Erica Noonan reports in this morning’s Boston Globe:

An era when Halloween costume shopping for girls could be confused with exploring a Victoria’s Secret lingerie trunk may be fading.  Girls between the ages of 6 and 14 and their parents seem to be gravitating away from revealing costumes this year.

…

Rachel [age 10] has her heart set on dressing as Hannah Montana, the schoolgirl-rock star character popularized by 15-year-old actress Miley Cyrus. Despite Cyrus’s controversial partially nude photo spread in Vanity Fair magazine earlier this year, [her mother] Britt said she has no particular objection to the Hannah Halloween theme.

But she was thoroughly unimpressed by Target’s $25 version of a costume, a barely-there swath of rayon and matching go-go boots. No way, she said.

In the words of Mrs. Judy Geller on Friends (episode 6-09, The One Where Ross Got High), “That’s a lot of information to get in 30 seconds.”

Let’s start by applauding parents who prevent their preteen daughters from wearing less total clothing mass than their pre-toddler siblings.  Speaking broadly on behalf of men — a gender that’s quite rightly notorious for its adoration of naked and nearly naked women — I’d really rather not find myself handing out Snickers bars to a ten-year-old girl in a “barely-there swath of rayon.”

I lived in Boulder in 1996 — the year that someone murdered six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey and the rest of us learned that even a child in kindergarten could win a beauty pageant.  I was confused then in the same way I find myself confused now.

In the 20 January 1997 issue of People Magazine, Mr. Bill Hewitt wrote:

There was one video that showed JonBenét, who had won a half-dozen pageants, including a 1995 Little Miss Colorado title and a 1996 America’s Royale Miss title, dancing in flirtatious—even provocative—fashion.  Photographs also surfaced of her in heavy makeup more suited to a woman at least three times her age.

Ten years and five months later, we apparently found ourselves reading about Miley Cyrus in Vanity Fair, and seeing her wrapped in a blanket on the second page of the article.  Half naked?  Not really.  Partially nude?  To no greater extent than a girl on a beach in a bathing suit.

It’s a much more artful and much less tacky pose than detractors would suggest, but it’s still reminiscent of something one would find in a men’s magazine.  It didn’t take long to prove that point by unearthing a photo of Ms. Gena Lee Nolin from the pages of Maxim that carries distinct similarities.

Again speaking on behalf of men everywhere, there’s a reason Maxim has roughly the same circulation as Newsweek.  It’s not a bad thing.  I’ll just choose, if any children come to my door tonight dressed as fashion models thrice their age, to keep the door closed and keep the Reese’s to myself.

From the Boston Globe, 22 October 2008:

It is a simple test, but has surprising power to predict a child’s future. A 4-year-old is left sitting at a table with a marshmallow or other treat on it and given a challenge: Wait to eat it until a grown-up comes back into the room, and you’ll get two. If you can’t wait that long, you’ll get just one.

Some children can wait less than a minute, others last the full 20 minutes. The longer the child can hold back, the better the outlook in later life for everything from SAT scores to social skills to academic achievement, according to classic work by Columbia University psychologist Walter Mischel, who has followed his test subjects from preschool in the late 1960s into their 40s now.

I remember failing that test like it was yesterday – sitting there with a marshmallow staring back at me was just too tempting to resist.  In fact, come to think of it… it was yesterday.  I never even took that test as a child!

Blërg!

From the Associated Press:

Monkeys taught to play a computer game were able to overcome wrist paralysis with an experimental device that could lead to new treatments for patients with stroke and spinal cord injury.

The monkeys regained use of paralyzed muscles by learning to control the activity of a single brain cell.

…

[Study co-author Chet Moritz] stressed the approach is years, if not decades, away from use in people.

We can all agree that any progress on a new treatment for paralysis is excellent news, both for paralyzed people and for the scientific and medical communities.

Now, let’s focus for a moment on the fact that we can teach monkeys to play video games.  How long has this been going on?

Please, somebody confirm that we’ve also taught them to post YouTube comments.  It would explain so much…

From The Age:

Pope Benedict XVI says the financial crisis sweeping the world proves the futility of craving success and money and he urges instead that people base their lives on the word of God.

“We are seeing now in the collapse of the big banks that this money is disappearing, is nothing,” Benedict told a synod of bishops on Monday on the theme of “The Word of God”.

Let’s review.  Our government believes if it just throws $700 billion at anything that moves this crisis will go away.  The Pope just shrugs his shoulders and pontificates (literally), “I guess we’re not supposed to have money or homes.”

Who do we have to take Jerry Falwell’s role of reminding us that if only we were less tolerant toward homosexuality and feminism (and the ACLU, don’t forget), we wouldn’t have these crises in the first place?

(via BBC Newshour)

Stephen Colbert interviewed Congressman Lynn Westmoreland on the Colbert Report.

Westmoreland is known best for cosponsoring bills to display the Ten Commandments in the House and Senate, and to allow them to be displayed in courtrooms.  Asked to name them in the interview he gets (and I quote), “don’t murder, don’t lie, don’t steal,” before giving up.

Some would criticize him.  I say: that’s why he wanted them on display in the first place!  How else are they supposed to remember all that cruft about not coveting your neighbor’s wife and honoring your parents?

That aside, this was my favorite exchange:

Colbert:  This has been called a “Do Nothing Congress.”  Is it safe to say you’re the do nothingest?

Westmoreland: Well, there’s one other do nothinger.  I don’t know who that is, but they’re a democrat.  So there’s one democrat do nothinger, one republican.

…

Colbert: Are you even a congressman if you haven’t actually introduced a law?

Westmoreland: I got sworn in with everybody else…

Besides, one doesn’t need to take action to have some brilliant ideas:

Colbert: What can we get rid of to balance the budget?

Westmoreland: Department of Education.

He has a point.  If we didn’t keep trying so hard to educate students, fewer of them would grow up to be responsible members of society, and it would be so much easier to get nothing done!

If you’ve been having a good day so far and want to remember what soul crushing despair for humanity feels like, just read this Associated Press story from Ponce de Leon, Florida.  You’ll want to punch someone in the face and then probably take up drinking.

When a high school senior told her principal [David Davis] that students were taunting her for being a lesbian, he told her homosexuality is wrong, outed her to her parents, and ordered her to stay away from children.

He suspended some of her friends who expressed their outrage by wearing gay pride T-shirts and buttons at Ponce de Leon High School, according to court records. And he asked dozens of students whether they were gay or associated with gay students.

…

“Davis embarked on what can only be characterized as a witch hunt to identify students who were homosexual and their supporters, further adding fuel to the fire,” US District Judge Richard Smoak recounted in his ruling. “He went so far as to lift the shirts of female students to ensure the letters ‘GP’ or the words ‘Gay Pride’ were not written on their bodies.”

Even if we suspend all morality and humanity for a moment and suppose that a witch hunt for gay supporters were justified, how is it even then acceptable for a high school principle to start lifting up his female students’ shirts?  Perhaps they should have taken to writing it under their bras so we could more easily convinct the guy as a sexual predator.  More importantly, of course, school principals are not empowered to crusade against homosexuals.

Heather Gillman (in the article’s photograph) was one of the students who protested in defense of the anonymous gay student. Her mother, Ardena Gillman, got it exactly right:

“What happens when these kids get out in the real world after they leave Ponce de Leon and they have a black homosexual supervisor at their job?” she said.

Hold whatever views you want in private, but if you can’t teach tolerance to the children under your supervision in a public school, you should be kept at least a thousand meters away from any place where minors gather.

The district had to pay $325,000 to cover the ACLU’s attorney fees.  The students who were sensible enough to stand up and protest should get another $325,000 to invest in improving their school in any way they want – up to and including firing the idiot that runs it.

JetBlue’s new Terminal 5 at JFK is about to get a test drive.  Over a thousand JetBlue frequent fliers were invited to come to the airport, get tickets, go through security, and wait at assigned gates for imaginary flights to nowhere.  It’s all the best parts of travel, without having to actually fly anywhere!  If they did that at Logan, I’d be in.

From the Boston Globe, 7 August 2008, describing the new terminal:

The security screening areas span a football-field-size space.  There are twice as many X-ray machines as metal detectors…. Rubber floors cover the security space – because it’s more comfortable for shoeless feet than tile or carpeting.  A blue wall nearby will hold a bench where travelers can sit to put their shoes back on.

It took four years and $743 million, but we’ll finally have benches to put our shoes back on.  It’s about smegging time.

This may be one of the most confusing headlines ever written:

Life bans reduced for shoplifting boxers

Go ahead, read it through a few times until you think you’ve got it.  Now, which meaning did you choose?

1. After shoplifting some boxer shorts, two or more people have been banned from being alive
2. After shoplifting some boxer shorts, two or more people had been banned from shopping for the rest of their lives, but now that ban is reduced to a shorter period of time
3. Two or more people who fight in a boxing ring (boxers) have shoplifted something, and consequently were banned from boxing for the rest of their lives, but now that ban has been reduced to a shorter period of time

If you guessed #3, you’re right!

I understand the need for economy of language in newspaper headlines, but once in a while you just have to throw a verb or two in there.