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South Carolina Student Arrested For "Killing Pet Dinosaur"
Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes In South Carolina a 16-year old boy, Alex Stone, was arrested and charged with creating a disturbance at his school, as well as suspended, for choosing to write: "I killed my neighbor's pet dinosaur. I bought the gun to take care of the business," in response to a class writing assignment. The story has attracted international attention.
Only in America ...
Only in 'Murica.
Here' if a 16-year old writes something like that, everyone would have a good laugh.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I'll bet the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Dinosaurs will put him in his place.
What is popular is not always right; what is right is not always popular.
This is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Will it ever stop?
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
... but I strangled my neighbor's unicorn, last night.
a. He's a he.
b. He's a teenager.
c. He goes to a school.
d. He wrote the word "gun" in a "fantasy" story.
Mandatory panic! Alert the police! Search EVERYTHING! Connect the dots!
Personally, I blame the teacher for not sufficiently explaining the limits of the assignment.
And as for the kid and his pet dinosaur killing, here's an even more disturbing news: so kids as young as maybe 8 are shooting at each other in pretend cowboy-indian or thief-policeman "games". Time to build more prisons for youngsters.
How'd it taste?
He had bought a gun to take care of business, but really who brings a gun to a dinosaur fight?
What will those wacky liberals in South Carolina come up with next?
If you read the details of the story, it becomes quite a bit less sensational.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Their whole society is based on worship of guns, possibly because of the success with which them Injuns were driven off their land with them. 70% of Hollywood films show how good will triumph if it has more guns, better guns, bigger guns. Yet, if a child should mention the word or make gun-shaped toast or point a gun-shaped finger, he (always he?) is treated with absurd ferocity as if he is a dangerous deviant. Go 'Merkins.
So in the country that brought us "You can't take my gun unless you pry it from my cold dead hand", you can't actually mention "gun"?
Zero Tolerance Money Making Opportunity
Clearly what this means is that any kid who writes any assignment about any subject is going to carry out the contents of what they wrote. There are thousands of schoolchildren writing about the Holocaust who should probably be locked up before they commit genocide.
He'll probably get jail time if he admits he chokes his chicken too...
This is ludicrous. He should get an A on the assignment... it was completely convincing apparently, despite the inclusion of a pet dinosaur. The school administration and cops were all convinced. The kid should put it on his fucking college resume: "Turned in a story that was so well written I got arrested for the fictitious deed."
Alternately, his college application could be, "I got this excellent ACT score despite being taught in a school that doesn't realize Dinosaurs are extinct."
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
The school officials probably felt that since it was only 6000 years ago that dinosaurs weren't only confined to zoos, the plausibility of the essay was too eerily real.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Jurassic Park banned from video stores for being terrorist propaganda!
Have to love broad laws willfully designed to make everyone guilty.
When the kings dislike you they need to have a "legitimate" excuse to beat you down and lock you away in their dungeons.
This isn't China.
We have gone to idiotic mode here in the States - beyond plaid.
We have been taken over by the lying bullying pundits - Hannity,Maddow, O'Reilly, Oberman, etc ....
Our media isn't really state controlled as it is corporate controlled - the corporations use the government to solidify their idiocy.
Even my beloved NPR doesn't escape my cynicism when the Koch brothers sponsor it along with many corporate sponsors - regardless of their political leanings.
We are being bombarded by shit.
Shit media.
All of it.
And it has become impossible for us to differentiate the shit from the Truth.
Mix in 110 proof pundits like Hannity and Limbaugh, and we're fucked.
I am trying to cut myself off from media - even the Internet.
It is getting ridiculous.
To paraphrase Thich Nhat Hanh, 'Don't watch the news. If it is really important, you will hear about it.'
I don't mean to stick my head in the sand, but when I cannot get the facts - or I have to sift through countless media outlets to get it - I just have to say, "Fuck it! Let me take care of my neighbor!"
Society is collectively out of their damn minds. Pretty soon sneezing in public will almost certainly be considered a biological weapon attack, because Ebola!!!...arrest and solitary him immediately!
From TFA:
How did "the school" know about this? At most his teacher and the school principal and the regional/district/whatever superintendent should have been aware of the issue.
If anyone was "disturbing" "the school" it would have been one of those three (or the cops) and they should be arrested.
For a student, being "difficult during questioning" should (at most) result in expulsion AND NOT ARREST.
If he'd said he'd shot Osama bin Laden, they probably would have made him Valedictorian, and nominated him for a medal.
He mentioned the word "gun" to a classmate, (he was in army cadets at the time) A teacher overheard him, and apparently this was a banned word at the school. The principal threatened to suspend him if he even mentioned the word "gun" again on school property. We promptly moved him to another school. This was in Canada by the way. Political correctness gone amok. Ironically, my dad used to fire rifles at his school as a part of ROTC training in Nova Scotia. How times have changed.
It is clear that the real reason he was arrested was for believing in dinosaurs.
Everyone knows that the world is 1000 years old and that God created dinosaur skeletons to trick heathens.
"Disturbing the school" cannot be a crime when done via the first amendment. Creating fear is not illegal if that fear is not based on credible threats.
Shouting "fire" in a theater is not illegal. Creating a panic in one that injures (or has substantial potential to injure) others because what if there is actually a fire? Or what if someone stood up and said "in 5 seconds, I will scream fire, but do not worry, there is no fire. (5.4.3.2.1) FIRE!" In neither of these cases would that person's actions rise to criminality because in the first case, there was a fire he was responding to, and in the second, a reasonable person would not fear the fire that they were warned did not exist.
In this case, a reasonable person would assume that the teen did not actually shoot a dinosaur in his neighbor's back yard because reasonable people know that dinosaurs no longer exist. Also, even if that teen admitted ready access to firearms, he was not threatening to use them in illegal, immoral, or unsafe manners. (an argument could be made that shooting a dinosaur would be against endagered species laws, but after Jurassic Park, we all know what happens if you don't shoot dinosaurs...
My question. What happens when this school teaches about wars? Do they arrest every student who writes a paper about Pickett's Charge or the Battle of the Bulge for mentioning firearms? What about the teachers? If the student can be arrested for "disturbing the school," wouldn't the teacher who asked students to write papers about wars be guilty of enciting panic himself? And asking multiple students to do so would place the school in jeopardy of RICO charges for asking multiple students to work independently to break laws.
Could we at least put some of the blame on the teacher for giving such a lazy, vague, open-ended assignment?
(I *hated* those in school - I work best with structure.)
Okay the police did not find the gun, but have they found the poor pet dinasour?
In the scale of geologic time, trivializing the demise of dinosaurs is entirely too soon. Give us time to grieve ffs. This kid is clearly not very sensitive to the plight of other species. What next for him and his thoughtless fantasies? Making a mockery of the middle ages? Pointing a rapier at the Renaissance? RIP dinosaurs! #nvr4get
If there's anyone in South Carloina with enough brains to form a synapse, please put them in charge. Stupid, brutal behavior like that make even the craziness of California look good.
I'd be disturbing too if it was me being harassed by the police for thought crime. If my kid did this I'd tell me he did good to question censorship and police harassment.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
at this or cringe with fear that you actually wrote that.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Jesus christ, thinking back upon the mounds of morbid, violence filled short stories, poetry, and many many many drawings I produced growing up, reading stuff like this makes me glad I grew up then and not now.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
that the neighbor had which he shot then crucified.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Gun is not allowed, only assault rifle.
Pet dinosaurs are quite rare. In fact I’ve never seen one. So to kill it is a crime against humanity.
At least this kid had enough remorse to need to admit his crime.
I know his message was a cry for help but the school must pursue criminal action as a warning to others who might kill dinosaurs. Thank God we live in a country that takes “If you see something, say something” seriously.
God forbid the kid ever does anything violent for the rest of his life. Then, everything he's ever written, said, or done comes under scrutiny. And anyone who ever saw it, and didn't report it to "proper authorities" goes under the bus with him. Gotta over your ass, just in case.
Not-news for these "authorities" - there isn't a teenage boy (or a lot of girls) born that hasn't fantasized violence, against more than an entirely fictional dinosaur, at least once. A lot of them even write it down. But as long as they don't know about it, no one cares.
... for killing a dinosaur Steven Spielberg posing next to a dead dinosaur
mod parent up!
Because this is the sort of shit i see on Facebook all the time, I think he did the assignment great.
Be seeing you...
lol, so Hannity and Rush are to blame for the complete zero tolerance, LIBERAL policy in schools? Do you ever sit back and think why so few EVIL people(hannity, rush, Fox News) have such high ratings/followings? It's because the rest of the media is so left wing, DNC water carrying stooges, that there really are no other alternatives.
Blame Hannity all you like for "This" situation. But ask yourself why you are so mad at Rush/Hanity, yet so no problem with being exposed to an opposing viewpoint to your own in the rest of the media.
Hannity,Maddow, O'Reilly and Oberman run the government? I thought their job was to point out when the government is screwing up. Matter of fact, if you go to their web sites and look for this story, that's exactly what they're doing.
The most disturbing news in all of this is that his neighbor is breeding raptors. The kid was justified in his heroic actions, the deranged neighbor needs to be indicted for crimes against humanity.
God creates the world. God creates dinosaurs. God destroys the world to get rid of the raptors. God creates man; Man kills god. Man brings back raptors. My god, what have we done!?
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
You just made dinosaurs extinct, again... :( We could have started a Jurassic Park if that little bastard killed the neighbors invisible friend instead.. Nah I'm sorry, I didn't mean that I don't want to see the little guy be charged with fourth degree murder.
What will those wacky liberals in South Carolina come up with next?
Zero tolerance policies are a whacky liberal idea.
The other side is that there have been a lot of ridiculous school shootings where people wrote loopy things and came under fire (unjustly, IMHO) for not realizing that the kid had a screw loose and was dangerous to everyone.
If they were wrong and this was one of the crazy kids that shoots up a school, they'd be screwed.
The real problem is that we escalate everything to 11. There seems to be no way to calmly look into something without punishing people or going overboard because everyone is so willing to threaten everyone with police, guns or whatever.
Fear yes, but cowardice, no. That is not the point.
Folks in the US seem to have a hard time believing and/or seeing what is going on. It is social engineering 101. You are being taught several things. First and foremost, do not question authority.
They are also trying to teach fear the punishment for any thought of violence. They are even being to teach people to fear the consequences of speaking out against their leaders.
Swat raids for twitter posts anyone? In 20 years America will not even be recognizable. For F's sake, most teens don't care at all over the amount of control the government has over their lives. They are taught, from the beginning that this is good and right and just!
We saw the writing on the wall years ago though and left America to a free country.
Yes strong military help avoid being conquered. But AMerica does not have a strong military , America has an over militarized force. Even if it was half as funded it would still be fine enough. And remember that the military compelx lied a lot about the strength of its enemy to get more funding, Like when they pretended soviet russia had tons of nuke to justify making tons themselves. They started the nuke race. If you look at the statistic it would be years before russia had a small stock and a decade or two before they started overcoming US nuke stocks.
The bottom line is that the US military has long stopped a force of defense and looks dangerously like a force geared toward conquest of other territory. Eager to use their toys.
What in all crazy hell has gone wrong with your country?
The US public school system is in full-meltdown mode. In most places (the only exception I can recall is Texas) they are unionized now with the teachers being members of one of two national unions that are tightly-aligned with the Democrat party (so your kids are bing indoctrinated by leftwing-political activists like the ones who youtubed their classes singing "mmmm mmmm mmmm, Barack Hussein Obama..." and the whackos who trashed the capitol building in Madison while using thier students as political props. Letting kooks like that "educate" your kids is as political (on the left) as letting the Koch brothers or Ann Coulter do it (on the right)
All the public schools, including in Texas, are further corrupted by lawyers. Left-leaning lawyers sue the schools over any policy they politically object to (like ANYTHING religion-related), and trial lawyers are always "ambulance-chasing" for clients if anybody is harmed in big institutions with "deep pockets" like public schools, so the lawyers for the school districts advise the districts to "fold" on ANY challenge immediately rather than risk a legal fight. As a result, most public schools have brainless "zero-tolerance" policies on all sorts of insane stuff. "Common Sense" can no longer operate in a public school. If you want your kids to be able to THINK, get them OUT of those places! Get them into private schools if you can afford them, religious schools if that fits your fancy (I'm not Catholic, but Catholic schools used to do a very good job on all the basics) or home-school them (the best option for many geeks), or try a mix (Catholic for "reading, writing, and arithmetic" and home-school on science or whatever). Brick-and-mortar schools are as obsolete as brick-and-mortar bookstores at this point.
Part of the population of the US wants to ban guns, so some states are taking baby steps to pass laws that will make it easier. Total registration is the first step in the future plan. These states keep saying they need a federal/state registry to check for criminals, when all we really need is an 800 number for people to call in before private sales, a simple yes/no if the person is allowed guns. Only a ban list is kept, and never a total registration list. Thus no private sales to criminals, and we keep our historical idea of a ban on government confiscation.
(Except NY, they are chipping away rights faster than California, how would you like to be a store owner with riots like Ferguson and have only allowed a few bullets in a magazine due to bad laws...)
For the kids, the brainwashing has started. Its Doctors asking kids if their parents have guns at home or Teachers trying brainwash kids that guns are bad, and if you mention guns, its a suspension.
This is about forcing political change with the children. Also why people want to stop all religious actions, mandatory LGBT studies at k to 6, rules on cakes at school functions, ban student stores, ban the pledge of allegiance, mandatory feminism classes, etc.
It's about control.
The US has been glorifying scenes of extreme violence for years on TV or in the movies. And yet, if a child were to mention they watched anything like that, and, god forbid, write a synopsis on it, they'd be looking at expulsion/sternly-worded letters too? Really, what kind of children are being raised there these days? Where everything is an offence of some kind, where to feel mildly insulted is a level of indignance akin to to smacking your mother in the face elsewhere in the world.
In a couple of decades, these mis-educated, skin-as-thick-as-paper children are going to be the ones running a country possessing the most powerful military on earth.
This, in a land where guns are legal in many states... Ok. To be honest I would have understood more if it was about the word dinosaur, seeing as how so many people there claim they never existed.
If one writes a murder mystery where someone kills someone else with a gun, are they arrested and put in jail? What CRIME did the kid committ? Release the kid imediately!
The cops took Stone in for questioning and searched his locker and backpack for guns [...and dinosaurs]. None were found.
interestingly the article mentions they now want to homeschool.
This is the way all centralized systems ends. At first a few people are ostracized / arrested for writing about guns, gay people, nazi's or whatever.
Over time these few become more.
People reject the system (remove their children from public schools).
Central authorities (state and federal) keep taxing. So parents are paying for both private schools and public schools (through taxes).
Eventually enough parents revolt and the public system crashes. Even though politicians cry out that the widows, orphans and minorities need public schools.
Dictators who've stayed in power the longest know that you can't kill too many people, you need to kill enough to maintain fear, but not so many that you remove hope. The way we're going is we've gone past the maintaining fear stage, as seen in Ferguson, Nevada, Occupy Wall Street, people using Uber even when banned etc.
Remove hope and you have anarchy, provide a new hope and you have a revolution.
The statute of limitations is apparently over 65 million years. That doesn't explain how a 16 year old could have done it. Maybe there's a typo, and he's really 160 million years old?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
If the facts are as described, the police officers are guilty of kidnapping. The moment they violated their oaths to uphold the Bill of Rights, which under the 9th Amendment protects reasonable conduct, they ceased to be police officers, such oaths being preconditions for holding that office. It was thus as private citizens that they took this person against his will, hence kidnapping. Not to mention misuse of government equipment and facilities, and impersonating a police officer.
It is not within the legal authority of government to provide immunity (or pardon) to members of government, or former members of government, who violate their oaths to uphold the Bill of Rights. This is precluded by the existence of the 9th Amendment. There can be no rights retained by the people if government officials can freely violate any rights that might reasonably be asserted (a contradiction), hence there can be no immunity for such violations.
The school officials are likely accessories to kidnapping (not to mention they certainly are guilty of violating a number of fundamental rights arising under the 9th Amendment). As such, they are - at a minimum - disqualified from holding any position of public trust or responsibility, EVER AGAIN.
Any attempt to retain these people in government by ANY government official makes that official an accessory to the original illegal actions.
Learn the lesson taught at Nuremberg: positions of authority do not come with permission to abuse others, and any laws to the contrary are invalid.
Mandatory panic! Alert the police! Search EVERYTHING! Connect the dots! Personally, I blame the teacher for not sufficiently explaining the limits of the assignment.
doubt very much the reaction would have been the same if he'd written that he did it with bow & arrow.
Maybe he had previously been complaining that his neighbor's pet dinosaur was barking too loudly? (Just made that up, to show what a difference context can make)
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I went to the end of rainbow and bitch-slapped a leprechaun until he handed over his pot of gold. Then I stabbed a unicorn in the flank and watched it bleed to death, cut off it's horn and made an awesome knife. Then I stepped through a StarGate portal and came back to reality, where stupid crap like this story happens.
That'll teach that kid - never, ever write anything remotely creative for a public school, it's a waste of time and it'll get you in trouble. If you want to write, you can put it in a weblog or on wordpress, or you can submit it to publications that publish the kinds of things you write about. Writing is a craft involving creativity and thinking and observation and discipline. It requires a significantly longer attention span than any public school could possibly tolerate. Public schools inculcate obedience to arbitrary authority and discourage creativity and independent critical analysis, which is why they have nothing of value to people who wish to educate themselves in the writer's craft.
The kid said/wrote something which was unlikely to cause a problem.
Not at all like yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater.
The school made a silly, unnecessary big deal out of it.
Makes perfect since if you mission is to raise a crop of wimps unable to fend for themselves.
Idiotic if your mission is to prepare kids for life.
The kid and his mom should appeal this all the way to the supreme court.
It would be good for the country for them to win.
God help us if they don't.
No, it's actually "S" words, words beginning with the letter "S". On a side note, I've got to ask you about the Penis Mightier. Will it really mighty my penis, man?
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Are you against arresting kids for writing the word "gun"? I have to wonder because Hannity, O'Reilly and Limbaugh regularly rail against schools' substituting zero-tolerance policies for the use of common sense. The arrest of young Mr. Stone is anything but a reason to rail against Hannity, O'Reilly and Limbaugh.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
False, it is their job is to showcase the Republican Party's point of view. You will notice how NSA spying on everyone was the best thing since sliced bread when Bush wanted the Patriot Act Passed (or extended), and only a terrorist-murica-hating-commie-liberal-jew would disagree. Until, Obama signed an extension of the Patriot Act, and the details of the NSA finger-banging your privacy became public. Then it was the kinda big-brother-government-intrustion into your daily life that the Founding Fathers and Jesus warned about, and only some sort of pinko-feminist-homosexual-atheist-secular-liberal-scumbag could possibly support it.
They are the mouth organs of the "powers that be"... My belief is that those powers are the monied but you are free to insert your controlling obsession e.g. Trilateral commission, Koch, Coke, Illegal Aliens, Extra-terrestrial Aliens, Multi-Nationals, Washington-Nationals, Left wing, Right wing, Little Wing, Wing Nut, Hike! etc.
I don't think these organs of the state are they themselves particularly intelligent but they are pretty good at talking/herding up the lemmings into distinct groups rallying around minutia (things that won't actually lead to physical upheaval ) and in exchange, given a pretty comfortable life by their patrons.
And for the non-political we have HSN, ./, and things of that ilk to further distract us. Ummm, must go, just received my Netflix DVD in the mail.
but there's only internet outrage on /. when it happens in one of them "redneck" states.
anything to disparage the "flyover" states while refusing to acknowledge where this sort of crap ORIGINATED.
Overreactions due to political correctness stifled a hell of a lot more thought and creativity in schools (and society at large) in the last three decades than any wannabe creationist in Podunk, Ohio.