Day: December 22, 2004

Moron of the Day

Chris 7 Comments

Goes to Andrea Minnon from North Berwick, Maine. She is trying to get The Catcher in the Rye banned from the freshman curriculum at her son’s high school. My favorite part of the article is this:

Andrea Minnon of Lebanon said she had never heard of “The Catcher in the Rye” before she learned that it was on her 14-year-old son Spencer’s freshman reading list.

After Andrea Minnon went online to research “The Catcher in the Rye,” which had been assigned to her son, she decided that it espouses immoral ideas. Now she is reading the novel.

I don’t really care what she thinks about it, she is entitled to her opinion (although she probably should RTFB first) however the thing that irks me about people like Ms. Minnon is they have this weird idea that their principles should be pressed on everyone. If you want your child to grow up in a vacuum of ignorance go ahead but what is up with forcing your principles on everybody?

Space Art in Children’s books 1950’s to 1970’s

Chris 1 Comment

yoadst4.jpg

The picture above is from the 1951 book, “The Young Adventurer’s Pocket Book of Space Travel.”

In post-World War II America anything seemed possible, even going to the Moon! There appeared in 1949, a book The Conquest of Space , which led to a new trend in children’s books. These books outlined the future the children of the “baby boom” would grow up in, the world of space (example). The illustrations in these books show facts (as they were known) mixed in with the fantasy of space flight and led many of the readers of these books to “dream of space”.

Photos from the Arkansas State Prison 1915-1937

Chris

11785.jpg

These images are based on a group of about two hundred 3×4″ identification photographs made between 1914 and 1937 that I found in a drawer in the Arkansas penitentiary in the summer of 1975. The photographs of the men were loose in the drawer; the photographs of the women—all of them white— were in a small brown envelope. Most of the photographs of the men were taken inside, against a wall or a cloth; most of the photographs of the women were taken outside, near a fence, in a wicker chair.

(via Exclamation Mark)