“In Coeur d’Alene, four members of a committee dedicated to curriculum review have urged the city’s school district to ban Steinbeck’s famous novel from being taught in classrooms … In Asheville, one school has already suspended [Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 bestseller], a frequently challenged novel about an Afghan boy growing up in Kabul.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Librarians Fight Back Against NSA’s Big Brother-Style Mass Surveillance
“The American Library Association has counted privacy among its ‘core values’ since 1939, but [Alison] Macrina thinks that now, in the age of dragnet data collection by intelligence agencies and corporations, librarians aren’t taking enough concrete steps to protect their patrons, in many cases because they don’t have the technical skills.” And she’s working to change that.
Shakespeare’s Globe Offers Discount Tours On Days When Tour Guides Strike
“Shakespeare’s Globe is to slash the cost of tours at the venue by 26% when guides begin two days of strikes later this month. … Tour guides who are members of backstage union BECTU will strike on May 18 and June 1, when the venue will make use of specially developed audio guides instead.”
Electra’s Sorrow And Rage, Explored In Cabaret
“Each major character in Ann Liv Young’s Elektra Cabaret tries to break the tragedy with a different emotional code. All of us at times react sorrowfully like the wounded Elektra, cruelly like the controlling mother Klytemnestra, vindictively like the raging prodigal son Orestes, or vacuously like the denying younger sister Chrysothemis.”
Haruki Murakami On Aum Shinrikyo, Terrorism, Nuclear Power, And His Advice Column
“I’m saying quite honestly what I’m usually thinking about … I was thinking it might be something like the Agora of Athens in ancient Greece, where everyone came together and anyone could put up their hand and say whatever they wanted to say.”
I Was David Letterman’s Animal Handler
“I never could have imagined that my career would involve sitting beside sloths and snakes on a late-night TV couch.’ “Jungle” Jack Hanna writes about the baby hippo he brought to his first appearance on Dave’s show, the camels that took out all the ceiling panels, the hyena that drank from Dave’s mug, the armadillos that mated on his desk, and the beaver that bit him on set. (includes video clips)
So, What Do French Muslims Think About The PEN/Charlie Hebdo Controversy?
The people arguing about PEN’s award to the magazine’s surviving staffers have mostly been anglophones, many of whom had never heard of Charlie Hebdo before the murders. Finally, someone has asked French Muslims – well, seven of them, anyway – for their opinions.
Trolls, What Constitutes Trolling, And How It Has Changed
Way back in 1992, a writer for the Toronto Star described online trolls as people who “fish for flames” the way fishermen troll for fish. These days, Laura Miller observes, “‘troll’ is a word pinned on whoever happens to be upsetting us online.” Miller looks at the motivations of trolls and the rise of reverse trolling.
Adelaide Festival Has A New Director – A Pair Of Them, In Fact
“Nine years after they last shared the running of Sydney’s Belvoir St theatre, Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy have been announced as the new co-artistic directors of the Adelaide festival of the arts.”
Do Memes – As Transmissible, Mutating Entities Like Viruses Or Genes – Really Exist? (Nah, Probably Not)
At least not the way Richard Dawkins theorized them. That was a metaphor, whether Dawkins realized it or not.