[NWF Daily News]

The sturdy steel bastions where high schoolers shove their books, papers - and sometimes their classmates - will now come at a price for some local students.

Choctawhatchee High School will begin charging students $5 to use a locker next year. 

With budget cuts, “it is strictly being done to help take care of the maintenance of the lockers,” said Choctaw Principal Cindy Massarelli-Gates.

Local high schools spend between $2,000 and $5,000 every summer repairing lockers and changing combinations, she said.

Massarelli-Gates doesn’t expect the fee will “be a big shock” for parents, particularly because Crestview and Niceville high schools have been charging a similar fee for the past few years.

“The cost of keeping up a locker is a lot,” Massarelli-Gates said. “That cost has just continued to go up. As our budget has tightened, we’ve had to look at some ways to tighten some things.” 

In addition to rising costs, schools are facing declining enrollment. Schools are funded by the state primarily on the number of full-time students. 

Read more here.

[From me]

What’s next?  Charging for use of the restroom?  How about having a toll booth set up in the hallway for access to go to class?  They could even have a cover charge for the lunchroom.  What other ways could they make money?

What do you think?

I have to be the klutziest person in the world.  I’ve broken so many bones and I’m constantly tripping and falling down.  Saturday I slipped and fell down the stairs and broke my toe so badly they are sending me to an orthopedic.  

When it rains it pours.  I had the the privilege of teaching at church today. We are doing a series called “Going to the Beach.”  Every messages is from a passage near water.  Today I spoke on “Simple Faith”–it was the story of Naaman in 2 Kings 5.  I don’t know why God makes me learn so many lessons every time I get to speak.  I’m ready to teach a message on being rich or one on love because they won’t be so painful for me leading up to the message. 

I was able to make it through the service without too much pain and set up to see a Foot Doctor who attends our church.  

[BP]

The Spanish Parliament’s move to grant rights previously reserved for human beings to chimpanzees and other apes is a victory for those seeking to minimize the uniqueness of humanity, a bioethics specialist says.

An environmental committee in Spain’s legislature approved a resolution June 25 calling for the government to abide by the Great Apes Project, a 15-year-old campaign to grant the right to life, freedom and no torture to chimps, gorillas, orangutans and bonobos. The measure has the support of a majority of members of Parliament and is expected to become law, according to Reuters News Service.

The declaration, developed in 1993 by a group of primatologists, ethicists, and psychologists known as the Great Ape Project, demands “the extension of the community of equals to include all great apes.” According to the declaration, apes may not be killed except under “strictly defined circumstances,” such as self-defense. They may not be imprisoned without due legal process, and they may not be subjected to the “deliberate infliction of severe pain,” even if doing so is said to benefit others.

The Great Apes Project (GAP) is the brainchild of philosophers Peter Singer, a controversial ethics professor at Princeton University, and Paola Cavalieri, who founded it in 1993, Reuters reported.

GAP’s goal is not just to improve conditions for apes but “to demote human beings from the uniquely valuable species and into merely another animal in the forest,” Wesley Smith wrote on his weblog. Smith is a bioethicist, author and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute.

“Once people accept that premise, Judeo/Christian philosophy goes to the guillotine allowing the utilitarian agenda to proceed unhindered, leading in turn to the moral value of the weak and vulnerable among us becoming archaic, resulting in their loss of the right to life and being used instrumentally for those deemed more valuable.

“In the world being born out of the ashes of the sanctity/equality of human life ethic, value will be subjective and rights temporary — depending on one’s individual capacities rather than humanity,” Smith wrote. “And we will see apes … being viewed as more important than some humans.”

Read more here.

[From the Bible]

Genesis 1:26

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

[From me]

I guess they waited for Charlton Heston to die before they tried this.  I’m not for any kind of torture.  But Animals are not equal with humans.  Did Apes create vaccines to cure diseases?  Can they participate in diplomacy?  Do they talk?  What’s next?  Roaches?  Ants?  Fleas?  When will it end?

What do you think?

[USA Today]

What happened to responsible movies and TV shows when it comes to sex?  What about abstinence?  What message does this send to our youth?  Yes, I don’t get it.

What do you think?

[Tampa Bay.com]

 A 50-year-old Lutz man hired a nude maid to clean his 2,281-square foot home Friday.

The woman arrived at the Cheval home in a one-piece light colored dress. She took off the one-piece light colored dress. She cleaned the house per their $100-per-hour agreement. Four bedrooms, three baths.

She redressed and left.

Shortly after, the man’s wife came home from vacation to discover $40,000 in jewelry missing from their bedroom.

The man told Hillsborough Sheriff’s deputies he’d only left the maid alone in the bedroom a short while, spokeswoman Debbie Carter said.

Deputies are investigating. The nude maid, whom the man found on the Internet, is described as a white female, age 21 to 24.

Source here.

[From me]

How stupid.  Let’s see what kind of excuses we can find for this man to give his wife.  Be nice, but funny.