Students shouldn't be saying "piss off, asshole" to teachers in front of a class. Period. Saying "piss off, asshole" to a teacher makes any student a loudmouth. But being a loudmouth isn't illegal, beating people up is.

She sounds awful, but this is a simple, open-and-shut case of assault, just the same as if it had happened at a bar, on the street, or between any other two people, in which case it's still a simple, completely clear case of assault. The law says that verbal taunts are not justified by physical violence unless they're…

According to the Census, TN has a net domestic population inflow, which means that yes, people are moving to Tennessee at a pretty fair clip. It has decent weather, low land prices and OK infrastructure.

We may be trying and confused. This is a complicated disease to manage unless you cook all your own food. If I was eating with someone, I would welcome a caring word to stop me if I was about to add a gluten-containing element I didn't know about. Throttling not necessary.

A counter argument. After nearly four decades of hoovering everything in sight into my mouth, I was recently informed by my doctor that I have developed celiac disease, and it is destroying my liver. Apparently this thing just pops up midlife and medical science has a lot of theories, but no definitive answer why.…

I'm specifically thinking of how the Wogglebug makes sure to point out that girls are equally good students and he'd like to be her tutor. As for Jinjur ... Jinjur may be lightly mocking more socially conservative suffragettes whereas Glinda and Ozma (who concern themselves not with chores and emeralds, but with the…

Baum was a famous feminist and studded the Oz books with strong female characters - Dorothy, Billina, Glinda, Ozma, etc. There's a really touching part at the end of Marvelous Land when, oh spoiler, okay. Jinjur just happens to not be a very good _person._

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Oh hai, anecdote =! data! My anecdote contradicts your anecdote! Seriously, I'm a lighter sleeper and my wife is a heavier sleeper, so during those horrendous early months I was typically the one to wake up and go spatter hot water on myself from the *#^$(*$^ malfunctioning bottle warmer.

Just wanted to lay down some random Frank Baum trivia. Under the name "Edith Van Dyne" he wrote a ten-book series of realistic adventure novels for girls; in one of them, he opines that the airline pilots of the future are generally likely to be women because "they are more supple and active, quick of perception and…

Big danger in assuming Oz is "a" message about anything. It's a lot of messages. The one I remember being most excited about when I studied it in college (yes) was about the perils of consumer advertising; the ability of consumer-products companies to make us want to buy things to fulfill nonexistent needs (a brain, a…

One of the things I like about Baum is that both men and women are heroes, both men and women are villains, and both men and women are idiots. Jinjur's a doof with the wrong motives, but there's also Ozma and Glinda. Over and over again he refuses to clearly align a specific gender with concepts like "virtue" and…

I've been working through the Eric Shanower/Skottie Young graphic novel adaptations with my 7-year-old daughter (we started when she was five or six.) They do one a year, they're up to the fourth book, they're great and quite faithful to the originals. She loves 'em and agrees that Ozma is the best - Marvelous Land…