Hey, reader guys everywhere, it's Carl and I'm glad to be blogging again. I was gone all last week on an awesome vacation on an island off the Georgia coast.
It's a beautiful place, as you can see, and has some great beaches. Of course, I couldn't go to the beach without thinking of Capt'n Eli:
The only bad thing about vacation was that I had to miss Joe Piscopo's visit to the library. But Darth Bill said it was really fun and is working on a post about it.
Of course, I couldn't go without taking some good reading. I didn't get much time to sit and read but I did get to hear a couple of good books on CD. The first was Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing by Judy Blume, read by Judy Blume. It was funny! 10-year Peter has a two-and-a-half-year-old brother that everyone calls Fudge (it's a better name than Farley) and that little brother is almost always a royal pain. From trying to fly from a jungle gym to almost ruining a TV commercial to stashing Peter's pet turtle in a most unusual place, Fudge always seems to cause headaches for everyone. Especially Peter. This made me laugh out loud, it was so funny.
The other one was The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis, read by that terrific British actor, Derek Jacobi. Lucy and Edmund Pevensie, from the first two Narnia books, find themselves onboard a ship with Prince Caspian, who is now King Caspian. All is well in Narnia, so Caspian sets sail to find seven Narnian lords who disappeared 7 years before. This would be a real treat for Edmund and Lucy except that Eustace Clarence Scrubb, that real stinker of a kid, happened to be pulled into Narnia with them. What happens next? Well, you'll just to read to find out, won't you? This is my favorite of the Narnia books and is just fantastic--there are close encoutners with sea serpents, deadly unknown islands, and storms at sea. Plus a whole lot more! Excitement and adventure abound! And the last few chapters are so good that your jaw will hang open. Derek Jacobi gives a nearly-perfect reading of this nearly-perfect book and makes the characets sound
exactly as you'd think they would.
These books are great if you ever have to spend a lot of time in the car, whether you're going on vacation or just have to ride a long way to school every day. So get on down to your local library and get them!
This poster visualizes the spread of anonymous gossip as the production of destructive monsters. Designed by Alex Godfrey for Ownwhatyouthink.com. Download Poster PDF. The latest fads in our society almost never produce refreshing news. On the other hand, sometimes, like in the post from
before Christmas about the guy who overcame disability to build a useable
Viking Ship from popsicle sticks , you'll get somebody that says
"You can't take me down!" to evil, tragedy, pain or disaster. Or to a current fad.
Remember the Magician's book in
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader?(Sure you do, without it I wouldn't have the premise for this very blog! :-)It exists. Or at least, one of the spells from its pages does. That's the spell that Lucy tried out to see what her friends really thought of her. Lewis-as-narrator of Voyage of the Dawn Treader remarks of the words of this spell "nothing will induce me to tell you what they were."
But people today can find it --on the internet, of course. I guess we should have expected that, eh?
Blogs, e-mail lists, social networks, forums.....all of these have potential for damage. Writers may be indiscreet or even malicious as they slip into careless remarks about friends, or in a passive-aggressive way announce on their Facebook update or Twitter "Marjorie Preston (the girl who gossiped about Lucy) was getting pretty tired of some people by the end of last term."
But there is a site even more egregious than these, that exists for the very purpose of saying all sorts of things, without any social constraints at all. I'm not linking to it. It's called
Juicy Campus, and it's a
gossip cesspool like we've never seen before, where college students come to write the kind of stuff that used to only appear on washroom walls. Classmates may find themselves hounded, outed, harassed,
labeled and slandered--
and unlike Lucy's friends in the Magician's book, the perpetrators get to remain anonymous.
But it's all in good fun. Well, fun like running with scissors, that is, until somebody gets an eye poked out.....
But hang on. This evil website has a noble twin.
Started by students at Princeton,
Own What You Think.com "
seeks to unite people and bring personal accountability back into the ways in which we communicate and interact with each other. It is about encouraging individuals to voice their opinions respectfully and constructively while refusing to participate in anonymous and malicious character assassination. It is also about taking a personal stand for something and encouraging others to do the same. "Among the initiatives of their campaign for civil discourse, these students have created a "love wall" in which they write positive things about others; T-shirts that declare "anonymity=cowardice" and a petition/pledge that begins:
We, the undersigned, commit ourselves to taking a stand against anonymous character assassination, a culture of gossip, and all other acts of ethical and intellectual cowardice.
Bravo, Princeton and other colleges that have joined the campaign. Call it prissy and Pollyannaish if you like...when you see the stuff they are taking a stand against, ownwhatyouthink.com is what I call good magic.
It's a beautiful place, as you can see, and has some great beaches. Of course, I couldn't go to the beach without thinking of Capt'n Eli:
Of course, I couldn't go without taking some good reading. I didn't get much time to sit and read but I did get to hear a couple of good books on CD. The first was Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing by Judy Blume, read by Judy Blume. It was funny! 10-year Peter has a two-and-a-half-year-old brother that everyone calls Fudge (it's a better name than Farley) and that little brother is almost always a royal pain. From trying to fly from a jungle gym to almost ruining a TV commercial to stashing Peter's pet turtle in a most unusual place, Fudge always seems to cause headaches for everyone. Especially Peter. This made me laugh out loud, it was so funny.
The other one was The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis, read by that terrific British actor, Derek Jacobi. Lucy and Edmund Pevensie, from the first two Narnia books, find themselves onboard a ship with Prince Caspian, who is now King Caspian. All is well in Narnia, so Caspian sets sail to find seven Narnian lords who disappeared 7 years before. This would be a real treat for Edmund and Lucy except that Eustace Clarence Scrubb, that real stinker of a kid, happened to be pulled into Narnia with them. What happens next? Well, you'll just to read to find out, won't you? This is my favorite of the Narnia books and is just fantastic--there are close encoutners with sea serpents, deadly unknown islands, and storms at sea. Plus a whole lot more! Excitement and adventure abound! And the last few chapters are so good that your jaw will hang open. Derek Jacobi gives a nearly-perfect reading of this nearly-perfect book and makes the characets sound
yikes! such madness. on the other hand, it's refreshing to see that there still are people out there with some heart and common sense who see practical and wonderful ways to counteract this kind of nastiness.
This is late in coming, but thank you for stopping by and the really enjoyable read.