When did our dreams shrink? When did we go from asking the wild blue yonder questions, from imagining all the possibilities when John Glenn orbited the Earth for the first time... to being excited over an iPad app like STAR WALK. "This is great for making friends' jaws drop as you show off your iPad: simply point the device at the night-time sky, and it identifies stars, constellations and satellites. A real showcase for augmented reality technology." WHOOP-DE-DO. Time was, even after John Glenn's historic soar into space, that people knew the constellations from memory...
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Amanda Knox, convicted murderer, whose conviction was later overturned by an Italian appeals court, just signed a $4 million dollar deal with Harper Collins. Earlier this week, Italian prosecutors asked the country's highest criminal
court to reinstate the murder convictions of Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito. Prosecutor Giovanni Galati said he is "very convinced" that Sollecito and Knox were responsible for the Nov. 1, 2007, stabbing death of British student Meredith Kercher, who shared an apartment with Knox in Perugia, Italy. One hopes the public will stay away from this stinkhole and spend their money on something more deserving of their time and hard-earned cash... it's the only way that publishers will stop bending over for "celebrity" authors. Prediction: Casey Anthony and Drew Peterson will soon enjoy similar rewards... On this date in 1969, George Harrison’s tonsils are removed at London’s University College Hospital. The tonsils are destroyed so that they can not be sold. (????)
Well, we all have embarrassing moments in our lives... if you are an aging superstar, it may be the fact that you find yourself headlining the half-time show at the SuperBowl... a gig that was once filled by Up With People... if you are a B-list celebrity/actress (celebractress?), it's probably a suspiciously leaked "sex tape"... and then, there are librarians....you've heard of food porn, well, book porn is right up there... To see it in its full glory, download it (Windows Media File)... for a quickie view, without the effects, you can use the viewer.
One evening with the Internet down = one and a half books read....hmmmm
Also, fine collection goes to the extreme at this library. Are you watching TV, answering email, text messaging and reading this blog all at the same time? Stop! Now! Choose one thing and do it well and with focus, then move on to the next task, and so on. Multi-tasking is bad for you. Okay, so you won't take my word for it? Here's more than a decade's worth of research on the subject from such stalwart institutions as Stanford University, the University of Michigan and UCLA. And the research all points to this fact: juggling multiple tasks, ubiquitous in our tech-laden world, hurts learning and performance as it divides attention. The Stanford researchers set out to tackle the assumption that it is impossible for the brain to process more than one string of information at a time. They theorized that maybe people who appear to multitask must have superior control over how they focus and what they focus on. So they went hunting for the secret. But after studying 100 students, they discovered that the multitaskers don't have a special "gift," and they are, in fact, losing mental acuity. The researchers divided their test subject into two groups: those who do media multitasking on a regular basis and those who do not. They conducted three different tests which involved ignoring irrelevant information, organizing memories and switching tasks. The heavy multitaskers underperformed on all three tasks: they were, as one researcher put it, "suckers for irrelevancy;" they were unable to filter out information unnecessary to the task at hand; and their capacity to store information to help complete a task was diminished. The UCLA researchers examined how multitasking affects our ability to learn. In short, it does! Adversely! It may just be common sense, but it would certainly seem that the best way to learn and improve your memory is to pay attention to the things you want to remember! Like stuff you want to learn! Duh! So the next time I hear a fellow educator talk about the wonderful ability of today's students to multitask, I think I am going to scream! And then I will refer him or her to these research studies. Wow, what a concept: maybe we could achieve more by doing less. The Great Gatsby
"Midwestern boy mixes with rich Easterners, learns lesson from Gatsby’s story: rags to riches to death in a swimming pool, all cuz of girl."@Tweetbook Macbeth "Ambitious Scotsman slays true king, rises to throne on advice of witches, ghosts and bat-shit crazy wife, is slain by Caesarean-born lord."@Tweetbook Hamlet "Manic-depressive Dane mourns dead dad, hallucinates, contemplates matricide, drives flower-strewing chick to suicide, dies by the sword."@Tweetbook The Catcher in the Rye "Troubled youth flees prep school, drinks, swears and offends girls in New York City, rants about phonies, loses it watching sis on carousel."@Tweetbook Anna Karenina "Unhappy family, dull husband, dashing lover, tormented adulteress, tormented landowner, unrequited love, all ends badly under a train."@Tweetbook Apologies to blondes in advance...
Did you hear about the dumb blonde who attached a keyboard to her iPad and rested it on a stand? She invented a laptop! Okay, so maybe this, on the surface, has nothing to do with reading and/or writing, but... baseball is a metaphor for life. And so it absolutely has everything to do with reading and writing. Today, Chicagoans can celebrate Ron Santo finally getting recognition from Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, the reward is posthumous and several decades late. And the outcome of the "Golden Era" election was hardly a perfect resolution for baseball fans in the Windy City. White Sox great Minnie Minoso was still denied at place in the pantheon of baseball greats and that's an outrageous oversight!
Minoso led the league in steals three times in an era when people didn’t steal a ton of bases. He also led in triples three times and hits once and total bases in another. He racked up 1,963 hits, 186 home runs, and 205 steals. Minoso did not win a major award, and he never played in the postseason. On a superficial level, it’s a very good career, but perhaps not an all-time great one. However, you can’t talk about Minnie Minoso’s case for Cooperstown without getting into his history in other circuits, playing at a time when opportunity was not equal, thanks to matters of race and the reserve clause. His first three years as a pro were spent in his homeland of Cuba (1943-45). He played three more years in the Negro Leagues for the New York Cubans (1946-1948) and then played in the minor leagues because the Indians felt they were already set in the outfield. Minoso got his real break in 1951 after getting sent to the White Sox in a three-way deal. Minoso was already 28 years old. As a result, Minoso was already well through the years that are supposed to be a player’s peak seasons, years he hadn’t gotten to spend in the majors due to racism. We can't speculate how much of his career was lost to that. Despite this late start, Minoso took off on a 10-year run that marked him as one of the best players in the American League. Minoso was a trailblazer as baseball’s first great black Latin player as well as the first black man to play for the White Sox. His popularity in Chicago was astounding, as he was widely acknowledged as the reason the White Sox attendance crossed a million for the first time in franchise history in 1951, and then stayed there throughout the decade of the 1950s. He was a major cause for South Side pride! Did I ever get to see him play? Of course not. But I listened to many stories at my father's knee as to his greatness, both as a baseball player and as a gentleman. He was ever a positive team force, and had a smile for everyone. The Hall needs to add him while he's still around to truly appreciate the honor! |
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