Monday Monkey-Spankings

Today's "What in the FUCK?!?!" moment is brought to you by this story, telling us that high school students are getting stupider, but at least their grades are improving.

--Two federal reports out Thursday offer conflicting messages about how well high-schoolers are doing academically.

One showed that seniors did poorly on national math and reading tests.

The other -- a review of high school transcripts from 2005 graduates -- showed students earning more credits, taking more challenging courses and getting better grades.--

Well, well, well. Now why does that not surprise me? With all of these efforts to shore up the self-esteem of the little bastards, it's not exactly a shock that while they appear to be learning more in school, their IQs are falling like Skylab.

I continue to fear for the survival of your species.

Next we have an unfortunate accident involving chicken. As in, 60,000 pounds of it all over the road.

It's apparently the second time this month that a truck full of chicken parts has scattered its load in that same location. I suspect fowl play.

In other animal-related news (this time the kind of animal who's not dead), there's a beaver in the Bronx. (No, not that kind of beaver, you fucking perverts.)

--Beavers grace New York City's official seal. But the industrious rodents have not been seen in the flesh here for as many as 200 years -- until this week.

Biologists videotaped a beaver swimming up the Bronx River on Wednesday. Its twig-and-mud lodge had been spotted earlier on the river bank, but the tape confirmed the presence of the animal itself.--

Take it from a moose who's been living around humans his whole life, little beaver. They're a pain in the ass, but basically good-hearted creatures. So find yourself a girl beaver (a beaver beaver, even), and enjoy your stay in New York.

This little weep-fest is an opinion piece by George F. Will about Down Syndrome. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has revised its recommendations regarding screening for the disease. They used to say women over thirty-five. Now they're saying doctors should offer the testing to all pregnant women.

What's changed? Nothing, really, except the screening has become simpler, less expensive, and more widely available. So the snatch quacks figure a woman would rather know than not know.

Mr. Will is alarmed because about 85% of the parents who receive a diagnosis of Down Syndrome choose abortion. He is afraid the disorder will disappear if the rate of pre-natal diagnosis approaches 100%.

Certainly, if nearly all pregnant women choose to have the screening, and the abortion rate of 85% holds, the number of Down Syndrome babies born in this country every year will fall drastically, to perhaps even as low as five hundred. George thinks that would be sad, because he knows a very high-functioning Down syndrome guy named Jon.

From what I can tell, he trots "Jon" out every time he writes about screening for birth defects. Jon loves sports, has his own apartment, knows how to ride the bus, works three days a week, and is "sweet." That's all good and well, but for every Jon, there's a bunch of much lower-functioning Down syndrome folks who won't ever do any of those things, even the "being sweet" part.

And it's a crap-shoot. You don't know if you're getting Corky or total gorky until the kid is a few years old. Chiding parents who don't want to roll those dice is mean-spirited and unfair. Only the parents involved know what they and the rest of their family can handle.

So go ahead and judge the people who have genetic screening, and those who abort defective fetuses, George. They're too busy making tough choices to listen to boneheads like you.

Today's "Well THAT sure didn't turn out like we thought it would" story is about a sorority whose national leadership kicked out all the women that were fat, ugly, and/or weird.

--When a psychology professor at DePauw University here surveyed students, they described one sorority as a group of “daddy’s little princesses” and another as “offbeat hippies.” The sisters of Delta Zeta were seen as “socially awkward.”

Worried that a negative stereotype of the sorority was contributing to a decline in membership that had left its Greek-columned house here half empty, Delta Zeta’s national officers interviewed 35 DePauw members in November, quizzing them about their dedication to recruitment. They judged 23 of the women insufficiently committed and later told them to vacate the sorority house.

The 23 members included every woman who was overweight. They also included the only black, Korean and Vietnamese members. The dozen students allowed to stay were slender and popular with fraternity men — conventionally pretty women the sorority hoped could attract new recruits. Six of the 12 were so infuriated they quit.--

Oops.

It's a tough problem. The Greek system cannot survive without attracting new members, and no one is going to be tripping over themselves to join the "socially awkward" sorority. If the house was only half full, the chicks on the national level had to do SOMETHING.

Maybe they should have just thrown in the towel, and revoked that chapter's charter. But I'm sure they figured that as long as there was a core group of the "right" kind of gals, those that remained could oversee the rebuilding.

I'm also sure they didn't count on half of that group quitting.

Ah, well. It's nice to know that in the 21st century, at least half of the sorority babes are still incredibly shallow. Now let's just hope that they're easy too, and that they give good head.

Our final story is pure fun. (We need some of that after the stupid students, spilled chicken, and retards.) There's this dude who goes around breaking strange records, and his latest was the squat thrust record. (I find the phrase "squat thrust" to be highly arousing.)

Ahem. Anyway, what's really interesting about the record is that he shattered the old one, and he did it on the back of an elephant.

--New Yorker Ashrita Furman looked around for a record he could break, and settled on doing the most squat thrusts in one minute. Then he decided on a place -- the back of an elephant in northern Thailand.

He achieved both goals Thursday as he climbed onto a platform on the back of an obliging pachyderm in blazing heat and powered through 40 of the vigorous kicks in a minute. The previous squat thrust record -- achieved on level ground in Britain without an elephant in sight -- was 30.--

Ashrita, my hat is off to you. I don't think I could do that many squat thrusts in a week, let alone squat thrust my way to victory on an elephant. You've got style, dude.

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