{"id":2246,"date":"2007-10-31T23:31:12","date_gmt":"2007-11-01T03:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2007\/10\/potpourri_ii\/"},"modified":"2007-10-31T23:31:12","modified_gmt":"2007-11-01T03:31:12","slug":"potpourri_ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2007\/10\/potpourri_ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Potpourri II"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Church <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2007\/US\/10\/31\/funeral.protest\/\">must pay<\/a>:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>A federal jury in Baltimore, Maryland, Wednesday awarded $10.9 million to a father of a Marine whose funeral was picketed by members of a fundamentalist church carrying signs blaming soldiers&#8217; deaths on America&#8217;s tolerance of homosexuals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s low grade to protest at just about any funeral, much less ones of killed soldiers.  I suspect the public was overwhelmingly on the Marine&#8217;s family in this case.  But I wonder about the jury&#8217;s basis for the award.  $2.9 million for compensatory damages?  $8 million for punitive damages?  That&#8217;s a hefty price for a public demonstration.  Better to err on the side of caution when it comes to punishing speech.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2007\/10\/31\/lance-armstrong-and-ashle_n_70525.html\">Ewww<\/a>:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>Ashley Olsen has a new, older man. The 21-year-old twin showed up to the Rose Bar at the Gramercy Park Hotel Monday night with Tory Burch&#8217;s ex, Lance Armstrong, 36. Our bar spy said, &#8220;They came together with a group of friends. Ashley drank red wine, sat on his lap and they were making out all night. They left together around 2 a.m.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I know we all have different tastes, and perhaps my non-attraction to the Olsen twins is coloring my view here, but 36 and 21?  Can&#8217;t Lance, a public ambassador, find someone closer to his own age?<\/li>\n<li>A principal at a Massachusetts high school <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/10\/29\/education\/29stress.html?ex=1351310400&#038;en=7a8173483cc02a46&#038;ei=5090&#038;partner=rssuserland&#038;emc=rss\">implements several measures<\/a>, including a yoga class, in an effort to reduce student stress.  The rightist reaction is <a href=\"http:\/\/article.nationalreview.com\/?q=NjRiYzk2ZWJhYWZiNTVkYzhhN2M3Y2YxZWFjYTcxNmU=&#038;w=MA==\">predictably pathetic<\/a>:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>Bit by bit, the dumbed-down cult of mediocrity, secular extremism, and multicultural madness has infected American public education. Instead of concentrating on the basics and then teaching children to manage and conquer their &#8220;stress&#8221; through internal discipline, we&#8217;re removing every last source of possible damage to their egos.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure what this has to do with multiculturalism or &#8220;secular extremism.&#8221;  Whatever.<br \/>\nIf you want to fault something, fault the method, not the objective.  I think a more effective use of school time would be to do something involving exercise, since kids don&#8217;t get enough of it these days.  That will combat stress <em>and<\/em> obesity.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/anz.theoildrum.com\/node\/3160\">Heh<\/a>.<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>Two economists find themselves locked in a basement. They&#8217;re not sure what time it is, because it&#8217;s dark and they can&#8217;t read their watches. They think it&#8217;s nearly dinner time, cause they&#8217;re starting to feel hungry. But they&#8217;re not worried; they are not starting to panic &#8211; because they know that their demand will create sandwiches for them!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s just a matter of time before we&#8217;ll have a lot of new oil created.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2007\/10\/potpourri_ii\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Potpourri II\"><p>Church must pay: A federal jury in Baltimore, Maryland, Wednesday awarded $10.9 million to a father of a Marine whose funeral was picketed by members of a fundamentalist church carrying signs blaming soldiers&#8217; deaths on America&#8217;s tolerance of homosexuals. It&#8217;s low grade to protest at just about any funeral, much less ones of killed soldiers. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2246","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}