Miss Piggy's Grocery Store Checkout Headlines

[Byrthnoth]

Peter Anthony, Chris Khan, Neil Rajaba and Darian Ramnarine — all of them 18, three of them popular graduates of Richmond Hill High School — were killed instantly and pronounced dead at the scene.

It's okay Darian. You may not have been popular, but your name is in the paper anyway.

PS. Making Beer the DD was a bad idea.

[Ragnus]

That'd be true if the driver died. But like oh so many other cases, the one who ended the lives of others lived.

Bleh. Misread the article and thought everyone died. Hate it when everyone but the idiot dies. =/

[hey]

I just saw something about this. I was thinking about making a thread for it.. idk isn't this thread just meant for silly/weird new items?

This is the random news thread.

[Talint]

PS. Making Beer the DD was a bad idea.

I laughed at this more than I should have.

[Byrthnoth]

http://www.wnd.com/2012/10/wear-radi...ells-students/

Brushing aside privacy concerns by parents and civil rights activists, a Texas school district has gone live with a controversial program requiring all students to wear a locator radio chip that will enable officials to track their every move – or face expulsion.
At the beginning of the school year students at John Jay High School and Anson Jones Middle School within the Northside Independent School District were told their old student ID badges were no longer valid. During registration they were required to obtain new badges containing a radio frequency identification tracker chip.
Students refusing the chips were reportedly threatened with suspension, fines, or being involuntary transferred. Unlike chips used by retailers to track inventory which activate when scanned by a reader, these chips contain batteries and actively broadcast a continuous signal.
On October 1, the schools went live with a program to use the chips to track the exact locations of students using the badges. The badges would even be able to tell if a student in a classroom is in his seat or somewhere else in the room.
The district’s stated reason is to help obtain funding from the state by documenting the number of students who attend the school.
...

[Necronus]

This is the random news thread.

The problem is that some people are still confused as to what this thread is about. If I recall, it was originally for tabloid-esque news stories which absolutely did not need a thread. Now its grown into ANY news story that you even slightly suspect probably doesn't need a new thread.

[Qalbert]

miss piggy made a new thread any time he read any article, regardless of importance/credibility/etc

[zoobernut]

The problem is that some people are still confused as to what this thread is about. If I recall, it was originally for tabloid-esque news stories which absolutely did not need a thread. Now its grown into ANY news story that you even slightly suspect probably doesn't need a new thread.

People are over thinking and over complicating it if they are confused by this thread. If it is news post it here. If the news is big enough (the start of world war 3) it can get its own thread. If you post important news here it will still get read it isn't a black hole.

[hey]

People are over thinking and over complicating it if they are confused by this thread.

A lot of people seem to be over thinking and over complicating this then. This issue has been raised a number of times.

[Mazmaz]

More people posted about/were shocked by a stupid car crash than they did about a 14-year-old female activist being shot in the face by the Taliban.
THAT'S why this thread is terrible.

[Guitarman]

More people posted about/were shocked by a stupid car crash than they did about a 14-year-old female activist being shot in the face by the Taliban.
THAT'S why this thread is terrible.

Thank you.

[Blubbartron]

More people posted about/were shocked by a stupid car crash than they did about a 14-year-old female activist being shot in the face by the Taliban.
THAT'S why this thread is terrible.

Since when is the Taliban being the Taliban shocking?

[Stumblingdrunk]

http://www.kgw.com/news/world/173242601.html

tl;dr: Taliban shoot a 14 year old girl in the face for protesting the wars. Can we just glass them all now?

More people posted about/were shocked by a stupid car crash than they did about a 14-year-old female activist being shot in the face by the Taliban.
THAT'S why this thread is terrible.

Thank you.

You Don't get to claim the moral high ground after your solution to ending the violence towards Muslim girls is to blow up all of the Muslim girls in Pakistan. I apologize if you have created bombs that managed to glass only terrorists or males.

[Mazmaz]

Since when is the Taliban being the Taliban shocking?

Car crashes haven't been shocking since Ralph Nader. What's your point?

[Blubbartron]

Car crashes haven't been shocking since Ralph Nader. What's your point?

The point is neither of them is more important than the other (because neither is important). What's a 17 year old kid with a supercharged vehicle gonna do? Drive recklessly. What's the Taliban gonna do when confronted by women? Shoot 'em. No one should be surprised by these things. But at least the kid in the car had a name rife with comedic opportunity. "Beer causes horrific accident."

[Guitarman]

You Don't get to claim the moral high ground after your solution to ending the violence towards Muslim girls is to blow up all of the Muslim girls in Pakistan. I apologize if you have created bombs that managed to glass only terrorists or males.

Wow you actually believed that? I have a bridge to sell you. Really cheap.

[Stumblingdrunk]

You've gone out if your way to defend your Christianity in the past. You've proven that you aren't above holding retarded opinions

[Zeb]

A STi costs around $35k. Alyssa Milano tells me I can buy a 12yo for $.50/day. The car crash is obviously more important.

/And it's turbocharged, not supercharged.

[MaachaQ]

http://www.wnd.com/2012/10/wear-radi...ells-students/

I'm not sure what's going on with this, but I didn't think RFID chips had batteries... I thought the scanners just scanned for chips in range. I don't understand what the big deal is; this will save time/money used for attendance taking and give a more accurate count of who does/does not attend class and eat lunch, allowing the district to take advantage of fedeal and state funding better. You're legally obliged to attend class anyway, what's the big deal with having a chip that is scanned to have real proof of when you were or were not in class?

Another article explains a bit more:

https://rt.com/usa/news/texas-school-id-hernandez-033/

Texas schools punish students who refuse to be tracked with microchips

Published: 09 October, 2012, 22:34
Edited: 10 October, 2012, 15:23

A school district in Texas came under fire earlier this year when it announced that it would require students to wear microchip-embedded ID cards at all times. Now, students who refuse to be monitored say they are feeling the repercussions.

Since October 1, students at John Jay High School and Anson Jones Middle School in San Antonio, Texas, have been asked to attend class with photo ID cards equipped with radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips to track every pupil’s location. Educators insist that the endeavor is being rolled out in Texas to stem the rampant truancy devastating the school's funding. If the program is judged successful, the RFID chips could soon come to 112 schools in all and affect nearly 100,000 students.

Students who refuse to walk the school halls with the card in their pocket or around their neck claim they are being tormented by instructors, and are barred from participating in certain school functions. Some also said they were turned away from common areas like cafeterias and libraries.

Andrea Hernandez, a sophomore at John Jay, said educators have ignored her pleas to respect her privacy and told her she cannot participate in school elections if she refuses to comply with the tracking program.

Hernandez said in an interview with Salon that subjecting herself to constant monitoring through an RFID chip is like being branded with the “mark of the beast” – a reference to the Bible's apocalyptic Book of Revelations. When she reached out to WND with the school’s response, though, she said that she was threatened with not being allowed to vote for her school's homecoming king and queen for disobeying the student ID rule.

"I had a teacher tell me I would not be allowed to vote because I did not have the proper voter ID," Hernandez told WND. "I had my old student ID card which they originally told us would be good for the entire four years we were in school. He said I needed the new ID with the chip in order to vote."

After Hernandez refused to wear an RFID chip, WND reported that Deputy Superintendent Ray Galindo issued a statement to the girl's parents: “We are simply asking your daughter to wear an ID badge as every other student and adult on the Jay campus is asked to do.” If she is allowed to forego the tracking now, the repercussions will be harsher than just revoking voting rights for homecoming contests once the school makes location-monitoring mandatory, he argued.

“I urge you to accept this solution so that your child’s instructional program will not be affected. As we discussed, there will be consequences for refusal to wear an ID card as we begin to move forward with full implementation,” Galindo wrote.

The girl’s father, Steve Hernandez, told WND that the school was somewhat willing to work with his daughter, but said that the family is unwilling to “agree to stop criticizing the program” and publically endorse it.

“I told him that was unacceptable because it would imply an endorsement of the district’s policy and my daughter and I should not have to give up our constitutional rights to speak out against a program that we feel is wrong,” Mr. Hernandez responded.

The Northside Independent School District expects to collect upwards of $2 million in state funding by reversing its poor attendance figures, with the RFID program costing around one-quarter of that sum to initiate and another $136,005 in maintenance. The new funding may not offset the other damages that could arise: Heather Fazio of Texans for Accountable Government told WND that she filed a Freedom of Information Act request for $30 and received the names and addresses of every student in the school district.

“Using this information along with an RFID reader means a predator could use this information to determine if the student is at home and then track them wherever they go. These chips are always broadcasting so anyone with a reader can track them anywhere,” she said.

Kirsten Bokenkamp of the ACLU told the San Antonio Express-News earlier this year that her organization expected to challenge the board’s decision to use the tracking system, but the school went ahead with the program undeterred. Steve Hernandez told WND that he approached the ACLU abour representing his daughter’s case, but Rebecca Robertson of a local branch of the organization said that, “the ACLU of Texas will not be able to represent you or your daughter in this matter,” saying the case did not meet the group's criteria.

[Mazmaz]

Here then, since we've proved this thread is for airheads:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/offbeat/story...-ancestry.html

Bieber, Lavigne, Gosling all relatives, sort of

Call it the Canadian dynasty of teenybopper pop and movie stardom.

Genealogists at Ancestry.com say they've discovered teen idol Justin Bieber is a distant cousin of movie star Ryan Gosling and singer Avril Lavigne. Their family link dates back to some of Quebec's earliest settlers 400 years ago, the Utah-based company said Thursday.

As if Bieber didn't have enough superstar genes, Ancestry.com also said he's a distant relative of singer Celine Dion.

"The great thing about family history is that you never know what you're going to find," said Michelle Ercanback, a researcher with Ancentry.com. "It was a very pleasant surprise."

Ercanback said researchers begun tracing Bieber's family lineage about a year ago by paging through teen-idol magazines to find biographical tidbits from the pop star.

What they say they found was that Bieber and Gosling are 11th cousins once removed, and Bieber and Lavigne are 12th cousins. They share common relatives Mathurin Roy and Marguerite Bire, the researchers said. Both were born in France in the early 1600s, married in 1637, and moved to Quebec, where Roy worked as a master mason

The genealogists also said Bieber and Dion are 10th cousins three times removed because they're linked to French couple Jacques Vezina and Marie Boisdon, who were born in the early 1600s. They moved to Quebec, where they died in 1687.

Ercanback said she didn't know if these celebrity links are "sufficient to point to the existence of a superstar gene."

In July, Ancestry.com announced they had found that President Barack Obama could be the descendent of an African slave, after an examination of his white mother's family history.