(08-22-2014, 07:44 PM)Dr. Vegetable Wrote: May Allah bless you with many fertile, willing goats!

Quote:A sign advertising the bacon at a Vermont diner has been taken down after a Muslim resident complained about the sign on the Internet and sparked to a massive backlash campaign towards Sneakers Bistro.

In June, in return for taking part in a local volunteer initiative to plant flower beds in the city’s traffic medians, the diner was awarded a sign on a lamp post that said “Yield for Sneakers Bacon.” A woman took issue with the sign, calling it insensitive to those who don’t eat pork, according to WPTZ.

The woman’s objection, which she posted online, prompted several Facebook and Yelp comments calling on Sneakers Bistro to take down the sign. The diner’s owners contacted the woman to apologize and tell her the sign has been removed.

“We are here to serve people breakfast, not politics,” the owners wrote in a separate Facebook post over the weekend. “We removed the sign that was located on public property as a gesture of respect for our diverse community.”

The mayor of the town, Winooski, Vt., commended the diner for taking down the sign. “The cool part of living in a diverse community is that it’s not always comfortable,” Mayor Katherine “Deac” Decarreau told the television network. “It’s a fascinating place with lots of opportunities for conversation. The city has to pay attention to a lot of factors while acting within what we can regulate.”

Winooski is “a fabulous artist mecca,” Mayor Deac has told the Center for Media and Democracy. “Winooski has always welcomed immigrants,” she said, “including my ancestors who spoke only French in 1835 when they arrived here.”

Quote:One professor at the College of Coastal Georgia has banned students from saying “bless you” in his class.

Campus Reform reports that Dr. Leon Gardner, assistant professor of chemistry at the College of Coastal Georgia, pointed out his six rules on behavior on his Introductory Physics class syllabus.

According to the #6 under the “Behavioral Deduction” section of the syllabus, students’ grades will be lowered for: “Saying ‘bless you.’ We are taught that it is polite to say ‘bless you’ when someone sneezes. However, if you say this while I am talking, it is NOT polite, it is very rude!”

Gardener states that a student may be deducted up to 15 percent of their final grade for any student that disrupts his class. He goes on to say in the syllabus that saying “bless you” may result in an immediate 1 percent grade deduction for each occurrence.

“Especially egregious behavior could result in expulsion from the class, withdrawal from the course, and disciplinary action from the college,” his syllabus warns students.