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.

Comments

Land of insanity

[qbast]

Only in America ...

Re:Land of insanity

[Aighearach]

I'm in America, and when I was in 7th grade I wrote a sci-fi story where all the characters were cooked inside a giant microwave oven disguised as a movie theater.

I got a perfect grade on it.

I'm sure in any large country there are numerous strange school decisions, just based on statistics. Heck, even just in 1 US State there should be enough school decisions being made to find outliers in numerous directions. Certainly at a minimum I would expect both excessive responses to minimally violent expression, and also excessively mild responses to actual violence.

When I read your comment I think, "wow, your school system didn't teach math or social studies very well." But you could also just be a bigot.

Re:Land of insanity

[CQDX]

If I was a kid today I'd probably be institutionalized.

When I was in 1st grade or so the Vietnam War was on the news all the time and I was just getting into plastic model building. My favorite thing to do was to build Army tanks and helicopters and play war with them. One day at school we had to write a little story and draw a picture with it. I wrote little scenario where a bunch of Army tanks and helicopters were blowing a bridge with a bunch of NVA crossing it (didn't know what a NVA was, they were just the bad guys). The picture had lots of explosions and bodies flying everywhere. It was very colorful and had a lot of detail. I got a good mark for my creativity.

In the afternoon we'd play Army with plastic guns that looked liked the real thing. None of this pink gun shit. We didn't shoot imaginary dinosaurs. We were out hunting Germans and Japanese soldiers. Whoever got stuck being the enemy would at least have fun hamming up his death scene. I guess it wasn't such a big deal back then because I grew up in San Diego and there were more than a few WWII vets that would egg us on.

I don't look forward to seeing what our world will be like when the current crop of kids grow up to be our nation's leaders.

Re:Land of insanity

[qbast]

And how many years ago it was? Besides giant oven is ok - you did not use any of the magic words like 'gun', 'bomb', etc.

Re:Land of insanity

[easyTree]

Putting aside that these people are retards for thinking he's serious and that they massively overreacted... if you recall, your whole culture (certainly, appears to) celebrate guns, killing etc (certainly movies/tv, film, youth culture). Your armed forces have been at war overseas for hundreds of years. Relatively recently there was video of two good old boys laughing it up whilst shooting news cameramen from an attach helicopter with a 50mm gun. Your own police are now paramilitary organizations quite happy to use armed troop carriers, rubber bullets, tear gas, etc... on civilians.

So, doesn't it seem pretty much like the horse has not only bolted but has evolved into an entirely new life-form and is on a beach somewhere drinking Piña coladas? Hint: yep, it does.

For moderation purposes, troll != you-have-inconveniently-reminded-me-that-I-live-in-a-police-state.

Re:Land of insanity

[lgw]

Relatively recently there was video of two good old boys laughing it up whilst shooting news cameramen from an attach helicopter with a 50mm gun.

Just making shit up doesn't help your argument any. I can only guess you're talking about the incident where we heard the gunship crew radio that they saw a group of hostiles (true) and a guy with a tube-like device on his shoulder (true) and requested permission to engage. They were given permission to engage. There was no laughing. There was no evidence they knew there was a reporter embedded with the enemy troops. (There's also no such thing as a 50mm gun.)

"good old boys"? If you think that anyone with a southern accent is a bad person, you are simply a bigot.

Re:Land of insanity

[Seumas]

Not really. School is used less as a tool for actual enlightenment and education and critical thinking skills and more for indoctrination and acclimation to submission to authority throughout most of the world.

Re:Land of insanity

[easyTree]

You might want to watch the video for yourself.

I'm particularly fond of the way they fabricate a justification to kill complete strangers who at worst would be guilty of defending their country from an invading force.

Re:Land of insanity

[epyT-R]

I suppose the 9/11 bombers were just "defending their country from an invading force" too?

Re:Land of insanity

[SimonInOz]

And in Australia ...
A while ago, my daughter, aged approx 14, wrote a rather scary essay all about grooming of girls for sex. It was a creepy story - about creepy people.
The school was shocked, called her in for counselling, and called me. After a while they settled down, came to the conclusion she was not writing about real life, and let the story stand.

No police, no arrests, sensible consultation. I think they did a much better job.

Scary essay though. Where did she get it all from?

Re:Land of insanity

[ganjadude]

no one in america is killing iraqis for defending their home from an invading force (the invading force being ISIS)

Re:Land of insanity

[Optali]

That's almost as good as the Catholic Archbishop who sued a group of Satanists to get back some sacred Wafers the Satanists wanted to use at a Black Mass:

satanist turns communion wafer-

Mind you: The wafers were not stolen, but bought via Internet from Turkey. XD

l

Re:Land of insanity

[NoImNotNineVolt]

(There's also no such thing as a 50mm gun.)

Indeed, there's no 50mm autocannon anywhere in the skies. The GAU-8 Avenger, a 30 mm rotary cannon that is the A-10's primary armament, is the heaviest automatic cannon mounted on an aircraft.

Re:Land of insanity

[Aighearach]

Judging from your user id, a few decades before your great grandpappy was born.

And I did use a bunch of "magic words," like kill, cook alive, etc.

Also, I paralleled a hate crime and attempted to let the horror of it speak for itself; I made no attempt to explicitly declare the actions as deplorable.

I stand by my claim, though. There will be outliers, and you can find excessive responses to art, and ignoring real violence.

You didn't even address the main point, which was that you were spewing bigoted anti-Americanism based on an outlier that will exist in any populous nation, and accused us of being unique in having negative outliers.

LOL

[war4peace]

Only in 'Murica.
Here' if a 16-year old writes something like that, everyone would have a good laugh.

Re:LOL

[ColdWetDog]

The child understood that dinosaurs don't exist anymore. It's not clear that the police were operating from the same viewpoint.

Re:LOL

[0123456]

The police were probably just hoping they'd get a chance to shoot a dinosaur themselves.

Re:LOL

[YrWrstNtmr]

Well gee, Sparky. Why don't you tell us what pseudoenlighted country you live in. So that we may delve into some random idiotic episode that happens in your hinterland and make fun of it.

Everywhere has some stupid crap going on.

Re:LOL

[qbast]

Come on, show me link to story that got French or Chinese kid arrested over writing school assignment about shooting something.

Re:LOL

[war4peace]

Oh we have our fair share of retarded stuff happening, but punishing teenagers for writing stupid shit clearly ain't it.

Re:LOL

[war4peace]

1. Not a hate speech. I don't hate USA, not at all.
2. I don't read tabloids. If this story was posted on /. and came from a tabloid, I expected better and I'm sorry for /.
3. Who says I'm a nationalist, let alone bigot? I hate my countrymen because they're retarded, but in other areas.

Re:LOL

[hedleyroos]

It is illegal to hunt extinct animals.

Re:LOL

[Em Adespoton]

Come on, show me link to story that got French or Chinese kid arrested over writing school assignment about shooting something.

It wouldn't make the news. That's not the same thing as saying it doesn't happen. In China, the child would probably be sent off to a re-education camp, and everyone would think it normal. In France, he'd likely just get a bad grade.

Re:LOL

[dlt074]

Murika is conditioning its citizens to fear any and all mention of guns and weapons. none of these types of storys are because of "stupid" administrators and teachers, it's an unspoken, unwritten plan to make all future generations shun weapons and guns.

it's the only way to do away with the pesky notion of personal responsibility and self defense.

an entire generation of children so scared of even talking about guns, will never own a gun let alone vote against anything that bans them.

conditioning at its best.

Re:LOL

[Darinbob]

That law may be on the books but no one has enforced it in years.

Re:LOL

[war4peace]

I seriously doubt that would work.

Re:LOL

[Aighearach]

That it is a story when it happens in the US proves that it is unusual, that it is an outlier.

You thought "news" was the stuff that is normal, and they ignore the unusual stuff?

NSPCD, get on that!

[slgrimes]

I'll bet the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Dinosaurs will put him in his place.

Just like Happy days..

[mrbcs]

America has jumped the shark..

This is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Will it ever stop?

Re:Just like Happy days..

[reikae]

I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume the student hasn't actually killed anyone or anything. If the student later is involved in an investigation as a potential suspect, then you can bring something like this up.

I agree on teaching students how to deal with the police, ie. not to say anything. The situation was probably quite scary to the kid, so I do understand his behavior although I don't condone it.

Re:Just like Happy days..

[msauve]

"You might have missed the part where the story isn't from a newspaper that is claiming to have researched it and presented the facts. It is actually from a blog called the "mommy files," and they don't describe the actual charges, or interview anybody other than the student and his mother."

You definitely missed the part where they linked to their source article, which was on a Chicago TV station news site.

The rest of your post just sounds like the sort of BS a psych major might spew.

Re:Just like Happy days..

[Anonymous Coward]

You might have missed the part where the story isn't from a newspaper that is claiming to have researched it and presented the facts. It is actually from a blog called the "mommy files," and they don't describe the actual charges, or interview anybody other than the student and his mother.

Said blog is associated with the San Francisco Chronicle, a well-known newspaper. It quotes articles from the New York Daily News and Fox on the subject. These articles further quote other coverage on WCSC TV and 5 News. The Fox article includes quotes from the police, which are included in the blog post you state doesn't have any such information.

Re:Just like Happy days..

[ganjadude]

long story short, the kid should have been given a grade, and that should have been the end of it, no cops, no bullshit. Anything you just said should be irrelevant because it should never get to that point

Re:Just like Happy days..

[ganjadude]

ever notice how few child psychologists actually have kids??

Re:Just like Happy days..

[Aighearach]

He isn't accused of killing anybody, so who cares if he killed anybody or not? Fail.

Re:Just like Happy days..

[Aighearach]

The rest of your post just sounds like the sort of BS a psych major might spew.

So you're bigoted against psych majors, or even software engineers that are well educated enough to sound educated. Gotchya.

Mine was hashbrowns and eggs.

Re:Just like Happy days..

[Aighearach]

I'm quite sure letting the teacher "handle it" would not resolve any of the serious issues. When a student substitutes violent fantasy for a non-fiction assignment, it is highly likely that they need some professional intervention. Obviously, the most effective way to handle that would be gently, by a trained professional, who can provide low-pressure counseling to attempt to uncover what the problem is, or if the student was simply trying to alarm their classmates for fun.

I find it interesting that what he's accused of is actually the least dangerous possibility. The most likely, in my opinion, is that this child is abused and had a pet murdered by a friend or family member, and would benefit from counseling. Obviously in this scenario calling the police is counter-productive and actually harmful.

But it is known that killing animals can lead to killing humans. Most children are at some point cruel to animals, but taking it too far at the wrong developmental phase can lead to dysfunction around the valuing of life. That can, and sometimes does, lead to murder. Getting treatment early could save this kids life, if he wasn't just trying to alarm his classmates.

So it all comes back to, unless it is something worse, then he was indeed trying to alarm people, just like pulling a fire alarm. If you think alarming people with fake violence should be legal, that is a good debate to have in a State legislature, but I don't want workers or school officials to make up their own version of what they think the laws should be, and impose that instead of the real laws.

Re:Just like Happy days..

[Aighearach]

The whole point of putting it off into a blog is to show that it is not part of the main site. Being owned by a newspaper, or having hosting provided by them, doesn't cause some sort of authority to leak over to it. That would be crazy. If that was the case we'd have to believe everything they say on cable news, too, because those same companies might own trusted newspapers.

Does the blog follow the standards of journalism that the SF Chronicle is so well known for? No. Does it claim to? No, it claims to be a blog. And a quick glance at their methods, they give one side from a "mommy perspective." Which makes sense and is appropriate, because it is The Mommy Files.

Re:Just like Happy days..

[Aighearach]

Imagination has nothing to do with the problem. People are knee-jerk reacting to this because it matches the cliche, which most of us experienced first hand, of teachers over-reacting to nonsense.

Using violent imagination in place of non-fiction shows either real emotional problems, or clearly trying to alarm people. If he had simply told the police, "It was just a joke, I wasn't trying to alarm anybody I was trying to make them laugh," then he wouldn't have been charged. Instead, he did a full "freak-out" yelling at the police, so they charged him. Keep in mind, in most States this won't lead to any real charges or a record; it will lead to a visit with a Juvenile Court Judge who will, as long as the kid can show he learned to say what he is supposed to say in front of Authorities, assign some community service and drop the charges.

IMO the mother should be teaching the kid the Big Boy Realities here; freaking people out with fake violence crosses lines, and when you cross lines and Authorities are coming down on you, you need skills for that. I mean, unless you're just going to follow the rules. Instead he's learning to whine and cry about being charged with... what he was actually trying to do. Which he should either deny, or be proud of.

The fact is there could be a dead pet that he killed. Or his dead pet that was murdered might be troubling him. Or a dead human he witnesses being killed. Even more likely than any of those, more likely than "innocently" trying to alarm people, is that the child is abused and asking him to "tell something true about himself" creates a real emotional dilemma for him. If they had used not a teacher, but an actual trained counselor, they would have had a chance to determine that. Maybe the police needed to be called, but with a totally different reported crime. We'll never know.

Re:Just like Happy days..

[Aighearach]

Right, so some Coward who calls people names on the internet, that must be your example of a Good Person? LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

LOLOLOL

LOL

I'll give you a hint, though, even though you're trolling. You didn't attempt to understand my words; and I'm not defending their idiot actions. I'm pointing out the flaws in the complaints against those actions, and also providing examples of better actions they could have taken. Just because they were small-minded idiots doesn't mean that any complaint against them is right. In fact, small-minded complaints about small-minded actions are recommending even worse actions. Like, don't even try to find out if this kid witnessed a murder. Obviously the police aren't the right people to find out why this kid is troubled, or if he even is troubled. But neither is the teacher, or the school nurse. What he needed was to have a trained counselor find out what was wrong. They only should have taken the "punish for being disruptive" attitude if he refused to "come clean" and provide a believable story as to what was going on in his mind. It was clearly not "nothing."

Re:Just like Happy days..

[Aighearach]

It is normal for people with advanced degrees to seek out degrees that they personally relate to. Since psychologists earn low pay compared to the number of years they have to study, most of them will have psychological problems, and that is why they identify with the field. That maps better to treating adults who are seeking treatment than to treating children, who are still developing. Few psychological conditions can be treated with psychiatry at a young age, because most conditions change as a person ages and develops. Instead, there is a lot of danger of harm by excess treatment.

That is why in these cases it is almost universally advised to use a Counselor, instead of a Psychiatrist. A counselor is trained in listening, asking good questions, and showing compassion. People who are drawn to the field of Counseling often relate to the field because they felt like people didn't listen to them, or else because they felt people did listen to them, and they valued that, but saw that most others don't have somebody who listens.

Counselors more typically have families, compared to psychiatrists. And they have lower divorce rates, lower suicide rates, etc.

Night and day, actually; psychiatrists have above average suicide rates, counselors have below average suicide rates.

Re:Just like Happy days..

[reikae]

There's no reason to think he killed anybody. That's also why you or I aren't involved in a murder investigation right now. The police can't know for sure we didn't kill anyone. That doesn't mean they don't care. You think what he wrote is a reason to think he killed somebody; I don't.

Please, don't tell them ...

[Rambo Tribble]

... but I strangled my neighbor's unicorn, last night.

Re:Please, don't tell them ...

[hduff]

... but I strangled my neighbor's unicorn, last night.

Or you could have sodomized that unicorn. That would have been OK as well.

But mention the word "gun" and everybody goes batshiat insane!

Re:Please, don't tell them ...

[jtownatpunk.net]

And there's a new euphemism for the list.

Re:Please, don't tell them ...

[Eevee]

... but I strangled my neighbor's unicorn, last night.

Now, I've heard the phrase choking the chicken before, but that one's a new euphemism to me.

Re:Please, don't tell them ...

[Rambo Tribble]

I was afraid of that. So, how do you get pixie dust off your hands?

Re:Please, don't tell them ...

[ArcadeNut]

This is exactly why I support the banning of hands! Just think of all the crime it would stop! Strangling, Shootings, Stabbing, Stealing... Without hands, you cannot do any of that (easily)!

Re:Please, don't tell them ...

[Rambo Tribble]

Isn't that what they call "Sharia Law"?

Re:Please, don't tell them ...

[Aighearach]

A unicorn is a bi-sexual person of either gender, generally in the context of a threesome with a couple and where the unicorn has sex with both members of the couple.

So I think he means he gave a hand job to his neighbors bisexual male third wheel. What a bunch of sluts. LOL

Legal in most States. ;)

Re:Please, don't tell them ...

[countach]

Maybe the gun was a water pistol. Maybe the "killing" was part of a game. It's quite possible this status report was actually true in its own context, not creepy at all, not weird at all. Don't you think asking a few questions might have been the first step, rather than calling in police, mental health people or whoever?

Re:Please, don't tell them ...

[Kohath]

You are the problem. Stop trying to police everyone. Stop trying to be everyone's insane busybody mom. Mind your own business.

Re:Please, don't tell them ...

[Oligonicella]

That the "pet" is an imaginary creature suggests he might have serious guilt problems associated with having killed a real pet, or even a human; or witnessed such a crime.

Oh bullshit. Stop playing psychologist, this wasn't some six year old. Every time I was asked to write about myself I fabricated stuff and made it plain that I did. It's not a teacher's job to investigate a kid's psyche.

Re:Please, don't tell them ...

[Oligonicella]

Look ass-hat AC, I'm a Rep and I find the teacher's, school's and police response intolerable. Most Rep's do, by the way. We're not the ones freaking out over any mention or play acting concerning a gun.

Re:Please, don't tell them ...

[Belial6]

No, it is generally only women that are counted as Unicorns. As in, "Finding a hot young chick that want's to have sex with me at 45, and my wife at 43 is like finding a unicorn."

Re:Please, don't tell them ...

[Aighearach]

Nope. Maybe in your town/circle of friends. But nope.

Interestingly, you not using it that way, does not, cannot, mean that others don't use it that way.

You can look it up, I'm sure any of the websites that keep track of slang can inform you of multiple usages.

Re:Please, don't tell them ...

[lgw]

But he wasn't. I know you Republicans always have trouble with the truth, but that's ridiculous. He did not pull the fire alarm. He did not pull the fire alarm. HE DID NOT PULL THE FIRE ALARM. If he had, that would be a crime. You might as well ask if he was caught anally raping the principal's seven cats while cutting the clitoris off of his teacher's vagina. That is what your nonsense is like. Please stop doing this typical Republican thing. It is disgusting.

If you're entirely oblivious to American politics (fair enough if you're not from here) then some facts: The Republicans are the pro-gun side. The Democrats are the anti-gun side. Public schools in the US are profoundly dominated by the Left (or was passes here for the Left).

Also, the left here is pro-"that religion that cuts girls clitorises off", the right is anti-that-religion. (But I thought that was true in most of Europe too?)

Please inform your future hate-filled rants with these simple facts.

Re:Please, don't tell them ...

[fermion]

An arrest is clearly overkill. Many urban districts are trying to go against the insanity of the past 20 years of zero tolerance and return the classroom management to the classroom teacher, along with more leeway. That said, like your post, such things are usually a call for help. I have see in kids that I personally have known for many years. I have seen it in kids that I hardly know. Such things almost always a request for a response by the child. It might be dropping everything and having a one on one conversation, or therapy. Some educators think that just ignoring the kid is the proper thing to do, and honestly sometimes it is, and if the behavior is repetitive then it simply a training thing, like the baby repeatedly dropping the spoon. But it is a new things, or an escalating things, while it may not be a plan to actually cause harm to someone or themselves, it could be a cry for abuse or some other such thing. Which, again, is not best handled by calling the cops. So we have had the conversation, and attention has been given, and I hope you feel better.

Re:Please, don't tell them ...

[danlip]

I believe Dan Savage coined the term unicorn, and it applies specifically to females (as it is generally much easier to find men who are up for MMF threesomes). Urbandictionary agrees too (mostly).

Re: Please, don't tell them ...

[silentcoder]

ERM. As somebody who lives in Africa I should tell you there is NO religion that condones cutting girls clitorisses off. There are several CULTURES that do but they do so despite not because of their religious beliefs and quite a lot of them are Christian.
And as an American a country where male genital mutilation is an extremely common cultural practice despite being discouraged by your major religion this should not be hard for you to comprehend.

Re:Please, don't tell them ...

[markass530]

Kid isn't black jackass

Re: Please, don't tell them ...

[torsmo]

Nobody here believes your cock-and-ball story.

Re:Please, don't tell them ...

[ganjadude]

im going to go on a limb and guess you are a psych student. because no, no one in their right mind would think that he has guilt problems for writing fantasy regardless of if it was supposed to be non fiction or not. The only people who would believe that are psych majors, and liberal pansies

Re:Please, don't tell them ...

[ganjadude]

hey idiot, its the liberals who get butthurt over things that are gun related

its the liberals who have ran the schools for 2 generations now

republicans would think the teacher/principal should be fired (as they should)

Re:Please, don't tell them ...

[Rambo Tribble]

Then again, it may simply reflect an act of defiance toward an assignment that was unwelcome.

Re:Please, don't tell them ...

[Aighearach]

You might need a citation for that. Where did I claim to be policing everyone, or to be your mommy?

Are you absolutely sure that being against his arrest requires you to misconstrue the actual events?

Is your reading comprehension truly so low that you couldn't read what I said and discover that I was advocating an in-school mental health response?

Do you claim I have no business discussing how schools in my own community should respond to situations? Who is the "busybody mom," again?

Mandatory panic!

[khasim]

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.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Jane Q. Public]

Mandatory panic! Alert the police! Search EVERYTHING! Connect the dots! Personally, I blame the teacher for not sufficiently explaining the limits of the assignment.

I doubt very much the reaction would have been the same if he'd written that he did it with bow & arrow.

As far as I am concerned, it was the school's actions that were criminal. First, censorship is not the business of schools. Second, they called the police over a non-crime. They didn't even have a reasonable suspicion that any crime had been committed.

It's one thing to say "no guns in school". It's quite another to ban any mention of them. This isn't China.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Anonymous Coward]

The police account was that he became "irate" and that's why they had to arrest him. So I'd add to your list e. (isn't rich and) doesn't act how the police like.
 
The best case spin on this for the police is as another version of the "Don't tase me, bro!" guy.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes this stuff gets outrageous. We had a personal experience with it 3 years ago. In a high school English class our son - 15 at the time - was assigned to write a simple biographical essay. They got to chose the subject and needed to have it approved by the teacher. Our son chose Mikhail Kalashnikov and the teacher approved it. They were then allowed to use class computers to do some research. The teacher freaked out and had our kid taken the to the office and there was a big brouhaha because he was "looking at a web site with guns on it". Really? Really? You don't expect to have some pictures of guns in biographical information about the guy who designed the fracking AK-47 along with several other guns? Argh! If they didn't want guns to be seen on school computers perhaps they should not allow students to select the designers of said guns as their biographical assignment. Yep, out of control loonies running the schools.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[timeOday]

He wasn't arrested for writing about shooting the neighbors' dinosaur. He was questioned about it, and then he escalated things from there. The story even says this. Even so, this type of anecdotal story is utterly worthless without knowing the backstory and what else was going on. Maybe it's just as ridiculous as it sounds, more likely not, but you really can't tell anything either way from these little tabloid "Can You Believe It!?" writeups.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt very much the reaction would have been the same if he'd written that he did it with bow & arrow.

Well, of course, the arrow would have bounced off the dino's skin and the dinosaur would have eaten him, end of story!

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Anonymous Coward]

His teacher heard the name and thought the paper would be a fluff piece extolling the brutes of communism. Surprise, Teach'!

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Zero__Kelvin]

At first I thought you were taking about this guy, and all I could think was: "OK. I'm not really a fan either, but expecting the teacher to assume the presence of guns might be taking even my disdain for it a bit too far"

Re:Mandatory panic!

[jedidiah]

Actually, based on the writeup it sounds like he could be guilty of nothing more than knowing his rights.

He was questioned by police without his parents. That's not acceptable. He shouldn't be punished for anything that arose from an illegal interrogation. He may have simply refused to cooperate.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[BronsCon]

I dunno, I robbed a bank once by walking in, unarmed, writing "gun" on a piece of paper, and then shooting everyone in the place with it. Once I'd shot all of them, there was nobody to trigger the alarm or stop me from walking out with all the money.

Letting people write the word "gun" on a piece of paper is very dangerous.

And yes, for those who can't detect satire, this really did happen. We should ban pens and paper so it doesn't happen again.

Re: Mandatory panic!

[mwvdlee]

Why would that matter?
Does your opinion on the events change depending on his skin color?

Re:Mandatory panic!

[meerling]

Irate? Yeah, I'd have become "irate" if some blithering idiot was accusing me of violating the law for a piece of fiction written for class in which his character (modeled as himself) hunted a species that became extinct millions of years ago. (Of course, being a "pet dinosaur" you could probably classify it as fantasy.)

As to fiction including guns. Oh no! Go arrest EVERY AUTHOR ON THE PLANET!!!

The ones disturbing the school were the police and the idiots that panicked over the short story/assignment. At least one person deserves to be fired.

When I think back to the stories I wrote for class back in high school, morons like the ones at his school would have called out the police, fire department, FBI, NSA, NASA, Marines, Air Force, and MIB!

Re:Mandatory panic!

[flayzernax]

yeah, losing your shit is a sure fire way to demonstrate calm and respectful behavior to a young kid writing about *his* fantasies.

if it was a girl she probably would have been treated differently too

our culture is a culture of fear and cowardice :( plain and simple, when we all realise this collectively (lets hope it doesn't take a collective ass kicking) we'll grow up

Until then, our empire is tiny and shitty compared to the aztecs and mighty vikings that came before it, we will see

Re:Mandatory panic!

[flayzernax]

p.s. ps this isn't a testosterone fueled rant, about warrior races, this is coming from someone who is out and proud of who they are and unafraid of their speech still.

we could stand to learn a lot from independent more decentralized cultures from all over the world if they were studied as such, but they are put down as primitive and backwards in history class, while the great white empire of the east india trading company and royal academy of sciences is touted as the greatest achievements of mankind

Re:Mandatory panic!

[AthanasiusKircher]

He was questioned by police without his parents. That's not acceptable. He shouldn't be punished for anything that arose from an illegal interrogation. He may have simply refused to cooperate.

I don't know anything about what happened in this particular case, but in general, your assertion about the law is not true. Minors may be questioned by police without parents present. However, what the Supreme Court has said is that police may have to adjust their standard of when to issue a Miranda warning, depending on the subject's age. The normal standard is that Miranda is not required for questioning when a reasonable person in that situation would feel free to leave at any point. However, minors may sometimes assume they must be more obedient to authority figures and therefore may not feel they are free to leave -- thus, in some cases the Miranda standard should be altered to take that into account. Minors may therefore need to be advised of their rights earlier, or offered an opportunity to speak with parents or counsel to help them understand their rights in that situation.

But there's no legal requirement in the U.S. that parents always need to be present for police to talk to a minor or ask him questions. You haven't presented any evidence of an "illegal interrogation."

Re:Mandatory panic!

[AthanasiusKircher]

By the way -- I'm NOT at all saying I agree with the actions by the police in this situation. The outcome certainly sounds ridiculous. But just because his parents weren't present doesn't make the police questioning "illegal."

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Culture20]

We should ban pens and paper so it doesn't happen again.

"Oh no! He typed 'pens and paper!' When will they stop?!?"

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you do not find cops questioning and searching 16 years old boy after fictional Facebook post mentioning gunning down dinosaur overreaction?

They questioned and searched him and he became difficult cause they acted like bunch of idiots. Then they arrested him, because you have to totally submit yourself to cops no matter how ridiculous their reason for detaining and searching you. Right?

Re: Mandatory panic!

[alex4u2nv]

This story will yield a jurassic response

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Concerned Onlooker]

"We should ban pens and paper so it doesn't happen again."

Oh, it's YOU. I was there that day. I would have been dead if I hadn't had a pen in my coat pocket to write "emergency exit" on the wall behind me.

So, no, I disagree. Pens don't kill people, aneurisms do.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[ShanghaiBill]

It's one thing to say "no guns in school". It's quite another to ban any mention of them. This isn't China.

Why the China bashing? It is not illegal to write a story about guns in China, and I have never heard of this sort of political knee jerk reaction there. An American is FOUR TIMES as likely to be arrested and imprisoned by their government as a Chinese citizen.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Cryacin]

Exactly, the pen is mightier than the sword! Will someone think of the children having to witness these horrors!

Re:Mandatory panic!

[TheReaperD]

No kidding, they would have locked up my writing partner and me in high school and thrown away the key! Our english teacher lovingly referred to us as the Jeffery Dahmer society. ...and our papers were no longer read aloud in the class. But, we still got high grades on them for creativity so I had to give the teacher a lot of respect. Plus, he didn't do anything stupid like this idiot teacher did.

Re: Mandatory panic!

[TheTurtlesMoves]

No, but a lot of peoples reaction to the event will.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[arth1]

Exactly, the pen is mightier than the sword! Will someone think of the children having to witness these horrors!

Google does. Their new e-mail filter might reject statements like the above depending on the word frequencies in spam du jour, because it contains the phrase "pen is".

I wish I were only joking.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Em Adespoton]

"The pen is mightier than the sword" is really a typo; it should read "The pen is mightier than the words." It's hard to poke someone's eye out with a word.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[TheTurtlesMoves]

This isn't China.

Yea, in China its perfectly ok to shoot your neighbors Dinosaur with a gun in a fantasy story.

Criticize the Government... not so much.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[msauve]

"...he escalated things from there. The story even says this."

Are you reading the story linked here? Because, it says no such thing. The closest it comes is "Police told My Fox Chicago that Stone was difficult during questioning..."

That may simply mean he refused to answer their questions, which is well within his rights, and actually the proper thing to do. Don't talk to the police.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Em Adespoton]

I remember having to write a story a week in grade 8; I wrote a number of fictional stories based on real life happenings, some of which did include guns. A lot of what I did at/brought to school looks like it would now result in a call to the police. Of course, I have my suspicions that in many cases (including this one), there's more to the story. I don't think that if the schoolboy me was suddenly dropped into today's schools, they'd call the police (at least not for that sort of thing). More likely, this is a kid that had been talking a lot about guns, was being unruly in class, and this was the last straw for the teacher -- so they abused a "gun" rule and tried to scare him into proper behaviour by having the local policeman talk to him. Doesn't make it right, but it sure frames the story differently, doesn't it?

Re:Mandatory panic!

[digsbo]

we could stand to learn a lot from independent more decentralized cultures from all over the world if they were studied as such, but they are put down as primitive and backwards in history class, while the great white empire of the east india trading company and royal academy of sciences is touted as the greatest achievements of mankind

Yes. I was having this argument with a self-described progressive, who, when faced with me saying, "maybe we don't need to be militarily great, and can learn to live humbly, and trade freely with people without having a huge *@#(ing military" responded with, "But every great nation has to be made that way by having a strong central military" or some such rubbish. It boggled me that someone who nominally claims interest in peace equated greatness with military might. It's downright disturbing.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[DexterIsADog]

Contrary to what many, especially Americans, think, you cannot win a war. The "winners" are simply the last ones standing, whether they have lost arms legs or heads. We still lost the war, like every other participating country.

It's not that I disagree, it's that you are demonstrably wrong.

Which countries redrew borders in the Middle East after World War I? Germany? Guess again. Did Germany voluntarily pay reparations? No.

Which country dominated the world in trade and influence after World War II? Again, not Germany, Italy, Japan, etc. It was the "winner", the U.S.

If you are making the point that even the winners were worse off after the war, I'd have to disagree. The U.S. was booming within a few years. If you argue that the world as a whole was worse off after, for example World War II, tell me, do you think it would have been better to let Germany continue its policy of lebensraum, or two fight the war?

I avoid violence whenever possible, it sickens me. But I cannot deny that it sure solves lots of problems.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[lgw]

Through all of history, every place with a remotely hospitable climate was eventually governed by a nation with a strong military. If on government didn't have that, it would be conquered by one that did. There's no evidence that it's even possible to not have a strong central military for a long time (unless you live someplace where the environment is so hostile it's not worth anyone's effort to conquer, but sometimes even then).
 

Re:Mandatory panic!

[blind monkey 3]

Letting people write the word "gun" on a piece of paper is very dangerous.

It's only dangerous if people were literate. banin reedin an riitin wud b tha eydeel solushyun.



....________|_
\-' _________|
) ___/
| `./_/
| |
`---'

If they can't see.....

Re:Mandatory panic!

[lgw]

Based on what? The official numbers published by China? China executes so many of it's people that they need custom-built execution vans for logistical convenience. America is a China-wannabe when it comes to human rights violations. We try (Delaware apparently bought 1 execution van in 1986), but we always fall short. Write a story about violence in Tiananmen Square and see what happens.

But that doesn't change the fact that the US has gone absolutely fucking insane about both guns and drugs in schools. When you punish a student for eating a Pop-Tart in such a way that it briefly looks like a gun, it's time to back slowly away from the levers of power and let someone sober, sane, and rational take over. And at least that incident has prompted a couple of state legislatures to take action in defense of sanity, but clearly not in South Carolina.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Rick Zeman]

It's one thing to say "no guns in school". It's quite another to ban any mention of them. This isn't China.

Why the China bashing? It is not illegal to write a story about guns in China, and I have never heard of this sort of political knee jerk reaction there. An American is FOUR TIMES as likely to be arrested and imprisoned by their government as a Chinese citizen.

Hey, did you see the Dalai Lama in Tiananmen Square? He was talking about all of the corruption in upper reaches of the Chinese government with some Maoists while he was on his way to the Falun Gong Meeting.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Rick Zeman]

He wasn't arrested for writing about shooting the neighbors' dinosaur. He was questioned about it, and then he escalated things from there. The story even says this.

Evidently, your reading comprehension is a bit off. From the article: The cops took Stone in for questioning and searched his locker and backpack for guns. None were found.
Police told My Fox Chicago that Stone was difficult during questioning and they arrested him and charged him with disturbing the school.

How, praytell, did he "disturb the school" while he was "difficult during questioning" AFTER they "took Stone in for questioning" which, by common American syntax, means at the police station?

Re:Mandatory panic!

[westlake]

I dunno, I robbed a bank once by walking in, unarmed, writing "gun" on a piece of paper, and then shooting everyone in the place with it.

Show the paper to a teller and she will take it as a threat, as she is trained to do.

In real life most of us aren't being paid enough to sort out the real crazies from the geek playing a prank. We'll assume the worst and let the geek - who should know better - fend for himself.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[BasilBrush]

However, if the kid HAD gone on to commit a gun massacre, everyone would be questioning why the signs that the kid was fantasising about guns weren't followed up.

The problem with America here isn't too much censorship, it's that there's too many school gun massacres. Other first world countries don't have security guards and metal detectors in schools. In most other countries school principles don't need to make plans for what to do if a kid turns up with a gun.

Your American problem is your gun culture. And many of you don't even realise it's an aberration.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Lunix Nutcase]

And they'll even execute you for non-violent offenses like not paying your taxes.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Entropius]

And yet Japan and Germany are two of the most prosperous countries in the world today.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's bullshit. If you hand a teller a note that involves violence or a gun, that's the likelihood. If you hand them a fantasy short story they'll likely promptly not read it and go about their business.

A story about killing a pet dinosaur is only worth worrying about if there's signs of mental illness or it's showing up somewhere other than as part of a fantasy writing assignment.

Yes most people aren't trained to tell the difference between the crazies and other folks, but for God's sake it was a paper about killing a dinosaur with a gun! It wasn't even a fantasy about killing classmates or other people.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[hawkinspeter]

Unless you were there fighting the war, it's a bit disingenous to take on other people's war victories as your own. I'm a Brit, but I had nothing to do with World War II or any other war since then. Just being born on the same piece of land as someone else is a strange way of measuring your worth.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[NormalVisual]

"maybe we don't need to be militarily great, and can learn to live humbly, and trade freely with people without having a huge *@#(ing military"

It's a nice thing to aspire to, but without said military, what happens when one of your trading partners decides to just take what you have by force?

Re:Mandatory panic!

[hawkinspeter]

What I don't understand is why there's so many killings in schools that teachers need to be worried about someone looking at a website with guns on it. Do you Americans really shoot yourselves that much that you get scared when a kid looks at pictures of guns?

Re: Mandatory panic!

[LordLucless]

There's also quite a difference between "strong central military" and "three times the size of any other military force in the world"

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Applehu Akbar]

"The penis, mightier than the sword" - W J Clinton.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, in large part because the us rebuilt them from the ashes we consigned them to after their failed adventures in fascism. Then we outlasted the soviet bloc because that system was riddled with internal inconsistencies and improbabilities. The us is far from perfect, but is far better than the alternative of either national socialism, the greater east asian co-prosperity sphere, or the CCCP.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[AK Marc]

If the US were to close the military tomorrow, all standing army, all reserves, all Coast Guard, every gun owned by the feds were destroyed tomorrow (not sold, but destroyed), we'd still have a military force in just the local police enough to repel any threat, including the rest of the world combined invading. China may have a larger military, but has no ability to project that force. Sadly, England would be able to do the most damage, but even then, not able to "invade" or hold anything that wasn't right on the coast under near-constant navy bombardment.

A "realistic" disarmament, leaving national guards, Coast Guards and such in place would be able to repel the rest of the world combined in a world war.

Comparatively, the world has had a large decrease in military force, where world wars were a 20-year occurrence. But those mostly ended after WWII. And yes, lots of wars in the 1800s that weren't world wars were still world wars because Spain, England, and France were battling behind the scenes in lots of "local" skirmishes.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[AK Marc]

New Zealand has a military that is outclassed by a number of US police departments. Yet nobody has made an issue of it. In practice, "weak" nations do not get invaded. Singapore has a larger military and has been invaded more, the largest British surrender, once. Didn't stop the invaders.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[AK Marc]

One can hardly say that USA "won" the great war. The American participation was minimal and not decisive in any way.

So you are saying that if the US entered the war on the "other side" that the result would have been the same?

Re:Mandatory panic!

[canadian_right]

He said arrested and imprisoned, not executed. The USA incarcerates more people, in absolute numbers, and per capita than any other country in the world. The USA has 5% of the worlds population and 25% of the worlds prisoners.

China isn't even in the top ten.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[AK Marc]

No, the teacher thought it would be about ballet. For a non-gun person, they'd likely correct the surname in their brain to a more popular (and commonly biographied person), and even presented with it in writing wouldn't read it correctly.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[thegarbz]

And if the USA had 10 times the population and faced massive prison overcrowding? Also what does execution have to do with the fact that the USA incarceration rate per capita is 7x higher than that of China?

Re:Mandatory panic!

[AK Marc]

There is oil and coal production in NZ, not sure how much as it isn't "my country" just an example of a country with trade partners and near-zero military. A single counter-example proves a generalization wrong.

Re: Mandatory panic!

[DigiShaman]

It's when they back up their liberal fantasy utopian vision for the rest of us with force, do they become communists.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[bigfinger76]

No. This fear is irrational.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Lunix Nutcase]

I was talking about China as was the person I responded to. And just to correct myself, apparently 3 years ago they stopped executing people for it.

http://www.newser.com/story/11...

Re:Mandatory panic!

[schlachter]

Aren't you all missing the point! It's not about the gun.

He KILLED his neighbors dinosaur!! Horrible.

Re: Mandatory panic!

[schlachter]

I think China has a military of this size partly to keep people employed. It's not like they really use it.

But it is only twice as large as any other force in the world...twice the size of the USA, twice the size of India, and North Korea.

Re: Mandatory panic!

[epyT-R]

skin color and sex, both, yes.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[jenningsthecat]

Mandatory panic! Alert the police! Search EVERYTHING! Connect the dots!

How can you make such sarcastic references indicating that you clearly understand the issue and disapprove of what happened, then proceed to "blame the teacher for not sufficiently explaining the limits of the assignment"?

Personally, I blame witless school officials, over-reaching law enforcement, and a military-industrial complex that has propagandized and brainwashed the populace into believing that even just a fictional description of violence is tantamount to a crime. This is 'thoughtcrime' straight out of Orwell's '1984'.

BTW, your post reminds me of another Orwellian concept, namely "doublethink".

Re: Mandatory panic!

[epyT-R]

Nah, socialists use taxes on your income and property, the communists use guns as they already own all of your property.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[russotto]

The cops just didn't know that dinosaurs were extinct. Now, if he'd written that he killed an honest cop, they'd have known it was fiction.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[AK Marc]

Yeah, and we've gotten to the point that with the Guard holding "real" tanks and things like fighter jets, and the police with APCs and such, we have a domestic military capable of repelling the entire world, should the entire world declare war tomorrow. The military is surplus, and should be eliminated, saving trillions we can use to pay down the debt. If we paid off the debt and eliminated the military, we could cut Federal income tax in half, and increase services.

But no, being able to kill foreign dictators because they sell oil in Euros, not Dollars, is worth bankrupting the country and destabilizing the world.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[flayzernax]

There's a difference between military might, military dictatorships, and a strong cultural propensity for the martial arts.

I'm not sure what we stand to gain from making ourselves the largest and possibly most unwieldy (yes we can project force all over, but at what cost and how easy is it to disrupt us?) force on the planet.

I've read through most of this thread. I believe it does take more than a strong central military to hold a society together. Needless to say. I am speaking in terms of endurance and stability over large stretches of time. Modern society is still relatively young and going through lots of growing pains. We probably kill each other more on a regular basis violently than we did in the past overall. Just in a much more dynamic, indirect and less nationalistic way. But I haven't really sat down and looked at the numbers or have done any research to specifically back up that idea.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[flayzernax]

Err, as in force, I meant to say the largest target as well.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[HiThere]

I wish that wasn't a good point. I know that there are many things that are considered human rights violations in many countries that are common in the US. But do remember that EVERY country lies to it's citizens so that they will think that its better than it is. And there is no real agreement as to what is a human rights violation.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Anubis350]

What, pray tell, (ignoring all other effects for a second) do you think would happen to the economy if a)all defense contractors suddenly had their orders shrink by 80% (bearing in mind this cascades down the supply chain to everyone from small subcontractors like speciality machine shops to the delis that make their bones on selling lunch and coffee to everyone working on projects) and b)if we suddenly dumped all the people currently employed by the DoD directly in the labor market? Not that the military is really about to be drastically eliminated but if it were the economic effects alone would probably tank the US economy, and the world's right afterwards.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Anubis350]

NZ has the advantage of knowing that if another nation invaded them there are countries with big sticks, like the US and UK, that would defend them. It's easy to go light on national defense when you have other people willing to step in. When you're already the big fish there isn't someone else to rely on

Re:Mandatory panic!

[HiThere]

No, not really.

Re: Mandatory panic!

[LordLucless]

I was referring to the US military, which has a budget more than three times the size of China's. China might have more troops, but the US' combat ability is still far greater.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[AK Marc]

GDP would triple in 5 years. Easy. Next time ask a hard one.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[drkim]

Writing "gun" on a piece of paper and handing it to the teller might actually be effective - it conveys the threat of force and probably would lead to armed robbery charges.

Does this look like "gub" or "gun"?

Re:Mandatory panic!

[AthanasiusKircher]

How, praytell, did he "disturb the school" while he was "difficult during questioning" AFTER they "took Stone in for questioning" which, by common American syntax, means at the police station?

Despite the wording here, Stone was questioned at the school. See this article, for example, for clarification:

The police report suggests that the entire incident was handled as if Stone was an active shooter, rather than a kid who had written an obviously fantastical story: "While administrators, Officer Floyd and I looked for the suspect all students were held in their homeroom classes, until the suspect was located, bookbag located, and locker was cleared with negative results for a weapon."

Stone was then brought to the principal's office, where police questioned him about the gun comment in the story. He "became very irate stating that it was just a joke," and then "continued to be disruptive and was placed in handcuffs, which were double locked and check for fit, and was advised he was being detained for Disturbing Schools."

According to Aylor, Stone was taken to the police station and booked like a common criminal. He was released after his mother arrived and signed a Custodial Promise form. The charge is "disorderly conduct based on the alleged interviews related to when they were discussing the writing," said Aylor.

I agree that the response to all of this sounds rather crazy, and there seems to be little reason that this should have escalated to an arrest. However, let's keep to the facts here. Whatever Stone is accused of doing in terms of "disorderly conduct" happened at the school.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[quenda]

I dunno, I robbed a bank once by walking in, unarmed, writing "gun" on a piece of paper,

Worst analogy ever. Handing the teller a piece of paper with "gun" on it will get you done for armed robbery. It will reasonably be construed as a threat. Same as hands in pockets with finger extended.
Threatening to have a gun or knife is enough to have you locked up for years.

But the kid did not make any threats, so what on earth is your point?

Re:Mandatory panic!

[ganjadude]

when I was in 8th grade i had a smaller than kid hand sized, see thru blue water pistol in the last few weeks of school. the principal brought me in, and the cops were there. I wasnt arrested but i was yelled at by both the cops and principal, because "someone might mistake it for a real gun"

my mom and dad are just laughing at them like are you kidding me?? I ended up getting suspended for a day, my dad took me to the shooting range to show me what a real gun was (and made sure the principal and cops knew, and knew i wasnt in any trouble)

Re:Mandatory panic!

[ganjadude]

wouldnt you escalate things if you were being accused of something ridiculous?

Re:Mandatory panic!

[ganjadude]

no, only the ones where they feel its a gotcha! moment (then it usually turns out that the teenager was in the wrong)

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Lehk228]

translation: average chinese citizen is four times as fearful of their government as the average american citizen

Re:Mandatory panic!

[lgw]

And I said according to whose figures? The official Chinese figures? Including the millions in work camps? Or do those die off fast enough to keep the count low.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[denzacar]

What if you write "sword" instead?

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Gonoff]

...Sadly, England would be able to do the most damage,..

The problem with that statement is that England does not have any armed forces. The Royal Air Force is British, The Royal Navy is British and even specifically regionally English army units are in the British army. It is uninformed statements like yours that has caused so many of my fellow Scots to want separation from the UK.
(Hopefully this will fail like their last attempt, despite the fiddling that has been done.)

Re:Mandatory panic!

[lsatenstein]

Mandatory panic! Alert the police! Search EVERYTHING! Connect the dots! Personally, I blame the teacher for not sufficiently explaining the limits of the assignment.

I doubt very much the reaction would have been the same if he'd written that he did it with bow & arrow.

As far as I am concerned, it was the school's actions that were criminal. First, censorship is not the business of schools. Second, they called the police over a non-crime. They didn't even have a reasonable suspicion that any crime had been committed.

It's one thing to say "no guns in school". It's quite another to ban any mention of them. This isn't China.

When you live in a gun society, and you glorify the criminally insane, what do you expect. You live in fear, in fear of another mass killing.
And the sad part is that the wild west ended in the 1800s around the world, but in the USA. So, the right to bear arms is a right that results in the country with not the largest population, but the largest per capita gun killings, accidental of intentional.

Re: Mandatory panic!

[denzacar]

They have 3 years of service in the army, 4 in the navy.
Even with all those deferred "if he is the only worker in his family providing its means of subsistence or if he is a student in a full-time school" - that's still a LOT of recruits coming in every year.
Which necessitates a large military structure just to handle all those enlisted men.

In a country with such a large rural population (about 656.56 million, a lot of them poor) obligatory service like that boils down to essentially population control and education.
Through drilling-in obedience to authority and military discipline into 18-year-old teenage boys and through essentially removing them from the pool of potential fathers for 3-4 years.
Also, you're not neet while serving in the army.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[BronsCon]

The punctuation mark at the end of that quote is a comma. Do you know what that means? It means

and then shooting everyone in the place with it.

is part of the same sentence. Your whole post kind of falls apart when you realize that, doesn't it?

Re:Mandatory panic!

[BronsCon]

Hell, I wrote a short story, impromptu, not even part of an assignment, about a kid who was bullied and just plain didn't fit in, who ended up bringing a gun to school, threatening his classmates, then shooting himself. All of my teachers loved it, except for one who thought it was a red flag; she took it to the principal, who also loved it. He congratulated me for having written something so thought provoking and compelling, told me he wished more of his students wrote the way I did, and that was the end of it. Shit's gotten too out of hand today.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[NoOneInParticular]

Sure, and by the same measure, the average European citizen is about 20 times less fearful of their government as the average American citizen. And that's the land of the free?

Re: Mandatory panic!

[Optali]

China might have more troops, but the US' combat ability is still far greater.

You sure?

Check out this link:Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding

You have seen Kungfu Panda, right? Nuff said.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Optali]

As far as I know England has no army. Maybe if you wait a few years and Wales and Northern Ireland follow suite to Scotland it will. Unless you count the supporters of West Ham United... pretty scary of you ask me.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Optali]

Ha! You treacherous Englishman wanting to make these poor Yanks believe that you don't have a powerful army. But you can't trick me, I have read a lot and I am well informed about these Knights of the Round Table you have hidden somewhere in a secret place known as Camelot.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Optali]

That's because of their gross habits New Zealand Pub Serving Horse Semen Shots.

Nobody wants to get even close to this country... not to speak about being infested y hobbits!!

Re:Mandatory panic!

[CrimsonAvenger]

Comparatively, the world has had a large decrease in military force, where world wars were a 20-year occurrence. But those mostly ended after WWII. And yes, lots of wars in the 1800s that weren't world wars were still world wars because Spain, England, and France were battling behind the scenes in lots of "local" skirmishes.

Two things:

1) one of the reasons world wars went out of style was the US's overwhelming military dominance. World Wars were fashionable when the "great powers" (note the plural) had comparable military strengths.

2) Before the 20th century, "world wars" were mostly impractical because it took so damn long to get anywhere. Months to cross the Atlantic, more months to cross the Pacific, much less to do the fighting when you got across, that sort of thing....

Re: Mandatory panic!

[LinuxLuver]

He also wrote "kill" using the "gun". Tell the whole story. America's gun terror is a consequence of its idiotic gun laws.... Or lack of them.

Re: Mandatory panic!

[LinuxLuver]

China can descend into violence on a large scale and quickly. History makes that clear. That huge army is probably required for disaster relief and suppressing local insurrections.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[AK Marc]

The problem with that statement is that England does not have any armed forces. The Royal Air Force is British, The Royal Navy is British and even specifically regionally English army units are in the British army.

Should I presume the British forces to belong to Britain (England and Wales) or Great Britain? Or are UK forces called British, even if not from or based in Britain?

I was under the assumption that the UK armed forces, whatever they are called, are roughly proportionally staffed by member kingdoms, making English, what, 80% of the population of the force?

An army that's 90%+ English wouldn't be unreasonably called "English".

Re:Mandatory panic!

[AK Marc]

Before the 20th century, "world wars" were mostly impractical because it took so damn long to get anywhere. Months to cross the Atlantic, more months to cross the Pacific, much less to do the fighting when you got across, that sort of thing....

Yes, but before 1492, "World Wars" were common, but only involved Eurasia/Africa. The one continent where someone could theoretically walk from South Africa to France to China without ever getting your feet wet, though in practice, boats across the Aegean and Mediterranean were much easier than walking. And, for a while, every England vs world (France and Spain) was a world war. The Crusades were World Wars, even if East Asia didn't really care.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[digsbo]

There is a huge gaping chasm between a huge military that can only be justified by imperial interventionism abroad, and just enough military to safely defend the continent. One could argue the latter wouldn't need to be highly centralized, even, except maybe the navy and a small air corps. He, also, seemed to miss that point, as you did.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[digsbo]

See my reply above: http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

It's a false dichotomy to say we need enough bombs to blow the world up a million times or be totally undefended.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[digsbo]

And if other nations scaled back on excess defense spending, the ones who rely on them would have the option of stepping it up. It's not an either/or thing, and it's dynamic.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[LifesABeach]

Just curious, was the name of pet called, "Barney?"

Re:Mandatory panic!

[romons]

High school age kids are just coming into their psychosis at that age. Full blown schizophrenia happens in about 1 in 100 individuals, so, if you have kids in high school, and your high school has 1000 kids, 10 of them are probably fighting incipient insanity. Many more will end up in jail.

I'd go with being more, rather than less, paranoid in this situation if I was a teacher or administrator.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[quenda]

The point is, you were being sarcastic, but unwittingly stating a truth among the pointless absurdity. Wring "gun" on a piece of paper can be very dangerous - especially in the scenario of a bank.
But not in a school essay - so there is no connection. Context is vital.

Re: Mandatory panic!

[shutdown -p now]

China only has conscription in theory. In practice, because the volunteer pool is so large (and it obviously is, not just because of the sheer size of the country, but also because military is a fairly prestigious and stable career, and hence desirable), they don't actually draft everyone, it's all volunteers.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[shutdown -p now]

Those shootings happen so rarely in practice that all the outrage about them is just farce, and the security measures are just theater. Much like terrorism, the chances of your kid dying in a shooting are so low as to be negligible, especially compared to the real dangers such as cars and swimming pools.

But because it is very easy to hype, and hype gets eyeballs - and therefore sells ads - the media keeps blowing it all out of proportion, and hence you have a moral panic about guns.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[aybiss]

"our culture is a culture of fear and cowardice :( plain and simple, when we all realise this collectively (lets hope it doesn't take a collective ass kicking) we'll grow up"

Your culture is a culture of guns. You don't even need to grow up about it if you just stop letting people shoot at each other all day long.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[gzuckier]

Meanwhile the guy with the pet dinosaur gets off scot free. Don't these people realize how dangerous those things are?

Re:Mandatory panic!

[BronsCon]

Perhaps I've more wit than you give me credit for?

Re: Mandatory panic!

[denzacar]

First a correction.
The law I quoted above was changed in 1999, and the obligatory service is now 2 years, not 3-4.

Second... You are quoting a Wikipedia article(s) which fails to source its claim of "in practice - it's all volunteers".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Which is a claim, arising from some BS "is blue REALLY blue" philosophizing in a footnote in National Air and Space Intelligence Center's handbook on China's Airforce.
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/aw...

Which goes on and on, describing the whole compulsory registration process, the numbers and stats of 400.000 conscripts EACH YEAR, how many come from urban and rural (mostly rural) areas, how the law states that there is a 2 year sentence for NOT REGISTERING - and then they decide to bullshit about it all MAYBE-SORTA-KINDA being voluntary recruitment cause almost no one goes to jail for not registering.
Riiiiiight.

That's like saying that you don't need a driver's license cause almost no one goes to jail on account of driving without a license.
The same report, few pages earlier, mentions the prior practice of "volunteering" for 16 years (quotation marks included) after serving the obligatory 3 or 4 years, prior to 1999 reforms.
And the same section asking "Hey? Is this REALLY conscription? Or perhaps happy-fun-volunteer recruiting for fun and profit?" goes on and on about the issues and actions taken to ACTUALLY recruit college graduates.

Because there are almost no college graduates in the army. Because that is one of the exceptions for NOT serving - being in school.
Urban kids represent only about 33% of conscripts. Cause they have more means to avoid service until "aging out". To bend the law.
Starving oneself into exemption if needed - like that Taiwanese kid.

China IS reforming its military and its recruiting policies, but they will probably never completely eliminate the conscription.
Too many young single males and too much rural population with too much free time on their hands and nothing to do.
And while for most people being conscripted into military service is the closest they'll get to serving a prison sentence for something they didn't do - some actually benefit from military discipline and routine.
And that population sample tends to intersect with the sample of young, poor and (in China) rural boys with little access to higher education.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[pnutjam]

Why the ascii art pic of someone getting tea-bagged?

Re: Mandatory panic!

[shutdown -p now]

There is a big difference between registering for service, and actually getting drafted for service. US doesn't even have an active draft, but still requires all males of applicable age to register, and a couple decades ago the penalties for not doing so were quite hefty (if not enforced in practice). I have no doubt that China has even harsher laws on the books, and may well enforce them. The question, rather, is how many of those registered are actually drafted.

The paper that you cite does not necessarily support the notion of compulsory conscription. Yes, it does say that 400k conscripts enter the force every year. It does not say whether those were involuntarily conscripted, or it's those that actually expressed the desire to serve. The two notions are not contradictory - I'm quite familiar with how conscription works in my home country, Russia, and there also you see some people who are actually eagerly waiting for it, because it gives them a steady occupation and a roof over their head for a year (used to be two), opens up some career opportunities such as police or further contract service, and is generally vastly preferable to being jobless and drinking oneself to death in their home village of 100 people. China, with its much larger, and poorer rural population, should have the same thing on a vastly bigger scale, and their army deal is better to boot, so they shouldn't have any shortage of willing recruits. Now, if in practice, every year they only draft those that expressed the desire to be drafted, is it a de facto voluntary system? I would say yes.

I'm not sure what your link to the Taiwanese kid story is supposed to prove, since this is a different country, and the one where conscription definitely does exist, and people are drafted against their will.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[almitydave]

wouldnt you escalate things if you were being accused of something ridiculous?

I'm imagining a scene where a typical 16-year old boy, having written an obviously nonsensical, nonthreatening comment, is corralled in the principal's office. There are a couple of stern, serious police officers staring him straight in the face, asking in all seriousness about shooting his neighbor's dinosaur. How could he possibly react EXCEPT for an irate "are you f-ing kidding me?!?" I'm not sure that I, with 20 years of life experience on this kid, could react very differently.

Do it - imaging yourself, sitting in a chair surrounded by a bunch of stern authority figures, some in uniform, asking you: "why did you want to shoot your neighbor's dinosaur?"

Sure, maybe he was unruly towards the officers, which is never a good strategy, but some people are provoked to anger by (accurately) perceived lunacy on the part of people who should know better, which would include teachers, principals, and officers of the law.

Of course, I wasn't there - perhaps he actually did something criminal, but I haven't seen it mentioned yet.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[david_thornley]

WWI was fought almost exclusively in Europe and the Middle East, with some initial actions elsewhere in the world, wiping out German colonies and warships. The submarine warfare did extend through the Mediterranean and much of the North Atlantic, IIRC. The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries were quite capable of similar scales.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[david_thornley]

The biggest powers on the winning side were the US, the Soviet Union, and the British Commonwealth and Empire. The Brits were badly hurt economically by the war, and never did regain their former standing. The Soviet Union was ravaged, but did benefit from the elimination of a lot of the competition.

It's worse in WWI. Russia was technically on the winning side, and its government didn't survive. The British Empire was badly hurt, France was really screwed over, and Italy suffered some serious blows. Only the US, among the victors, wound up better off. (Well, technically, Romania got a whole lot of territorial expansion out of a truly miserable military effort.)

Re:Mandatory panic!

[david_thornley]

There really aren't all that many killings in schools. The problem is that they dominate the news when they do happen, and so it's perceived that there's a lot of killings in schools. I believe a psychologist would call it the availability heuristic, the idea that if you can come up with examples of something easily you'll perceive it as common.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Gnostic Teflon]

You mentioned the Aztecs. I think you should read the memoirs of Bernal Diaz del Castillo, one of Cortez's foot soldiers, to know truly what the Aztecs, and all the occupants of Mesoamerica were really about. It was not a romantic reality. Even with our cowardice state ruler mentality, we have it magnitudes better than any of those, except the royalty, that came before us.

Re: Mandatory panic!

[denzacar]

The question, rather, is how many of those registered are actually drafted.

No.

Replace "conscription law" with "death sentence" and see if "how many of those are actually carried out" and see if that makes sense.
A law is a law is a law.

Government MAY not enforce every single law fully as it lacks the capacity or willingness to enforce 100% of laws on the books, but the fact of an existence of such a law shows CLEAR INTENT TO ENFORCE IT.
They reformed the laws several times, yet they kept all elements needed for unforced conscription.

The paper that you cite does not necessarily support the notion of compulsory conscription.

You are missing the point of that citation. Reread my comment above again.

The paper lists MANY examples of circumstantial evidence of an existing and ongoing conscription.
What it DOES NOT DO is prove a "de facto" non-existence of conscription and an existence volunteer service in its stead.
BUT, it tries to argue such a position, despite the COMPLETE LACK of any evidence for its thesis.

I.e. It's bullshit.
And I'm not citing it as a proof of existence of conscription or volunteer service or non-existence of either, but as a source of that unsourced and unsubstantiated bullshit claim.

I'm not sure what your link to the Taiwanese kid story is supposed to prove

Again, reread my comment.
It is there as an example of tactics and means for deferment available to the urban population, and NOT available to the rural kids.

Taiwanese kid could afford such a stunt at 24 - i.e. 6 years after he became eligible.
For 6 years he dodged the service in the country you define as "one where conscription definitely does exist, and people are drafted against their will."

A rural kid of 18, trying the same dieting technique, would just be written off as underfed because he's from a poor village.
Older than average, emaciated kid among the group of well fed city kids 6 years younger... clearly he's sickly and incapable of service.
He probably even looked at least 30% older than all the other recruits.

And a city kid gets that 6 year buffer cause he has a high school right across the street and a college two blocks away.
Unlike the rural kid who probably walked couple of hours to and from school IF there was one that near, and who could never afford to go to a college unless he was exceptionally intelligent and studious so that he would get a scholarship to a college somewhere in the city.

While the rest of his class went off to serve.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[drkim]

Never thought of this until I made the same typo elsewhere a few minutes ago: B, or b doesn't look line N, or n in handwriting. On the other hand, B is next to N on a keyboard. Therefore, Woody Allen wrote that script on a typewriter.

You are very wise...

Mr. Allen writes everything on a typewriter. An Olympia portable model SM-3, to be precise.

He bought it in 1951, and has used it for every script he's written since.

Bonus factoid:
Instead of [CTL] X and [CTL] V, Mr. Allen uses scissors and stapler.

Re: Mandatory panic!

[sudon't]

I think the anonymous coward was wondering if the child's color influenced the reaction of the school.

My opinion is that this teenager learned a valuable lesson - don't trust authority. It's important for people to understand that the adults in charge can just as likely be hysterical idiots as not, and the rules they invent can be nonsensical. The sooner you learn this life lesson, the better, and the schools are doing an excellent job of teaching this nowadays.

I thought this only happened in Florida

[Issarlk]

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.

Re:I thought this only happened in Florida

[Anonymous Coward]

Youngsters?

Do not minimize the dangers that these pint-size suspects pose to law enforcement safety. 8 year olds should serve mandatory 20 year sentences in prison for pretending to make a gun shaped hand motion at another 8 year old who is designated as the sherrif. Law enforcement safety comes first.

Re:I thought this only happened in Florida

[bill_mcgonigle]

Time to build more prisons for youngsters.

What, have Truancy Officers really been slacking that much?

Debbil in de details

[paiute]

If you read the details of the story, it becomes quite a bit less sensational.

Re: Debbil in de details

[bistromath007]

...How so? I just read it, and the only thing that makes it in any way "less sensational" is the fact that this mother and child are both so thoroughly whipped by this idiotic culture that they're playing along with the idea of it being the kid's fault for daring to have some cheek.

Re:Debbil in de details

[WaffleMonster]

If you read the details of the story, it becomes quite a bit less sensational.

The details make it worse because not kissing police officers asses resulted in bullshit disturbance charges. (e.g. retaliation)

Not only did the grownups at the school abuse their authority so did the police.

Re:Debbil in de details

[Aighearach]

When a blog called "the mommy files" interviews mommy and her little darling and describe his behavior as having been "difficult," without giving any account of the police or school version of events, you should probably read that as, "luckily he didn't get charged with assaulting a police officer, because that is what an adult would have gotten."

Re:Debbil in de details

[jedidiah]

No. If you read the details of the story, it becomes MORE sensational.

A minor was questioned by the police without his parents present.

Re:Debbil in de details

[sjames]

In what way? 16 year old writes two clearly flippant sentences that cannot possibly be true. School officials, apparently too mentally ill to distinguish reality from fantasy, call the cops. Cops, apparently also mentally ill, question the boy as if what he wrote could possibly be a confession. They then arrest him for the perfectly natural outrage he expressed at being subjected to their madness. Then principal Nutty McCuckoo suspends him for a week over the incident that the school instigated.

In what way is that not sensational?

In a just world, the students and their parents will mock and ridicule the principal until he is forced to resign. He brought it upon himself by refusing to be more mature than the kids in his charge.

Re:Debbil in de details

[AK Marc]

When he's in police custody, being questioned, how can he be disturbing anyone? Or do the police hold private questioning in the auditorium of the school with all the students invited? Seems much more likely, it was a fabricated charge to hold him for something, and then his family started making a fuss, so the police stuck with it.

Re:Debbil in de details

[AK Marc]

When the police and the school are contacted for comment and refuse, what would you do? Bury the story to not soil the good reputation of the police?

Re:Debbil in de details

[sjames]

Based on the assignment and the response, flippancy is clear. Or did you suspect his neighbors somehow opened a rift in time to acquire a pet dinosaur? Perhaps they are witches?

Me lot? How many of me do you think there are? How about they blow the dust from their brains and act on credible threats rather than obvious non-threats? How about they do their job? How about they actually handle the situation like real adults instead of calling the cops every time someone sneezes?

Re:So...

[mdsolar]

South Carolina BBQ sauce is good. https://www.google.com/search?...

Re:My pet dinosaur ate my neighbor

[NotSanguine]

He had bought a gun to take care of business, but really who brings a gun to a dinosaur fight?

Get real. Everyone knows you need A Gun For Dinosaur. I wonder if de Camp was arrested for this story. Sigh.

Now I'm worried about Holocaust assignments

[FutureRobertOverlord]

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.

What else?

[Stoutlimb]

He'll probably get jail time if he admits he chokes his chicken too...

Don't Ask if you Don't Want

[The Raven]

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."

Re:Don't Ask if you Don't Want

[Zero__Kelvin]

No wonder's they are extinct. School kids keep shooting 'em!

Re:Don't Ask if you Don't Want

[Culture20]

FTFA (w/emphasis mine): When a South Carolina student was given an assignment by his teacher to create a Facebook-type status report telling something interesting about himself

Huh. Then he was following the rules of the assignment. Facebook statuses are mostly fiction, and some are fantasy.

Re:Don't Ask if you Don't Want

[Em Adespoton]

Huh. Then he was following the rules of the assignment. Facebook statuses are mostly fiction, and some are fantasy.

Ah; I begin to see the problem. For him to be so insightful, he'd have to be using Facebook. As he's not 18 yet, he's underage to be using facebook, and so needed to be visited by the police for participating illegally in adult activities such as reading Facebook.

Re:My pet dinosaur ate my neighbor

[Khyber]

Bonus points for quoting one of my favorite stories.

Probably all too plausible

[sacrilicious]

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.

Re:Probably all too plausible

[CrimsonAvenger]

Or maybe they're up to date enough to realize that the Blue Jay I'm looking at out in my backyard is a dinosaur.

As is the neighbor's parakeet....

Coming soon...

[SeaFox]

Jurassic Park banned from video stores for being terrorist propaganda!

Re:So...

[Zero__Kelvin]

Are we back to talking about that guy strangling his neighbor's Unicorn again?

Disturbance in the course

[WaffleMonster]

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.

Yes it is.

[Anonymous Coward]

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!"

Re:Yes it is.

[Anonymous Coward]

"my beloved NPR.." - there's your problem. No news organization should be "beloved". It just makes you their bitch. Just because you don't like the facts that you are getting doesn't mean that you "cannot get the facts".

Re:Yes it is.

[lgw]

There's no better decision you can make, IMO, than to walk away from broadcast media, and newspapers, and all those centrally-controlled outlets for news. If you have a deep distrust of blogs, that can work for you. Find a blog or two of interest; look for ones that routinely correct stories when commenters point out flaws, avoid those that instead ban the commenters. As long as you keep your distrust of blogs, that's a good way to keep your head out of the sand.

The only way to learn anything about current events is the combination of a hard-to-censor channel, a willingness to correct mistakes, and your own distrust of everything on that channel.

Re:Yes it is.

[jopsen]

Unless you want to do a journalist job... You need a reporter you can trust to present the story without too much bias... That's very hard today...

Re:Yes it is.

[khallow]

Out of curiosity, does the phrase "50 cent army" mean anything to you?

Re:Yes it is.

[AuMatar]

Where do you think those blogs are getting their info from? Their large collection of reporters circling the globe and getting the real scoop? Or do they just check out the big news sites for 99% of their stories? (Hint: the answer is B). So you have yet another layer of obfuscation and bias in there. Congratulations, your news is even worse.

Re:Yes it is.

[pyg]

I appreciate the spirit of your post but slashdot is no longer an independent blog/news site. Just because you're paranoid... doesn't mean XXXXXXX won't be modifying/moderating your post.

Re:Yes it is.

[lgw]

What's needed is a layer of editorial fact checking. Today, the broadcast media instead checks for compatibility with their political party, instead. Many blogs many do the same, of course, but there are already a few that at least view favorable stories with suspicion, at least do a cursory google search first, ask around for technical experts on technical topics, and often update stories with retractions. None of which ever happens in the mainstream press.

Re:Yes it is.

[IHateEverybody]

You seem to be filled with paranoia, an easy sense of outrage, and distrust of all media. Are you by any chance a news pundit?

Re:Yes it is.

[nobodie]

"Wumao brigade"
The Chinese army of "fact checkers" who make sure that nothing "bad for the public" gets on the internet (or SMS when I was there, including Skype of course). The sad part is that most of them are unemployed Masters and PhD holders from mid to lower level Chinese universities who have formed the "Ant Tribe" and live in little concrete boxes with a bed, a desk and a computer on the desk. It is worse than you can imagine: they have tapped out their family's resources and have nothing to show for it, not even a factory job (they are over-educated for something like that).

Re:My pet dinosaur ate my neighbor

[NotSanguine]

Bonus points for quoting one of my favorite stories.

It is a good one. Although, I'd more highly recommend The Gnarly Man if you haven't read it.

I give up

[Guru80]

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!

Re:I give up

[Nephandus]

They always were. Officially, it's not psychotic, if it's normal, and you're "socially disordered" if you have a problem playing along with them. Seriously. Check either shrink bible.

Re:I give up

[slew]

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!

Not sneezing itself, but saying "bless you" when someone else sneezes will get you suspended, but shutter to think what would happen if someone said "god is great" when someone sneezed...

Mod parent up!

[khasim]

From TFA:

Police told My Fox Chicago that Stone was difficult during questioning and they arrested him and charged him with disturbing the school.

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.

Re:Mod parent up!

[Anonymous Coward]

"For a student, being "difficult during questioning" should (at most) result in expulsion AND NOT ARREST."

being "difficult during questioning" by police should result in nothing at all since that is a constitutionally protected right.

Re:Mod parent up!

[epyT-R]

why should "difficult during questioning" result in expulsion? You've got to be fucking kidding me.

He should have...

[countach]

If he'd said he'd shot Osama bin Laden, they probably would have made him Valedictorian, and nominated him for a medal.

I had to switch my stepson's junior high school

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I had to switch my stepson's junior high school

[scotts13]

Pffft! I had a riflery class at my christian summer camp. When I was nine. I was a pretty good shot. Good thing I didn't write a story about it.

Re:I had to switch my stepson's junior high school

[Rick Zeman]

I think he should have proposed starting a rifle club.

Re:I had to switch my stepson's junior high school

[Reziac]

Fortunate that you had another school to switch to. Many places, you have a choice of one.

And I'm with the other two replies... this was the time to start a rifle club!

I don't think it's coincidence that we also have the insanity of "trigger warnings" lest someone be traumatized anew by the mere mention of whatever evil befell them... in Another Forum[TM] I griped that soon mere breathing will require a 'trigger warning' lest it traumatize someone who once had a sip of water go down the wrong way.

Cuz, ya know, the mere mentioning of something (eg. a gun) is the same as doing horrible things with it.

Mod parent up!

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Share the blame

[Livius]

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.)

Re:Share the blame

[Em Adespoton]

This kind of assignment is usually done at the behest of social services to see what "signs" of home problems or mental issues students may have. It's pretty much a standard for students aged 13-15.

And yeah; I hated those too; but what I hated most was when no structure was given, and then I was penalized for thinking outside the box (yes, that unspoken box that the teacher said didn't exist until s/he saw my work).

Where is the dinasour?

[vargad]

Okay the police did not find the gun, but have they found the poor pet dinasour?

This is entirely justified

[bunhed]

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

you're making California look good

[dltaylor]

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.

Disturbing

[future assassin]

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.

I'm old.

[Rinikusu]

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.

He should have wrote about a jesus pet

[future assassin]

that the neighbor had which he shot then crucified.

The school did the right thing

[real gumby]

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.

It's all ass covering

[scotts13]

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.

Re:It's all ass covering

[Anubis IV]

Bingo on the ass covering. Everything about this reeks of CYA.

The teacher reads the word "gun", and while they are probably okay with laughing it off and asking the student to take the assignment more seriously, they know that if anything ever comes of it, they'll be fired, so they report it to the department head. The department head knows that "boys will be boys" and that this is just silly, but they have no choice but to pass it up the line if they want to make sure that they aren't the one holding the hot potato if the student ever does go off the deep end. So on and so forth until it gets to the principal, who takes it to the police.

The police should have had the common sense to tell the school they were overreacting and that they wouldn't do anything at all about it, or at the VERY most just pull the kid aside for a few minutes between classes and get a read on him while letting him know that it probably wasn't a smart thing to write, but instead they demonstrated extraordinarily poor judgment, leading to the situation we saw here.

Steven Spielberg soon to be arrested...

[Anonymous Coward]

... for killing a dinosaur Steven Spielberg posing next to a dead dinosaur

Give him an A+

[Nyder]

Because this is the sort of shit i see on Facebook all the time, I think he did the assignment great.

Hanity runs the government? or points out stupid

[raymorris]

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.

Re:guns guns guns

[bigfinger76]

I have a sneaking suspicion that you're British.

Re:Even more disturbing

[captjc]

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!?

Re:guns guns guns

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

We don't "worship the gun". Go watch the movie Zardoz, THAT is worshiping the gun!

Re:My pet dinosaur ate my neighbor

[sound vision]

Personally I prefer the Hurdy Gurdy Man.

Re:My pet dinosaur ate my neighbor

[NotSanguine]

Personally I prefer the Hurdy Gurdy Man.

Cool. However, we were talking about fiction written by L. Sprague deCamp, rather than music. Not sure if that's really comparable.

Re:fear and cowardice

[pablo_max]

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.

Same tactics as war on drugs, now its war on guns.

[BrookHarty]

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.

Where's this going to end up?

[amalek]

So was his offence the mention of a firearm, or the mention of its employment in ending a fantasy creature's life? If he said he shot a raccoon, would he have also been expelled?

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.

Release the kid imediately!

[jraff2]

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!

statute of limitations

[eric_harris_76]

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?

Is there context?

[penguinoid]

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)

That's nothing...

[JasonGoatcher]

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.

creative writing vs public schools

[streamfortyseven]

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.

Mandatory SNL

[Yaotzin]

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?

I'm confused

[GPS Pilot]

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.