1. Countdown: Palin Wants To Help Special Needs Kids By Doing Away With Science

Comment #272933 by KateGladstone on October 27, 2008 at 10:58 pm

Suggestion: begin a petition and lobby for an Act of Congress regarding the medical treatment of those who deny the necessity or advisability of scientific research. This law (provisionally titled the "Put Your Health Where Your Mouth Is" Act) would deny medical treatment to all who deny the advisability or necessity of any of the scientific research without which that treatment would not have existed. (For instance: since Ms. Palin disdains medical research on fruit flies, the Act here proposed would make it illegal to provide Ms. Palin with medical treatments whose development involved, at any stage, testing or other research done on fruit flies.)

2. Hebrew Charter School Spurs Dispute in Florida

Comment #111821 by KateGladstone on January 15, 2008 at 8:37 pm

As a somewhat competent speaker of Hebrew, I read with interest that a Hebrew-teaching school forbids a phrase meaning "Welcome" because the phrase's literal meaning expresses a religious notion. Since all Hebrew equivalents of "Welcome" express that notion (the various available phrases translate as "blessed is he who enters," "blessed is she who enters," and "blessed are they who enter"), I wonder what answer the school gives to students who ask how to say "Welcome" in Hebrew. (Does the school simply pretend that these common and requisite phrases do not exist? To avoid all mention of religion, do the schoolteachers and school librarians scissor "Welcome" out of their Hebrew dictionaries, textbooks, and grammars?)