An Experiment in Racism
Friday, April 3rd, 2009
From the article:
With King shot just the day before in Memphis, Elliott encouraged her third-graders to discuss how something so horrible could happen.
“I finally said, ‘Do you kids have any idea how it feels to be something other than white in this country?’”
The children shook their heads and said they wanted to learn, so Elliott set the rules. Blue-eyed children must use a cup to drink from the fountain. Blue-eyed children must leave late to lunch and to recess. Blue-eyed children were not to speak to brown-eyed children. Blue-eyed children were troublemakers and slow learners.
Within 15 minutes, Elliott says, she observed her brown-eyed students morph into youthful supremacists and blue-eyed children become uncertain and intimidated.
Brown-eyed children “became domineering and arrogant and judgmental and cool,” she says. “And smart! Smart! All of a sudden, disabled readers were reading. I thought, ‘This is not possible, this is my imagination.’ And I watched bright, blue-eyed kids become stupid and frightened and frustrated and angry and resentful and distrustful. It was absolutely the strangest thing I’d ever experienced.”
Link: http://www.latimes.com/…
(via Neatorama)
The Houston Chronicle allows you to 
Turns out that American cheese is the sausage of cheese making—you don’t want to know how it’s made. And there’s the fact that it’s legally named “a homogeneous plastic mass.” Despite this, American cheese is still my favorite.
I’ve read about organized copper theft in third-world countries, but now it’s made it’s way to the United States. Fortunately there is some amount of 
From the article: “No matter what, if someone asks you to deposit a check and send them a smaller amount of money — you are about to get screwed.” This applies to money orders as well. Way too many people fall for this type of scam, even those who should know better.
Register before 6:00pm EST today to get a coupon for a free Dr. Pepper. 
Daylight saving time ends in the US this weekend—turn your clocks back one hour. Also, researchers have determined that the extra hour of sleep reduces the number of heart attacks on the Monday following the switch.
The linked video shows how cocaine is made, by filming a Columbian farmer performing the process. It’s when he adds gasoline that gets to me.
This train engineer ran a red light and crashed into another train—killing himself and 24 passengers. Turns out he was sending and receiving text messages immediately before the crash.
Here’s an interesting take on why the Allies won World War II. (The first link is to the actual picture, and the second is to the associated article.)
