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Let us start at the Vatican in Rome. St. Peter’s Basilica has a strict dress code: no skirts above the knee, no shorts, no bare shoulders, and you must wear shoes. At the entrance there are signs picturing these instructions. To some visitors this comes somewhat as a surprise. Becky Haskin, age 44, from Fort Worth, Texas, said: “The information we got was that the dress code only applied when the pope was there.”

The post What do we talk about when we talk about ‘religion’? appeared first on OUPblog.

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New York-based production house Dress Code produced the spot "Death to Mosquitos" for Terminix's new product Attractive Targeted Sugar Bait.

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NOTE TO SELF: EDUCATORS SHOULD STICK TO...EDUCATION


Here we go again. There used to be a time when schools and educators relegated themselves to expanding student's knowledge. It appears that they're also getting involved in fashion choices.

School officials at Lincoln Middle School in Meridien, Conn. have banned hooded sweatshirts, citing that they violate the dress code policy. While the district's Board of Education dress code policy does not specifically ban this piece of clothing, it does now allow head gear, which presumably includes sweat shirt hoods.

"The hooded sweaters, and some of the hooded shirts that are out, all those are excluded. If you're in the stores shopping, that's all there is -- everything is hooded," said parent Cheryl Tomassetti.

School officials said they decided to ban the shirts after some students were spotted wearing hoods over their heads in school hallways and classrooms. Officials said that hoods are sometimes used by students hiding headphones.

Makes a person wonder how far the arm of educators should extend, especially when it comes to the choice of clothing. If it was for safety purposes officials would be justified but headphones?

The ban will go into effect after winter break.

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Slaughterhouse-Five is now on my "must read" list for the "Banned Book Challenge." I was not that familiar with Vonnegut, other than the fact that he is almost the spitting image of a friend of mine. I am fascinated by what I have read about him and how his life inspired his writing. I like his punchy, satiric style. Check out his writing below.

I Love You, Madame Librarian by Kurt Vonnegut

I, like probably most of you, have seen Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. Its title is a parody of the title of Ray Bradbury’s great science fiction novel, Fahrenheit 451. This temperature 451° Fahrenheit, is the combustion point, incidentally, of paper, of which books are composed. The hero of Bradbury’s novel is a municipal worker whose job is burning books.

And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

And still on the subject of books: Our daily sources of news, papers and TV, are now so craven, so unvigilant on behalf of the American people, so uninformative, that only in books can we find out what is really going on. I will cite an example: House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, published near the start of this humiliating, shameful blood-soaked year.

In case you haven’t noticed, and as a result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war lovers, with appallingly powerful weaponry and unopposed.

In case you haven’t noticed, we are now almost as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis were.

With good reason.

In case you haven’t noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanized millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound and kill ’em and torture ’em and imprison ’em all we want.

Piece of cake.

In case you haven’t noticed, we also dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class.

Send ’em anywhere. Make ’em do anything.

Piece of cake.

The O’Reilly Factor.

So I am a man without a country, except for the librarians and the Chicago-based magazine you are reading, In These Times.

Before we attacked Iraq, the majestic New York Times guaranteed that there were weapons of mass destruction there.

Albert Einstein and Mark Twain gave up on the human race at the end of their lives, even though Twain hadn’t even seen World War I. War is now a form of TV entertainment. And what made WWI so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun. Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don’t you wish you could have something named after you?

Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now am tempted to give up on people too. And, as some of you may know, this is not the first time I have surrendered to a pitiless war machine.

My last words? “Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse.”

Napalm came from Harvard. Veritas!

Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler.

What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without a sense of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations and made it all their own?

With thanks to Luminiferous Ether, who is about to become a librarian herself, from whom I cribbed this article about Kurt Vonnegut and admits to shamelessly cribbing it from Michael Moore who shamelessly cribbed it from "In These Times."

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A Bokonon Calypso:

I wanted all things
To seem to make some sense,
So we could all be happy, yes,
Instead of tense.
And I made up lies
So that they all fit nice,
And I made this sad world
A par-a-dise.

- Kurt Vonnegut

I first read Cat's Cradle for my Modern American Lit class in high school. When I was in China, about halfway through the semester, we had run out of English language novels and were too poor to buy more. I begged my parents for books and they sent me a box of Vonnegut and Steinbeck and everyone was jealous of my bounty. (Yes, I shared)

And really, no one can draw an anus like him:

*


And now he's gone... Read the rest of this post

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Newspapers around the world yesterday reported the death of writer Kurt Vonnegut at the age of 84.

His books such as Cat's Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, and Slaughterhouse-Five faced many challenges over the years, likely for their dark, satiric humour.

The Columbus Dispatch describes his novels as "classics of the American counterculture" and go on to compare his humour to that of Mark Twain.

Like Mark Twain, Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well?
He also shared with Twain a profound pessimism.

He was the author of 14 novels and wrote in other genres as well.

His experience of the fire bombing of Dresden during the war was the basis of Slaughterhouse-Five, which was published in 1969, just as America was experiencing the war in Vietnam, racial unrest, and other social upheaval. It struck a chord with American society. The author became a cult hero when Slaughterhouse-Five became a best seller. It was challenged in schools and public libraries for its violence, sexual content and rough language. Vonnegut took on censorship as an active member of the PEN writers' aid group and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Boing Boing offers a podcast of the very first reading of Breakfast of Champions by the author.

A number of people who are signed up for the "Banned Book Challenge" are moving the order of their books or adding a Kurt Vonnegut book to their list, in honour of his passing.

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Goodbye, Mr. Vonnegut. Goodnight and Goodbye.

You'll be missed.

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Lots going on, it seems. I have smattering on unrelated items you may find of interest:

Farecast. An online tool to help you know whether to buy those tickets to Aruba now, or wait until next week. Very easy to use with nice information design.

Social Issues portal. News of this site came out a couple of days ago...put out by Gale. Nice for a snapshot of "current hot topics" of the sort that PAIS is so good at. Makes sense to include Crime, Animal rights, Genetic engineering, Islamic fundamentalism...but working women? That one was new to me, as far as a controversial topic. But my Americanism may be showing...

New York City Council has proposed the library stay open for 6 days a week. News clip from LJ. And Hennepin County recommends a merger with Minneapolis library system. We're headed to Minneapolis next week, to visit my brother and their family... (thanks to our awesome reference librarian on staff for the link.)

And we are all hats in hand for Mr. Vonnegut today. 624 works in WorldCat.

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Kurt Vonnegut has died at the age of 84. The Washington Post article is here. Wikipedia entry about Mr. Vonnegut here.

I have long been a Kurt Vonnegut fan, having read most of his books in my pre-kid twenties. His books are interesting, stimulating, and often amusing. Before I turned over a working third of my brain to playdatestantrumsnightmaresdaycare... breathe ...carpoolsballetclassGirlScoutsattentionissuesdramacamp, Vonnegut challenged my developing intellect. His books are monumental in the course of American Literature and significant in my own reading life.

As it turns out, he thought a lot of me as well. Actually not me specifically, but my kind, my people. This quote won’t be new to many of you. I have a copy of it on the wall in front of my desk where I can see it every day that I work.

And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

— From “I Love You Madame Librarian” or Man Without a Country

I missed the chance to name him as the author with whom I would share a glass of wine. Darn it. But truly it isn’t me, the person today, who would have imbibed freely with this genius. It was the younger me who in naiveté would have been ironically less awed and more confident. Or the older me, world-wise, who could have also been less awed and more confident. Today’s me will drink a glass of wine tonight, and think about courage in writing against the grain, courage in standing up for what you believe, and courage in living a cogitative life. God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut.

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