January 30, 2004
arresting fining garfunkel
Via Nikkie Eitmann at Vice Squad I see that the police are concentrating their limited resources on such threats to society as marijuana-smoking Art Garfunkel. Garfunkel is fighting his $100 fine.
Update: Greg at Begging to Differ writes in to correct me. Garfunkel doesn't seem to have been arrested, merely ticketed. I stand corrected.
I still don't think that's a reasonable way to treat marijuana possession or consumption, but obviously it's better to ticket people for bad reasons than it is to arrest them for bad reasons.
Update.
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Uniformity
Steve Dillard at Southern Appeal writes:
Yet another reason for all schools, public and private, to go to school uniforms. Kids should more concerned about their education than engaging in protests and making fashion statements.
Should they really? I don't know about everyone else, but a lot of what I learned in high school had nothing to do with the books we read, the lectures we were given, or the tests we took. How to make new friends and keep (or lose) old ones, how to break the rules, how to keep yourself entertained during a really boring lecture without the teacher noticing, how to play chess surreptitiously on a piece of notebook paper, how to fall in love, how to (yes) engage in effective and ineffective protests and how to dress well, badly or provocatively-- these things were as important a part of my high school education as Joseph II of Austria, basic optics, and parametric equations.
This is especially the case given that much of the official curriculum taught in high school classes will either be re-learned in college (and it will often turn out to have been wrong the first time around) or else never used again.
Furthermore, even if you think that learning to protest or make fashion statements aren't good things in and of themselves, there's a question of whether there's really some mechanism by which flashy clothing distracts students who would otherwise be perfectly studious and attentative. I think it's just as likely that there are a large number of students who have no interest in whatever's being taught to them and are casting about for something else to do with their time in school. Fussing over a T-shirt seems far better than the alternatives.
This isn't to say we shouldn't have hard classes and exams in high school. Of course we should, and we should make it possible for students who want to learn to do that, and we should encouage students who don't want to learn to change their minds. But I think fashion and politics are two things that add to students' education rather than subtracting from them, and that rebellious students who are restrained by dress codes aren't simply going to turn to happy little calculus drones.
[On the original article, I should add, I think students should be allowed to wear Confederate Flags, Nazi symbols, and plenty more in school. I don't think the rules for what students can wear in government-run mandatory schools should be any greater than what they can wear on the streets, and while private schools are obviously under little Constitutional compulsion, I think that as a matter of policy they generally ought to let students wear whatever they want.]
UPDATE.
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stoking the flames of liberty
While acquainting myself with the platforms of the Libertarian Party candidates, I came across this tidbit from the Michael Badnarik campaign website:
Given the opportunity, Michael would like to change one aspect of prison life to increase the safety of the people guarding them. Instead of allowing them to lift weights and exercise several hours per day (making them violent AND powerful), Michael would require them to remain in bed all day for the first month, and twelve hours per day after that. This lack of activity would allow their muscles to atrophy, making them helpless couch potatoes incapable of inflicting very much violence on each other, the guards, or unsuspecting citizens should they manage to escape. Michael also likes the idea of requiring them to submit one book report a week, encouraging them to strengthen their minds instead of their bodies.
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turning back
So just in case I get distracted today and don't post much, remember that yesterday we had sixteen posts on the blog, and you can always go back and read the ones you skipped.
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