are you a good witch, or a bad witch?

I found this through a circuitous route of email, BoingBoing, and Neil Gaiman's journal (don't think this has appeared on the LJ RSS feed yet): The Department of Education is deciding what will and won't get funding for closed captioning, and have chosen to exclude a bunch of shows that discuss witchcraft.

My first reaction was to launch a vicious diatribe re: how this violates church/state separation, how dare 5 people at the DOE decide what's worthy of captioning for the deaf, etc. And I do find it interesting that their choices for exclusion were deemed "inappropriate"...

But then I got to wondering - why does the Department of Education have ANYTHING to do with closed captioning? Shouldn't this fall under the FCC, or under the various government initiatives promoting accessibility for all? I also find it interesting that, like Neil Gaiman, this is the only article I can find on the subject, with no links to primary sources at DOE or elsewhere.

So much as I love to bash the Bush administration, I'm going to hold off until there's more to go on.

It's the Arts

I spent enough time in the Metro Saturday to see a lot of their advertising - the closer you get to the Smithsonian, the more of it turns art- and exhibit-related. All my little art-hairs stood on end when I saw the big poster for Verrochio's David Restored, in town only a brief time. It's pure chance that I found out about this; I'm madly sifting through the NGA site to see if they have an announcement list I can subscribe to!

For non-art people: Verrochio was Leonardo da Vinci's teacher, and the sculpture in question is one of the first great Renaissance artworks. AFAIK, it's never been here and isn't likely to again - and here I was thinking I'd have to get to Italy before I'd ever get to see it!