Overreactions and World War I

I don't mean to concern you, but it has happened again. There was another stabbing at our school last week. It was a little more downplayed then the one in November 2004. Somehow, a student was able to get a knife into the school despite all the security upgrades. I assume he had his pocket knife in his pocket, and like it or not, that's where most of the weapons are going to be and not in our backpacks as the "experts" say.

Apparently, a student (let's just call him Pointed) saw the knife, took it from him, said something to the effect of "Hey, you're not allowed to have this deadly weapon in school because that is a violation of rule six on page 49 in our student handbook!" I don't know if that is actually what he said, but that's what I would say. Anyway, Pointed took the knife from the guy (let's just call him Watchman) and threw it away. Now, I've got to say, that took some balls, and I praise his ballfulness. Then, Watchman went to sharpen his pencil, and he retrieved the knife and when he came back stabbed Pointed in the leg.

I am not a fan of overreactions, but I think that may be the biggest overreaction I have ever heard of. If someone throws something away that I shouldn't have in the first place, I don't retrieve it and stab him in the leg. That's just dumb. I can see stabbing someone in the leg if he says, "Hey, stab me in the leg." But if someone is just hanging out, you don't stab them in the leg. If you ever feel the need to stab someone in the leg, just calm down, take a step back, and think, how can I inflict the same amount of pain of stabbing someone in the leg and not get expelled for it? I’d go with a dead leg.

To top it all off, the school considered disciplinary action for Pointed because he "disrupted the learning process". At what point does the learning process stop? Because if I get stabbed in the leg, I'm probably not going to be learning any more that day. But I assume it went something like this:
Pointed: Hey! That kid just stabbed me in the leg!
Teacher: SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Also heard a little about World War I this week, and I've got to say that World War I is without doubt the dumbest war of all time. I'm going to sum up how it started in one sentence: It started in 1914 when England and France declared war on Germany for declaring war on Russia for declaring war on Austria-Hungary for declaring Serbia. This war consisted of men sitting in a trench facing each other, and then someone said, "let's run toward that machine gun nest and see if we can get there without being shot." And everyone else was like: YAY! By the end of the war, they realized that if they ducked down, they would decrease their chance of getting shot by fifty percent. Unfortunately, the chance of getting shot at the beginning of the war was 150%, so it didn't really make a difference.

Now, I'm not saying that sprinting toward a machine gun nest was a bad strategy, I am saying , however, that it was a terrible strategy. You'd think after about the second time someone tried that, the generals would think: "Hmmm, this isn't going to work" and then think of something else. But no, they did this for a solid four years. The Pre-Nazis are pretty lucky I wasn't there because I would have taken all my guys, hopped in my generic Model T Ford, cruised around the German Line, surrounded the Pre-Nazis, and said: "Pack your bags boys, war's over."