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"An eighth-grade language arts teacher from Maryland has been placed on administrative leave after school officials learned he allegedly authored two books containing questionable content under a pseudonym.
Local network WBOC News reports that the investigation concerns two books published by McLaw under the nom de plume “Dr. K.S. Voltaer,” and one is about a fictional, futuristic school shooting that goes down in history as being the largest ever in the United States.
http://rt.com/usa/182964-teacher-leave-shooting-book/"
This is lunacy. School administrators are terrified there will be another Columbine or Sandy Hook and are overreacting, or are they. What could they do to prevent one. Nothing, nil, zero. No need to ask yourself 'why', say thank you to the traitorous NRA , the propaganda arm of the small arms manufacturing industry, for blocking any form of gun control. They have successfully infected the country with The American Disease™ almost unfettered access to weapons of war that kill with brutal efficiency. Sadly there appears to be no cure.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: The preceding paragraph was not up to our standards. The comments to this story are spot on. You expect better than this and we let you down. There are so many comments referring to this paragraph, we cannot just delete it, hence the strike-through. More to follow.]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 30 2014, @10:31AM
the ranting and name-calling in their so-called "articles"
Even if the original story has merit (and it does) respectable journalism sources simply don't behave this way. You wonder why nobody takes this site seriously?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Kell on Saturday August 30 2014, @10:51AM
I rather agree - if SN is to go from a site run by people passionate about community driven news, they need to actually apply a bit of care in crafting TFS. We all railed against the green site's lazy summary writing. We should aspire to better.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Kell on Sunday August 31 2014, @02:13AM
And hey - here's SN changing TFS and apologising for dropping the ball. This sort of responsiveness to the readers and willingness to listen is what makes SN great. Good stuff, Soylent!
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by romlok on Saturday August 30 2014, @11:11AM
Yes, less editorialising and political ranting in the summaries, please.
The content and tone of the summaries of the site are the face of Soylent News, and if this kind of ranting is what SN wants as their public persona, then I don't think I would want to patronise this site any more.
If the submitter really wants to make a case for their personal political stance, coherent or not, then let them do it in the article comments like the rest of us.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday August 30 2014, @10:05PM
I had a hearty laugh reading that summary, and wondered if it was April Fool's day. Was the submitter serious? How could they have submitted that with a straight face? They must have been trolling. Thank you Soylent News for making my day, heeheehawhaw!
And the comments certainly didn't disappoint either, like the one on downward that says something like "Hey Hippie, shut the fuck up with your pacification bullshit!" And I agree, those filthy hippies should get a haircut and a goddamn job instead of wallowing in pot and incense smoke and being stinky degenerates.
That being said, I think that submitters should be allowed to editorialize as long as they make it clear that certain blocks of text are just, like, their opinion, man.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mcgrew on Sunday August 31 2014, @02:19PM
They must have been trolling.
You should know if anybody does.
those filthy hippies should get a haircut...
Why?
...and a goddamn job instead of wallowing in pot and incense smoke and being stinky degenerates.
I'll have you know, Mister Troll, that I've been smoking pot for forty years, had long hair most of that time, and worked from when I was sixteen until I retired this year. How your offtopic insults got modded insightful rather than flamebait I can't fathom. Maybe someone misread it as "insultful".
I think that submitters should be allowed to editorialize
Not in the summary. The summary is for information, editorializing belongs strictly in the comments.
Oh, kudos to s/n staff for actions after this blunder. I doubt they'll repeat the mistake.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday August 31 2014, @05:03PM
Maybe they are in financial trouble? [wikipedia.org]
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Leebert on Saturday August 30 2014, @11:25AM
Indeed. I was happy to see that SN was finally selling subscriptions, and it was on my "to do" list this weekend. Now I'm second guessing that...
(Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday August 31 2014, @10:53AM
Looks like someone's going through marking everything about the poor submission as "offtopic" -- I got hit by one and a bunch of other comments have been downmodded including yours. Not really off-topic to be discussing the submission itself, in my opinion, but whatever. I'm guessing SpockLogic just got some mod points today is all.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday August 31 2014, @02:41PM
Looks like someone's going through marking everything about the poor submission as "offtopic"
They are offtopic, including mine, and if they're modded down I won't complain. The topic is overbearing idiocy in our schools, not the summary.
However, that summary begged for a deluge of offtopic comments.
As to Spocklogic, he must be the most misnamed person here, because his anti-gun rant was completely illogical and irrational and completely a knee-jerk emotional response, the opposite of a Vulcan. Look at Chicago and New York City, two places with the roughest anti-gun laws, but with gun deaths almost daily.
The failure of alcohol and drug prohibitions is proof that anti-gun laws won't work. Guns are not hard to construct, prisoners have made guns while incarcarated! Outlawing a thing does not get it off the streets.
That said, I own no firearms. Everyone dies but no one has to kill.
Logic dictates that the laws should target guns used in crimes, and the people who use them. Felons lose their right to bear arms, as they should. What you want is Minority Report. That was a fantasy, as there are no people like the ones in the tank.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday August 31 2014, @09:21PM
I just think the summary is part of the relevant discussion, so if it's off-topic borderline-insane ranting, then discussion of that is fair game as well. Otherwise there'd be no point in allowing a summary at all. I elaborate on that in my reply to janrinok, so no point repeating it all here.
Same. I have no desire to own one, but I have no problem with others wishing to, or enjoying their use, and support keeping firearms legal because the tool isn't the problem, it's how a minority of people use them.
It's the same logic as the "I don't agree what you say but I'll defend your right to say it" idea, which I also adhere to, and is relevant to the story itself: even if someone disagrees with the subject matter of the book, they should be able to accept its existence and let it go. Books should not be criminal, because down that road is thought crime. Next up we'll have people incarcerated because Big Data knows you bought candy off Amazon and you looked up where day cares in your town are. The algorithms decided that means the person's a potential pedo, so better toss them in a prison just in case.
Precisely. A firearm is a tool, just like any number of other tools. Chainsaws are dangerous but as far as I know not illegal to own, as well as knives. You can create malware with a compiler, but that doesn't mean compilers should be banned. Some people argue that firearms are different because their primary purpose is offensive in nature, but that's not a feature unique to guns. If you're going that route, you'll have to start outlawing chemistry, too, but I don't see anybody arguing for that.
Better to bust the people that do the horrible things and restrict their future access to the tools based on prior misbehaviour. There's some inherent risk involved, but it's less dangerous than stripping freedom from everybody, piece by piece, because "it's for your own good, we promise", in my opinion.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday August 31 2014, @02:47PM
I think that you already know, but in case others do not, if you set the threshold value to -1 you can read every comment.
The moderation is not being done by SN staff - but as the offending paragraph was irrelevant to the main story, it does not seem unreasonable that the comments about that paragraph are now being modded as 'Off Topic', particularly as we have indicated that it should be ignored and it has been 'deleted'. The discussion of the teacher being banned is most certainly of interest to many of the community.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday August 31 2014, @08:58PM
I wasn't implying that staff was doing the modding, unless SpockLogic is staff and I wasn't aware. (God, I'd hope not, considering.) Also, thanks for the threshold tip, but you're right about me being aware already: I've got it set to -1 thresthold and 0 breakthrough so that ACs with good comments get seen, and I can fix bad moderation in the rare situation where it knocks someone to -1 undeservedly. I know a lot of people specifically avoid the AC comments, so I try to help bring the good ones to attention when I have mod points :)
I was mostly just criticising moderation of discussion of the summary as off-topic, because I disagree with the judgment. As far as I'm aware criticising moderation is still fair game, and I do disagree with that decision enough to speak up about it. Maybe I'm missing something here, but why is it off-topic to discuss part of the summary? It was allowed in the submission, but we're not allowed to discuss it? If that's the case, why have a submission at all, rather than just a link to the article with a quote from it? Sure, someone marked it out, but it seems wrong to try burying the discussion that got it fixed in the first place. The damage was already done by having it at all, and no amount of downmodding is going to bring back article discussion that was lost.
As for the actual article, it was definitely of interest to me, and is why I read the summary at all (the rant at the end was just too off-putting to ignore and refocused my attention). It's a continuation of the same sort of insanity that resulted in a student being harassed for "killing a pet dinosaur" recently, and it needs to stop. This BS is getting well into thought crime territory, and that's a scary place for law enforcement to be at. I have a feeling it's just going to get worse before it gets better, though...
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday September 01 2014, @03:30PM
My misunderstanding then.
Interesting that you mention nicks and who they might be - many of the staff have completely different nicks on here than those they use on IRC. I'm often not sure to whom I'm talking!
Your comments are very much on-topic, although we would rather forget that terrible mistake. Still trying to get to the bottom of how it happened but I suspect it is nothing more sinister than human error.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Monday September 01 2014, @11:06PM
That's what I suspect, too. Rather than forget it, though, I kind of hope it ends up like someone else said and just turns into an in-joke of sorts for the site. SN's own meme instead of borrowing slashdot ones. Probably healthier for everybody in the long-term than trying to forget about it and pretend it didn't happen. Shit happens, not the end of the world, just has to be called out and then forgiven. Maybe teased about it later ;)
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Tuesday September 02 2014, @12:09PM
So, this is like our Noodle Incident [tvtropes.org]? Perhaps it could be called the Crazy Hobo Post [soylentnews.org]?
1702845791×2
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mcgrew on Saturday August 30 2014, @01:25PM
Agreed completely. The way the summary was written just begs for a gun control flame war and almost guarantees that there will be little discussion about the actual topic, which really has absolutely nothing to do with the editorializing at all.
Shame on both the submitter and editor, that was incredibly lame. This is a first amendment issue, not second amendment.
OK, now on to the actual topic -- considering that Nobots had cannibalism, necrophilia, and billions dead, and Mars, Ho! has hookers, drug abuse, and thousands dead, I guess I'll never have a job teaching school. Not that I'd want to (I'm retired).
Odd how the neither the submitter nor the school doesn't seem to care care about freedom of speech.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Saturday August 30 2014, @05:28PM
Another issue is that this is yet another story about school officials being stupidly overbearing. Yes, they should be rebuked and their bad decisions and rules rolled back. They should probably be fired, but a demotion is likely the most they'll suffer.
But it's not big news. School officials are not the brightest people. They like to simplify their world no matter what that does to others, and are likely to go for extreme blanket bans with no nuance or flex. They'd probably love to have a computer do a search of everything for the word "gun", and give them a list. If that list includes a third of the books in the library and half the students, so be it. They'd get busy going through the list, without considering if the whole thing is really good idea. Huckleberry Finn is a regular on banned book lists, for the "n" word. They need constant oversight.
Also, schools are all too attractive to the sort of person who enjoys abusing power to make others' lives harder, and they're petty enough to take this out on children. They'd buy a dog to bully if they couldn't worm their way into a school district.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 30 2014, @06:38PM
This. The story here isn't about guns but about the people in charge of schools. I worked in a school for a few years: the bright teachers left after a couple of years, the average joes stuck around, and the dumbest of the PE/wood shop/special ed crowd became administrators. There were no administrators at our school with academic backgrounds, and nearby schools who did have more academic backgrounds got the ones who were the bottom of the barrel. It's a low-prestige job that doesn't attract the best and brightest.
That's the paradox with schools: we demand that they make our kids smarter, but we don't treat the teachers and administrators in a way that would attract smart people to the job. It's not just pay; pay is only a symptom. It's a fundamental disdain for education that I haven't seen in Europe or Japan, and it makes teaching (and administration) an undesirable job that attracts undesirables who do stupid things like blanket-banning materials that mention guns.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Yates on Saturday August 30 2014, @01:36PM
I too am most disturbed that the editor did not remove the submitters editorial before sending this to the front page. I'm assuming of course LaminatorX did not add the editorial himself which would make me even more disturbed. One of the reasons news sources are supposed to remain neutral is to not lose half of your audience when you start putting out highly polarized opinions such as this, and SoylentNews does not have a large enough audience for such nonsense. At this point I would not be unhappy to see the offending text removed off the bottom and replaced with some kind of 'oops, sorry' message.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Fnord666 on Saturday August 30 2014, @04:40PM
I have not found a way to see the actual submission here on SN once it comes out of the queue. Anyone know where we can find it?
(Score: 4, Informative) by janrinok on Sunday August 31 2014, @02:33PM
Here it is: http://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=3574 [soylentnews.org]
We have a set of editorial guidelines and procedures to prevent this sort of mistake - and on this occasion they didn't work. However, the editors are spread around the globe and it is a holiday weekend in the US. Our internal inquiry to find out exactly how this happened, and to look at where and why the procedures didn't work will take several days because not all the editors involved will be back on before Monday. It has not been swept under the carpet and we will learn the necessary lessons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @12:44PM
Problem is if he did remove it all the trolls and hypocrites would be crying "censorship!".
For the editors (and I'm not one of them) you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.
For those that reckon they can do a better job, volunteer some time and prove it.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday August 30 2014, @04:36PM
Well at least in TFS facts were separated from opinions :)
I am familiar with smallish towns where hunting is still commonplace and 12 years olds go with dad to the range with their compressed air rifle. I don't debate whether availability is a factor in school shootings. But then consider other factors [youtu.be].
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday August 31 2014, @02:46PM
I owned an air rifle at age six, killed my first rabbit with a 20 guage at age 8, and won a turkey shoot at age 12.
Learning firearm safety at a young age is very important IMO.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Saturday August 30 2014, @07:45PM
the ranting and name-calling in their so-called "articles"
Indeed they belong in the "comments".