FWIW, i *highly* recommend lego star wars. addictive to the nth degree.

ok, i'll bite. what country has more gun violence than the US?

also, re: crime and gun laws... maybe the gun laws are because of the crime, not the other way around... also, most organized crime centers around prohibition of various sorts. legalize drugs, prostitution and gambling and street gangs would disappear overnight.

i still think the two antidotes to crime are police and schools. call me old fashioned. also, i kinda hate how our local cops are getting lazier and lazier. i can't help but wonder if they'd be more inclined to apprehend violent criminals if there wasn't a chance some citizen would do it for them...

mario kart is a effing blast.

i don't understand. you say that people won't commit violent crimes against people they think are armed. why is that? it doesn't matter if your victim is armed or not as long as you draw your gun first.

of course, if your victim is armed, then when you DO get the drop on them you should probably kill them right away.

i live just outside of a city with a very high murder rate. we also have legalized concealed carry, and a very high rate of handgun ownership in the city. the only thing that's changed is that now, once the burglar gets into your house, he assumes you have a gun.

so he shoots you in your sleep.

you see, back in the good old days when only outlaws had guns, once they pulled them on an unsuspecting victim they could be relatively sure they had the upper hand. no more. now there is no such thing as an unsuspecting victim. every criminal on the street regards every victim as a potential vigilante. victims who could have escaped a horrible crime with their lives are now murdered out of hand, with no more thought than you or i would give to buckling our seat belts as soon as we got into a car.

speaking of cars, my car was broken into a couple years ago. they smashed my window in my driveway (and this is out in the boonies, almost across the state line). they also smashed the windows of every other car on the street. at the time of the break-in, my car was filled with very expensive musical equipment. they didn't touch it. guess what they went for?

the glove compartment. same with every other car on the street. all they wanted was guns.

the ubiquity of guns, in this case, actually generated more crime. thanks, concealed carry laws! that window cost me over $700. and thanks also for that criminal who came to my driveway in the suburbs, no doubt armed to the teeth, because the odds were simply in his favor that my car would have a gun in it.

thank God he didn't think i had one in my house.

perhaps you can explain why the united states has the highest rate of private gun ownership AND the highest violent crime of any nation in the world? surely, if guns always made people safer, this would not be the case...

look, you're obviously biased. you've got your mind made up, and you're going to jump through whatever hoops you have to in order to rationalize the bad behavior of a teenager. you can call it "passing notes" if you want to - if you're going to bend logic that much you may as well call using a computer "passing notes", or shooting a flare gun "passing notes". (incidentally, the first thing that happens when you're busted passing notes is that the teacher takes the note. i suppose you consider that a moral outrage as well)

the facts are very clear. a teenager broke public school rules. when confronted, the teenager chose to pursue civil disobedience, even when presented with multiple opportunities to comply with the rules. the teenager was aware of the permanent presence of a police officer in the building she chose to pursue civil disobedience in. the teenager was cited and arrested, exactly like any similarly obstinate and petulant adult who used a cell phone in a courtroom and then refused to surrender it to the bailiff would have been.

public schools, courtrooms, city halls, libraries, police stations, and the like are all government entities, charged by citizens with special and important missions, and as such have regulatory powers not enjoyed by private schools, businesses, and residences. in other words, if you act against any of these institutions, you're acting against the government and, therefore, against the citizenry, and will likely be treated accordingly. if i were to engage in political protest at city hall, in violation of their rules, i would expect to be arrested. if i lit a cigarette in a courtroom, and refused to put it out, i would expect to be held in contempt of court. if you can't understand the difference between government entities and private homes or businesses then i feel sorry for you. and if, as i suspect, you simply choose to stomp your feet in ironic parody of your noble tosa east heroine, then i can only shake my head and wish you the best of luck making your way in the world.

either way, i'm done with you.

please explain how me having a gun in my pocket does me any good when somebody else already has theirs out, in their hand, and pointing at me.

you have apparently never been the victim of a violent crime.

being in possession of a handgun does not equate to self defense unless you walk around everywhere pointing it straight ahead of you. any gun takes a second or two to unholster and draw, especially if it's concealed, and a LOT can happen in a second or two.

when you feel the cold steel of somebody else's gun in your back, or when they pull their gun in front of you before you can pull yours, what are you going to do? ask them to be sportsmanlike, let you draw your weapon as well, take 20 paces?

no. you're going to give them your wallet and watch them run away. and if you shoot them in the back then YOU are going to jail.

there is no easy answer to violent crime. many people who are uneducated and poor WILL be criminals in the same way that water WILL flow downhill. vigilante justice is impractical and ineffective, and there is no deterrent that will stop a crackhead.

no, this escalated because a teenager decided to embark on an unswerving course of civil disobedience. she wound up with a citation. and that sounds very educational indeed.

oh, btw, your criminal record is expunged or sealed when you turn 18. so don't let that keep you up at night.

did you read the part of the police report where the girl wouldn't give them the correct phone number for her mother? you probably should read the whole thing.

BUT THEY DON'T. because if they suspend a student, and the student's parents complain to the superintendent, guess what? the student's back the next day. at least in my part of the country, principals hardly ever back up the teachers, just because they know the parents have all the cards.

it's sad how out of touch with modern public high school education so many people here are.

my parents are both public high school teachers. they are in the trenches. at their school district, supensions are only ever given for proven physical violence against another student. physical violence against the teacher is blamed on the teacher. if it's the teacher's word against the kid's, the kid wins. expulsions simply never happen. kids have been caught bringing guns to school and not been expelled.

send a kid to the principal's office, the principal asks what happened, the kid says "the teacher's mean and doesn't like me", and then the TEACHER gets reprimanded for being mean. i am not making this up. this happens, literally, every week.

this teacher was going 100% by the book to call the school cop.

the police officer demanded she surrender the cell phone in accordance with school rules. school rules, in a public school, carry the force of law. so, technically, she was breaking the law right there.

when she refused to obey a police officer, she was definitely breaking the law. if she wants to engage in civil disobedience, that's her right - but she should expect to be arrested and charged.

"That was a cute, yet lengthy rant,"

thanks! i've had lots of practice.

"What's happened in the past is not relevant."

relevant to what? i was addressing the root of the problem.

"Think kids with mental disabilities."

obviously, i was talking about shitheads and not disabled kids.

"Taking away a child's privileges until age 47 is not a viable answer."

this is just pedantic. if you're going to take all my hyperbole literally, this rant will be no fun at all!

obviously, the age of 47 was not meant to be taken seriously. the idea of taking away a teenager's privileges was.

"So if I child ever says, "I hate school," that tells you nothing about the child, but everything about the school. It means the school has systematically crushed the child's natural curiosity."

let's parse this sentence. if a child EVER, ever ONCE, from the first day of kindergarten to graduation day of high school, ever ONCE utters the words "i hate school", it means that the ENTIRE school, from the principal to the janitor, engaged in a specific pattern of behavior designed to serve no other purpose than to crush your kid's spirit.

this is so ridiculous i honestly don't know where to start.

you apparently had a very abnormal childhood. as somebody who didn't, i can assure you that it is perfectly natural for children to hate school, brushing their teeth, going to bed on time, eating vegetables, and any number of other inconvenient things that make their lives a better place anyway. at some point, i hated every school i ever went to, including a montessori school where i could do whatever i wanted and got no grades. at some point, i also loved every school i ever went to. kids have good days and bad days, and feel them very intensely. your willingness to engage in a wholesale and blanket indictment of an entire school based on a child EVER ONCE saying "i hate school" says much more about your prejudices and quality of judgment than it does about the school.

are your children homeschooled, by any chance?

"What I'm reading here is that you propose to have a heart to heart with the student in the article"

hmm, i must have blacked out when i was writing that, let me go back and... oh, wait, turns out i never actually said that at all.

"I think you'll find that the above will not change the nature of a child like the one in the police report."

no, i suspect proper parental discipline is the only thing that could accomplish that.

"Dropping out of high school is legal in all 50 states"

wow, that's funny that i knew so many kids in high school who were cited (and sometimes arrested) for truancy. so i'm afraid i'm gonna have to call bullshit on that and ask for a cite.

"Regarding "working my butt off in high school for a teacher that I found tedious and dull", I have to say that I never did that. But that is only because I did not work my butt off in high school at all. In fact, I slept through many of my classes--especially if the teacher was uninspiring."

wow, so the moral of your story is "do whatever you want, work when you want to work, slack off when you want to slack off, and there will be no consquences." you must be thrilled to be such a wonderful and responsible role model, demonstrating behavior for your children that's sure to work just great for them in college and the job market. if it feels good, do it. what could possibly go wrong?

"I absolutely had teachers who inspired me in high school."

of course you did. so did i. so does everybody. every school has some good and some bad teachers. you enjoy the good ones and do what you have to do to pass the bad ones.

but there's no teacher that's so good that the only kids who fuck off in their class are those with mental illnesses. there's no teacher that can make a kid learn who just doesn't want to. teachers can't make kids do anything. only parents can. which bring us to our conclusion.

"All this being said, I don't think we are any closer to an answer regarding what techniques should be used to modify the behavior of a girl like the one in the police report."

well, obviously, i don't know the girl in question, so this is all speculative on my part.

first let me say that, at her age, she's likely learned so much bad behavior already that it may be too late to turn her around.

but, were her parents to try, here's a few things that i'd recommend. firstly, divorced or not, they have to present a unified front. kids can't be allowed to turn parents against each other and manipulate them. one very hard thing about being a parent is that you have to show your child that there are boundaries, and that there are consequences for violating them. if you don't teach your kid that they are not in charge then you better believe the world will, and the world will be much more likely to break them permanently in the process.

secondly, there need to be clearly established and predetermined consequences for misbehavior in school. get a D or a C, get detention or suspension, get a call from a teacher, grounded. period. no phone, no TV, no computer (except for schoolwork), no friends. in a particularly harsh case, no extracirricular activites.

if i were this girl's parent, after this incident, she'd be grounded until the start of the next school year. no privileges whatsoever. she could do housework, she could study for next year's classes over the summer, she could volunteer to feed homeless people, but she would basically live the life of a nun until she earned the right to be treated otherwise.

and after missing out on an entire summer of being a teenager, i guarantee you that she'd think twice before shoving a cell phone into her ass crack ever again.

harsh? sure. but not nearly as harsh as jail. which is what happens when you get arrested in Real Life.

once she'd straightened out, i'd be thrilled to be able to reward her positive improvement with anything i could. in my experience kids usually respond better to the carrot than the stick anyway.

so there's my proposed solution. given this girl's age, her parents' divorce and her mother's co-conspiratorial behavior, i'd be very surprised if it - or anything else - worked. i fully expect this girl to have a long, hard, unrewarding life of conflict with authority ahead of her.

"What, exactly, do you expect the parents to do to get through to a kid who is such a discipline challenge that she is on a first-name basis with the local police force? Who would brazenly lie to a cop?"

uh, maybe the kid wouldn't be such a discipline challenge if they'd had, oh, i don't know... discipline? bad kids aren't born, they're reared. "shit happens" is probably not the best philosophy to have regarding bad behavior.

i know what would have happened if i behaved like that girl did. i would not have seen my computer, the TV, my CD collection, my books, any of my friends, or DAYLIGHT until i was approximately 47. according to that police report, as soon as the responsible adults were out of the room, this little brat and her mother were laughing about the whole thing. is it any wonder that she's a discipline problem?

"Did you wise, enlightened mother ever come up with any good suggestions in between bitching about the kids she failed to inspire?"

oh, plenty. subjectively, i think she's done a lot more good for students than i would venture to guess you ever have, unless you're also a public high school teacher in an economically depressed area of the rural southeast. objectively, they don't keep awarding her trophies at her school because she's got a hot ass (she doesn't).

but that's completely beside the point.

it's not the job of a teacher to inspire. it's the job of a teacher to TEACH. that's why they're called teachers and not counselors, mentors, or coaches.

and it's not the privilege of a student to condescend to be inspired, to deign to be motivated. it's the privilege of a student to STUDY, when it's easy and when it's hard. that's why they call them STUDents. and it's a privilege they'd be denied if they were chained to a loom for 16 hours a day like the kids in the countries that make the clothes you're wearing right now.

and, if they weren't kids who didn't know any better, i'd say they should be grateful. but they shouldn't - they're just kids. and they don't know any better because they haven't lived long enough to have learned any better yet.

YOU, on the other hand, should know a great deal better than to expect public high school to be anything approaching consensual. in fact, you should be glad it isn't. because kids from poor and poorly socialized families are forced through public school, and are imbued with some basic literacy and knowledge in spite of their childish natures, the crime rate in your neighborhood is down, companies come to seek your workforce, and museums and libraries are built in your area because there's enough people with a high school education to appreciate and demand them.

do you think i graduated high school because i was inspired? did you? did you graduate high school without ever having to work your butt off for a teacher that you found tedious and dull? please tell me where this magical fairyland high school exists so that i can have my children taught by unicorns and leprechauns. and to think i actually buckled down and worked my way through my less enjoyable classes like a sucker.

basic k-12 public education is not something a student opts in or out of. it's required by society because it benefits everybody involved.

look, high school can be magical. some of my best memories are from high school. if you don't have one teacher who you absolutely love, if you were never hoisted up on the shoulders of your fellow athletes or applauded at the school musical or made the academic decathlon team, i feel truly sorry for you.

but you know what? if you don't hate at least one teacher in high school, if you aren't given at least one bubbler ride as a freshman, if you weren't lucky enough to be shown your weaknesses as well as your strengths, if high school only served to inflate your ego and taught you nothing of humility or hard work or sacrifice or hard choices... if high school was every bit the cakewalk, then not only do i feel sorry for you, i'm actively afraid of you. God forbid you ever be elected president.

oh, the hostility. i may faint. slashdot arguments, how i missed you...

"Of course, your statement is also ridiculous because there was no indication that this person was "on an swerving course". Jumping straight from 'give me your phone' to 'you are now under arrest' is no different than, jumping from 'don't put your feet on my coffee table' to having you cop pal come over and arrest you with trumped up charges. "

clearly you either haven't read the entire police report or are remembering it selectively. there was no "jumping straight from" involved. the student was asked multiple times by the teacher, administrators, and police if she had a phone. she was told that she'd been ratted out by her friends as having a phone. she was told she'd be searched. the teachers, school staff, and police spent the better part of a day trying to get her to not be a shithead. stupidly, in calling the police officers' bluff, she chose obstinacy. she lost. gasp.

"Suggesting that we should just start arresting kids when they have committed no crime because we might have to have them arrested if they don't leave the premises when told to leave is simply stupid."

there's three things here you're not getting about public schools. (hint: the key word here is PUBLIC)

firstly, school rules, in public schools, carry the force of law.

secondly, public schools are public property, not private. very, very different from my feet on your coffee table - unless i'd paid for part of your coffee table.

thirdly, one disruptive student impacts the learning of every good student in the room. as a taxpayer, i don't want the money i spend trying to educate the kids who actually want to learn to be wasted on trying to treat willing shitheads with the dignity and respect they freely discard by being shitheads.

to correct and extend your flawed coffee table analogy, let's say i put my feet up on a coffee table that i'd paid for part of. but there's 20 other people in the room who all paid for part of it too. the melting snow and road salt from my boots is getting on everybody's part, not just mine. the melting snow is also getting everybody's coffee cold, so they can't use the coffee table to sit their coffee on. which is, you know, what that coffee table was actually for.

"No, we do not agree."

that's funny, because i could have sworn that earlier you said

"That is a ridiculous statement because the answer is obviously yes."

oh wait. that was you. so we do agree. good. sorry you're having such a hard time accepting it.

"This person was NOT treated like an adult."

actually, you're right. speaking as an adult who has been arrested, i can say that this girl was actually treated much, much better than many adults who are arrested. but that's not unexpected. i grew up in wauwatosa, and while the police there can be a little prickish at times, it's not LA.

"I can think of no situation where a person who is not an officer of the law or judge can after demanding that I stop text messaging, and when I don't, then after demanding that I give them my personal property, and when I don't, have me arrested."

what you continue to misunderstand is that public school teachers are much closer in nature to officers of the law or of the courts than they are to private school teachers. when you break the rules at a public school, you are acting against society in the same way as if you were to break a rule in a courtroom.

look, the moral of the story is: if you're going to pick an unwinnable fight on the grounds of your basic dignity and worth as a human being, don't put something in your ass crack that's going to be in regular contact with your open mouth. instead of losing your unwinnable fight, you will lose it to the derisive laughter and half-suppressed heaving noises of of any and all onlookers.

because ironically, in trying to not laugh at you for fear that the small amount of vomit pooling in the back of their mouth might dribble forth onto their clothes, those onlookers will be showing you what dignity and self-respect actually look like.

"The very first sentence on the second page clearly says that the cops WERE called. I would chalk up your bizarre claim to you not being familier with the fact that School Resource Officer is the double plus good term for cop in NewSpeak, but a School Resource Officer IS A COP. This excuse for your bizarre statement falls appart on when you get to the fifth paragraph on page three where the first cop that was called says:"

wow, over 20 years as a card carrying liberal and you're calling ME orwellian?

gasp.

my wording was poor. let's try this instead - no officers were dispatched to the scene in response to any calls places by school personnel. this kid was a total shithead to a cop who was already there. the cop called for backup. does this revision appease your overdeveloped sense of semantic outrage?

i hope so. because you're still sticking up for an asshole who had something sticking up IN theirs.

"There is cause and effect in play here. Police are already immune from civil suits, why not teachers?"

i can only assume that what you propose is very similar to previous arrangements that the public saw fit to either put an end to or allow an end to be put to. personally, i think it'd be a net good, though i'm certain that you'd see plenty of abuse of this by bad teachers (which would probably increase geometrically). and anyway, nobody's suing the teachers. they're suing the school district, in the same way that people sue a city in lieu of an actual police officer. the principle is the same - sue the larger body who hired the (alleged) bad apple.

"I would hazard a guess that the reason districts routinely settle out of court has less to do with bad press than huge paydays for largely frivolous lawsuits."

well, the choice to settle is made by the person or entity being sued. who's to say what motivates them? were i to hazard a guess, it'd be the opposite of yours. turns out there is such a thing as bad publicity. and the worst kind of bad publicity is to lose even one lawsuit - because as soon as you did, no future plaintiff would ever settle.

"If teachers are exercising poor judgment, why not treat them the way everyone else gets treated (fire them)? "

as the adult child of a public high school teacher currently in the process of being fired i can say that this process, while inevitable and inexorable, is neither quick nor painless for the administration. and this is with a lapdog union, in response to a (baseless) accusation of physical assault.

no offense taken.

apology accepted anyway.