Day: March 22, 2010

Supreme Court doesn’t care about your graduation

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case of Nurre v. Whitehead. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that it was OK for a Washington high school to not let a graduating senior perform an instrumental version of “Ave Maria” during her commencement.

Kathryn Nurre, the aggrieved senior, sued the school for violation of her First Amendment right to A) turn the graduation ceremony into a Catholic mass and B) lengthen the already long ceremony of reading names while everyone’s buzz wears off.

While the court declined the case without comment, that didn’t stop Justice Samuel “Not True” Alito from saying he would have heard it.

While it is hunky-doory for public schools to cover the students’ selection of clothes to express themselves, Alito worries that banning poorly performed hymnals could lead to a slippery slope of further censorship at school events, like of speeches.

Honda of Jupiter had no comment on the matter

Toyota vehicles have been having a problem with sudden, uncontrollable acceleration lately. It’s been variously attributed to faulty circuits and driver error, but the real culprit might be radiation from beyond the skies. Woooo, oooooOOOOoooo, woooo.

Every day, the Earth is bombarded with trace amounts of radiation from space, though it poses no direct harm to you and me, but the radiation has been known to cause glitches in circuitry, including the kind found in airplane navigation systems. And now, Toyota is looking into the possibility that the same radiation might be causing their cars to speed out of control.

An anonymous tipster contacted the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to let them know that Toyota might be using software that’s unusually susceptible to ambient radiation. A body of published scientific work lends some credence to this theory, so federal regulators are now talking about devising a test to check Toyota’s radiation immunity.

Toyota maintains that radiation has nothing to do with the sudden-acceleration phenomenon. Thus far, the official and most widely accepted story is that something’s wrong with the car’s hardware or software—wiring, circuitry, something like that. Still, we at SG kind of like the cosmic radiation angle, if only to see four Corollas randomly gain superpowers.

Jogging is a dangerous hobby

Remember the cartoons where kangaroos could box? (Rick, help me out with this.) As it turns out, that was more than just amusing fiction, it was actually a warning to all of us young children to be wary of wallabies and other creatures–because they want to hurt us.

David Striegl was jogging recently when a kangaroo came out of nowhere and attacked him. Striegl was knocked unconscious by the beast and its lightning fast moves. Keep in mind, Striegl is an Australian rules football player (it’s like rugby, only with more punches thrown), so for him to be felled by a foe is no small feat.

He said he remembers little about the attack, and there is no word on whether the animal took his wallet.