Here is something new I learned today: The nation's largest area of sand dunes is in Colorado: [link]

I want to go. It'd be fun to walk through the sand dunes. Then I'd lie down on a dune and take a nap.

In case it isn't obvious, the caffeine hasn't kicked in yet....

Sue, do they hand out the labryses at the ceremony or is there some secret meeting afterwards?

hunh? Wha?

I skipped the ceremony.

The World's Most Dangerous Books Revealed!

At conservative weekly Human Events Online, scholars and public-policy leaders have labored bravely to come up with a list of the most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries.

...

So what is on the list? Sure: no-brainers like Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto made the grade (with our experts, interestingly, rating Marx and Engels almost twice as evil as Adolf Hitler).

What else?

Duh! The Kinsey Report, of course! Only two places below Mein Kampf! Also, that bloodthirsty villain Betty Friedan's seminal text, The Feminine Mystique. And, somewhat more obscurely, The Course of Positive Philosophy, Auguste Comte's treatise on rationalism and agnosticism, in which he essentially argues that science trumps religion. Very explosive stuff, that.

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed, and Charles Darwin's Descent of Man, while not in the Top Ten, are also considered extremely wicked and harmful. You've been warned, people! If I've seen it once, I've seen it a thousand times: it begins with reading about spontaneously combusting Corvairs and evolutionary science, and it ends with the Prince of Darkness instructing you to wipe out your entire family with grampa's shotgun.

I like "milky zombie". I was one once.

Betty Friedan's seminal text

There is something wrong with this phrase, don't you think?

...I am surprised that Where's Waldo is not in the top 10. It took me forever to figure out what on earth could be wrong with Waldo that conservatives could have a problem with him. Turns out, it is the wizard you have to find, in addition to Waldo. You don't have to like him or read stories about him or enslave yourself to his evil master; you just have to find him among 100,000 gyrating elephants or a million roller-skating children.

I guess I should be glad that the people who would like to squash me into a tiny tiny box are instead busy hunting through dense illustrations in search of evil. Keeps them busy, you know? And they might ignore me a little longer.

Phyllis Schlafly is a scholar or public policy leader? God help us all.

Madness and Civilization ? That's an interesting choice.

Thanks for the congrats and ~ma, everyone.

I taught one 86-minute block. Tired now. Can I go home? Don't really want to teach two more. My brain is still on Pacific time, and 5:45AM was not fun this morning.

Also, that bloodthirsty villain Betty Friedan's seminal text, The Feminine Mystique.

All of society's problems can be traced to one thing: teaching the wimmins how to read, consarn it!

Judge offers church attendance as alternative to rehab/jail:

A Kentucky judge has been offering some drug and alcohol offenders the option of attending worship services instead of going to jail or rehab -- a practice some say violates the separation of church and state.

District Judge Michael Caperton, 50, a devout Christian, said his goal is to "help people and their families."

"I don't think there's a church-state issue, because it's not mandatory and I say worship services instead of church," he said.

head---->desk