Bruce Campbell and Old Spice

Tell me I’m not the only one who finds the new Old Spice package to be a little disturbing.

The benefits of moving

So, in the process of moving from the duplex to our new house — sort of a fractal process, since there’s less to do after each trip between the two places, but it still seems infinite — I’ve rediscovered a pair of brand-new jeans that somehow got stuck into cold storage, my old NATO and Miss America press passes and a Rolodex card with Neil Gaiman’s home phone number on it. (Probably long out of date. I’m not calling to check.)

The original move from North Hollywood was a tough one, and there wasn’t a lot of time to sort and purge as a result, so this is the first time I’m able to go through some of this stuff that’s been stuck at the bottom of boxes in the back of closets for three years.

Virginia middle school bans all touching

Va. School’s No-Contact Rule Is a Touchy Subject

Fairfax County middle school student Hal Beaulieu hopped up from his lunch table one day a few months ago, sat next to his girlfriend and slipped his arm around her shoulder. That landed him a trip to the school office.

Among his crimes: hugging.

All touching — not only fighting or inappropriate touching — is against the rules at Kilmer Middle School in Vienna. Hand-holding, handshakes and high-fives? Banned. The rule has been conveyed to students this way: “NO PHYSICAL CONTACT!!!!!”

School officials say the rule helps keep crowded hallways and lunchrooms safe and orderly, and ensures that all students are comfortable. But Hal, 13, and his parents think the school’s hands-off approach goes too far, and they are lobbying for a change.

“I think hugging is a good thing,” said Hal, a seventh-grader, a few days before the end of the school year. “I put my arm around her. It was like for 15 seconds. I didn’t think it would be a big deal.”

A Fairfax schools spokesman said there is no countywide ban like the one at Kilmer, but many middle schools and some elementary schools have similar “keep your hands to yourself” rules. Officials in Arlington, Loudoun and Prince George’s counties said schools in those systems prohibit inappropriate touching and disruptive behavior but don’t forbid all contact.

Deborah Hernandez, Kilmer’s principal, said the rule makes sense in a school that was built for 850 students but houses 1,100. She said that students should have their personal space protected and that many lack the maturity to understand what is acceptable or welcome.

“You get into shades of gray,” Hernandez said. “The kids say, ‘If he can high-five, then I can do this.’ ”

She has seen a poke escalate into a fight and a handshake that is a gang sign. Some students — and these are friends — play “bloody knuckles,” which involves slamming their knuckles together as hard as they can. Counselors have heard from girls who are uncomfortable hugging boys but embarrassed to tell anyone. And in a culturally diverse school, officials say, families might have different views of what is appropriate.

It isn’t as if hug police patrol the Kilmer hallways, Hernandez said. Usually an askance look from a teacher or a reminder to move along is enough to stop girls who are holding hands and giggling in a huddle or a boy who pats a buddy on the back. Students won’t get busted if they high-five in class after answering a difficult math problem.

Typically, she said, only repeat offenders or those breaking other rules are reprimanded. “You have to have an absolute rule with students, and wiggle room and good judgment on behalf of the staff,” Hernandez said.

This is inane. If a teacher cannot explain the difference between appropriate and inappropriate touching, good luck with diagraming a sentence. Likewise, middle schoolers trying to negotiate their way into breaking the rules is a failure of the teachers being able to enforce discipline. Banning high-fives and handshakes is ridiculous, akin to swatting flies with a sledgehammer.

(And yes, I heard about this in a Washington Post podcast!)

Blue eyed girls and blue eyed boys

I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts this week, can you tell? This was from Sanda Tsing Loh’s science podcast:

The genetics are simple: Blue-eyed parents make ONLY blue-eyed children. A brown eyed girl would be, well, the milkman’s.

Whereas brown-eyed parents–and a blue and a brown–can legitimately have babies with either eye color.

Does this effect how we hook up?

Bruno Laeng of the University of Troms� in Norway says yes.

He recruited forty-four men and women with blue and brown eyes and had them rate photos of the opposite sex for attractiveness. Another forty-four rated photos of the same folks whose eye color had been digitally swapped–from blue to brown and vice versa.

Women and brown-eyed guys had no preference for blues or browns. But blue-eyed MEN found blue-eyed ladies MUCH more attractive. Subconsciously, Laeng says, they’re drawn to the surefire future indicator, via those blue-eyed babies, that they have not been cheated on.

This explains a lot.

(I first became a fan of Sandra’s through her KPCC audio column, but the new science thing is pretty good, too. And it’s daily.)

The Washington Pants Suit

Speaking of podcasts, I heard this one on the From the Pages of the Washington Post podcast the other day: Wearing Down the Judicial System With a Pair of Pants:

Don’t look for Roy Pearson to be out shopping for new suit pants this weekend. At the end of the $54 million pants suit in D.C. Superior Court yesterday, Judge Judith Bartnoff said she wouldn’t issue a decision until next week but nonetheless gave a strong hint of her direction.

After listening to Pearson argue for hour upon hour that he was somehow protecting the interests of all Washingtonians by using the D.C. consumer protection law to punish Custom Cleaners for allegedly losing a pair of his pants, Bartnoff said: “This is a very important statute to protect consumers. It’s also very important that statutes like this are not misused.”

Trying to get inside the head of Pearson — a D.C. administrative law judge who launched his long, twisted legal odyssey after bringing pants in to be let out — is tricky business.

This is a man who, despite his soft voice and polite demeanor, told the court yesterday that “there is no case in the District of Columbia or in the United States that comes anywhere close to the outrageousness of the behavior of the defendants in this case.”

The Chung family, owner of Custom Cleaners, is accused of the terrible crime of not only misplacing Pearson’s pants — either for a few days, as the Chungs contend, or permanently, as Pearson claims — but also posting a “Satisfaction Guaranteed” sign and then refusing Pearson’s demand for vast sums of money.

He brought in several pairs of pants to be let out, allegedly got one wrong one back (he’s apparently not a cuffs guy), and is now suing for $54 million. Amazingly, this case has gone on for years now.

Did Pearson have a case? When the defense finally revealed the pants it says Pearson brought in for a $10.50 alteration, it wasn’t clear whether they matched the jacket Pearson displayed the previous day. One thing was certain: The pants bore the same ticket number as Pearson’s receipt.