It's officially fall again, and that can only mean three things: Everything tastes like pumpkin; monster-themed breakfast cereals are back on the shelves; and no freshly raked pile of leaves is safe from sneak attacks.
"I just had just finished raking leaves, when Butch decided to help," writes Ogden, Utah, resident Kent Petersen, referring to his Siberian Husky.
So that's what pure happiness looks like.
[H/T: Daily Picks and Flicks]
Two weeks ago The New York Observer, once a scrappy ankle-biter of gentrified Manhattan, published an utterly unaware column
However, two very important details in the column appear to be factually untrue. The apartment, located in Greenwich Village, did not cost $250,000. According to city property records, Mosendz paid $345,000 for the apartment. The same records indicate that Mosendz did not buy the property all by herself. Her grandmother, Ludmila Lapchyk, served as a co-signer — though its unclear whether Lapchyk herself contributed the $95,000 difference.
When made aware of these discrepancies, Observer editor Ken Kurson told Gawker that Mosendz claims to have received a “refund”—he did not know for how much—from her building’s co-op board, due to the building being land-leased. Regarding the unmentioned second buyer, Kurson added: “I do not think the author was trying to deceive her readers.”
Kurson’s first response:
Thank you for your intense interest in this story.
First, the article does not state that she paid $250k. It reads, “I settled on a budget of approximately $250,000” and the loose language is intentional — the author's intent was not to reveal the precise specifics of her personal finances but to provide a general roadmap to how this can be done. Later, the piece reads “I had an accepted offer—just over a quarter million” — again, the language is intentionally vague and even nods toward a higher than $250k price.
I would agree that “approximately $250,000"”and your assertion of $345,000 are meaningfully different amounts, but as I understand it, that’s mostly because the $345k number reported in records does not reflect the refund that buyers receive after closing because the building is a land lease.
As for the person you mention (who is the author's grandmother): as I understand it, she is simply a co-signer. I re-read the story (again) and my sense of fairness was not offended by this. Had I known that this was the case before we ran the article, I would have urged the author to include this information. Not because I think she was being sneaky in not mentioning it — I don’t. But because I favor transparency and in reading the reactions to the story, both on your site and ours, I think it’s fair to conclude that knowing that the author had a willing co-signer would have been helpful to the exact young aspiring homebuyers for whom this story was intended. In fact, I think I’ll add that now. But I do not think the author was trying to deceive her readers.
KK
We asked Kurson about the precise refund amount, and whether “approximately $250,000” or “just over a quarter-million” would suggest $345,000 to a reasonable person. He wrote back:
1) I do not know the amount. I believe it was in the 5 figures, but I am not sure. I THINK the way it works (I am not an expert on this) is let’s say there’s a co-op with 10 identical units that sits on a lend lease. Meaning the coop does not own the land, it simply has a long term lease on it. The lease expires in 2050. Jane buys Unit A in 1990. That means the value of her unit includes 60 years of using it in peace. John buys Unit B in 2010. That means the value of his unit includes 40 years of using it in peace. The board somehow refunds John some of the money he has “lost” by enjoying full use of his apt for 20 years less than Jane. The reason for this is that if they didn't do that, as 2050 nears, they’d never be able to get anyone to buy an apt and everyone's investment would go to zero. Again, I’m not an expert.
2) I’m arguing the exact opposite, and you asking me this question makes me wonder if you're really attempting to be fair. Note that I wrote “I would agree that ‘approximately $250,000’ and your assertion of $345,000 are meaningfully different amounts.” If I say that 250 and 345 are meaningfully different,” how can you you conclude that I think a “reasonable person” would think they’re the same? But what IS close enough, in my view, is the amount that she netted out at after the refund and the high end of “just over 250.”
KK
Today’s lesson: You are never going to own in Manhattan. (Or Brooklyn.)
Update: As promised, Kurson appended the following paragraph to Mosendz’s original column:
Many readers have inquired about the exact details surrounding the author’s purchase of her co-op apartment. The purchase price listed in city records is higher than the amount budgeted by the author because the city records do not reflect the value of the refund that is common when buying a co-op that sits on leased land. Furthermore, the buyer had the benefit of a co-signer — a relative who agreed to be on the deed.
[Photo credit: Shutterstock]
After the landmark trial that effectively legalized public masturbation in Sweden
The Local is reporting that a man in the western city of Gothenburg was arrested recently for relieving himself all over the produce section of a popular supermarket chain.
Police officers who arrived at the Hemköp grocery store found the man standing in the fruit in vegetable aisle, having just urinated on a variety of apples and oranges.
All told, some 700 kronor ($110) worth of produce had to be destroyed following the incident.
During his arrest, the man reportedly became belligerent and had to be physically restrained.
He was ultimately taken to a nearby police station and charged with vandalism.
Police suspect alcohol may have played a role in the man's poor decision-making process.
[photo via Shutterstock]
Soon your little girl will be a full-grown adult, a worldly woman confronting some very difficult life decisions. Can she have it all? Is there a God? And what prefabricated
Fortunately, Wal-Mart wants to help prepare her early for these challenges—well, actually, just the confounding pressure of naughty costumes. To wit: a Consumerist reader spotted a "naughty leopard" toddler costume in an unspecified Wal-Mart location and submitted the above photo. There aren't any "naughty" toddler costumes available on the retail giant's web site, though there is a "devil diva" suit for your miniature lady. After all, "diva" is just another word for shitty princess, right?
[h/t Feministing; image via Consumerist]
A University of Florida professor who was arrested for allegedly filming secret upskirt videos of his students claimed he was merely trying to prove they weren't wearing underwear.
Don Samuelson, of UF's College of Veterinary Medicine, was placed on administrative leave earlier this month after a USB camera pen found in his office was tied to at least four incidents involving the filming of female student's body parts through their clothes.
The 65-year-old's creepshot sessions were discovered in late August after he reportedly attempted to stick his hidden camera between a female student's thighs.
The student recognized the pen's ulterior function and reported Samuelson to school officials.
Samuelson was arrested last Friday and charged with multiple counts of video voyeurism.
According to University Police, Samuelson confessed to filming the students, but claimed he was doing so in order to prove the student "wasn’t wearing undergarments."
The investigation is ongoing, but a UF spokeswoman said the university is likely to terminate Samuelson's employment.
[screengrab via FirstCoastNews]
Yesterday, The New Republic published a mammoth profile of Doug Band, Bill Clinton's longtime body man and all-purpose Clintonland gatekeeper, a 40-year-old Floridian-turned-New Yorker with a taste for luxury. Senior writer Alec MacGillis describes how Band, from his toehold as a gofer and coat-holder, shamelessly traded on his access to the former President to amass millions of dollars, an enormous Manhattan apartment, and cushy appointments on corporate boards. The piece documents and perhaps implements the rest of the Clinton family's desire, after all these years, to get him out—presumably before he can damage Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential prospects.
MacGillis’ piece more or less answers what that breathless but otherwise insubstantial New York Times investigation
It was Doug Band, for instance, who arranged for the Italian expat Raffaello Follieri (another grifter who dated Anne Hathaway before being jailed for money laundering charges) to donate $50 million to the Clinton Global Initiative pledge $50 million to the healthcare of poor Americans (and announce the pledge through the Clinton Global Initiative), on the condition that another Clinton buddy, the grocery chain billionaire Ron Burkle, would invest in Follieri’s own venture, allegedly devoted to developing “some of the Catholic Church’s choicest North American properties, to help the church pay off bills associated with its sex-abuse scandals.” Follieri never came up with the donation, but not before Burkle threw in $105 million to Follieri’s church venture, and Band captured a $400,000 finder’s fee. (Band claims he later returned the fee.)
MacGillis’ Band is a tragicomic figure, slavishly entranced by the comfort and status enjoyed by the investor class that populated his boss’s post-White-House world. Per MacGillis:
The profile is humiliating, almost painful to read at times. The piece opens with Band essentially tricking various luminaries—among them George W. Bush, Harvey Weinstein, Tony Blair, and Sean Parker, who had gathered in New York to listen to Bill Clinton speak—into watching a sales pitch for his own company. It details how, around the time White House staffers were trying to neutralize Monica Lewinsky, Band himself escorted Lewinsky to the White House Congressional Ball.
Yet Band seems to thrive on his devoted servitude to the Clintons. According to MacGillis, Band constructed an elaborate vanity wall in his Midtown apartment, visible to every guest, devoted mostly to his adventures with Bill. “Band and Clinton were so inseparable,” he adds, “that Band sometimes framed requests to colleagues using the royal ‘us’ or ‘we.’” Given multiple opportunities to strike out on his own, often for much more money Band always chose to stay where he knew he was needed: carrying Clinton’s bags across the tarmac, glued to the background of people more important than him.
It’s all so sad.
And now the Clinton family, understandably, is working to distance themselves from Band, who is currently occupied with his consulting/banking/PR firm, Teneo Holdings. Too bad that, then, that the entire appeal of Teneo appears to be...Band’s connection to the Clintons. “Some Clinton aides and foundation employees,” the Times reported in August, “began to wonder [in 2011] where the [Clinton Foundation] ended and Teneo began.”
It’s a good question that, given Hillary Clinton’s 2016 ambitions, requires an even better answer.
[Photo credit: Associated Press, Teneo Holdings]
Here is a fact: paying people money to give you investment advice is a waste of your money. It will not make you money. DO NOT HIRE INVESTMENT ADVISORS, STOP NOW.
This is not a new insight; John Bogle of Vanguard, for example, has been yapping about this fact for decades. Yet—here's the funny thing—people and institutions around the world (including your very own retirement fund, in all likelihood!) still pay billions and billions of dollars to investment advisors each year. It's truly amazing. Despite having been mathematically proven to be completely without value, the industry persists, due to quirks of human psychology. These advisors take your money, and then charge you a percentage of that money in order to tell you where to invest the rest of your money. And what do you get, for the money you pay them? In aggregate, absolutely nothing.
Here is the very latest research that proves that, out of Oxford, via the FT:
On an equal-weighted basis, US equity funds recommended by consultants underperformed other funds by 1.1 per cent a year between 1999 and 2011, according to analysis of 29 consultancies accounting for more than 90 per cent of the market by a team from Oxford university’s Saïd Business School...
The paper speculated institutional investors continued to rely on recommendations either because they want a “hand-holding service”, a “shield” to defend their decisions, or are “simply unaware how accurate or inaccurate” consultants’ calls are.
Are some advisors able to beat the market? Yes. Are you, or your pension fund, able to know which advisors will beat the market? No. In total, the entire industry is not worth a nickel to you, the investor. The great insight of John Bogle was: the only thing you can really predict about investing is how high the fees you'll be paying are. So if you pay lower fees, you will do better. So instead of paying high fees to some "investment professionals" in return for no benefit, just pay low fees for some index funds, the end.
I encourage you to print out this article and give a copy to whoever is responsible for choosing the investment advisors for your retirement money. And when you give it to them, ask them whether they are looking for a hand-holding service, a shield for their own mistakes, or are they just stupid?
[Image via]
Anti-anti-sexism expert Christina Hoff Sommers has repeatedly warned America that boy-hating educators are forcing children to play namby-pamby things like "Circle of Friends," in lieu of traditional, vigorous games of tag. "Circle of Friends," Amanda Hess discovered, is freeze tag.
A former FBI agent has reached a plea deal with the U.S. government for leaking classified information about a terrorist plot to the Associated Press. Donald John Sachtleben will get three years and seven months in prison for the leak, but that's just the beginning of his legal troubles.
Besides being collared on the national security charges, Sachtleben, who was a bomb technician who'd worked on cases like the Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 attacks, is also facing prison time for possessing and distributing child pornography. Nine days after he leaked information about an Al-Qaeda plot to the AP, the now 55-year-old was picked up for sharing kiddie porn through the very forthright email address "pedodave69@yahoo.com."
At the time authorities had no idea Sachtleben was also the source of the AP's leak. That information would come later, according to a Justice Department press release:
Sachtleben was identified as a suspect in the case of this unauthorized disclosure only after toll records for phone numbers related to the [AP] reporter were obtained through a subpoena and compared to other evidence collected during the leak investigation. This allowed investigators to obtain a search warrant authorizing a more exhaustive search of Sachtleben’s cell phone, computer, and other electronic media, which were in the possession of federal investigators due to the child pornography investigation.
According to the Department of Justice, Sachtleben's plea agreement will find him jailed for 14o months altogether: 43 months for the leaking and 97 months for the child porn.
[Image via AP]
Lois Lerner, the IRS official who sparked the IRS Tea Party
Lerner was in charge of the IRS’s tax-exempt-organizations division last year when she was asked a planted question about the IRS's treatment of political groups, namely Tea Party organizations. Lerner admitted that some groups were unfairly flagged for review; initial reports said groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names received additional scrutiny, but it soon became clear that other, non-conservative groups were targeted as well
"That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive, and it was inappropriate. That's not how we go about selecting cases," Lerner said at the time. "The IRS would like to apologize for that."
But two weeks later, when called before a Congressional committee investigating the controversy, Lerner kept quiet, choosing instead to plead the Fifth Amendment. She was placed on administrative leave two days later.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Lerner retired today after receiving word that she'd be fired otherwise.
A Democratic congressional aide said Ms. Lerner's decision came after an IRS review board had informed her that it was set to propose her removal from the agency. The board had found "neglect of duties" during her tenure as director of the IRS exempt-organizations division, as well as mismanagement consistent with critical findings of an earlier inspector general's report, the aide said.
The same congressional aide added that the review board found no evidence of political bias or willful misconduct, which confirmed
The chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who has been aggressively investigating the IRS scandal, said in a statement, "Lois Lerner's exit from the IRS does not alter the Oversight Committee's interest in understanding why applicants for tax exempt status were targeted and inappropriately treated because of their political beliefs.
"We still don't know why Lois Lerner, as a senior IRS official, had such a personal interest in directing scrutiny and why she denied improper conduct to Congress. Her departure does not answer these questions or diminish the Committee's interest in hearing her testimony."
The IRS released a statement on Monday, acknowledging some wrong-doing and outlining the changes they've made since May.
"Since May, the IRS has taken decisive actions to correct failures in exempt organizations management, replacing top leadership throughout the chain of command," the statement said. "In addition, IRS acting commissioner Danny Werfel created an accountability review board to fully review information to ensure proper oversight in handling personnel issues."
"The IRS is making important progress on fixing the underlying management and organizational deficiencies," the statement said. "Our goal is to restore the public's faith and trust in the tax system. We have sent nearly 400,000 pages of documents to Congress and facilitated dozens of employee interviews. We look forward to continuing to cooperate with Congress and other investigations.”
[Image via AP]
Hello, I have just been listening to Black Midi for the past 10 minutes so you will have to excuse me if my writing is INCOMPREHENSIBLY DENSE AND GLORIOUSLY CRACKED LIKE A GOLDEN TORTOISE'S SHELL THAT HS BEEN DROPPED FROM THE TOP OF A CRAY XC30-AC SUPERCOMPUTER.
Imagine a robotic squid with thousands of high-powered servo arms pounding a 360 degree piano inside the center of the sun. That's what Black midi is. Or, more accurately, according to Rhizome:
a group of musicians who use MIDI files (which store musical notes and timings, not unlike player piano rolls) to create compositions that feature staggering numbers of notes. They're calling this kind of music "black MIDI," which basically means that when you look at the music in the form of standard notation, it looks like almost solid black.
There is a Black midi wiki and everything, where 'blackkers' trade songs in their attempt to create a track with infinite notes. It is the weirdest internet music subculture, but now that it has been noticed, we can expect the Black Midi-influenced Rihanna song in three months.
Here's a good one with 4.5 million notes:
In this month's issue of Fortune, we "meet the most important young iconoclasts, risk-takers, and rule breakers in business"—40 of them, to be exact. At the top of the 40 Under 40 prestige pile is Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, who, despite lavish press, has accomplished about as much for Yahoo! as you have.
Here is why Mayer rests—and I do mean rests!—atop the list, according to Fortune:
"Get in over your head" is Mayer's guideline. It's this career philosophy that has fueled her turnaround effort at Yahoo since she joined the company as CEO last year, at age 37, after more than a decade at Google. Mayer has replaced key Yahoo executives, made a string of acquisitions (22 so far, including Tumblr—see No. 24—for $1.1 billion), and overhauled Yahoo's culture and HR rules (its logo too) in an effort to make the company innovative again. Revenue growth is her challenge, but investors like what our newly crowned No. 1 has done: The stock is up 86% since she came in.
This is all more or less true, but by no means justifies a top spot, to say nothing of "iconoclast." Examine any of these sentences alone, and you'll see a corporate black eye, not plaudits.
But fine, this is Fortune, not an epic poem, and so it's enough to be a above-capable businessperson. Is she?
Mayer landed at Yahoo! after a series of clear demotions at Google—she entered the former after a downward slide at the latter. Over the past year and change as CEO, she's earned headlines and retweets not through her deeds, but through discussion of her deeds. Corporate theater, innovation as exhibition—Mayer is a household name (at least in geekier households) by virtue of being Marissa Mayer. She's gotten people talking about Yahoo! into conversations again, but can any of us remember what any of those conversations were about? Repeating a noun for its own sake doesn't do much to elevate that noun, no matter what purple font it's rendered in.
Push aside URLs and magazine spreads, and what's left? What has Marissa Mayer done? How has Yahoo! changed under her?
In summation: bought a bunch of middling companies, bought Tumblr, minor page design changes, a new logo, a magazine spread, and no working from home. The company's stock value has leapt, sure—but this is almost entirely the fruit of a fortuitous investment in Alibaba, a an enormously successful Chinese startup being successful on the other side of the planet without help from Mayer. When the Alibaba cash runs out—and one day it will—which of the aforementioned feats will Mayer be able to lean on? The logo? Giving a teenager $30 million
Self-perpetuating buzz is a short term enterprise, and Yahoo! under Mayer has been all about the short term.
What can Mayer do that'll get people talking about Yahoo! today?
What can Mayer do that'll get people talking about Mayer today?
How can Yahoo! keep its head above water for one more day? What do we have left? Well, we can always change the logo. AllThingsD's Kara Swisher calls Marissa Mayer the "Hey-look-at-me" CEO. That's not entirely fair: she has places like Fortune saying "Look at her!" just as much. For a peek at real corporate power, it'd be hard to avoid staring at Sheryl Sandberg, disqualified from the Fortune list by her age on a ranking that includes Will.I.Am. Maybe we should just look away from lists entirely.
Carol Fowler says she was fully prepared to lose the deposits she and her husband Willie put down on a lavish reception for their daughter's abruptly cancelled wedding.
"We went home that evening and my husband woke up the next morning and I was in the process of cancelling out the venue and he said, 'No, what we'll do is donate it to Hosea Feed the Hungry,'" Carol told ABCNews.com.
A representative for the Atlanta-based nonprofit said the administration thought it was being led on when Carol and Willie first called to say they were giving away the reception.
"It's a very creme de la creme wedding venue, so to say that you're going to host 200 homeless individuals at Villa Christina — it sounds like a prank call," Quisa Foster said.
But the Fowlers weren't kidding around.
A short while later the couple met up with Elizabeth Omilami, head of Hosea, to coordinate the event, which involved busing some 200 homeless men, women, and children to the reception hall for a four course meal complete with plenty of entertaining activities for the young and old alike.
"The children had chicken fingers, French fries, fresh fruit and chocolate chip cookies," Carol recalled. "The adults had salmon and chicken."
Though the family wouldn't say what caused their daughter to call off the wedding, Carol did tell WBUR's Here & Now that Tamara was "very delighted to see and know that others had an opportunity to enjoy something, rather than just allow it to go to waste."
Foster also noted that the experience of seeing all the empty plates was "eye-opening" for her.
"You go to weddings sometimes and you see a lot of people really waste food," she said. "We take so many things for granted. These clients or guests, as we call them, they don't."
Carol and Willie are now looking to turn this one-off event — dubbed "The Fowler Family Celebration of Love" — into an annual thing, and hope to get some sponsors aboard for next year.
"If you have cancelled an event, do not walk away. Pick up the phone and call your favorite charity and offer it to them," Carol told ABC News. "We're regular, working people and anybody can do this. This is not star stuff."
[photos via Hosea Feed the Homeless, Instagram]
In which the United States Department of Justice cites the Wikipedia article on Goatse. pic.twitter.com/c6STYKKwVs
— Nate Cardozo (@ncardozo) September 23, 2013
Since the Norwegian siblings better known as Ylvis released their too-catchy hit song "The Fox
Well, that question has at long last been answered, and, not to spoil it, but let's just say Bård and Vegard Ylvisåker weren't that far off when they claimed the fox says "hotee hotee hotee ho," "joff-tchoff-tchoff-tchoff," and "wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow."
[H/T: Geekosystem]
Over the weekend, the New York Times "Vows" section published a 1,765-word celebration of one couple’s love that was so aggressively serene—so gratingly ethereal—it just may be the most irksome in the history of the medium.
Between its recipe for a natural abortifacient cocktail, its emphasis on the bride’s overwhelming beauty (“she probably doesn’t have many” bad hair days, the Times observes), and its dash of tragic manslaughter, it's certainly staggeringly bizarre.
Which makes it, for the "Vows" section, weirdly typical? So we're wondering: How well do you know the "Vows" section? We have transformed the most surreal lines of the article into multiple choice questions. Can you accurately fill in each blank?
1. People describe Erika Halweil, a longtime yoga teacher in the Hamptons, as someone who__________________.
2. Ms. Halweil, 36, grew up in New York in a tightknit family of four who loved to spend weekends together ________ in Central Park, watching old Laurel and Hardy movies or surf-casting on Long Island.
3. While her marriage — and also her yoga practice— were foundering, she began regularly running into Corey De Rosa, an intense, thoughtful _______ in Sag Harbor. “I was bumping into him three or four times a week, randomly, outside the post office, on a bench on Main Street,” she said. “He was so inspired and I was pathless.”
4. Three years later, [Mr. De Rosa] opened his own Ashtanga studio, Tapovana, in Sag Harbor. He painted the walls dark red, installed almost-black wood floors and put yellow candles everywhere. “It was like a _____,” he said. “It took you somewhere else.”
5. “You always need to go a little further than you think you can in order to make progress,” said Mr. De Rosa, who in a single conversation might discuss Hindu deities, the connection between the _____ and the ego, an energy healer he admires, Indian spices, juice cleanses and his ideas about love (timing is everything).
6. When she recounts the accident (the child died and Ms. Halweil was not charged) you can really see her ______________.
7. In the fall he ____________________. “I just had this realization that it wasn’t time for me and Erika to even be friends,” he said. “I chose not to spend any more time around her. Our relationship was totally innocent but it was getting stronger.”
8. “This is one of the ways I seduced her: I would cook all the time at her cottage,” said Mr. De Rosa, who is so knowledgeable about food he can tell you what to eat to feel more grounded, to __________ or to sleep better.
9. “It’s a combination of really loving being around each other; _________ has a lot to do with it; and openness,” he said. “We’ve been so open about even the deepest secrets. That’s one of the keys to really strengthening a relationship because you’re breaking barriers and clearing blockages.”
10. Their daughter, Neelu, was born at home on June 15, 2011, shortly after Ms. Halweil drank a concoction of _____________ prescribed by her midwife to speed contractions.
11. As 150 guests looked on and bamboo flute music played, Ms. Halweil appeared wearing a backless dress designed by Nili Lotan on a lawn decorated with modern sculptures including an enormous one by Urs Fischer of a yellow __________.
12. The bride described the color of her dress as “_______.”
13. He had on a Nehru-style suit the shade of ________, lined with jewels around the lapels and neck.
14. The ceremony was led by the bride’s brother, who is the editor of Edible East End, a regional food magazine. He shared several pieces of advice about marriage that he had collected beforehand from family members and friends: think, laugh and love as often as possible; save money;___________; let the other person win sometimes; and, during difficult times, remember, this too shall pass.
15. **Bonus Question** What headline accompanied this story in print?
Answers:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15: C
9: also C
[Image via Shutterstock]
What won't adult star James Deen do? Clown porn.
Coatesville Area School District in southeastern Pennsylvania is now demanding all district employees enroll in sensitivity training after two top administrators were caught trading “sickening” and “highly offensive” text messages on district-supplied phones. Superintendent Richard Como and Coatesville High School athletic director Jim Donato resigned Aug. 29 “for personal reasons” after an internal investigation by the school board revealed their love of pretty much all racial slurs.
The school board will formally vote on whether to accept or deny their resignations Tuesday. Pissed off parents and community members are pushing the board to deny the resignations and fire both administrators instead. The Coatesville School District Parents/Taxpayers Coalition is even circulating a petition demanding retirement the request not be voted upon until "any and all internal and external investigations are completed."
The Chester County District Attorney’s Office confirmed on Sept. 20 that there is a criminal investigation underway, though no criminal charges have been filed.
The hideous text message transcripts leave no racist stone unturned.
[Screengrab via WPVI]
President Obama was caught on a live microphone today telling U.N. official Maina Kiai that he hasn't smoked in six years because he's "scared of my wife." Cue your crazy right-wing uncle's next chain email: "NOBAMA ADMITS HE'S AFRAID OF A WOMAN, JUST LIKE ALL MALE LIBTARDS! GUESS WE KNOW WHO WEARS THE PANTS IN THE WHITE HOUSE!"
In February 2011
Thanks to the watchful stepfather of a Henderson High School student in Hendersonville, Tennessee, teachers will no longer be “pushing Islamic tolerance” on the students in the form of religious field trips.
Mike Conner, concerned his stepdaughter would be exposed to knowledge in a 36-week world studies course, got angry at back-to-school night when he heard of a planned Sept. 4 field trip to a mosque and a Hindu temple. So he spoke up because, you know, “If we as parents don’t begin speaking up, no one will.”
Oh, it gets better.
The honors course – which is an elective – has been offered by Hendersonville High for a decade. The curriculum includes world religions, and students spend three weeks on that topic, learning about Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, said school system spokesman Jeremy Johnson. In the past, the students have typically visited a Jewish synagogue, a Hindu temple and a Muslim mosque without parental complaints.
Conner's stepdaughter, who elected her elective, decided to forego the field trip. So when she elected to stay home from her elective field trip, she was given an alternate assignment “comparing and contrasting the religious teachings of Jesus, Gandhi and Muhammad.” But this assignment was too difficult for her because the materials she was given “contained a page of Bible verses, two-thirds of a page about Gandhi and five pages about Muhammad.”
But Conner hadn’t reached the height of his anger yet:
When his stepdaughter decided she could not compare and contrast the three because she was given unequal information, she was initially told that she would receive a zero and would not be given another assignment, Conner said. That’s when he really became upset. However, school officials later agreed to give a second alternative assignment.
Did he get even angrier? Yes, he did. He got angrier when he heard students who elected to go on the elective field trip were given copies of the Quran and a tour guide demonstrated Hindu meditation.
Conner believes that between the trips and the assignment, the school was clearly promoting the Islamic faith.
“The teacher was pushing Islamic tolerance,” Conner said. “We did not want to make this about religion – they forced us to.”
And he won by force. On Sept 17., the school system issued a statement:
“After receiving a parent complaint regarding field trip locations, our district has reviewed the practice and decided to eliminate field trips to religious venues from this class, as it does not provide equal representation to all the religions studied in the course unit.”
So this was not about religion at all, ok? It was about equality. And equality won.
Thank God.
[Image via Tena Lee / Summer A.M. / The Tennessean]
