Banning Silly String, Weighing schoolkids

The town of Huntington, N.Y., has banned the sale of Silly String within 1,500 feet of a parade route, after the local fire department complained that the colorful, aerosol-propelled substance was damaging the paint on its fire trucks. Town board member Mark Cuthbertson, the lone vote against the ban, says it won’t do much good anyway, since people will still be able to buy the stuff elsewhere. “Plus when we start to legislate at this level,” he said, “we run the risk of earning the name of the string we’re trying to ban.”

Elementary school pupils in Georgia are to be weighed twice a year, under a new state law that also requires schools to track kids’ body mass indexes and post the aggregated information on their websites. Critics say the testing is an invasion of children’s privacy, and may be traumatic. But bill sponsor Sen. Joseph Carter said such concerns are overblown. “‘Sally, step into the office, step up on the scale’—that’s about as invasive as it gets.”

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