The state of the culture

I don't want to have to fight with my kids, so no ice cream for you, either!

They’re all screaming for no ice cream.

Overprotective Park Slope parents have declared war on a treasured rite of spring: an ice cream in the park.

Was this an overreaction -- would a suspension have been more a more just punishment than an expulsion?

An Indiana high school senior has been expelled for a Tweet he says was posted from home on his personal account.

You will be assimilated into the hive mind:

Educational psychologist Gaynor Sbuttoni said the policy has been used at schools in Kingston, South West London, and Surrey.

She added: “I have noticed that teachers tell children they shouldn’t have a best friend and that everyone should play together.

"A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" update:

I forget things, so I understand how it happens. I've left my car keys in the car. I've forgotten to take my cell phone to work. I've forgotten an occasional appointment or two. I forget to get things at the store that I go in knowing I needed. This here is a doozy, though:

Everybody complains about the outrageous cost of popcorn and other snacks at the movies, but nobody ever does anything about it, until now; Joshua Thompson, is suing a theater chain because he "got tired o being taken advantage of." Good luck with that:

Explains a lot:

A growing body of psychology research shows that incompetence deprives people of the ability to recognize their own incompetence. To put it bluntly, dumb people are too dumb to know it. Similarly, unfunny people don't have a good enough sense of humor to tell.

And we live in a Lake Wobegon of the mind, where "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average."

Kinda scary if so many people are really this dumb:

A new review of condom research reveals some surprising findings: many people use them incorrectly.

This report on the military readiness front is from Stars and Stripes, so I don't doubt it:

CAMP ZAMA, Japan – The Army is ordering its hardened combat veterans to wear fake breasts and empathy bellies so they can better understand how pregnant soldiers feel during physical training.

Further proff, if anybody still needs it, that we live in a culture that sometimes values style over substance, the symbolic over the real, the aesthetic over the functional, appearances over meaning . . . well, you get the idea. After a prolonged controversy over an abbreviated quote on the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial, the National Park Service has announced it will replace the abridgment ("I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness") with the full quote -- "Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice.