How can they tell it's theirs?

Here's an interesting fundraiser idea: we'll dump a toilet in your yard, and you can pay us to remove it. For 50% more, we'll put it in the yard of your least favorite neighbor.

But in Bath County, Kentucky, the cheerleading squad is banking on the idea that their toilet may be the first to sit in some random Southern yard. Is this an actual attempt at raising money, or a political statement that our schools have literally run out of reasonable fundraisers?

http://bathcountynews.com/toilet-in-the-yard-problem-cheerleaders-have-solution-p3101-1.htm

Have you noticed a toilet sitting in an unusual place…such as someone’s front yard? The Wildcat Potty will be traveling around town, so come out and help the BCHS Cheerleaders “flush” the opponent! If the toilet lands in your yard, the cheerleaders will remove it for a fee of $10. If you want it delivered to someone specific, $5 more will do it. Want to make sure it never comes to your yard again? Just pay an additional $5. Join the Wildcat Spirit and support the BCHS Cheerleaders! Stop by our booth at Friday night’s game for more information!

Was Pythagoras a secret Communist too?

It's no wonder that Texas sees no harm in politicizing its educational system; they clearly weren't using it for anything else. Even the dumbest math student knows that a^2 + b^2 = c^2, although they may need some prodding to remember what it means. I will say, though, that I'm confident that none of my journalist friends would make this mistake:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spt/outdoors/stories/091610dnsposasser.291bac0.html

I watched hunters fire at doves at ranges I'm sure were 55 to 60 yards. In all likelihood, these particular hunters don't hunt doves other than opening weekend, but we all owe it to the game to become more proficient to judging distances and understanding our own capabilities. As Dirty Harry once noted, "a man's got to know his limitations."
If you own a spinning wing dove decoy, you can set up the decoy, which is about the same size as a live dove, at various distances. Try your hand at estimating the range to the decoy, then measure it with a laser rangefinder or by stepping off the actual distance.
Remember your old geometry lesson about the long side of a triangle being equal to the two shorter sides. That means a dove 40 yards out and 10 yards high is 50 yards from the gun and clearly out of range.

Nope. Fail #1: you can't even make a triangle with sides of 10, 40, and 50 (try it). Fail #2: it's got to be a right triangle for any such property to hold.

Journalists like to make fun of themselves for not knowing much math, but only in Texas would that extend all the way down to the sixth grade.

How to Keep Power

Step 1: elect morons to your state board of education
Step 2: breed until your state is populous enough to force textbook companies to do your bidding
Step 3: have the board of education set up a system guaranteed to create an infinite supply of unthinking, unquestioning footsoldiers

So it's pretty well known that Texas's state board of education has been having quite a kerfluffle about rewriting their history standards - they've already pretended that Phyllis Schlafly accomplished something, that Hispanic-Americans don't exist at all, and strategically selecting words such that kids won't think that there's even a ghost of a chance that a good capitalist (like Houston-based Enron) could possibly be doing anything but fulfilling the noblest American Dream.

But their assault on facts in an ideological struggle hasn't stopped yet. And, as I often say, when only one person thinks it's a competition, that person's likely to win. Mainstream historians aren't accustomed to fighting for their worldviews, so they will lose every time to an organized far-right moron brigade. Their latest game? Pretending that the US history curriculum has somehow been "anti-Christian", and that the existence of anti-Christian facts in history somehow makes that history incorrect.

A good article summarizing the original issue, for those who've been under a rock:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

I hear math's pretty conservative, though, so maybe we can call it even?

And on the new stuff:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/23/national/main6893460.shtml

Texas' State Board of Education - following a long history of throwing itself into "culture war" issues - is set to vote Friday on a resolution calling on textbook publishers to limit what they print about Islam in world history books.

The resolution cites world history books no longer used in Texas schools that it says devoted more lines of text to Islamic beliefs and practices than Christian beliefs and practices.

"Diverse reviewers have repeatedly documented gross pro-Islamic, anti-Christian distortions in social studies texts," reads a draft of the resolution, which would not be binding on future boards that will choose the state's next generation of social studies texts.

It couldn't be that we assume that kids who grow up in this country already get a pretty fair understanding of Christian practices, beliefs, and celebrations, and don't know crap about religions which predominate in the rest of the world. Nope, we counted the pages, and it turns out that McGraw-Hill hates Christians.

"The biggest problem I saw was their overreach not to be 'ethnocentric,"' McLeroy said of an Advanced Placement world history book approved in 2003 and still in use. "It's a very, very, very, very biased book. Christianity didn't even make it in the table of contents."

That's okay. McLeroy didn't make it PAST the table of contents, or I'm sure he'd see lovely bits about Christianity throughout the book. At least they don't want to cut out the Crusades.

Yet.

Why can't the church just be the state? Wouldn't that make it easier?

Our first winners come from the great state of Tennessee, where a local media outlet has picked up on a movement by the Alliance Defense Fund [I'm not linking that crap, you can Google it if you like] to encourage ministers across The South (actually, the whole country, but I'm assuming most of the takers are here) to endorse political candidates from the pulpit, claiming freedom of speech.

Someone forgot to tell them that freedom of speech doesn't equal freedom from the consequences of your speech. But hey, look on the bright side - they'll help reduce the budget deficit when they have to pay taxes on all those tithes for a whole year.

http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=135560

"For governor, I'm going to encourage people to vote for Bill Haslam," said David Shelley, pastor of Smith Springs Baptist, one of seven Tennessee religious leaders who plan to take part in the pulpit protest. He also will throw his support behind Republican congressional candidate David Hall and Republican statehouse candidate Jim Gotto and urge his congregation to skip the spot on the ballot where state Sen. Thelma Harper, a Democrat, is running unopposed.
"My support for these candidates has nothing to do with their party or their skin color or any other non-biblically related issue," he said.
Haslam's campaign did not respond to requests for comment on the endorsement.
Shelley knows he runs the risk of provoking the Internal Revenue Service into revoking his 60-member church's tax-exempt status. In fact, he's hoping the IRS will try. But this is the second year he's baited the IRS from the pulpit, and still the agency has not risen to the bait.

Go go IRS! [how often do you get to say that and mean it?]

The South is Falling

Okay, so here's the deal. This is where we find stupid things The South (interpreted liberally) is doing, and we make fun of them for it. There's no overarching political purpose, although it will probably lean in whatever direction The South doesn't. Here to point out a logical fallacy? Go away. We're just having fun.