"Dreams For My Father"  by Barak Obama was on the reading list for students of Hingham High School in Massachusetts, but some parents complained that it shouldn't be there because they consider the choice "divisive".  Some complained that it was too thick and 
"not what I would call recreational reading for the summer" for high school students.  I think it is the parents who are a bit too thick.  Side note, it seems all the offended parents were Republican.


www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20090902hingham_school_assignment_of_obama_biography_riles_parents_bummer_reading/srvc=home&position=also

Go figure...

::)

Leaving a 460 page book until the last week?  Cheer up, kids, I survived four years of college doing just that!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/07/partytime.gif

Leaving a 460 page book until the last week?  Cheer up, kids, I survived four years of college doing just that!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/07/partytime.gif


yesh, I had to read Fountainhead and Crime and Punishment over my summer vacation one year.  Fountainhead is perhaps the worst book ever written, filled with one dimensional characters and pontification of disproved theories.  Crime and Punishment was ok, but Russian writers were paid by the word you know.  Neither of those books was under 500 pages.

I got stuck reading Tolstoy in college, but it wasn't War & Peace thank God... 

Shame they're being made to read something written in the past fifty years instead of something barely relevant to anything.

  Fountainhead is perhaps the worst book ever written, filled with one dimensional characters and pontification of disproved theories.
Sounds like the town hall meetings!
:D


  Crime and Punishment was ok, but Russian writers were paid by the word you know.  Neither of those books was under 500 pages.



Solzhenitsyn listed the characters in "The First Circle" in the beginning so you could go back refresh your memory in case Boris Tchenko wasn't mentioned for the past 250 pages!
:P

yesh, I had to read Fountainhead and Crime and Punishment over my summer vacation one year.  Fountainhead is perhaps the worst book ever written, filled with one dimensional characters and pontification of disproved theories.  Crime and Punishment was ok, but Russian writers were paid by the word you know.  Neither of those books was under 500 pages.


You had to read Fountainhead?  For summer vacation?  Dude, what the hell did you do?  (BTW, Rand was also Russian.  And yeah, she wrote like it, too.)

I don't know what's more weird.  That a school had Rand in the curriculum in the first place, or that you actually made it to the end.

(And I say that as one of her fans.  Wow, WTF, man :)  Part of me wants to say you're lucky you had a school that let her within a light-year of the curriculum, for fear that the nerds might get turned onto it.  And second, if a sneaky teacher actually wanted to teach it, the hypocrisy of a schoolteacher - a government official in loco parentis - forcing kids to read a work of libertarian philosophy... that's so WTF it makes me want to... oh, hell, I don't know.  It's self-contradictory on the level of photoshopping the LOL WUT pear in the place of the Earth, and putting it on the cover of Atlas Shrugged.

(Hmm.  The more I think about that image, the more I want to do it, just for the lulz.  Subtitle it "Greenspan Shrugged, Bernanke Held" or something.)

You had to read Fountainhead?  For summer vacation?  Dude, what the hell did you do?  (BTW, Rand was also Russian.  And yeah, she wrote like it, too.)

I don't know what's more weird.  That a school had Rand in the curriculum in the first place, or that you actually made it to the end.

(And I say that as one of her fans.  Wow, WTF, man :)  Part of me wants to say you're lucky you had a school that let her within a light-year of the curriculum, for fear that the nerds might get turned onto it.  And second, if a sneaky teacher actually wanted to teach it, the hypocrisy of a schoolteacher - a government official in loco parentis - forcing kids to read a work of libertarian philosophy... that's so WTF it makes me want to... oh, hell, I don't know.  It's self-contradictory on the level of photoshopping the LOL WUT pear in the place of the Earth, and putting it on the cover of Atlas Shrugged.

(Hmm.  The more I think about that image, the more I want to do it, just for the lulz.  Subtitle it "Greenspan Shrugged, Bernanke Held" or something.)


Atlas Shrugged was also taught... I think you either ended up reading one or the other.  Not sure that's still the case, but I did know the head of the English dept. was pretty conservative, but he was an anti-abortion individual, so not really Libertarian material.

I thought the Simpson's take on her this last season was pretty funny, especially when Skinner's mom showed Marge & Lisa the dust jacket of Fountainhead and said "The guy who wrote it's pretty handsome too".  For some Reason, poor Maggie is always subjected to Ayn Rand parodies.

Atlas Shrugged was also taught... I think you either ended up reading one or the other.  Not sure that's still the case, but I did know the head of the English dept. was pretty conservative, but he was an anti-abortion individual, so not really Libertarian material.


Even more weird.  I can't think of a non-religious objection to abortion.  Chalk it up to nuttery on your teacher's part - the big controversy about her when I was growing up was her devout Atheism-with-a-capital-A.  (I came from a place where both big-L-liberals and (religious-c-)onservatives hated her.  Your mileage varied :)


I thought the Simpson's take on her this last season was pretty funny, especially when Skinner's mom showed Marge & Lisa the dust jacket of Fountainhead and said "The guy who wrote it's pretty handsome too".  For some Reason, poor Maggie is always subjected to Ayn Rand parodies.


Oh, hell yeah!  Where I part company with Objectivists(tm) is that most Objectivists(tm) tend to have no sense of humor, especially when it's their own ox being gored.  Me?  I thought the only thing than Groening's take on it would have been seeing it done by the case of South Park or Family Guy.

Atlas Shrugged was also taught... I think you either ended up reading one or the other.  Not sure that's still the case, but I did know the head of the English dept. was pretty conservative, but he was an anti-abortion individual, so not really Libertarian material.



Same here, he was more of an Eisenhower Republican, but he was definitely a Republican, definitely a conservative, and definitely the only one in the entire English dept. at my HS, and he was the department chair.  He's also the only one I really learned from.  That had less to with politics, and more to do with Reynolds being a crusty old Yankee who actually made you WORK for it!
;D

"Dreams For My Father"  by Barak Obama was on the reading list for students of Hingham High School in Massachusetts, but some parents complained that it shouldn't be there because they consider the choice "divisive".  Some complained that it was too thick and  
"not what I would call recreational reading for the summer" for high school students.  I think it is the parents who are a bit too thick.  Side note, it seems all the offended parents were Republican.


www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20090902hingham_school_assignment_of_obama_biography_riles_parents_bummer_reading/srvc=home&position=also
It sort of interesting me that parents of Massachusetts children would voice an opinion against a book by Barack Obama. I mean Obama is a liberal and Massachusetts is a very liberal state. I mean John Kerry and the late Ted Kennedy are/were liberals.

Even more weird.  I can't think of a non-religious objection to abortion.  Chalk it up to nuttery on your teacher's part - the big controversy about her when I was growing up was her devout Atheism-with-a-capital-A.  (I came from a place where both big-L-liberals and (religious-c-)onservatives hated her.  Your mileage varied :)



In the end nearly all value system issues are based on religion or basically mores that can neither be proven or disproven.

For example, laws against theft... What part of opposing theft makes it any more or less religion-based than opposing abortion?  Ditto for opposing dishonesty and laziness.

While formal organized religion can be eliminated from laws and government, the values that arise from religions (or similar value systems) cannot be excluded.  In the end the basis for most choices are rooted in value systems.

In the end nearly all value system issues are based on religion or basically mores that can neither be proven or disproven.

For example, laws against theft... What part of opposing theft makes it any more or less religion-based than opposing abortion?  Ditto for opposing dishonesty and laziness.


Eh?  I disagree.

Theft:  If I have the right to take stuff from you by force, then other folks probably have the right to take stuff from me by force.  We all wind up beating the crap out of each other for stuff, and none of us gets anything done.

Dishonesty:  If I can scam you outa stuff, someone might scam me outa stuff.  Sucks to be either of us.  If a man's word isn't bond, we can't rely on each other to do things in the future that we agreed to do today.  Nothing gets done.

Laziness:  I'd argue there ought to be no laws against laziness, and frankly, I don't know any laws against laziness.  The moral argument against laziness, well, that's pretty simple.  You've got Plan A: "Damn, I'm hungry.  Tribe's walked away since I was too lazy to walk to the next hunting ground.  Think I'll take a nap", vs. Plan B: "Damn, I'm hungry.  Better get off my ass and dig up some food, hunt me some grub, then run to catch up to the tribe."  We don't know what the Gods did with the people who went with Plan A, because none of them lived long enough to tell their stories and write their myths.  The only people who lived long enough to tell their stories about how the Gods blessed them in their hour of need... were the people who chose Plan B, and who were lucky enough to catch up.  Dead men sing no praises to any Gods, real or imagined.

I can explain laws against theft and fraud from an understanding of how crappy the world would be without them.  I'd argue there ought to be no laws against laziness -- but in the absence of laws supporting laziness, only the industrious would survive.  No God required.

The only practical argument for the pro-life position is that of a small tribal society (outnumbered by neighboring tribes of opposing ethnicities) in which every broodmare should be encouraged to breed as often as possible, in order to raise more male warriors for defense against neighboring tribes, or female broodmares to produce the next generation of male warriors for defense against the children of the neighboring tribes.  Unfortunately, those sorts of conditions prevailed during Old Testament Judaism, the first few centuries of Christianity, and we're still in the first few centuries of Islam.

But those sorts of conditions haven't been prevalent since the Industrial Revolution.  Theft and fraud actively harm others: there are victims, and it's a crime.  Sloth only harms the slothful: if it's a victimless crime, it's not a crime at all.  Some forms of abortion (we can split hairs on viability, but for sake of argument, let's take the position that life begins at conception) harms no demonstrably sentient being.  A single cell is non-sentient, and there's demonstrably no shortage of humans on the planet.  The only conceivable arguments against it are religiously-based. 

It sort of interesting me that parents of Massachusetts children would voice an opinion against a book by Barack Obama. I mean Obama is a liberal and Massachusetts is a very liberal state. I mean John Kerry and the late Ted Kennedy are/were liberals.


::)  This sort of statement always makes me roll my eyes.  Why would being a liberal state not allow for different opinions, and different political actions by any group?  We are a very diverse state, with very diverse opinions. I don't know if you are aware of it, but this very liberal state, for whatever reason, has a history of voting in Republican governors. 

::)  This sort of statement always makes me roll my eyes.  Why would being a liberal state not allow for different opinions, and different political actions by any group?  We are a very diverse state, with very diverse opinions. I don't know if you are aware of it, but this very liberal state, for whatever reason, has a history of voting in Republican governors. 


Not to mention the very blue collar town I live in has a Republican state representative. Even the most liberal states are only maybe 60%-65% Dem.    The whole blue state/red state thing is a made-for-tv division, which the Republicans have really pushed because it helps them demonize certain regions they don't have a clear majority in. 

Massachusetts, despite a population that hasn't been keeping up with some of the more popular areas, still attracts a large population from elsewhere. There's a lot of different businesses here, so people move in with a company stay awhile, maybe move back out again in a few years.  There's a lot of colleges as well, but college students don't vote as much as people seem to think (especially if they aren't full time residents here).  All these factors make it a pretty big mixture of a lot of different beliefs.

My guess is that someone out there, is going to compare his book, to Mein Kampf.

::)

What a minute, it's too late, someone has already...

http://mediamatters.org/research/200804030010

My guess is that someone out there, is going to compare his book, to Mein Kampf.

::)

What a minute, it's too late, someone has already...

http://mediamatters.org/research/200804030010


Ann Coulter is like a walking Godwin's Law.

My guess is that someone out there, is going to compare his book, to Mein Kampf.

::)

What a minute, it's too late, someone has already...

http://mediamatters.org/research/200804030010


Yeah, well, consider the source.  Ann Coulter doesn't know her ars from her elbow.