Let's Stop Reproducing And Just Raise Cabbages

An elementary school has banned tag on its playground after some children complained they were harassed or chased against their will.

"It causes a lot of conflict on the playground," said Cindy Fesgen, assistant principal of the Discovery Canyon Campus school.

Running games are still allowed as long as students don't chase each other, she said.

Fesgen said two parents complained to her about the ban but most parents and children didn't object.

In 2005, two elementary schools in the nearby Falcon School District did away with tag and similar games in favor of alternatives with less physical contact. School officials said the move encouraged more students to play games and helped reduce playground squabbles.

Michael Shermer on Stephen Colbert

Being interviewed (if that's what you can call it) by the inimitable Stephen Colbert was one of the wilder experiences of my career. I would imagine by now that most readers of eSkeptic know that Comedy Central's hit series The Colbert Report features the comedian Stephen Colbert playing a role that is largely a parody of Bill O'Reilly and The O'Reilly Factor. Exaggerating the extremes of the conservative position on nearly everything, Colbert gets in his hilarious digs by arguing against liberals and liberalism.

Well, words don't do the show justice. You just have to see it. Anyway, I was on last Tuesday night. The show is taped in New York. Stephen was good enough to come by the green room (they're never green, by the way) to introduce himself and explain, "You know, I play a complete idiot on the show, so just try to debunk me like you would any idiot." (This introduction was very unusual. I've been on Larry King, Bill Maher, Oprah, and Dennis Miller, all several times each, and never once have any of them ever spoken to me before or after the show. The funniest was the first time I was on Dennis Miller's show - I didn't see him in person until they plopped me in the chair next to him during a commercial break, and when the cameras started rolling he turned to me and said "Sherms! How you doin'?", like we were old pals going way back.)

After Stephen left, the producer came in to review about a dozen questions that Stephen might ask, emphasizing that he might not ask any of them, or that he might start with the first one and then just wing it. That's exactly what happened. The first question asked me to prove that I was the publisher of Skeptic magazine, and we were off and running from there, as you'll see in this clip. It was also one of the more difficult interviews I've done as he is quite verbally facile, aggressive, and so damn funny that it was hard to stop laughing and try to get in just a couple of points. At least I didn't throw water on him, which Richard Branson did the next night, another clip well worth watching.

- Michael Shermer

Darwin Lover!

Hollywood Has Completely Stopped Trying

Wow.

• Keanu Reeves is Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still Remake

• Todd McFarlane's Revisionist Oz

• Roland Emmerich Remaking 1966 Fantastic Voyage

• RKO Pictures Remaking Isle of the Dead

• Len Wiseman Confirmed Directing Escape from New York Remake

• Brad Pitt Starring in Bullitt Remake?

• Zak Penn Rewriting a Dirty Dozen Remake

• Hong Kong Martial Arts Movie Enter the Phoenix Being Remade

• Fu Manchu to Return to the Big Screen Again!

• Clash of the Titans Remake Being Written by Lawrence Kasdan

• Scanners Remake Plot Details from Screenwriter

• Death Race 3000 Plot Details - Doesn't Sound Good

Bad Credit A Higher Threatening To US Economy Than Terrorism

Bad credit has supplanted terrorism as the gravest immediate risk threatening the economy, a key national research group reported Monday.

Borrowers' withering ability to pay their bills and the subsequent fallout in the credit markets this summer topped the list of short-term risks on peoples' minds, according to a survey of 258 members conducted by the National Association of Business Economics.

NABE, a Washington-based association, said 32 percent of its surveyed members cited loan defaults and excessive debt as their biggest near-term concern.

Only 20 percent of members cited defense and terrorism as their biggest immediate worry, down from 35 percent when the survey was last conducted in March. Credit risk also topped gas prices, inflation and government spending.

"Financial market turmoil has shifted the focus away from terrorism and toward subprime and other credit problems as the most important near-term threats to the U.S. economy," said Carl Tannenbaum, president of NABE and the chief economist at LaSalle Bank/ABN-Amro.

The market turmoil began earlier this year, when mortgage lenders like New Century Financial Corp. and H&R Block Inc.'s Option One Mortgage Corp. unit reported their clients were missing payments on their home loans more frequently.

This led the Wall Street banks that finance the mortgage market to ultimately pull much of their money out. With cash draining rapidly from the industry, more than 50 lenders have gone bankrupt and a number of investment funds have gone under.

Victims of this flare-up include two of the 10 biggest mortgage lenders in the country and two hedge funds managed by Bear Stearns Cos.

Loan brokers say it has become more difficult for some people to line up mortgages. Subprime loans, or loans to people with spotty credit histories, have all but disappeared as lenders scale back or shut down completely.

The shakeout in the subprime mortgage market forced investors around the world to reassess how much risk they were willing to stomach. This led to an exodus of cash from investments like securities backed by home loans, short-term corporate bonds and stocks whose values were inflated because they were perceived as takeover targets.

In the past five weeks, the stock market has lost 5 percent. The dollar fell to an all-time low versus the euro. A number of companies have had to cancel bond sales because of an absence of buyers.

And, the Federal Reserve has lent billions of dollars to banks from its "discount window," normally associated with bailouts for struggling financial institutions. The Fed this month issued a statement that the risks to the economy have risen considerably and traders ramped up their expectations the Fed would cut targets for interest rates this year.

The tumult in the financial markets has led businesses to revisit their interpretation of the housing boom earlier this decade and the easy credit that fueled it, NABE said. The proportion of surveyed members who call it a "serious national bubble" more than doubled from two years ago to 29 percent, the group said.

NABE said the market turmoil is considered a short-term risk because the five-year outlook for housing is still strong. More surveyed members expect home values to appreciate in the next five years than fall. Very few expect a serious drop in home prices in the next five years.

The greatest long-term risk facing the economy is still health care costs and the medical needs of an aging population, NABE said.

Top Ten Reasons Why Beer Is Better Than Jesus

10. No one will kill you for not drinking beer.
09. Beer doesn't tell you how to have sex.
08. Beer has never caused a major war.
07. They don't force beer on minors who can't think for themselves.
06. When you have beer, you don't knock on people's doors trying to give it away.
05. Nobody's ever been burned at the stake, hanged, or tortured to death over his brand of beer.
04. You don't have to wait 2,000+ years for a second beer.
03. There are laws saying that beer labels can't lie to you.
02. You can prove you have a beer.
01. If you have devoted your life to beer, there are groups to help you stop.

Bible Time in The Chat Rooms

grosslack: Hell is a place of everlasting damnation and fire.
locokamil: Your belief system is thermodynamically unsound.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

<Belial`> you still cant say anything with certainty though
<Belial`> since the bible has like, a fucking black hole between jesus being a kid and his preaching days
<Catoptromancy> Phase 1, birth
<Catoptromancy> Phase 2, ???
<Catoptromancy> Phase 3, Prophet

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

evilada: agh, i'm watching this jesus camp documentary and it's horrible.
evilada: i want to burn down a church
pnkfloyd: woah woah woah
pnkfloyd: Hold on there
pnkfloyd: wait for me

Criteria For Proper Tactical Usage Of Phrase "Oh, Snap!"

How To Pay Off Your Subprime Mortgage