It was bad enough when a Florida site noticed, but it was echoed in Indiana, the Pacific Northwest, and Minnesota.

Yes, a Florida school district fired a substitute teacher for “wizardry” when a parent apparently complained about the teacher doing “magic” in class.

Come on, they didn’t burn him at the stake or stone him.

It’s not like they will be able to pay substitute teachers next year, so it just happened a little earlier. The cuts in K-12 are even worse than what is happening in the university system.

The BBC has a general overview, Burmese storm toll ‘tops 10,000’, of the storm.

Dr. Jeff Masters has a more technical look at the storm, Cyclone Nargis:

A disaster of horrific proportions has befallen Myanmar, where the death toll is now over 4,000, with thousands more missing, in the wake of Cyclone Nargis. Nargis–a popular woman’s name in India–is the deadliest and most destructive tropical cyclone ever to hit Myanmar (Burma). The storm hit the coast of Myanmar Friday night as borderline Category 3/Category 4 cyclone, with winds of 130-135 mph. After passing over the low-lying and densely populated Irrawaddy River delta region, Nargis made a direct hit on the capital city of Rangoon.

Because of the secretive nature of the Burmese military government, it has taken days for the facts to start coming out about this disaster. Assistance will be complicated by the lack of relations to other nations that the military dictatorship has caused over the years.

Wikipedia usually has to “lock” its Cinco de Mayo page. I suspect it may be related to the sudden appearance of sites opposing the celebration of this semi-holiday and others who have a hissy fit about any Mexican holiday being celebrated in the US.

In Mexico Cinco de Mayo or Batalla de Puebla, is only a really big celebration in the state of Puebla, where the battle took place.

The Mexican army won the Batalla de Puebla on May the 5^th, 1862, but the French went on to Mexico City in 1863 after receiving reinforcements and installed Emperor Maximilian.

It has the status of St. Patrick’s Day in the US, an excuse to eat different food, and drink different booze, and be obnoxious show an interest in other cultures.

Margaritas, tacos, and the destruction of piñatas, that’s what it is really about, although some people have other interpretations.