Students, Practice Civil Disobedience! Sleep During Class!

What Not To Name Your Blog, from Slate. Believe me, I considered all this good advice before going with the almost completely nonsensical option.

The Early Bird Gets the Bad Grade, from The New York Times. The point that teenagers don't function well early in the morning (falling, in fact, somewhere between the cognitive abilities of a rock and a zombie) has long been taken as an article of faith by anyone who's ever interacted with or who has, say, been a teenager. It's good to see people actually talking about it.

Of course, no matter how beneficial it might be for students if schools started later, there will always be strong resistance to this from the after-school sports programs. Underfunded schools are pretty much the norm, and high school athletics provide not only an income boost (I can't prove this, but dude... I've seen the concession lines at high school basketball games), but a status boost, as well. I'm not saying this is bad, exactly, but you'd think the order would be 1)academics, 2)student's well-being, 3)sports, wouldn't you? (Okay, okay, I suppose there's some wiggle room between 1 and 2.)

Starting later would mean games would have to take place later, which would mean the school that opted to do this would be at a disadvantage unless all the schools in the local athletic conference followed suit. They'd presumably be less likely to have winning seasons, thus losing the glory and money that comes with a championship, and all the other kids school administrators would laugh at them. Too, daily practices would have to be held later (unless you moved them to the morning - but then you risk groggy athletes. Groggy students:okay. Groggy football players:madness.)

Or maybe I'm just a grumpy ol' ex-non-athlete who watched all my favorite high school extracurriculars passed over for funding in favor of sports one too many times. Whatever.

The Paranoia Round-Up!
First Time Airlines Are Legally Accountable For Stranded Passengers, and how they're trying to fight it.
Filmaker Attempts to Sue A Negative Reviewer. Hey, celebrities get to do it. Why not movies?
And finally, J K Rowling Goes Crazy & tries to claim copyright protection prevents published discussion of the Harry Potter-verse. I'm beginning to think she should've quit while she was ahead.

Just for fun, here's a robot. Playing air hockey.