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Well, I'm probably dealing with an urban legend, but I saw this in the Wahington post, the AP wire, and CNN, so it probably is true. What has happened to the common sense in our society?

An 11 year old honor-roll girl was SUSPENDED for drawing a doodle stick figure of the teacher with an arrow through the head. She did not turn it in, it was in her binder - just a doodle! This is bad behavior, and the teacher should have scolded, given detention, called the parents, or had her write "I will not . . " 1000 times or something, but what did the school do? Called it "TERRORIST ACTIVITY" and suspended the little girl from school. What??

The only thing I have to add to the obvious stupidity of this, if we do have all the facts, is that I found the details on the superintendent who defended this as standard procedure, no big deal, he said, in effect.

Glenn Smartschan, Superintendent
Mount Lebanon School District,
7 Horsman Drive,
Pittsburgh, Pa. 15228-1107.
E-mail: gfs@bbs.mtlebanon.k12.pa.us

An e-mail or two might show our opinion.

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HERE IS THE NEWS CLIP:

Girl Suspended in Doodle of Teacher

MOUNT LEBANON, Pa. (AP) - A school suspended an 11-year-old girl for drawing two teachers with arrows through their heads, saying the stick figures were more death threat than doodle.

Becca Johnson, an honor-roll sixth-grader at Mellon Middle School, drew the picture on the back of a vocabulary test on which she had gotten a D.

"That's my way of saying I'm angry," Becca said, adding she meant no harm to the teachers.

The stick figures, on a crudely drawn gallows with arrows in their heads, had the names of Becca's teacher and a substitute teacher written underneath. Another teacher spotted the doodle in the girl's binder Tuesday and reported it, prompting the three-day suspension.

Becca's parents, Philip and Barbara Johnson, denied the school's contention the drawings were "terrorist threats."

"She had done poorly on a test that was handed back to her. We've always told her that you can't take your feelings out on your teacher, so write about it or draw it, as a catharsis," Barbara Johnson said.

She accused the school of applying a zero-tolerance policy that "does away with due process and inflicts a penalty without a hearing or investigation."

The district said its zero-tolerance policy applies only to gun or drug possession, and denied that no investigation was done.

"All I can say is that when we have taken action related to the activities of students in the schools, we have done so after a thorough investigation," Mount Lebanon School District Superintendent Glenn Smartschan said.

2002-05-02 14:48:35 GMT

I feel terrible. I sent nasty e-mails (well at least rude, in retrospect) to two bidders who sniped (I learned that is what they call it) at the last moment and beat me at eBay auctions. They both were great when they responded, explaining in so many words in e-mail that they were just trying to bid and it wasn't personal. One was from Canada, and actually offered to let me have the item, and called the seller to see if they had another one! Of course I said it was not necessary, but it put me in my place. RGB

I am really upset with bidding on Ebay right now. I bid on a stupid part to fix an old banjo, just A $12 thing, and it was no big deal, but I had the high bid for like the last two days, and in the last 30 seconds some jackass outbid me. Out of the blue! And I didn't even know about it.

It has become too common a practice for bidders to steal bids like this. I have even heard that software can be used to automate this stealing process. I don't think that is in the spirit of the fair auction.

I'm not talking about the automatic bidding, if someone bids higher than necessary, and that automatically is entered for him. That is O.K. because he is willing to bid to that point. I'm talking about when one would be perfectly willing to bid another few bucks, but they don't get the chance! This is bad for the seller, too, since it stops the bidding at a lower price.

Now I have to admit, I have tried to do this last minute bidding myself in self defense, but I have realized that this is really not fun, and has sort of ruined Ebay for me. I have been selling and buying things on Ebay for years. Even before Ebay even started, I bought my Bach Trombone off the internet from a guy in the Midwest. I have had a lot of good experiences on Ebay, and funny ones as well, as have my relatives, but I think something has to change to make things fair and enjoyable again.

In an HONEST auction, the high bidder wins, not the scheming, fastest finger bidder. Right? The common good guys that made Ebay are not the ones who have the time to hover over the keyboards to steal bids in the last 30 seconds. If someone outbids me, or gets too high for my budget, FINE they get the item. But I have a bad taste in my mouth when auctions come down to robotic bidding, without my ability to bid higher even on lower priced items.

SO I HAVE A PROPOSAL that I will send to Ebay. The auctions should end ONLY after the highest bid has been uncontested for say 10 minutes. 10 minutes is not much to ask for in a 7 day auction! If somebody beats my bid, the auction is automatically extended another 10 minutes to see if I want to bid again. And if I do bid higher, they have 10 minutes to respond, etc. This way, it will go back to being an auction to the highest bidder, not the best timed schemer or luck of the fastest finger.

This would end the bid stealing, and you will not have to micro-manage your bid to the last second.

RGB

I've always been groaned at a little when I start with the puns, which of course is music to the ears of punsters. There is a branch of paranomasia (how 'bout that 25 cent word) that proposes names for people that may have a not-so-hidden meaning. Car Talk and Prarie Home Companion both have used pseudo-names in their credits, for example. Here are a few to say out loud:

Horrace Trader
Howie Doodat
Hugh Jankles
Ida Donemore
Iona dePlace
Isabel Ringing
Isaiah Prayer
Jerry Atrix
Jim Nazium
Joaquin DeDogg
Justin Tyme
Juliet Buggs (Julie, I told you not to)
Justin Tyme
Kay Sabere (not just a six pack)
Layne Downe
Linus Upp
Lou Dact
Luke N. Good
Lynn C. Doyle
Orson Buggy
Reba derchi (Audie Ohs?) (Cy Onara?)
Rhoda Dendron
Rocko Gibraltar .
Roland DeHay
Sid E. Lights
Mike Easter
Noah Count
Noah Vail
Trudy Votion
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I was going to use this blog the way I heard that you were supposed to, keeping a sort of public diary, reflecting a side of you that you didn't mind sharing. Or perhaps just intending to put up all those nuggets of information and witty things that you have collected, written, or discovered. However, I find it is hard for me to do that kind of un-targeted posting. I am accustomed to knowing specifically who is listening, and tailoring my wit or lack of wit to the audience.

We all know people who will just keep on talking, even if it is not clear that anyone is listening. "I went to town yesterday", they might say, " and the traffic was terrible, and down there in the neighborhood where the Caseys used to live, you know, the Caseys that had the son Adam who went to Yale with our neighbor, and now lives in Arizona . . . .yadda yadda yadda" and your eyes glaze over, not knowing about or interested in Adam or the Caseys, but it doesn't seem to matter at all to the chatter. They will go on and on, until they are out of steam, it seems.


I think you have to have a little of that in you to blog properly, I guess. I always have been the type who immediately stops talking as soon as they stop listnenig. I have always sent a joke to a specific person, or responded to an e-mail with someone specific in mind, perhaps something you wouldn't want to send to someone else you know. I can see that your mentality definitely has to change for this kind of thing. You lay yourself bare for ANYONE to read, or maybe NOBODY to read. Sort of scary either way.
RGB

I always was fascinated by the repetitive, creative, interlocking images by M.C. Escher. I once read a scientific article on the computer analysis generation of such images. Here is an even more artistic and kind of unbelievable animated extension of this. RGB

tessellating animation

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Behold the duck
It does not cluck
The cluck it lacks
It quacks
It's specially fond of a puddle or pond
And when it sups
It bottoms ups

Ogden Nash


Get used to it, all posts don't have to meaningful RGB

I tried my hand at being in commissioned sales years ago. I came away from it realizing that most everyone has to be a salesman as part of living to some degree, having your ideas accepted, or "bought" by others, or other sales-like behaviors. However some people are more in phase with sales than I am. Some people actually get a pleasure out of the "winning" of a deal or coming out on top. I see the value in that, but never had it affect me that way. Any successes I did have, I perhaps found gratification in the money earned, and sometimes proud of the knowledge I brought to the table that made it happen, but not the actual sales rush that I have seen in some people.

However, I once met a man, Ira Hayes, who could have inspiration for anyone's doings in life, even though he considered himself a sales trainer, and champion of the sales types. He spoke to a conference I went to, and he is was a motivational speaker of national note, like Zig Ziggler, W. Clemant Stone, etc. Early in his career, he sold cash registers on the street for NCR, and he rose to management in that company. I won't go into the pitch, but I really loved his enthusiasm, and I still think about and use some his simple, no nonsense ideas. For instance, he said, when somebody asks you how you are, just say Great! That's all, Great! They don't REALLY want to know how you are. they have troubles of their own. It's better to be a listener than a complainer. It's hard for me to say something bad about someone without at least sandwiching it with good comments, even if a stretch. Although I do, and have done my share of grousing and whining, I truly am impressed by people who keep the positive attitude out in front, and I try to do the same. They're Great! I'm inserting here a scan of the Hayes dollar I have kept in my wallet for ?? years.

RGB

Here are some quotes I have saved:
............................................................................
The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists. -Japanese
proverb

............................................................................
The believer is happy; the doubter is wise. -Hungarian proverb

............................................................................
Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of
agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world
alone; all leave it alone. -Thomas De Quincey, writer (1785-1859)

............................................................................
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
-Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963)

............................................................................

Folks:
I talk so rarely about Vietnam that I bet some people don't know I went.

I'm going to tell a true story about a day in my life that was extraordinary. It is particularly puzzling to me because I have never been one to believe in pre-destination, clairvoyance, ESP, numerology, astrology, or that kind of thing. As I have explained to people who may lean that way from time to time, though, I am practical, but open minded. Just because I have seen neither alien nor ghost, and consequently do not believe they exist here, does not mean that I have closed my mind to the possibility that they do, and with the proper evidence, I could accept those things as reality, since all we know is from faith, from logic, or from what we have experienced.

I have never been strong on remembering a timeline of my life, but figuring backwards, it was in 1982. I was employed in my first strange computer industry job, and was feeling lucky because I had to go on business to Washington D.C. from Richmond the day before the dedication of the so-called Vietnam Memorial Wall. I went to see it, but did not stay over to the following day for the formal dedication ceremony.

In 1967 when I went into the army, the only person I knew personally that had died in Vietnam was Gary Scott, from LeRoy. He was in my class, and I considered him a close friend, but I think everyone that ever knew him felt they were his close friend. He was that kind of a personality. I can still remember jokes he told me in science lab in 1963!

He died honorably in action as a lieutenant in the infantry just before I went over, but his death shaped the way I looked at the war, and indeed my time in the Army. But that is another story. Back to that day in 1982:

Since the dedication wasn't 'till the next day, signs weren't posted well or anything, I parked on the street and walked in the general direction on the mall where some people were grouped. I saw the monster black wall from a distance, seeing it gently sloping into the ground. Now this thing is 400 feet long, ten feet high (deep) in the middle, and has over 58,000 tiny names etched in it. The names and dates are almost invisible until you are right on them, being etched in the black granite. They seem endless and random, and only if you knew as I did later Maya Lin's design that names are arranged chronologically by death date. The first casualty is listed at the top of the middle, panels sequencing to the right on ever diminishing wall height till it disappears into the ground, then the names re-emerge on the left tip and end with the last name back in the center, to form a closure.

I would not believe this if someone else told me it happened to them, but I walked steadily and directly toward the wall until my face was inches from the wall and my eyes focused on the name GARY ARNOLD SCOTT. I went right to it! It is not even at eye level. To this day I still find it hard to believe. I visited the wall a few years later and even knowing generally where the name was, it took me five or ten minutes to find it again.

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blogger.com

I'm trying to decide on a base format for my blog, since I haven't learned the tags yet, so I am going to switch around a little to see what looks best. I have to find out what works best to do customization, too. I don't want another thing to be a slave to, so I'll try to get something I can leave alone, but that porobably is not realistic. I don't want to lose customizations and links and all, or have to keep reentering them all the time. I am not an expert at HTML from scratch, but like most things, I can modify templates and examples once I read the code, and find out how it is set up. This is saturday, and it is good enought weather to get out, so I will try to pry myself away from the computer. RGB

I tried to set this blog up in Opera 6.01, and it doesn't work. I found that Opera has a lot of things going for it, but you have to keep IE around for the incompatibilities like this. It seems a shame that MS has to have such a tight lock on things. Of course I'm not blazing the latest news here, but MS usually ends up pushing the little creative guys aside, maybe buying out one of the best, then giving theirs away, settling for the mediocre program because the incentive for competition, adding new features and one-upsmanship are gone. One of my pet examples is e-mail clients. I used to try out all sorts of them, both at home and in my role as computer administrator at a small company. There was the BAT, Pegasus, Netscape mail in the browser, geez I thought I could bring back amore names, but you get the idea. One would have a better address list, or be able to export things better, one would be good at formatting, or would ding you when you had new mail, and this competition would make everyone better. Of course this was shareware, so a lot of users wouldn't pay, but at least they had a chance of making it with a better mousetrap. Fast forward, Microsoft gives away Outlook Express with the Operating System, Bundles Outlook with business software, makes it hard for other things to work with Exchange, and stagnation sets in. Why should the others even be out there. Al monopoly questions aside, I know it is their right, and a competition driven thing to try to be the winner, and dominate, but is it really better for averageguy? There are some benefits, in the stability, the integration and the bundling, but that in my opinion is overshadowed by the lack of competition, and thereby the lack of new features and programs that the user really would have liked. Proving that this blog was actually headed somewhere, I will go back to Opera. Really a great browser. It has so many things I can do in it that beat IE and my previous champion (before they gave up), Netscape, and it's not MS. But do I think it can make a blip considering the situation? . . . RGB

On your mark. . .Get set . . . Go.