Pirate Pastafarian in Perfectly Preposterous Predicament

So I'm blogging about this kid in NC and found the best website for covering the story. And I am commenting about it on my blog.

Last night in my trade secrets class, I asked about the applicability of the "hot news" exception to bloggers. Was blogging about someone news agency's release unfair competion. The answer (according to my take-away from what the professor said):

Probably for us mortal bloggers -- no.
But for commerical blogs or blogs pretending to be news sources (like Matt Drugde for instance) -- maybe but probably not.


So what about this kid in NC? Apparently he demanded that his "religion" get equal time with "the amount of time that Intelligent Design is given in Kansas." Do you think this kid really cares about the "culture war" issue? I dount it. He's just some wise-guy. Nevertheless, because I have no experience at all as an educator or an administrator, I feel that I can conclusively say that the principal of this school made the wrong decision. This kid shouldn't have gotten a suspension. Clearly that was a waste of a teachable moment. Bad principal! What would have really fixed this kid's apple cart would have been to demand that he explain himself in essay form. Here's the outline:

Title: The Satorial Requirements of the Church of the Flying Spagetti Monster

I: Thesis statement - Pastafarians are instructed to don pirate garb by the Flying Spagetti Monster
II: Context
A. Church of the Flying Spagetti Monster
1. Overall perspective on theology
2. Structure of the theology
3. Tenants of CFSM concerning dress
B. Piracy
1. In general
2. 18th Century pirates of the carribean
3. How they dressed and why
III. Analysis (Wherein the context is synthesized with authorities on theology, philosophy, piracy, and fashion to give some cogent explanation as to why the Thesis should hold)
IV. Conclusion (some larger point to which the Thesis is but a gateway)


Paper should be at least 15 pages of body text (i.e. excluding any footnotes, photographs, illustrations, charts, graphs, tables, etc.) in length, Times New Roman 12 point, 1" margins all around, double spaced. As much as possible the paper should conform to Chicago Manual of Style. The heads of the English and Social Studies department must agree that the work is at a "B" level grade.

The kid gets 1 month to write the essay or else he is suspended
If the kid gets a B, he can don pirate garb with impunity
If the kid gets below a B, but gets above an F he receives no punishment but is barred from ever stylin' with piratewear again.
If the kid fails, he gets afterschool dention for a month during which time he must attend tutoring from the librarian and others on how to write a paper.