Then lets just get rid of pronouns entirely because they shoehorn all of us into categories. We can always use everyone' s name! We can then have a very precise, long winded, and repetitive language. Seriously... we have pronouns for a reason.

Unless we are going to make up new pronouns for every single gender deviation...

English (like most languages) has three third person singular pronouns: 'he', 'she', and 'it'. Other languages even have gender identifying second person pronouns and gender identifying plural pronouns. English seems to have gotten jipped on the supply of pronouns. If you do not understand our array of available pronouns and their correct usage, then you obviously do not use language much.

We often apply 'he' and 'she' to non human objects, however we balk at apply 'it' to people. In fact, in most other languages each object has actually been assigned a de facto gender. English is perhaps the most gender neutral language currently in use.

We get all uppity about people referring to themselves as 'we' because it makes them sound elitist due to the historic habit of royalty using 'we', so why should we let people incorrectly use 'they'? 'They' implies that there is more than one of you. The misuse of 'they' as a gender neutral person is a terrible abuse of the language.

The fact that our literature and fiction place so much emphasis on the usage of 'it' to refer to a dehumanized creature is telling about how much importance our culture places on gender. If it is now culturally acceptable to not have a gender, then it should be acceptable to call you 'it' since the removal of the gender is no longer offensive as gender is no longer a required trait of being human.

If you have no gender and don't want to be called a 'he' or 'she', well we have to call you something so 'it' is the correct choice (unless there is more than one of you). You can't both be offended at me applying a gender to you and then offended when I don't.

People do not always plan for that eventuality. My husband got a Masters in Nuclear Engineering... and now stays home with the kids. When he was getting his undergraduate degree he had plans to go out and work and actually spent 3 years working in industry. Then he married me, got a masters, knocked me up, and decided to stay home to play dinosaurs and sing the ABCs with the rugrats.

He might one day return to industry, or he might not. If you had told him when he started his undergraduate program he would end up a stay at home dad, he would have laughed at you. Life happens. It doesn't always go as you planned.

I don't necessarily agree with this idea of funding college through taxes, but it isn't really that much different than the current state run school system. State schools are pretty much free to residents because we all pay taxes to run them. What we need to do is to stop giving people loans to go to expensive private schools. Education is important, but you don't have the right to go to any school you choose.

The last storm the warnings were issued at 3AM, well before most people got up and went to work... The government and school systems had plenty of time to close the school and simply chose not to. Getting out of bed before the ass crack of dawn was apparently too much effort for the officials to prevent "snowpocalypse" and now we get to watch them do their darnedest to not look like idiots a second time for the same reasons.

We've been watching this current storm for days with no one able to say for sure it would hit us or pass just east of us. We still managed to close the schools this morning when mother nature finally made up her mind and decided to include us. Our school officials managed to get the fuck out of bed at 3AM to look at the radar and the forecasts and close the schools. They have managed to close the schools before when it is bright and sunny in the morning but by noon the storm hits and ices everything. They do that by watching the radar and listening to the warnings.

If the snow starts at 12AM or 12PM it doesn't matter. You still get to see it coming hours in advance. On the gulf coast they don't wait for the hurricane to make landfall to start making preparations. You also don't wait for the snow and ice to hit the streets before doing something about it. The idea that if it's sunny at 7AM means the day will be fine when the radar clearly tells you otherwise is insane.

By your logic if we didn't introduce kids to things like nuclear technology in high school, no one would go into that field in college. There are number of weird and niche collegiate programs that high schools do not generally touch and they still manage to somehow suck students into them.

Do high schools actually teach genetics beyond recessive/dominate genes? My husband's high school taught agriculture, not hard sciences. He still managed to end up a nuclear engineer.

Besides, if you bothered to RTFA, they are not simply ignoring it completely and pretending it doesn't exist. It's probably a poor decision, but its no where near the level of 'OMG! an entire state of children are going to grow up in darkness and ignorance!' that slashdot likes to make it out to be.

Please explain to me how an understanding or lack thereof of evolution impacts my ability to program computers? To be a successful photographer? To be a lawyer? To be a nuclear engineer? Build a bridge? A writer? In fact, any profession other than 'scientist studying evolution'.

I have never in 10 years of being a very successfully software engineer ever needed to know how old the planet it or where people came from to do my job. It's just never come up. I don't need to know about evolution to build a database or a webpage or a high performance processing system. I have needed to go look up Keplar's equations, figure out how to convert from sidereal time to SI time, model the atmosphere, and parse proc. Age of the earth? Never comes up. Did human's evolve from monkeys? Never comes up. Is there a god? Never comes up.

Seriously. Get over yourselves. The origins of life are not critical knowledge to the vast majority of the population.

Are they learning basic math, physics, reading skills? Those are actually important and widely applicable skills.

Ah! But CRITICAL THINKING! Really? Evolution is the only theory that allows you to impart the skill of critical thinking onto children? Reading literature and building robots don't do this?