so theyve decided that it's cheaper to just give anyone who asks a window unit.

We have a fan...one fan for a floor divided up into cubicles where about 30 people sit. And it took me months and months of bitching loudly last year to get that.

I sit directly under an air vent at work. I'm always cold.

Pop star-turned-doll maker MARIE OSMOND has launched a personal crusade to clean up the Internet after learning her two teenage daughters have been posting sexually explicit correspondence on their MySpace.com websites.

[link]

Good luck with that, Marie.

Where the fuck are my thunderstorms?

Errr, whoops. Sorry. I didn't mean to steal yours. We're having a (completely unexpected, at least to me) brisk set of clouds here that is making an odd rumbling sound. And I think water is falling. Out of the sky! Very startling. I almost thought to myself, oh, I should take the dog out before it storms. And then I remembered that I live in New Mexico, and if it storms, it will be over in like, ten minutes.

A cold noodle dish can be just the thing in this weather.

Mmm. We had a cold somen salad yesterday for dinner; chilled somen noodles, sweet egg, char siu pork, green onions & carrots with a sweet soy sauce dressing. It was yum. But the roommate ate late and I didn't get to tell him in time, so he reheated his. Hee. But it was probably still good that way. Just not as ideal a summer dish.

though My unkind thoughts do wonder if he is so far back in the closet that he fell out the other side.

So far in there he's met Aslan.

So, Marie can't control her kids so she wants to control the whole world? Cool.

Pop star-turned-doll maker MARIE OSMOND has launched a personal crusade to clean up the Internet after learning her two teenage daughters have been posting sexually explicit correspondence on their MySpace.com websites.

Uh, Marie? Sweetpea? Maybe if you spent as much with your kids as you do those godawful, uglyass dolls, you'd actually *know* what they were posting on the internet. Also? The day you tell me what I can and can't post to or look at on the internet, is the day that I'm a little bit chilly and little bit more in hell.

Timelies,

I was about 3,000 posts behind in the old Natter, so the new thread made a good excuse to just skip ahead.

Pop star-turned-doll maker MARIE OSMOND has launched a personal crusade to clean up the Internet after learning her two teenage daughters have been posting sexually explicit correspondence on their MySpace.com websites.

Because it's the internet's fault, of course. I seem to recall some rather racy notes got passed around when I was is in highschool. Same idea, just wider range.

Late to the table. Can I still have a plate?

I'm generally about as liberal as it gets, and civil rights and free speech are huge issues. Still...in this case, I feel differently.

She can believe whatever she wants. She can even say to her pals whatever she wants. When she teaches fictions as facts (and in this case dangerous ones) she's incompetent and its time to fire her ass if she won't stop doing so.

This is how I feel too. I want my free speech protected, but I think there's a vast difference between stating an opinion and teaching that opinion as fact. All K-12 teachers have curricula that must be approved by the school board, and part of their job is to teach that curriculum. I strongly doubt that the curricula said "Enduring Understanding #1: Rape is always the victim's fault." I believe that she had the right to voice her opinion, but not as the truth, the whole truth, etc. And honestly, even if she has the "right" to say it, I do believe that that teaching could result in physical and/or emotional harm to the students, and that's always grounds for dismissal.

Sparky, I hear you. I really do. On almost any other free speech issue, I'd agree. But I have to draw a line with K-12 kids being taught a version of the "truth" that is potentially harmful to them without allowing for or teaching dissenting viewpoints.

ETA: Also, as a sidenote, I think that I should note that I feel very differently about college teaching than I do about K-12. I think college professors should be allowed a lot more room for unconventional and/or controversial perspectives since their students are legal adults who, in theory, have learned to think for themselves.

A Salon article on dominionists from a few weeks back ended with:

Speaking to outsiders, most Christian nationalists say they're simply responding to anti-Christian persecution. They say that secularism is itself a religion, one unfairly imposed on them. They say they're the victims in the culture wars. But Christian nationalist ideologues don't want equality, they want dominance. In his book "The Changing of the Guard: Biblical Principles for Political Action," George Grant, former executive director of D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries, wrote:

"Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ -- to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness.

But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice.

It is dominion we are after. Not just influence.

It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time.

It is dominion we are after.

World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less...

Thus, Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land -- of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ."

Uh, Marie? Sweetpea? Maybe if you spent as much with your kids as you do those godawful, uglyass dolls, you'd actually *know* what they were posting on the internet. Also? The day you tell me what I can and can't post to or look at on the internet, is the day that I'm a little bit chilly and little bit more in hell.

Her ACTUAL statement seems much more benign than the way that blog wrote it up.

In her statement, shocked Marie, a devout Mormon, says, "I am saddened by some of the choices that two of our children have made. "The insidious potential for harm from adolescent Internet sites like MySpace.com only exacerbates these kinds of problems. "If my being a celebrity figure is good for anything, let it be as a voice of warning to other parents that no matter how protective we think we may have been with our children in the past, we need to become more knowledgeable and even more vigilant now in order to protect them."

I'm a little wary of that blog, since at the end of the entry, the writer chastises Marie for revealing her daughters' internet escapades, yet in the very entry itself (which the writer must have copied and pasted) it is stated that the Enquirer dug up the dope about the kids, and confronted Marie, which is why she gave a statement.

I'm wondering if there really is a crusade, or if the crusade consists of the statement. I'd google, but I'm too tired.

Sparky, I hear you. I really do. On almost any other free speech issue, I'd agree. But I have to draw a line with K-12 kids being taught a version of the "truth" that is potentially harmful to them without allowing for or teaching dissenting viewpoints.

Again, all I said was that a teacher shouldn't be fired solely for expressing or holding a belief. And I even believe this to be true at a K-12 level. When the element of excluding all other beliefs/expressions from the classroom is added, or not teaching the curriculum, or abusing students -- then it's a different discussion.