i wonder if erica needs coffee, or reading glasses. the link: "The world's oldest man, Emillano Mercado Del Toro, who celebrated his 115th birthday last week, does not take Capovilla's title though. That honor goes to Elizabeth Bolden of Memphis, Tennessee, who was born a few months before Del Toro." old, but not old enough to win!

re: Denver flag story. What fucking country are we living in? You can't display a flag? Nationalism anyone?

GRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!

When I read that story about the oldest person in the world earlier today, I tried to imagine how odd it would feel to know that none of the other 6 billion people on Earth were alive when you were born. That's nuts.

Re the flag article, I love the line about the display not being "temporary enough."

And this seems very arbitrary:

District officials agreed Thursday that Hamlin could keep the flags up for six weeks, then exchange them with other flags from his collection of more than 50. The district said he could keep his next set of flags, 25 of them from Middle Eastern nations, up for 12 weeks.

I don't know if the length that the flags can be up depends on the region or country, but anyway...gotta change 'em often enough to keep the little tykes from swearing loyalty.

Everything in New Orleans is FINE - JUST FINE. Understand?

That lousy commie teacher in Denver needs to concentrate on getting his kids through their tests and not on some la-di-da flag festival. Sounds like a homo to me.

That terrorist thing was IMPENDING I tell you - IMPENDING. If I were you I'd hide under the bed (with a computer hookup so you can continue shopping) until the election, at which time you will vote Republican. In the meantime, do your patriotic duty and buy some airline tickets but don't use them, so that the airlines can make some money. You people just get in the way.

Everything is just fine. Vote GOP and nobody gets hurt.

I expect Katherine Harris (Crazy Senatorial Republican candidate from Florida) to push for tighter border controls and more federal agents after illegal immigrant (and tropical storm) Ernesto comes ashore. Meanwhile, Governor Bush will declare that his measures for Ernesto prove his brother's endorsement of a guest worker program is effective.

Hmmm, that SFGate piece on GENDER raises a lot of flags. Anyone have a opinion on education and GENDER? My head's a little shakey just from the amount of times GENDER is written in the article.

This touchy-feely gender salad crap isn’t helping kids.

Gender identity and role models are most appropriate for childhood development. These loony educators are living their own agenda through the kids, and leaving them vulnerable and thin skinned for the real world. The vast majority of gay and straight kids are very happy with their gender. For those that may have gender expression issues, individual loving attention is far more helpful. Why treat ALL the kids as if they have gender identity issues. That’s perverted and sick!

Hmmm, that SFGate piece on GENDER raises a lot of flags.

Are they American flags? Because if they're not, I don't want to hear about it.

When did one's gender become a debate?

After reading the article it was having a hard time putting my finger on exactly what was so fucked up. Discrimination and individual expression are important but not having at least a definition of one's gender as a child is pretty fucked up. Then it came to me: they are talking about two things as if they are one.

There is gender and then there are gender roles (and I'll only briefly bring up the mother who thinks a girl playing with horses is somehow not a stereotypical young female gender role. Lisa Simpson?). A person's gender is static but the gender role is fluid. The boy who likes pink dragons is still a boy: his penis doesn't fall off when he plays with this pink dragon. Likewise, I don't think girls drop their womb when they read Lord of the Rings.

However, they do seem to suffering from their parents and school district own gender bias. That same boy who also likes ballet, move to Russia and that is fairly masculine. Yet he wears a tutu. Ballet and tutus are not mutually exclusive. Or the girl who like Tolkien, horses and at 15 dresses like a skater: why can she be a girl who dresses like boy? Isn’t it less gender neutral to say if you act like a boy you are boy? It seems more gender neutral to say your actions are individual and don’t define you gender. From the article it sounds like children show an interest in something parents have a gender bias against and then are told they can be a girl or a boy. I think that is highly discriminatory since the pressure is on the child for every choice he/she makes is to be a gender defining one. However, they are under the gun to choose without a concept of what they are doing, without any guidance.

I do think that gender neutrality is a fine thing but that shouldn't mean ignoring one's body. Do they make all the boys pee sitting down or the girls standing up? Gender is hard wired: penis = boy, vagina = girl. Gender roles are not, at least at the age the article talks about 2-5. Once a person can at least define their own gender then they can enter the discussion about whether that is who they are or not (which is another issue entirely).

The BBC reported the oldest woman died at 116 years old yesterday, think it was Venezuala or Columbia or Argentina.

But New Orleans is still waiting after one year.

There's incompetence. There's failure. And then there is Bush Incompetence, which manages to be even more of a failure and even more incompetent, but blames it all on others.

Just ask the Ninth Ward - they're guilty of Surviving While Black.

So why is Mississippi doing so much better at rebuilding?

actually, i think you are confusing gender and sex, GDC. Sex is static, gender is fluid. the ideas of gender and gender roles are closely related, sex is not.

Because Mississippi has a certain US Senator that just got kicked out for all his unethical behavior, but who made sure the money flowed. Out of our middle class taxpaying pockets, of course, so that the rich could get richer.

"Because Mississippi has a certain US Senator that just got kicked out for all his unethical behavior ..." Huh? You must be thinking of William Jefferson, HR, Louisiana. Not kicked out, but he's working on it.

Plame Name Blame Game, Joe Wilson, Fitzmas, & Tubby McTreason: "(Y)es, the Saddam Hussein regime did send an important Iraqi nuclear diplomat to Niger in early 1999. And I have not so far received any rebuttal from any source on this crucial point of contention. But there was always another layer to the Joseph Wilson fantasy. Easy enough as it was to prove that he had completely missed the West African evidence that was staring him in the face, there remained the charge that his nonreport on a real threat had led to a government-sponsored vendetta against him and his wife, Valerie Plame. ... "
www.slate.com/id/2148555

Karr - Krazy - like a Fox !
Jimbeau