No, he works for a company which makes sex simulator videogames. He has a responsibility to make sure the human race keeps breeding.

Relevant saturday morning breakfast cereal.

What? There are plenty of us who don't want zero tolerance. As I said, the schools have taken it and run with it. I'm not a school, if there's any confusion there. That many of the shrill parents and politicians want it isn't the whole story: it's approaching a point where most schools do have some degree of zero tolerance. I've known it was a stupid idea since I was in high school, I've never been an asswipe who demanded it.

Partially, like real roots which sometimes interconnect, but mainly I think the second is individual cowardice, while the first is bureaucratic paranoia.

Either I have found an exception to your test, or Tom Hanks deserves the nobel prize for time travel, not an oscar.

Serious point: that's a bit simplistic. People do threaten to sue the pants off people for saying things about them that are clearly true, and there may be a reason the holders have not sued yet. For example, perhaps the mayor is waiting until gawker actually buys it and shows it, at which point he can sue gawker for a ton of money in damages rather than suing whoever shot the video for all of the thousand dollars in his bank account. If the person with the video has even been identified.

Uh... perhaps you linked to the wrong one.

Similar reasons for this video you say? I... what?

It's more complicated than that

source They undoubtedly maintained that since a teacher wasn't present at the time, that violated the letter of the law and, obviously, "NO EXCEPTIONS TO RULES EVER" is the most important message schools can teach to kids. (sarcasm)

There's also obviously a bit of "I'm just following orders, it's not me who is doing this clearly stupid and unethical thing even though I am the actual one expelling you."

I think there are two big roots to the problem. The first is zero tolerance policies. Schools love them deep down because it makes fretful parents think their children are safer, and also probably dealing with kids all day makes you really want to clamp down hard with rules for your own sanity. And obviously in this case, the school was more interested in showing that students are not going to be blown up by science-loving terrorist children than they were in the student. Even if the schools didn't want zero tolerance, all the other idiots involved want them, legislators and parents.

The second is personal liability. No one wants to stand up and say "Fuck that rule, it's a stupid fucking rule" and then potentially lose their job. I have no idea how likely that would have been in this case. Evidently, no one even wanted to say "She DID have permission, so she's not really violating the rules." Maybe the teacher who gave her permission chickened out and said "Well, I didn't give her permission to do THAT, so please don't fire me.

TLDR: it would be nice if someone had the power to use their own judgement and intelligence here, but there are plenty of mechanisms in place to ensure that can't happen. Preventing this type of idiotic heavy-handed action will require bigger changes than one administrator growing a brain and/or balls.

You failed to read the rest of the post. 97% of climate change studies support climate change being a real thing. Gun control, you can't honestly claim that anything approaching 97% of the studies conclude gun control is bad and ineffective. There is a consensus on evolution and climate change, there is none on gun control.

You could elaborate. For instance, what's that about circumcision? The debate behind fracking is settled firmly on the "It's totally harmless" side?

GMO is a good example though, I'll give you that. Aside from making some "no true scotsman" arguments, I can't really counter that.

Did you fail to read the "As opposed to some other issue where there is much more support for either side" line or has that debate suddenly been settled?

When you say "leftists" do you mean anyone who thinks climate change is a problem (meaning everyone outside of the fossil fuel industry and the republican party?) Because that's not really true. Or do you mean a small subset of us? Because I can tell you, I'm a leftist, and you're stretching the truth a lot. For example, "surveillance" in the sense of "government watching the citizens" is not something the left is at large suggesting as a solution to climate change. You might mean allowing the EPA to monitor carbon emissions of companies, but it would be disingenuous to call that "surveillance."

I think your fix would be more reasonable if you cited examples of when liberal politicians ignored science to match their agendas.

Preferably some example where the vast majority of peer-reviewed studies support the opposite side. Like climate change, where 97% of studies conclude that climate change is real. Or evolution. As opposed to some other issue where there is much more support for either side.

I've been saying for a while now that the most effective conservative leaders are elected democrats. Obama apologizing for the IRS correctly identifying the tea party as a political group that should be taxed as a political group? I can't really see any other explanation for that other than Obama wanted to help out his friends in the Tea Party. A close second would be that everyone in the administration suffers from a weird disease where they are decent political strategists during the elections then they immediately become absolutely horrible at it in every way.

I imagine Mr. Burns sitting watching the TV as the conservative supreme court declares Bush the winner. "Checkmate, hippies! Lets see you legalize marijuana or fight 'global warming' now!" Cut to a disgruntled hippie "Man, I'm gonna move to Canada!" Mr Burns:... We'll see about that. MWHAHAHAHAH!

I know it was the Koch brothers probably talking to each other, but Mr. Burns is who I picture.

Also true. And i haven't tried the new site with the ipad. Maybe it is better. Alright, I realize that it's not really that important. Still, odd exception.

Indeed. Apple, EA, MS, Facebook, AT&T, Verizon and Sony for example all insulted their customer bases in various ways, some of which were outright insults in press conferences, and immediately went belly up. ~

Flickr can, in fact, get rid of the high-power users in exchange for more of the instagram crowd and gain marketshare and profits. The changes seem to be aimed squarely at that. Yahoo undoubtedly has far more data on their users than we do. Whether the decision is based on a reasonable interpretation of that data or whether they're all braindead idiots (or some combination) only time will tell, but I don't think it's certain that insulting a small part of their user base in a press conference will doom them.