Mats Hot; Lack Of Shoes Hurts Most Vulnerable Park Users

And once that happens, we’ll finally be able to realize white asphalt:

Black rubber mats designed to break a child’s fall turn blistering hot in the summer, soaring to higher than 165 degrees, a Daily News investigation found.

Doctors at two city hospital burn units reported seeing 16 to 18 young children with playground burns a year, mostly from the mats under junglegyms and sliding boards.

“I have nightmares,” said Anne Casson, whose toddler son, Will, ditched his shoes at Carl Schurz Park on the upper East Side one day last May.

“He stepped onto the black mats and was screaming hysterically,” Casson said. “When I picked him up, the skin was just hanging off his feet.”

The baby spent four days in New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell, where doctors administered morphine for intense pain.

The News, accompanied by NYC Park Advocates, took the temperature of mats under junglegyms at playgrounds in all five boroughs last Friday.

“It is unconscionable that the city continues to install products in playgrounds that hurt the most vulnerable park users — small children,” said Geoffrey Croft of NYC Park Advocates, who took a 166.9-degree reading on the mats at Carl Schurz. “How many more have to get hurt until someone is held accountable?”

. . .

Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe said signs were posted in playgrounds warning against going barefoot.

“We’re not going to remove [the mats],” Benepe told The News. “Our playgrounds are the safest in the world.”

Reyhan Mehran, a marine scientist from Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, said her son Kian Mehran-Lodge was 14 months old in July 2004 when he was burned at Van Voorhees Park.

“We cannot understand why the city wouldn’t immediately remove material that is known to severely burn children,” she said.

Admit It: Yankee Stadium Sucks!

Screw the stupid frieze:

As players were beseeched by countless members of the news media to eulogize Yankee Stadium as it hosts its last All-Star Game, those sufficiently provoked Monday were willing to discuss what they would not miss about the old — very old — ballpark in the Bronx.

Players from the past had no problem saying goodbye to the Astrodome’s rats and Candlestick Park’s hurricane-force winds. Today’s All-Stars have their own reasons to dry their eyes at Yankee Stadium’s funeral.

“The smell,” the Texas Rangers’ Michael Young said.

“The tiny clubhouse,” Justin Duchscherer of the Oakland Athletics added.

“Hitting my head on the dugout,” the Chicago White Sox’ Joe Crede offered. “Every time somebody scored or got a hit, you jumped up and forgot how low the ceiling is in there.”

Yankee Stadium is holding up about as well as any 85-year-old can be expected to, but the ballpark’s 1970s facelift has begun to droop. Players found reasons for moving on easy to come up with.

Olfactory issues led the voting, although few players were able to identify what the problem has been. Is one of Babe Ruth’s half-eaten hot dogs still rotting under one of the grandstands? Are the foul lines marked with sulfur? And how long does pine tar keep, anyway?

“Especially when it rains, the smell that comes up through the drainage system is not pretty,” said Jason Varitek of the Boston Red Sox. “It affects your sinuses, I’ll tell you that much.”

Young added: “It depends on the day. The last time we were there, which was a couple of weeks ago, a pipe burst. I was going back up the tunnel, and there was a flood — a sewer line broke or something like that. So I still have that kind of in my nose right now.”

Location Scout: Yankee Stadium.

Step One: Teach To The Test; Step Two: Pay The Kids For That Test; Step Three: Hope That They Won’t Get Comfortable Getting Paid For Doing What They’re Supposed To Be Doing In The First Place

Want me to do a good job? Pay me, sucker:

A controversial city program that gave kids money for high grades paid a dividend yesterday — it dramatically improved test scores.

The number of seventh-graders reaching proficiency in English shot up in 34 of 35 schools participating in the program. On math tests, the number rose at 32 of the 35 schools.

Seventeen of the schools did better than the citywide average improvement in English, and 21 did better in math.

Principals credited factors like teacher quality, class size and curriculum. But they acknowledged the cash may have played a role.

“I think it had a little bit of effect,” said Principal Virginia Connelly of The Bronx’s JHS 123, where 25.1 percent of seventh-graders improved in English and 27.6 percent improved in math.

Educators say the privately funded Spark program, run by the Department of Education, has gotten kids more focused.

“Anything to get them in the seat and attentive, we’ll take it,” Connelly said.

Earlier: The Conditional Cash Transfer.

Fine, Whatever, I Won’t Drive Around And Let You Know If There Are Long Toll Lines Then

Yeah, that was an untenable position:

David S. Mack, a vice chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, backed off on Thursday from statements he had made defending the use of unlimited free travel passes for the authority’s board members and said he would now vote to curtail the perk.

Mr. Mack’s reversal came just hours after Gov. David A. Paterson issued a scorching statement saying that continuing the free travel privilege at a time of economic difficulty would show “an utter contempt for average New Yorkers.”

Mr. Mack, a wealthy real estate executive from Long Island, prompted a storm of controversy on Wednesday when he told reporters that if the free travel passes he received as a transportation authority board member were taken away, he might not ride the Long Island Rail Road any more.

What Happens When Your Child’s Attention Span Is Much Too Short To Catch “The Moral Of The Story”

And it seems clear they really just don’t get the pedatainment (entergogical?) trope of “learning from the actions of your peers”:

A senior stunt involving a laxative-laced cake that sickened several teachers in Brooklyn was inspired by an MTV show, one of the pranksters told cops.

The three students who admitted to the mischief had bright futures ahead of them, but now face charges that carry up to seven years in prison. They were arraigned Wednesday on special counts of second-degree assault and reckless endangerment reserved for attacks on teachers, officials said.

. . .

Top student Tiara Peoples, 17, baked the cake, while pals Kenny Ramirez and Quashon Burton, also 17, distributed it to staffers at the Brooklyn School for Global Studies. The Bundt cake was studded with Dulcolax tablets, and two teachers were hospitalized.

Peoples cried when cops were called to the school.

“She told friends she didn’t think [there] would be so much in the cake that anyone would have to go to the hospital,” a school source said. “Her parents were pretty upset with her and called the school repeatedly to see how the teachers were doing.”

Ramirez apologized for his “stupid mistake,” which he said was was ripped off from MTV prank show “High School Stories.”

MTV said the show discourages copycats. “MTV always depicts the very real ramifications of these actions, showing how seemingly harmless pranks can have serious consequences,” the cable channel said in a statement.

Earlier: Piece Of Crap Kids.