Bookriot has a list of five signs you are reading too much of the current swath of YA Lit. For examples: “You keep a spreadsheet to try to determine whether you exist in a utopia or a dystopia. (Corporate ownership of media? Dystopia. New Muppet movie on the horizon? Utopia.) You secretly hope it turns out to be a dystopia so you can demonstrate your awesomeness in some world-liberating way.”

And now for something completely different: The Keep Calm Gallery, where one may buy all manner of things to calm oneself among other things.

I’ve noticed an odd phenomenon over the years. The very people who, you would think, would be able to give the best advice on raising children seem to be oddly reticent to offer a list of rules. And the more children they have, the more reticent they are.

Fortunately, there is an ever-growing demographic of people who have no such shyness about sharing their views on child-rearing. These, of course, are the people who (like me) have no children of their own.

I saw this article today (hat tip Strange Herring) on a recent study that concluded that children who watched “Sponge Bob Square Pants” showed decreased attention spans, as compared to children who watched “Caillou,” and a control group who (I assume) used a magnifying glass to fry ants. Continue reading A modest educational proposal →

I enjoyed Phil’s link to this year’s Bulwer-Lytton Award finalists so much that I thought that instead of trying to say anything coherent tonight, I’d just craft my own opening for a detective novel I would rather undergo minor surgery than read.

Det. Dierdre Hamerstein was just finishing up the paperwork from tonight’s arrest, adjusting the sling in which the emergency medics had put her arm after the .45 shell had ripped through her shoulder, when Lieutenant Greese swung his pendulous belly through the office door with that familiar, “I’ve got a high-profile murder and I need to put my best detective on it, even if she is a girl and has lost three pints of blood tonight” look on his insensitive face.

The following news item is “fake but accurate,” in the finest tradition of American contemporary journalism.

WASHINGTON DC: As part of an ongoing effort to streamline government and make it more efficient, officials of the Justice Department announced today that, instead of publishing their annual multi-volume edition of the Statutes of the United States, they will instead publish a single, softcover book containing a list of things that aren’t regulated.

“There isn’t much in here, really,” said E. Cleveland Weckmeyer of the Attorney General’s office. “Basically you can have consensual sex with anybody you want, any way you want. Other than that, everything’s either illegal or you need a permit for it.”

A representative of the America Civil Liberties Union, Eleanore Rigby-Trotsky, when asked for her organization’s response said, “We’ll have to look into it more closely, but from what I hear I’d say we’re OK with it. Call me back in a half an hour.”