I have a big bulletin board in my classroom with pictures of authors on it. This year, I decided to add some pictures to it, like EA Poe, Maya Angelou, and Samuel Clemens. Then I decided to add Michael Moore, insofar as he's written three books (four, if you count Adventures in a TV Nation, which we should). For the sake of balance, I decided to add a conservative political writer as well; because I figure she has the best chance of being recognized by my students, I chose Ann Coulter.

Here's the problem: Each sign also includes a quotation. I had some trouble finding something apolitical from Mike. (I know he's said and written plenty of appropriate things, but I was in a rush and therefore was scanning quotation sites.) Eventually, I found one about librarians that was good. I went looking for something similar by Ms. Coulter.

Nothing. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Every single word she has ever said or written, apparently, is either racist, violent, abusive, or wildly partisan. I even went to her website and looked though her column archive. Every title which looked like it could be somewhat useful, I read. I must have plowed through (top to bottom) over 30 columns, and not ONE of them had a single sentence about the importance of objectivity (instead, it's always something like "Liberals don't understand what it means to be objective") or school or hard work. Arg! (Photo swiped from JD, who is apparently not being ironic.)

Eventually I chose (gods help me) Bill O'Reilly, who said in his latest column: "Too many Americans are not skeptical enough about what is said to them. Fast-talking con people can hurt you badly." Yeah, okay. That's true. (I won't tell my students that O'Reilly is one of those con people, unless they ask.)

Fight the Power

Diane has blogged about the protest yesterday. Woop!

One choice moment is when I was interviewing the Lady Liberty stiltwalker and in the middle of the interview, a police officer came over to tell her to move from where she was sitting. Liberty, begone!

Heh. Reminds me of an economics class I took once, wherein the professor approached the blackboard and, finding it full of writing, tried to figure out what it was from. "There's a cognitive logic class in here before us," one of the students announced. The professor grabbed an eraser. "Logic?" he said. "We don't need any of that in here." And proceeded to clear the writing away.

Protests! Arrests! More protests! Some good pics from NYC. The following is, I think, my favorite protest photograph of all time:



In other news: Tarkovsky's Solaris voted fifth-best SF movie of all time.

OpeningHooks is an interesting project, although it looks like many people are just including works they like most, rather than finding the best actual hooks. I added Kafka's The Trial and Nawal El Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero.

TimeWaster™

Magnificent! Check out this guy and his bullhorn outside a Christina Aguilera / Justin Timberlake concert. Via ABS.

Today I'm listening to: Crystal Method!