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POPSBarack Obama is Mr Darcy --Maureen Dowd Dowd reports that some women won't vote for Obama because he's skinny, some because he seems haughty. That's no sillier than voting for him because he resembles Jane Austen's most popular hero, Mr Darcy. I'm not wild about the train of thought that says women vote based on fictional heroes. However, it may be an uncomfortable truth, and not only about women. Much of voter opinion is based on looks, style, and media hype--not content. I do give Dowd credit for making an unusual analogy. The "Pride & Prejudice" title fits the current politics in some ways, and Dowd correctly points out that the success of the Austen novel rests of changing the views of *both* sides.
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POPSFranken-Pets: A total loss of perspective
I'm going to have to start by saying I love people, and I love animals, I even love people who own animals. I've had pets myself, and I'm not attacking you personally when I say... THIS IS TOTAL INSANITY!!!! People who are obsessed with anthropomorphizing domesticated animals are really starting to freak me out. (Consider the wing-nuts who care for feral cat colonies even though they decimate the local ecosystem, and in Texas, kill off endangered species!) At a certain point we have to consider the situation realistically and draw some boundries, because it seems like our love could very well qualify as animal cruelty. After all, isn't treating an animal like a human, and placing upon it the expectations and burden of fictive human emotional relationship really unfair to the animal? Look at what we've done to them in the name of our narcissistic obsession! We are destroying them to satisfy our own emotional needs. Don't be cruel to your cat: be realistic.
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POPSScientists clone glow-in the-dark cats The cats glow due to a gene that is a marker gene, that can show a gene transplant can be possible, before more functional genes are used. The treatments and methods can then also be extended to other species including humans.
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POPSInternational Literacy Day--8 Sept. 2007 The following authors are working with UNESCO’s "Writers for Literacy" initiative. You can download their essays in the "Alphabet of Hope" anthology linked above. Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster, Philippe Claudel, Paulo Coelho, Philippe Delerm, Fatou Diome, Chahdortt Djavann, Nadine Gordimer, Amitav Gosh, Marc Levy, Alberto Manguel, Anna Moi, Scott Momaday, Toni Morrison, Erik Orsenna, Gisèle Pineau, El Tayeb Salih, Francisco Jose Sionil, Wole Soyinka, Amy Tan, Miklos Vamos, Abdourahman A. Waberi, Wei Wei, Banana Yoshimoto.
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POPSHigh school reading lists updating rapidly--8/07 Christian Science Monitor One quote in the article disturbed me. A college student said "Summer reading is a good thing if and only if there's a context for it. I don't like the idea of just handing us a list. If you say, 'Read these books,' tell us why." Context is a great thing. But there's a lot of value in simply reading for pleasure, reading for its own sake, reading for exposure to different ideas and styles.
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POPSKids Shouldn't Read Fiction -NYTimes Jul 2007 Bull! (a) Reading fiction has benefits other than information. (b) Kids get plenty of practice reading for information on the internet. (c) Studies show that if kids don't do enjoyable reading in school, they stop reading as soon as they're out of school.
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POPSHarry Potter doesn't increase kids' reading -NYTimes Jul 2007 Kids read if their parents read. And most adults don't read. I found some horrifying statistics on how little people read--and how reading dwindles as people age. Adults actually read less than kids do. Great example, huh? http://www.readforpleasure.com/2007/01/how-much-do-we-read.html
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