A Voice for Freedom

MSNBC reported this week on what just might be the most ridiculous example of nutritionist zealotry yet. Michael Sheridan, an eighth-grader in New Haven, CT, was recently caught - horror of horrors! - buying a bag of Skittles from another student. He was unfortunately unaware that in 2003, as part of a "wellness policy", the New Haven school system completely banned the sale of candy in its schools, even from one student to another. For his "crime", he was suspended for three days, barred from attending an honors dinner, and stripped of his title as student council vice president. Watch the video below for interviews with the student and his mother, both of whom are understandably confused.



As mentioned in the video, Sheridan's suspension was reduced from three days to one after his mother complained, and this past Thursday, his school's principal agreed to give him his student council post back. That reduces his total punishment for buying a bag of candy to being barred from having his academic achievements recognized at the school's honors dinner and being suspended for one day - one day when the students are, according to the principal, "in the middle of taking the Connecticut mastery test".

Sheridan appears in the video above to be a rather normal-shaped kid, maybe even a bit on the skinny side. But even perfectly healthy Americans have something to fear from the nutritionist mafia now. It's terrifying to think that someone has actually succeeded in turning sugar into contraband in American schools. Isn't is illegal for a public institution to control the purchase - not the sale, the purchase - of something that is not a controlled substance? If it isn't, anyway, it should be. But that wouldn't stop them even if it were the case. Goodbye, free market...it's been nice knowing you.

According to CBC, you're not Canadian enough if you don't know enough about the East.

Out of a sense of morbid curiosity, I took a Canada Day quiz on the CBC site a while back. I managed to get every question right, by the way, so whoop-de-doo for me; I guess studying the same Canadian history every year from grad 5 through grade 8 finally paid off.

But you know the really interesting thing about this quiz? The nature of its fourteen questions. Here's a brief rundown:

Six questions on national trivia, such as the national anthem and who the Canadian head of state is.

Five questions on national history, such as the role of the Hudson's Bay Company and what the first four provinces were

Three questions on Eastern Canadian trivia, involving things like Lake Algonquin and Quebec bilingualism

No questions at all about the West

Why am I not surprised?

Wow...been gone a while, haven't I? It's been a busy two months - not bad, mind you, but busy. It's been tough, too, because there's a lot of stuff I would've liked to talk about, but of course I can't remember much of it now. One thing I can remember, though, is this little gem of irony. Apparently the UN considers the Canadian government racist for its use of the term "visible minority", used in all manner of documents and processes in a backwards attempt to reduce discrimination. "Visible minorities" legally refers to "persons, other than aboriginal people, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour" - thereby, strangely enough, singling out whites (though of course the UN was not at all concerned with the well-being of Caucasians). Apparently having this "minorities" tag attached to them could cause problems for people, though what those problems are was never really discussed.

The same report, by the way, called for Canada to provide welfare services to "undocumented immigrants and failed refugee applicants". Yes, that's right, people who are in Canada illegally and people who were actively rejected for entry to the country now apparently deserve services paid for with taxpayer dollars. I'd mock that, but honestly, I can't find anything more stupid to compare it to.