Hopefully registration will keep the worst cranks out. Bannings will be plentiful for comment policy violations. In the past I haven’t really enforced the profanity rule when the profanity wasn’t aimed at a particular person – and sometimes have broken it myself – but that’s going to stop. If you want your comment to get out of the moderation queue, keep it clean.
The comments also look different – we’ve gone to a paged system on the advice of a Guru who says it’ll ease the server load. He’s always right and I’m sure it will, but will it help enough? Enjoy.
Also – I put the tip jar out not expecting anything, and actually did get one tip – enough to pay for about twenty days of the RAM upgrade. That was very kind and quite unexpected. Between that and the ads, I’m losing only my sleeve, not the whole shirt, with this traffic surge.
Listen people. As someone of african descent and belgian nationality, I’d like to think that i can afford the subject some objectivity. Race out of it for a moment, since when did a fight at school become a “state vs. 6 teenagers” sort of affair? I am not condoning violence on any level, however, i feel that the first problem is that this situation should have been handled by a school disciplinary commitee. And if the situation seemed to be more serious, perhaps the law did need to be involved but i can’t even fathom how it all got overblown to the extent of involving language such as “attempted murder”, “conspiracy” or “aggravated assault.” Anyone who has read up on the events leading up to the assault on Justin Barker, including the assault on the young black man (Bailey, I think?) the weekend previous to that, could see how and why this would come to a head in the way it did. Not excusing it but nothing about it suggests pre-meditation or forethought, let alone conspiracy to do anything. With racial tensions already at a high note at that school, thanks to nooses being openly hung on school property -and by the way, WHAT???- coupled with the taunting remarks about a recent attack, what red blooded teenager do you know, black or white, who wouldn’t have lashed out. That doesn’t make it alright and those involved deserve to be punished. But let’s not just make up charges and try to make them stick. In fairness to those of us who are protesting on behalf of the Jena 6, it’s not a “no harm, no foul” mentality towards Justin Barker that has him low on people’s sympathies, it has more to do with his own provokation and involvements in the events leading up to Dec 4th. It’s hard to feel sorry for him knowing that moments before he was assaulted, he was teasing a victim of a similar attack. The racial card in my opinion has justifiably been thrown out in this case for the simple fact that there is a clear imbalance in the punishment of the indidviduals involved in all events surrounding and leading up to the Barker assault based on race. In the wake of columbine and virginia tech massacres, I’m far more afraid of a student bringing a weapon and ammunition to school than a bunch of kids fighting and yet one group (Jena 6) is facing years in prison whereas another (all but one) weren’t even charged for the previous attack and in the incident where they had to wrestle a shot gun away from one of the attackers, these brilliant legal wonders in Jena found a way to turn the crime around on them. I’m babbling at this point, it’s 2:38AM but my point is that objectively, it has just escalated to ridiculous levels and yet the D.A. feels the need to commit to the road he started down now that the world is watching. Please believe, that in the many cases where the attack has been reversed, the consequences have rarely been as severe. Two wrongs don’t make a right but let’s be consistent now. Someone wise once said “If you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anything.
I LOVE YOU!