Sunday, January 8, 2012

The Good, The Bad, and The Curious

A list of links that made me happy, sad, and perplexed this week. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

The Good


The FDA is limiting the use of some antibiotics in livestock.

A story of a big brother sticking up to his father over his little brother's desire to play with "girl" games.

The Bad


A Georgia school decided to do a "cross-curricular" activity that involved sending eight-year-olds home with math word problems involving slavery. Without any historical context or explanation, the worksheets asked things like "Each tree has 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how many would each slave pick?" and "If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week? 2 weeks?"

Tyra Batts, a Buffalo-area high schooler, is facing five days of suspension after getting in a fight for confronting her teammates about using the n-word in a chant before every basketball game. The other girls, who initially refused to stop using the word and didn't understand why Batts was upset, face only two days of suspension.

A woman nicknamed The Human Barbie because of her love for plastic surgery gave her seven-year-old daughter a $10k gift certificate for liposuction for Christmas. She adds this to her seventh birthday gift of a certificate for breast implants and calls the gifts "investing in her future."

Alana, a new contestant on Toddlers and Tiaras, is featured in this video clip. I literally got sick to my stomach as I watched her mom dope her up with "Go Go Juice" (some sort of sugar concoction) and teach her to show her stomach to the judges. Young Alana proves that she is more than willing to "holla for a dolla."

Rick Santorum sees just how many logical fallacies he can commit in a debate with college students over gay marriage. Answer: A lot of them. (Oh, and here's a Rick Santorum "Hey Girl" Tumblr to help the medicine go down).




The Curious


Matt Damon and his mother, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, declined an education award from the National Education Association because the NEA had recently met with Teach For America. Damon and Carlsson-Paige said that TFA does not offer its students adequate training, that the students are sometimes used to bust unions, and that many of them do not stay in education after their two-year requirement.

The number of twins born in the US has doubled since 1980. Then, just one in 53 babies born was a twin; now the number is 1 in 30. This increase is widespread across all age groups and all parts of the country and is largely attributed to increased in vitro fertilization.

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