4:15 p.m.

• Well I just had the shortest pre-screening interview of my life.

“Do you know Photoshop?”

“Yes.

“Do you know Illustrator?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know Quark?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know how much pay this job offers?”

“Yes.”

We’ll be holding interviews shortly.”

“Uh, OK.’

I knew I should have said “No” for that third question. Damnit.

• Do it, for the CHILDREN! I remember back in the mid-90s when Republicans acted like they cared about limited government, liberals threw a shitfit because a reduction in increased spending on ANY government program would hurt, even kill, “the children.” I love it when “the children” card is played.

A state legislator whose district is home to thousands of Caribbean immigrants wants to ban the term "illegal alien" from the state's official documents.

 

"I personally find the word 'alien' offensive when applied to individuals, especially to children," said Sen. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami. "An alien to me is someone from out of space."

How about we just call “outer space” any place outside of the United States?

• I thought you put your kid in private school to get away from this kind of hippie shit. At least I now know where Smitty teaches.

According to the article, the students had been building an elaborate "Legotown," but it was accidentally demolished. The teachers decided its destruction was an opportunity to explore "the inequities of private ownership." According to the teachers, "Our intention was to promote a contrasting set of values: collectivity, collaboration, resource-sharing, and full democratic participation."

 

The children were allegedly incorporating into Legotown "their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys." These assumptions "mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society -- a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive."

 

They claimed as their role shaping the children's "social and political understandings of ownership and economic equity ... from a perspective of social justice."

 

So they first explored with the children the issue of ownership. Not all of the students shared the teachers' anathema to private property ownership. "If I buy it, I own it," one child is quoted saying. The teachers then explored with the students concepts of fairness, equity, power, and other issues over a period of several months.

 

At the end of that time, Legos returned to the classroom after the children agreed to several guiding principles framed by the teachers, including that "All structures are public structures" and "All structures will be standard sizes." The teachers quote the children:

 

"A house is good because it is a community house."

 

"We should have equal houses. They should be standard sizes."

 

"It's important to have the same amount of power as other people over your building."

• Yeah, let’s wait a year and see how these two act next to each other.

A pair of month-old Sumatran tiger twins have become inseparable playmates with a set of young orangutans, an unthinkable match in their natural jungle habitat in Indonesia's tropical rainforests.