENCE:

In Henrico County, Virginia, we have the case of a bratty 14 year old girl who threw a baby carrot at a teacher and hit the educator in the face.

The teacher wasn't hurt, but yeah, we need to get this girl in trouble. Detention! A letter of apology. Maybe even suspension from school for a coupla days.

All those ideas seem perfectly reasonable to me. But in the zeal of zero tolerance that I always whine about, we have to go much, much further than that.

We have to charge the kid with assault and battery with a weapon. We MUST ruin the kid's life because she stupidly threw a 1.75-inch long carrot.

After all, we shouldn't worry about gun violence. Who cares if 30,000 people or so die in gun violence each year. We shouldn't worry about guns. We should worry about carrots.

Television station WTVR even turned to legal expert Todd Stone to analyze this complex carrot law enforcement situation.

"If it's a soft carrot, it may not be as offensive.....But if it's a raw carrot, you don't have to have an injury or show you were hurt to prove a battery. It just has to be an offensive, vindictive touch. That's what the law says."

Got that? You can throw cooked carrots at your teacher, but throw a raw one, no matter how small, and you will spend years, YEARS in jail.

BoingBoing joked that something called The National Root Vegetable Association (There's an Association for everything) helpfully weighed in on this crisis.

Echoing the National Rifle Association in a tongue in cheek way, the National Root Vegetable Association says although it does seem like the time for a political debate on carrot violence, this question would not have arisen had teachers armed themselves and were trained in the use of small taproots and rhizomes.

The school district involved declined to comment, as dumb school districts always do when confronted by reporters reporting on administrators killing behavioral gnats with nuclear bombs.

GOOD SPORTSMANSHIP DISCOURAGED

Over in Iowa, high school student Zach Hougland was doing well in a cross country running race and was nearing the finish line recently. Yay! Go Zach!

Iowa high school cross country
 runner Zach Hougland was disqualified
from a future competition for aiding a member
of an opposing team who needed help.  n

But at that point,  he saw that a competitor from another school, Garret Hinson, was in distress and crawling on his knees.

Hougland helped Hinson to his feet and held him up as both crossed the finish line.

Great sportsmanship Zach! It was inspiring. But not to race officials. They disqualified both Hougland and Hinson because the moment was "interference" that "violated state rules" for helping another runner across the finish line.

It's not as if he was cheating to help his own team. And if other runs zipped past the two to finish, so be it

But I guess state high school athletic officials would hate to instill any sense of kindness or morality into any kids. We're all in it for ourselves, right?

Although Hougland was disqualified, he'll be able to run in a subsequent race because his team overall did well enough to qualify.

DRIVERS LICENSE DOUBLE

Meanwhile, in Georgia, twin sisters Alicia and Alicen Kennedy went to the DMV to get their drivers learners permits, says television station WIAT. 

They needed their photos taken, and Georgia DMV has super nifty camera with a computer that recognizes faces. This is handy if somebody's trying to get an illegal ID or is otherwise up to no good.

But the Kennedy twins were totally on the up and up. But the computer/camera  that recognizes faces thought each sister was the same one person because they look so similar/

"Aftery try after try after try, the system just would not accept them and it kept saying that it was the same person, they finally said there was a problem and they had to call headquarters," said Wanda Kennedy, the twins' mother.

So I guess if you're an identical twin, only one member of the pair can drive a car in Georgia.

To be fair, the DMV is reportedly trying to make arrangements to ensure both teens get their learner's permit.

.

Take a close look at their picture. Can you tell them apart? The state of Georgia sure can’t.

A right of passage replaced by frustration as the twins got denied by the DMV, all because a camera could not tell one girl from the other.

“We gave her our paperwork but we didn’t even get a chance to take the test because she kept saying something was wrong with the computer,” twin, Alicia said.

That computer can recognize faces, a feature that comes in handy if somebody’s is trying to get an illegal ID It apparently is not programmed to detect twins.

Alicia said she took her picture several times and then had to sign her signature several more time. She says she felt like it was her fault.

“I was listening to her conversation with the person on the phone and it said that one of us popped up as a fraud,” Alicen explained.

“The other lady came back and said that when we were taking our pictures it was picking up as saying that we were one person instead of two different people,” Alicia said.

All of a sudden, a day that these girls had dreamed about was dashed. Their high hopes of hitting the open road, brought down by a machine that didn’t know what to make of them.

“Af

Carter asked the girls, “Is that crazy to you that you have to go prove that you’re two different people?” To which Alicia responded with, “We don’t look exactly alike so you would think the computer would pick up somewhat of a difference, but it can’t tell us apart.”

Now the girls have to regroup. They have to get ready for whatever the state says comes next, as they continue their quest to get behind the wheel.

“I want my permit, I don’t want to wait a whole other year,” Alicia said.

We spoke with a spokesperson for the Georgia Department of Driver Services.

She says they have not heard of this happening before, but they do have a check box on the application asking if someone is a twin. The girls told me they didn’t see one.

After we picked up the story the DMV has been working with the teens to help this process move along as quickly as possible.

http://boingboing.net/2015/10/23/teen-faces-assault-charge.html

http://wbay.com/2015/10/23/twins-denied-drivers-permit-because-dmv-cant-tell-them-apart/

Stupid School News: School Finds Stupidest, Cruelest Possible Way To Punish Blind Kid

A school took away this blind kid needs to get
around and replaced it with a swimming pool noodle.
Just to be cruel, I think.  

Dakota Nafzinger, 8, of the Kansas City area is blind, and uses a cane to help him get around.

Like all eight year olds, he sometimes misbehaves. Though this isn't proven, school officials said he hit somebody with the cane.

If true, yeah, Dakota needed to be disciplined. But school officials decided on the most boneheaded solution possible: They took away his cane and gave him one of those swimming pool noodles to use as a substitute cane.

I guess the "logic," if you can call it that, is that if he hit somebody with a foam swimming pool noodle, he wouldn't hurt anyone since swimming pool noodles are in part design to hit other people with, I suppose.

Of course, a solid cane is how Dakota gets around, so giving him a humiliating noodle, and forcing him into danger and further humiliation from falls and other dangers is mystifying.

Did whoever decided to do this think whatever Dakota might have done wrong makes him deserve injury? Why are they setting up a situation where he might get bullied? Whatever happened to detention?

Of course, this pool noodle incident caused a big public outcry and the school hastily gave Dakota back his regular cane amid the horrible PR.

The North Kansas City School District issued a public apology.

My guess is the higher ups at the school were just as appalled by this as the general public was. It was likely some lower level employee who decided to impose his or her brand of "justice" discipline.

There's a minority of people in authority positions, be they teachers, cops, district attorneys, corporate bosses, politicians, who do this sort of thing. They're psychopaths, or maybe they were bullied as kids and this is their way of achieving vengeance, or they delight in being cruel.

Instead of meting out discipline as necessary and in appropriate dimensions, they think long and hard, it seems, on how best to endanger and humiliate others, just for the sport of it.

They're kind of like the mustache-twisting villains from bad melodramas. They'd be pathetically funny if they weren't so damaging to people.

It seems like schools attract psychopaths, judging from all the weird punishments and excessive discipline seen in some cases. Which must make it hard not only for the kids, but the vast majority of educators, who just want what's good for kids.

I hope the North Kansas City School District determines out who the psychopath was in Dakota's case and fire him or her.

The psychopathic minority among authority figures gives them all a bad name.  And nobody has quite figured out to deal with these awful people. Because if you punish them, they'll turn their wrath on you.

Apparently, it's not easy to deal with, or avoid or get around a psychopath. Which unfortunately means we're going to hear about more outrageous incidents, like the swimming pool noodle for the blind kid.

Wicked Creepy Guy Banned From Internet Due to Bizarre "Prank"

This is Jason Willis' idea of a good time:

Jason Willis has been kicked off the Internet
for committing a weird crime against his neighbor.  

Put an ad on Craigslist, telling people to show up at his unsuspecting neighbor's house naked.  He put her name, address and photo in the ad, too.

So the neighbor had all kinds of weirdos show up at her doorstep. And these weirdos now know where she lives.

According to police, Willis, 31, of Wisconsin, thought this was a great prank. Kind of on par with dropping a water balloon on a kid out in the yard on a hot summer's day

Of course the neighbor, police and society got the last laugh.  A judge has ordered Willis kicked off the Internet. He cannot go on line for at least 30 months, during his probation. If goes on line even once, Willis could spend 18 months behind bars.

According to Uproxx:

"Judge Pat Torhorst determined the Internet was Willis' 'weapon' in the crime and issued the ban as a way to disarm him. 'If you want to drive drunk, you're not allowed to drive! To me, a public availability of the Internet to use it the way he did, is unconscionable,' he said."

Nowadays, such a sentence, being kicked off the Internet is severe. If you want to apply for a job, you usually have to do it on line. Most jobs are done in part on line.

Increasingly, you have to pay your bills on line.  Most people communicate on a day to day basis via email, text or social media, so having friends is tough without the Internet.

Who'd want to be Willis' friend anyway? But that's another story.

Being kicked off the Internet is far more difficult than being barred from driving, using the judge's drunk driving analogy. You can take public transportation, bum a ride from a friend, or, yes, go on the Internet to get stuff done. You don't need a car so much.

Normally, I'd be opposed to a judge sentencing someone to stay off the Internet. It almost amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

But GAWD, what Willis did is so creepy. That neighbor could have been raped or killed. She's probably still afraid.

(Note: Me, and the rest of the media are not making the woman's name or any other identifying information public. She's been through enough.)

So I'm glad Willis is not online, at least for awhile. The only bummer is he can't read on line how many people think he's disgusting. He can't read this blog post, for example, given that it's only available on the Internet.

Willis apparently never did give a good explanation as to why he conducted this "prank."  According to the Journal Times in Wisconsin, he did it for "fun" and as retribution to the woman for picking on him for previously being in jail on an unrelated charge.

I'm personally tempted to put an ad out and send creepy people to his house to see whether he likes it, but I'll resist the urge.

I'm too addicted to the Internet.