Oxford Middle School assistant principal Roberson to lead Senatobia High School

Roberson

    Oxford Middle School assistant principal Bradley Roberson has accepted the principal's position at Senatobia High School, reports the Tate County Democrat.

    Roberson, a native of North Mississippi, graduated from Ripley High School and has a Masters of Education from the University of Mississippi, along with 13 years of experience in education as a teacher, coach and administrator.

During Roberson's tenure at Oxford, he has been named Teacher of the Year on three occasions and Administrator of the year once.

New Mountain Dew ad draws lots of attention, just the wrong kind

    Mountain Dew has released one of the shortest-lived ad campaigns of all time. In fact, the company is doing everything it can to suppress the ad, including the use of copyright law to keep the ad off Youtube. What I want to know is who within that corporation thought this would be a great ad to sell products.

    Mediate.com has an article describing the ad, which features a goat which has apparently sexually or otherwise assaulted a white woman, who is then asked to pick him out of a line-up of black men. If the commercial I've linked to gets taken down Mediate has a copy up that will likely survive fair use challenge.

    The ad was the creation of hip-hop artist Tyler the Creator, who supplies the voice of the goat. The black men in the line-up are his band members. Oh, but this commercial did not go over well at all.
    There is no need for me to reinvent the wheel here. Read the Mediate article to get the back story on what one university professor is calling the "most racist commercial of all time." What gets my goat is that this is the same company that killed off our beloved Frito Bandito on the grounds that the commercials were "racist." Nothing racist about them, and the pencil erasers were really neat. They get rid of the Frito Bandito and give us this. Sheesh!

UPDATE: As I predicted, Pepsi has used the threat of copyright infringement to pull the link I had off of Liveleak. You can still see the ad by clicking on the Mediate link above. As it is part of a news story, I believe the ad qualifies as fair use and Pepsi will not be able to force them to take the ad down.

Oxford School District orchestra presents Spring 2013 concert

    The Oxford School District Orchestra, under the direction of Melissa Hathorn, held its Spring Concert Tuesday, April 30, 2013. She was assisted by student teacher Tyler Kuntz.
    I thought they did an outstanding job. The beginner group, in particular, put in a fine performance. It was far more than just one or two notes played again and again.
    Jinny was out of town and so I recorded the concert so she could see our Lucy. I decided to go ahead and record all of the groups. I think it’s really interesting to see the improvement that takes place from year to year, as these videos allow one to do.
    I’ve posted five videos. The first is the beginner group. The second is the Middle School's 7th and 8th grade orchestra. The third is the Oxford High School orchestra. The fourth is the high school advanced orchestra. And the final video is the School District orchestra, grades 6-12, playing Skyfall.
    Skyfall was a difficult piece. And the orchestra didn't get to practice together as a group very much as the students are at different schools. They did well.
    Graduating seniors were recognized at the concert. Kayla Owens was presented with an award recognizing both her hard work and good citizenship in promoting the orchestra program.
    Following the concert Ms. Hathorn announced that she had accepted a position in Los Angeles and that Mr. Kuntz would lead the program next year. (Actually Ms. Hathorn said she was going to L.A. Maybe she's going to Lower Alabama!).

Orchestra members

6th Grade and beginner orchestra
Violin I: Jessica Aten, Jonathan Masters, Rebekah Moen, Young Oh, Keelan Case, Calendula Cheng;
Violin II: Will Bunch, John Parker, Landon Parker, Isuru Hewanamma;
Viola: Hope Brown
Cello: Siena Cizdziel, William Hopper Shakevia Thompson, Noel Torma, Jalon Young

7th & 8th Grade Orchestra
Violin I: Tamjeed Azad, Sarah Booth, Madison Hickey, Spencer Huggins, Tony King, Christopher Le;
Violin II: India Austin, Abigail Castro-Rodriguez, Maddison Colston, Ivy Li, Harrison Tann;
Viola: Brian Aten, Ra’Anthony Perry, Jake Riffe;
Cello: Josh Alba, Lucy Hurdle, Neely Mullen
Bass: Zela Kihei, Raina Woolworth

High School Orchestra
Violin I: Yoomin Jo (Concertmistress), Kayla Owens, Lucile Easterbrook, Renee Sullivan-Gonzalez, Steven Le, Boatman Jacobs, Guy Farmer, Maia Payne, Alex Vinson;
Violin II: Cindy Torma, Shreya Mathur, Ethan Holmes, Chamil Jayaratna, Deterrias Pegues, Jasmine Minor, Alexander Minyard, Keyshawn Williams;
Viola: Cheyenne Griffin
Cello: Kashaun Wortham, Kendall Roy, Thita Thamutok;
Bass: Kevin Hill, Tyreq Roberson, Eboni Thomas
Percussion: Sydney Hansen, Connor Vinson, Kim Casissa
Piano: Joonhee Jo

Voters tell Rep. Nunnelee 'right to keep and bear arms' is the issue they care most about

    Rep. Alan Nunnelee just sent me an email asking me to subscribe to his e-newsletter and to identify what national issue is most important to me.
    Naturally I chose illegal immigration. After I selected my choice I was allowed to see the choices others had made. And the winner is: "Protecting the 2nd amendment right to keep and bear arms," coming in at a whopping 41.59 percent. Ten issues are listed; the next-highest vote-getter was "Ending out of control spending," with 13.27 percent. Also of note is that "Strengthening our armed forces" is rated most important by only 1.77 percent of respondents. Are Mississippians slowly drifting into the Rand Paul camp?
    (The above numbers are not static, and will change as each person signs up for the newsletter and casts a vote. So the above graph is merely a snapshot.)
    The list is certainly skewed towards Republicans, although anyone from either party who has made it onto Nunnelee's mailing list surely got the survey. And the responses go a long way towards understand why congressmen from rural states simply won't budge on gun control.
    I know Rep. Nunnelee is listening to the voters. But is Sen. Wicker?

Lady Liberty 1885 blogger discovered identity of ricin suspect through use of Google, Facebook

    The Lady Liberty 1885 blogger may have discovered the identity of the suspect in the mailing of ricin to Congressman Wicker through the use of Google before the police did.
    In a blog post that was written yesterday but not posted until an arrest was made, the blogger tells how she used Google to track down the identity of Elvis impersonator Paul Kevin Curtis through a doctor's website and then Facebook.

Profile photo from
Paul Kevin Curtis' Facebook page

    One thing I found interesting is the photo that she took from Curtis' Facebook page showing him next to a bumper sticker on his car which declares him to be a "Christian" and a "Democrat." We've all been hearing speculation that this would be the work of some Republican, but now that the suspect is a Democrat, get ready for the sound of crickets chirping.
    The blog post is an interesting read. In reading Lady Liberty's blog I saw that one of her recent posts dealt with the problems of murders being committed by people in need of mental health services. Her views mirror my own. We should not have to wait until a person becomes violent before forcing them into mental health treatment.
    I'm adding the Lady Liberty 1885 blog to my blog roll on the left side of this page.

Jackson Jambalaya: HUD wants to bring Section 8 to a home near you

Jackson Jambalaya: HUD wants to bring Section 8 to a home near you:  The Wall Street Journal opined about some HUD social engineering and neighborhoods. Yup, Assistant Secretary and his HUD minions want to make sure your neighbors meet their criteria...

Kingfish at Jackson Jambalaya has an interesting post about how the government is working hard to destroy neighborhoods by forcing cities to rezone upscale neighborhoods for Section 8 housing and by attempting to force landlords to accept Section 8 vouchers, even though by law the program is supposed to be voluntary. Read it all by clicking on the link above.

A study in Memphis found that the city's crime wave in recent years was directly related to the sprinkling of Section 8 residents through the city. The Atlantic had an outstanding article on this, called America's Murder Mystery.

Now the Obama administration wants to host a Murder Mystery Party in your neighborhood!

It's far to early to start playing the blame game for the Boston Marathon bombing.

    There will be time to make political hay, if you will, on the recent tragedy at the Boston Marathon. One of the goals of our political system is to act to stop bad things from happening, and that includes making a bit of political hay out of events like this one.
    But I, at least, am going to reserve comment for a while. This isn't to say that no one is to blame. Often people are to blame. But we ought to at least know all the facts before pointing fingers. We ought to stop for just a day or two to mourn the loss of these innocent lives.
    I've read some Facebook comments that mention the Boston bombing in opposing gun control. I'm opposed to most federal efforts to seize or track guns, but gun control efforts and the Boston bombing are completely unrelated. It's not productive to suggest otherwise.