Month: April 2011

Posted on by — 2 Comments

American Library Association List of Books People Tried to Ban in 2010

In our enlightened world, people are still trying to ban books. The American Library Association (ALA) has just released its list of the 10 books which Americans tried hardest to ban in 2010.

  1. "And Tango Makes Three" by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
    Reasons: Homosexuality, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group
  2. "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" by Sherman Alexie
    Reasons: Offensive language, Racism, Sex Education, Sexually Explicit, Unsuited to Age Group, Violence
  3. "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley
    Reasons: Insensitivity, Offensive Language, Racism, Sexually Explicit
  4. "Crank" by Ellen Hopkins
    Reasons: Drugs, Offensive Language, Sexually Explicit
    Note: Crank is available for the Kindle
  5. "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins
    Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Unsuited to Age Group, Violence
    Note: The Hunger Games is also available for the Kindle
  6. "Lush" by Natasha Friend
    Reasons: Drugs, Offensive Language, Sexually Explicit, Unsuited to Age Group
    Note: Lush (Kindle version)
  7. "What My Mother Doesn’t Know" by Sonya Sones
    Reasons: Sexism, Sexually Explicit, Unsuited to Age Group
    Note: What My Mother Doesn’t Know (Kindle version)
  8. "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich
    Reasons: Drugs, Inaccurate, Offensive Language, Political Viewpoint, Religious Viewpoint
    Note: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (Kindle Version)
  9. "Revolutionary Voices" edited by Amy Sonnie
    Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit
  10. "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer
    Reasons: Religious Viewpoint, Violence
    Note: Twilight (Kindle version)

Do you agree or disagree? What books would you ban?

The State of America’s Libraries Report documents trends in library usage and details the impact of library budget cuts, technology use and the various other challenges facing U.S. libraries. The full report is available at http://tinyurl.com/alasalr2011. [Source, American Library Association]

Sources:
DayRiffer, Cowardly New World
Guardian, Brave New World among top 10 books Americans most want banned
American Library Assciation, "And Tango Makes Three" waddles its way back to the number one slot as America’s most frequently challenged book

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Entertainment Opportunity for You

Union County seeks entertainers for their Renaissance Faire Saturday, April 16 from 11am-4pm.

I am too booked that day to be able to help.

Would anybody (and multiple people can do this) be interested in providing walk-around entertainment at this event? This is volunteer work. Their one request is no clowns.

Here’s the link to their flyer.

If interested, email me juggler@gmail.com or call/text 865-898-7189 or skype: djuggler and I’ll get you contact information of the event organizer.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Best ev’r reminder service fails to its own success – RIP Jott.com

I can’t remember…oh right, RIP Jott.

"We founded Jott in April of 2006. … In 2006 Jott emerged as a leader in mobile voice-to-text applications… we will focus our voice-to-text service investments on carrier and enterprise distribution, and no longer on Jott.com." [Source, Jott blog]

Of all the services I’ve played with and have seen go, this is the first that almost brought a tear to my eye. My first Jott was on September 5, 2007 at 9:54am. I spoke into my phone and the service translated my words to text. I would later learn that Jott used a combination of computer software and people at call centers. I imagine that if the software failed to understand a word, that segment of the message would be pushed to a queue and transcribed by person. Jott sat on my speed dial and I could verbally leave a message, send it to another service like Remember The Milk or another person via email/sms/etc, and even set a reminder which would send the transcribed message to me via SMS. I even had Jott installed as the default software for my Jawbone Icon. A while after using it, Jott turned to a paid subscriber model that left a small feature set to free users and shortly after that killed free accounts altogether so I quit using Jott. But I found myself lost without it and soon relented to paying $4.95 a month for the service. Money well spent! Jott became my capture tool of choice and kept me organized and eased my forgetfulness. Now it looks as though Jott is turning to corporate clients.

How the hell am I going to remember anything?! (Springpad of course!)

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Knoxville STEM School Excites Students

The student/parent orientation and final tour of the STEM school before major renovation begins was this week. Noah received his official acceptance letter and will be one of 43 students in the sophomore class. A graduating class of 43! My graduating class from Germantown High School in 1988 was 672 people. I can only imagine how unique and special Noah’s education will be. The orientation was akin to a family reunion. Everyone seemed to know each other and be very like minded with regard to the goals of education. The principal is extremely enthusiastic. I have high hopes and think the Knoxville STEM Academy will do great! Oh, one of the highlights was the announcement that all students will be issued an iPad 2. There will be no textbooks. I’m thrilled and I’m thrilled for Noah.

Video source: WBIR.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Heard in 5 states!

What was I doing this morning between 9am and 10am? Hanging out with Bob Thomas, Ed Brantley, Mike Howard, and Brian Hornback on WNOX‘s The Ed and Bob Show! I had a blast! I hope they do this segment again. I think we could have talked for 8 hours on various blogging topics. Shoot, privacy and safety could be an entire show.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Where’s the Jeep?!

JeepI wish Clara Peller was still around to narrate this post for me. She could squawk out, "Where’s the Jeep?" See, last night was the parent and student orientation for Knoxville’s newest high school, the STEM Academy and my 14 year old son will be attending in the fall as a sophomore. With a household of seven, mobilizing our crew is no simple matter and when the plans get changed at the last minute, anything goes. Last night the plan changed to me staying at my client’s office and the family picking me up for the orientation. The STEM school orientation was incredible. The principal is so enthusiastic and everything about the school fits into my vision of the future of our education down to the students being assigned iPad 2’s! The gathering was like a reunion. So many familiar faces showed that it felt like family and the school hasn’t even opened. But that’s for another post. Where’s the Jeep? Well, we left so excited (and with a 5 and 8 year old up past bedtimes) that we just drove home. Muscle memory steered the van, not logic. And the sad, forgotten Jeep stayed somewhere overnight in its lonely parking spot, leaving me this morning with but one question…how do I get to my client’s office today?!

n.b. The Neon has an engine that goes cachug kachug cachug right now and expired tags so it’s not an option. Taking the van strands Cathy at home.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Tune in tomorrow 9-10am

Radio tower detailTomorrow, April 6, 2011 from 9am to 10am, I’ll be discussing blogging with Brian Hornback (Twitter: @brianhornback), Ed Brantley and Bob Thomas on WNOX‘s 100.3 The Ed & Bob Show (listen live online). You can interact with Ed and Bob on Facebook and Twitter. I suspect you can call in with questions or feel free to use twitter to send messages to @djuggler or post in comments here. This will be a blast!