East Windsor teen suspended over Confederate flag shirt, mom says school is wrong
Lisa Coryell, For The Times | nj.com | November 14, 2011, 3:54 PM

EAST WINDSOR — A Kreps Middle School parent who says her daughter was suspended for wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the image of the confederate flag says the school overstepped its boundaries and violated her daughter’s right to free speech.

Jane West says she’s thinking about withdrawing her daughter, Torri Albrecht, from the school even as district officials insist that the flag — viewed by many as a racially charged symbol — was not the reason the girl was suspended.

“They’re saying that now because they know they really went too far this time,” West said. “If there wasn’t a problem with the sweatshirt, why did the vice principal call at 10 after 8 on Monday to demand that I bring a change of clothes for my daughter?”

“He told me he had a bunch of students and a bunch of teachers come into his office to say they were disturbed by it,” she said.

West said she told the assistant principal, Jermaine Blount, he was crazy if he thought she was coming out with a change of clothes for the eighth-grader.

“The Indian kids wear their turbans. The Jewish kids wear their yarmulkes. That’s their birthright,” she said. “I told him that Torri was born in Virginia. That flag is her heritage and I’m not telling her to take it off. He said ‘I guess she’ll have to suffer the consequences.’”

West said before heading to the school she called her daughter’s cell phone to tell her not to follow any orders to turn the sweatshirt inside out.

When she got to the school she was told that her daughter had been given a one-day suspension, she said.

No stranger to run-ins with school administrators at Kreps over issues involving her daughter, West said she’d had enough. She told her daughter to clean out her locker because she wasn’t coming back to school.

District Superintendent Edward Forsthoffer III disputed West’s account.

“No student was suspended for wearing an inappropriate shirt,” he said. He declined to say why Albrecht was suspended, citing student confidentiality policies.

Speaking in generalities, he said the district has a dress code that bans any clothing that causes a substantial disturbance in school.

“We’d rather be proactive than reactive,” he said. “Ninety-nine times out of 100, when asked, students say ‘OK, I’ll change.’ Some want to make an issue of it for ulterior motives. If there’s defiance involved, if there’s profanity involved (in the refusal to change clothing), certainly we’d have to respond appropriately.”

The battle flag of Confederate forces in the Civil War is widely regarded as one of the most controversial symbols from American history. Many see it as a symbol of racism while others consider it a part of familial and cultural heritage.

West says she and her daughter are in the latter group.

“We are so far from prejudiced,” she said. “My older daughter is biracial. For Torri this was about expressing herself. It was about saying ‘I’m from the South and I’m proud of it.’ She didn’t do it to cause hurt feelings.”

Furthermore, she said, the sweatshirt could not have caused a disturbance in the 10 minutes Albrecht wore it before being escorted to the office at the start of the school day. Albrecht herself said no one commented on the shirt.

Courts have upheld the right of schools to prohibit the display of Confederate flags on school property, but both Forsthoffer and West agree that the East Windsor district is pushing that issue.

The superintendent said no ban was ever issued. West says Kreps Principal Lori Stein called her the day after the suspension to say the school had changed its stance.

“She said that after careful consideration she decided that if Torri wears the sweatshirt, it might not be liked but that (Stein) would look the other way and allow her to wear it,” West said.

She’s not sure she’ll accept that solution, she said.

West said she plans to send Albrecht to Virginia to live with her sister in December but doesn’t know what to do in the meantime, since Kreps is the only middle school in the district. She said she’s considering home-schooling the girl until she can make the move south.

Lululemon's bag.

Ayn Rand wrote books. John Galt is in one of the books.

Image via Wikipedia

Occupy Your Yoga Pants: Lululemon’s Toxic Mix Of Commerce And Ideology
Todd Essig, Contributor | www.forbes.com | 11/21/2011

Lululemon, a company that sells high-end yoga and workout gear to people, well, people like me, really stepped in it with their new Ayn Rand tote bag. The company has shown a genuine disrespect towards customers by remaining irony-free and proudly defiant in their effort to promulgate an ideology many find repugnant, dangerous in its popularity, inconsistent with the company’s mission to date, and just plain dumb and wrong.

Just the other day, before I found out about the tote debacle, Lululemon was my first stop for an autumn running shirt suitable for a 5K charity Turkey Trot, and they had exactly what I wanted. The shirt was functionally luxurious. I was all set for Thursday; when I crossed the finish line I was going to look good and feel great.

But then I learned the company has been ginning up support for Rand’s ideology of selfish rationality: “Who is John Galt” (a character and phrase from Atlas Shrugged) is emblazoned on a new version of their hip tote bag and the company blog proudly proclaims founder Chip Wilson built Lululemon on a Rand-esque “quest to elevate the world from mediocrity to greatness.”

Huh? All of sudden that shirt no longer felt so luxurious, it just felt expensive.

Mr. Wilson and Lululemon can, of course, believe anything they like. This is America, even for a Canadian company. And even in our horribly polarized country, short of a well-thought out boycott, there’s no reason not to do business with people with whom one disagrees philosophically, or even politically. But disrespect is not disagreement. And Lululemon crossed the line. Feeling disrespected should not be a price any customer gets asked to pay for a piece of clothing, no matter how useful and stylish.

What Lululemon fails to appreciate, and may hurt their business, is that their customers are not stupid. We may be overly self-involved; maybe we value our workouts more than we should; and perhaps we believe, when we do exercise, we should be coddled in luxurious fabrics designed to remove perspiration from our skin as quickly as possible while looking good, really good. But we’re not stupid. We know what it means to have “Who is John Galt” inscribed on a shoulder bag.

First, “John Galt” is a symbol for the Tea Party. Inscribing it on your bag signals support for the rhetorical excesses of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, for Paul Ryan’s privatization of Medicare, for being against health-care reform, and for Republican refusal to compromise on revenue in the deficit reduction debate. One may want “John Galt” to be a generic symbol for excellence and greatness, but it is not. Agree or disagree with the message, the message is still clear.

Next, Lululemon is also asking customers to signal a preference for ideology over reason, for politics over science. The behavioral sciences have amply demonstrated that Rand’s vision of human nature is simply wrong, however much it embodies a utopian capitalist vision designed to be a mid-century counter-weight to the communist utopian vision that caused so much suffering (note: Rand’s family lost everything in the Bolshevik Revolution revolution and then fled to the USA in 1926). Many have that preference. But to present ideology as excellence is just insulting. It diminishes everyone who does strive.

But there’s more disrespect present. This is not nothing they are asking their customers to do. Speech, even just words on a bag, is also always an action, and actions have consequences. Sauntering around town with a Tea Party message on one’s bag incrementally shifts the center of our political discourse to the right, just like Che Guevara tee-shirts but in the opposite direction. If you’re on the right and think I’m making a big deal out of nothing, let me ask how you would feel if Brooks Brothers or Wal-Mart started putting Che’s picture on reusable shopping bags provided with each purchase?

And it gets worse. There is a powerfully subtle psychological manipulation taking place. We know from the research into cognitive dissonance that when something we’ve already done conflicts with previous opinion, to minimize the resulting dissonance people change their opinion in the direction of what they did. Makes sense: you can’t undo what’s been done and you are motivated to reduce the conflict. Therefore, the only option open is changing the opinion. Applied to Lululemon’s disrespectful tote bag, that means people who just want posh pants end up having their opinions shifted in ways with which they might not otherwise approve.

So, I decided to occupy my yoga pants (or long-sleeved running shirt which is what is true but please allow me some poetic license). Back to the store I went. When I returned my purchase the cheerful sales staff got really defensive, but no less cheerful, and refused to engage in any conversation about what their company was doing, other than with cult-like sincerity refusing to consider that their tote bag message could possibly mean anything other than what the company was saying it meant.

“Shot-by-shot comparison of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” vs. scenes from 30 different adventure films made between 1919-1973. My love letter to Indiana Jones and the films which served as inspiration.”

Peter Dinklage and Martin Henderson (Pic: Getty and SWNS)

Who is Martin Henderson? Golden Globe Winner Peter Dinklage Dedicates Award to Him [VIDEO]
By Laura Matthews | January 16, 2012 | www.ibtimes.com

When Peter Dinklage won a 2012 Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series on Sunday at the 69th Annual Golden Globe Award, the “Game of Thrones” star dedicated the award to a man name Martin Henderson.

Henderson, a fellow little person from Somerset in England, was the victim of a dwarf tossing incident that left him with serious back injuries. The BBC reported that Henderson, 37, was picked up and dropped on the ground while he was out celebrating his birthday with friends at the White Horse pub in Wincanton in October.

The attack happened when Henderson went outside for a cigarette and he told “Metro” that a drunken stranger picked him up and threw him. The toss caused Henderson to land on his back, after falling three feet, according to reports.

According to MTV News, both Dinklage and Henderson suffer from achondroplasia, which causes dwarfirsm.

The BBC reported that Henderson believe that a dwarf-throwing contest in the New Zealand bar, which was attended by former England rugby captain Mike Tindall, might have influence his attacker.

Henderson, an aspiring actor, is only 4 feet 6 inches tall. His attacker was 5 feet 8 inches tall.

The attack has caused Henderson tissue damage and also caused his condition known as spinal stenosis to worsen, the BBC reported.

“I’m having a wheelchair made to measure because I’m finding it hard to walk long distances,” Henderson told the BBC.

The UK’s Telegraph reported that police are hunting the drunken man responsible for the incident, which took place during the rugby World Cup.

“From what I remember, there was only one person involved but it was very scary as I didn’t know what was going on,” Henderson told the Telegraph. “I guess I was an easy target and the only reason I was picked on was because I am small.”

Henderson told the Telegraph that people’s attitudes toward him when he is out in public can be “pretty cruel.” Still, he said “most are OK but you get the odd idiot who will make fun and start laughing at me.”

He manner of coping is to “ignore it.”

The incident at the pub was the first time he was ever picked up and thrown about.

Watch a news report about the incident in the video below:

Size matters: PLUS Model Magazine has shot size 12 Katya Zharkova pose with a 'straight-size' model to demonstrate the difference between them. Image Plus Model Magazine

Magazine says ‘Most runway models meet the BMI criteria for anorexia’
By TAMARA ABRAHAM  |  12th January 2012  |  www.dailymail.co.uk

A magazine dedicated to plus-size fashion and models has sparked controversy with a feature claiming that most runway models meet the Body Mass Index criteria for anorexia.

Accompanied by a bold shoot that sees a nude plus-size model posing alongside a skinny ‘straight-size’ model, PLUS Model Magazine says it aims to encourage plus-size consumers to pressure retailers to better cater to them, and stop promoting a skinny ideal.

Size 12 (U.S.) model Katya Zharkova, 28, stars in the shoot, which has a powerful statistic accompanying each image.

One, printed alongside a photo of the Russian beauty holding a tape measure across her rear, reads: ‘Twenty years ago the average fashion model weighed 8% less than the average woman. Today, she weighs 23% less.’

Another states: ‘Ten years ago plus-size models averaged between size 12 and 18. Today the need for size diversity within the plus-size modeling industry continues to be questioned.

The majority of plus-size models on agency boards are between a size 6 and 14, while the customers continue to express their dissatisfaction.’

And finally, further highlighting how poorly the fashion world caters to plus-size women, the magazine tells us: ’50% of women wear a size 14 or larger, but most standard clothing outlets cater to sizes 14 or smaller.’

In an accompanying editorial, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Madeline Figueroa-Jones, explains that the feature is a response to a fashion and beauty industry which continues to endorse a skinny ideal that is not always healthy and alienates a huge percentage of the market.

She writes: ‘We are bombarded with weight-loss ads every single day, multiple times a day because it’s a multi-billion dollar industry that preys on the fear of being fat.

‘Not everyone is meant to be skinny, our bodies are beautiful and we are not talking about health here because not every skinny person is healthy.’

Ms Figueroa-Jones says consumers can no longer identify with models; the disparity between real woman and those that grace ad campaigns and the covers of magazines is to wide now.

‘Small women cannot be marketed to with pictures of plus-size women, why are we expected to respond to pictures of small size 6 and 8 women?’ she asks.

The PLUS Model Magazine feature has generated a mixed response from its readers though.

While some have praised the statements the shoot makes, others believe that positively endorsing a fuller figure is as dangerous as advocating a skinny one.

One reader on the magazine’s website comments: ‘If this article is saying you should feel pretty at any size, fine. but don’t tell me you’re obese and healthy. We have a twisted sense of what healthy is in this country and an even more twisted sense of what people are allowed to say about it.’

Another adds: ‘I don’t think the fashion world should support obesity, just as I don’t think it should support anorexia.’

The article has also generated an equal share of agreement, though. Reader Danae writes: ‘We all women are brainwashed to believe that we are ugly and men will never look at us if we are not starving… We need more variety of healthy female body images.’

The January issue of PLUS Model Magazine is on sale now; plus-model-mag.com

Wipeout

MXC, err Takeshi's Castle

Wipeout

Takeshi's Castle

‘Wipeout’ copyright lawsuit settled
Dec. 25, 2011 | www.upi.com

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 25 (UPI) — ABC and production company Endemol have settled a 2008 lawsuit brought by Tokyo Broadcasting System alleging their show “Wipeout” was a ripoff of its shows.

The Hollywood Reporter said documents filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles this past week showed a settlement was reached Nov. 30 with the help of a federal judge acting as a mediator. The terms of the settlement were not revealed, the entertainment newspaper reported Saturday.

Tokyo Broadcasting had alleged “Wipeout,” a competition show, infringed on its copyrights by using key elements of its shows, such as “Most Extreme Elimination Challenge,” “Tawsha’s Castle” and ‘Ninja Warrior.”

ABC and Endemol countered that Tokyo Broadcasting was out of bounds by claiming copyright protection for such “ubiquitous” obstacle concepts as “rope swings, mechanical bulls and pole vaults.”

The settlement headed off a trial that was slated to have started this year.

Momento Mori is a latin phrase, not a Chinese restaurant.

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