If You're Not Part of the Solution, You're Part of the Problem

Your results:
You are Malcolm Reynolds (Captain)

Malcolm Reynolds (Captain) 85% Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command) 70% Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic) 60% Derrial Book (Shepherd) 50% Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic) 50% Alliance 45% Inara Serra (Companion) 30% River (Stowaway) 30% Jayne Cobb (Mercenary) 25% A Reaver (Cannibal) 25% Wash (Ship Pilot) 15%

Honest and a defender of the innocent. You sometimes make mistakes in judgment but you are generally good and would protect your crew from harm.

Click here to take the Serenity Firefly Personality Test

This is from "The Guardian", a British newspaper: Anybody heard of this in the American media yet???



US teacher is suspended for letting pupils read bestseller


Blog: A vocal minority speaks up once more

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Thursday July 3, 2008
The Guardian

An Indiana teacher who used a much lauded bestseller, The Freedom Writers Diary, to try to inspire under-performing high-school students has been suspended from her job without pay for 18 months.

The effective book ban by the school authorities in Perry Township has outraged teachers and education reformers.

The Writers Diary, a series of true stories written by inner-city teenagers, was put together by a teacher, Erin Gruwell, and has been celebrated as a model for transforming young lives. It was made into a film with Hilary Swank last year.


Connie Heermann, a teacher for 27 years, sought permission to introduce the book to her students last autumn after attending a training workshop held by the Freedom Writers Foundation. "If you read the whole book you will see how these inner-city students grow and change and become articulate, compassionate, educated young people who want to do something good in their lives despite the environment in which they were raised," she told the Guardian. "I thought my students would very much relate to those kids."

Her head agreed and Heermann got written permission from nearly 150 parents, but the Perry Meridian high school board urged her to wait for its decision.

Teachers' union officials say that a single board member objected to swearing in the book. The school board member allegedly persuaded the other six officials to ban Heermann from teaching the book. It remains available in school libraries.

Heermann and the union say there was no explicit ban on the book when she handed it out to pupils on November 15. But later that day she received an email from the board advising her not to teach the book. "That was the pivotal moment of my life, when I saw how my students were taken with the book, how they loved it, and then I am told not to let them read it? I said no," she said.

After being threatened with dismissal, Heermann was eventually suspended. The union is deciding whether to take the case to court.

The school board denies book banning and accuses Heermann of insubordination. Barbara Thompson, the school board president, wrote in an email yesterday: "She knew she had defied her supervisors' direction in her work and that her defiance was 'insubordination' and 'neglect of duty'."

I place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.

--Thomas Jefferson, (1743-1826)

You are Strength

Courage, strength, fortitude. Power not arrested in the act of judgement, but passing on to further action, sometimes obstinacy.

This is a card of courage and energy. It represents both the Lion's hot, roaring energy, and the Maiden's steadfast will. The innocent Maiden is unafraid, undaunted, and indomitable. In some cards she opens the lion's mouth, in others she shuts it. Either way, she proves that inner strength is more powerful than raw physical strength. That forces can be controlled and used to score a victory is very close to the message of the Chariot, which might be why, in some decks, it is Justice that is card 8 instead of Strength. With strength you can control not only the situation, but yourself. It is a card about anger and impulse management, about creative answers, leadership and maintaining one's personal honor. It can also stand for a steadfast friend.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

I've been reading a lot lately, and especially over the weekend in the New York Times, that book sales are down. Really down. Pittiful and pathetically down. "Harry Potter" last summer generated a lot of sales (which is an understatement when you stop and think about it) but it was not enough to "save" publishing from a bad year.

Hmmm. Why is that, I wonder? Why are book sales down?

It goes beyond our society's "MTV mind-set" that wants everything in 30 second sound bites; it goes beyond the excuse that there's "too many things to do". It goes beyond the argument that with iPods, cell phones, Facebook, MySpace and the myriad blogs out there that people just don't want to take the time to read.

Maybe they don't want to take the time to read.

Or maybe there isn't enough GOOD out there to read.

The problem, simplified of course, is two fold (from my limited, non-publishing-world point of view, which means I'm not seeing this through capitalistic-colored lenses where the bottom line is make more money no matter what it is you're trying to foist off on the general public):

1. Because it's all "how much money can I make today" publishers (not the indies, but they have their own set of problems) jump on whatever latest bandwagon seems to make the biggest splash--according to the media. According to the handful of prestigious critics who can make or break people. Right now, the focus is on memoir. We've become a people who can't get enough of "reality television", of delving into the innermost psyche of people other than ourselves, to make us feel better about our own pathetic lives. After all, it's quite refreshing to be able to sit back and say, "I don't have it so bad. These other people are really fucked up."

So "reality television" drifts over into the written word and we have everyone and his/her brother baring their souls for a buck and to offer a quick thrill to the outside world. And they're such sad, pathetic stories.

Fiction is definitely taking a backseat, at least according to publishers and the media. There happens to be a good deal of good fiction out there, but one of the cut-backs publishers have taken into serious consideration is marketing. Writers are free to go around and do readings on their own dime; take out advertising on their own dime, but if they aren't a big brand name (i.e. Stephen King, Dean Koontz, John Grisham for instance) there won't be much, if anything, put aside for marketing fiction.

Instead of relying on trendy analysts, why not actually ask THE READERS. Statistics can be skewed any way at all to justify any decision, good or bad. Instead of down-sizing book reviews in newspapers and magazines, open it up to op-ed people. It's not enough to read the comments on "Amazon.com" because people always have a bitch or an axe to grind so even things there have to be taken with a grain of salt. And one shouldn't have to wade through the loftiness that is known as John Updike to try to figure out what a book is about and whether or not they should read it.

(In an aside, please stop putting blurbs on the back of books, people. Obviously no one is going to say "This was a real shitty book, but they paid me to say something nice about it." WHO CARES? Tell me about the author, tell me about the book. I don't care what fancy-ass author recommends it. As a matter of fact, I might decide NOT to read a book that Updike said was good (ok, I'm down on John Updike, but the point is made here. Knock off the pretentiously wonderful blurbs. It's a marketing technique and really is stupid.)

2. If books aren't selling maybe it's because books have become overly expensive. Way too expensive. When paperbacks are now as costly as hardbacks used to be, with the recession clearly out there and not moving any time soon, wouldn't it make sense to lower prices? Hey, if I could buy a book for $8 bucks, I might actually be tempted to buy four (which comes to $32, if my math is right). More people would buy the lower-priced books, so publishers might sell more; granted at a lower price, but they'd sell the books and might end up making more money to begin with.

Stop with the $24, $25, $28 hardcovered books! Lower the price and sell more.

We need to have faith in the publishing industry again. We need to see more publishers (and more agents) at least try to work with new voices, new talent. We're tired of seeing the same old names being touted with the same old basic kinds of books. Stop paying the "big guns" so much freaking money that other, excellent writers who can't get published because they're not "known" stand at least a fighting chance.

It can be done. Who is willing to step up and do it?

The emperor has no clothes, people. Let's get some on and get back to bringing good reading to the public. If it's there, we'll buy it, we'll read it.

THIS JUST IN: The Tokyo cat café


Once AGAIN the Japanese hand our asses to us.

This time, in the form of "Cat Café", a place on Tokyo where fourteen resident cats make customers "purrrrr with delight." "The clean, odorless cafe -- Calico has six air fresheners and the litter trays are out of sight -- gets about 70 visitors a day during the week and 150 a day at weekends."

You heard me. People can mingle with kittehs and have a cup of tea.

Big props to Kari M., Calico-kitteh photo taker and Gina W., Japanese ass-kicker-pointer-outer

This is from www.cuteoverload.com (something a son showed me!)

What do you think, Caitlin? Can/should we do this here? God, I'd go!!!

Ha Jin's new book has been released today. (For those of you who are keeping track of "new books").

I read Russo's "Bridge of Sighs" but am waiting for Jeff to finish it before saying anything about it.

Meanwhile, I'm rereading Wharton's "House of Mirth" for AmLit and Atwood's "Handmaid's Tale" for Honors Comp.

Just in case you were wondering...

I am SO sick and absolutely beyond tired of people/students/alleged adults who CANNOT FOLLOW DIRECTIONS!!!

Is it so much to ask?????

Thirty years ago, Steven Biko died.

Who remembers Steven Biko?

The more things change, the more they stay the same. We really ARE doomed to repeat the history we choose to forget~