Outrages of the day

Short summary, then rant below the jump: Mariya Fatima, a 10th grader from Jamaica, Queens, had a stroke at school (as an interesting aside, this is the neighborhood where my mom grew up, and Tommy and I were born). The principal had initiated a ban on 911 calls in an attempt to make the school appear safer. So, no one does anything, and help arrives 90 minutes later. Mariya now has trouble walking, can't use her right hand, and went from being a great student to reading on a 5th grade level.

Oh, and the military can't count to six. Which wouldn't matter, if we weren't talking about nuclear weapons.

I have taught on high school and college campuses for most of my adult(ish) life. I've seen any number of insane and mind boggling rules and regulations and bureaucratic bullshit. I have NEVER in my life heard of a ban on 911 calls for kids experiencing a medical emergency.

What teacher is so desperate to keep her job, or so inured by the protection bureaucracy provides, or so numbed from the violence she sees everyday, that she chooses to do nothing? It is a teacher's job, above all else, to protect the lives and health of children. When in conflict, you choose children's lives over memos and policies, even if it means official reprimands or losing your job. If you have a kid collapsed on the floor in front of you for NINETY MINUTES, you think "fuck this principal and his statistics," and you act to save her life. Every time.

Complete and utter insanity.

In other news, and I sincerely hope this man is wrong, we appear to have "lost" a nuclear warhead, and mainstream media continues to appear not to care.
I might be more willing to dismiss the post I just linked to as pure conspiracy, if not for the fact that the Military Times, who I can only presume is a) on the military's side and b) knows what they're talking about and c) wants to minimize any sort of story, rather than exacerbate it, hadn't originally reported that there were six nukes on board that plane. Check out the byline on this story published today - why is Michael Hoffman from The Military Times now saying 5 nukes? There are lots of blog posts floating around about this, and I'm no expert, but seriously --- where'd the other one go? Up until September 10, they were reporting 6. Even stranger chronology: apparently, The Military Times originally thought it was 5, then updated it to 6, and now it's back down to 5 again?

If we were talking about, say, the number of billions of dollars Halliburton embezzles per week in Iraq. Or whether the Rockets lost by 5 or 6 points in their last game. Or whether I had 5 or 6 hot dates in the next week. Any of those would be puzzling, but OK. But it matters to me, kind of a lot actually, if there is actually an unaccounted number of nuclear warheads that we lost and then found and then maybe lost again.

I read a few DOD briefings, just for fun. Interestingly, on Sept. 5 the press secretary for the Pentagon was asked about the "six nuclear warheads." In his answer, the press secretary refrained from using any numbers. After two questions, the issue was dropped. Probably for the best. It's not mentioned, that I can find, in any other briefings or press releases -- but rest assured, once we realized, four hours later, that the warheads were missing, someone woke up Robert Gates to let him know.

Can someone clear this up for me? What am I missing? Did 5 or 6 warheads originally leave North Dakota? If it was 6, and we still have 6, then not great but ok. But if 6 left, and 5 arrived, then where is the other one and why is no one asking questions?

OK. I feel like a conspiracy theorist, and need to stop googling "nuclear warheads" on a government computer before someone gets suspicious, so I'm going to go read poli-gossip blogs for a while.