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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: 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]?
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