Dr. Who's Reading Room

No, there’s nothing intentionally risqué in the selection of “Between the Covers” as the theme for the adult summer reading program.

2012 Adult Summer Reading Program
Calling Adult Readers! Summer’s here, and it’s time to catch up on your reading! Grab a book, and join the Between the Covers adult summer reading program at Memorial Hall Library. To participate, read or listen to a book (yes, audio books count too, and log your reading online to be entered to win one of our grand prizes at the end of the summer. The more you read, the more chances you have to win! Enter to win one of several prizes including a Kindle! Share reading with your family through summer reading programs for all ages. Don’t miss our Between the Covers movie nights this summer too. (via MHL: Between the covers)

Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

“

—	P. J. O’Rourke - American - Comedian Quotations for P. J. O’Rourke 10829 via Pretty Good Goods

Use the Night theme in iBooks 1.5 for easy reading in low light.

I wonder how this works on a plane.

Subject: Use the Night theme in iBooks 1.5 for easy reading in low light.

Date: December 19, 2011 4:27:17 PM EST

iBooks 1.5 includes new fonts and ways to customize your reading experience, including a night theme which switches the display to white text on a black background. Besides providing you with excellent readability in low light, it also significantly reduces glare than might distract your “ready to go to sleep” companion if you’re reading in bed. To activate it, tap the Font icon in the controls at the top of the page, then the Themes button, and then Night (if the controls at the top aren’t visible, tap the page. Tapping it again will hide them). On the iPad there’s also a Full Screen switch at the bottom of the Themes list which hides the graphical elements that frame the text within a virtual book and gives you a few more words to the page.

Among the many reasons I love Doctor Who.

(Source: edmacfarlane)

Speculations abound concerning the deeper effects of screen technologies on a thoughtful inner life, and it is too soon to mourn the death of reading altogether. People love their e-books. The disappearance of the public book shelf, though, is not unrelated to the blatant new illiteracy that shows itself, at one end, in the shrinking number of published book reviews, and, at the other, in today’s shallow political discourse. Junk opinion replaces the astute analysis that only careful and well-edited authorship provides. The business of Borders might be replaced online, but the web that matters most is intangibly of the spirit, and Borders was one of its master weavers. This is the death to mourn - and take warning from.

“

—

James Carroll (via azspot)

This is a thoughtful epitaph to the demise of Borders, which reverberates quietly through our shared intellectual life. I understand that to some, this will smack of digital dualism. Therefore, I think it is incumbent upon those who embrace both the public and the digital to inhabit social media haunts thoughtfully, and in ways that provoke discussion of idea,s and promote public discourse.

How Much Do College Students Learn, and Study? »

caraobrien:

gregleding:

From The New York Times:

In the book, and in an accompanying study being released Tuesday, the authors followed more than 2,300 undergraduates at two dozen universities, and concluded that 45 percent “demonstrated no significant gains in critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and written communications during the first two years of college.”

The universities are not identified — the authors only say they represent “a wide range” of the nation’s approximately 2,000 four-year institutions — but the yardstick against which such judgments are made is the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test that is essay-based and open-ended. (It is worth noting that in measuring broad analytic and problem-solving skills, the exam does not assess how much students concentrating in particular majors — physics or psychology, for example — have learned in their respective fields of study.)

The authors of “Academically Adrift” — Richard Arum, a professor of sociology and education at New York University, and Josipa Roksa, a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia — also question the degree of rigor of many students’ college course schedules.

For example, they found that 32 percent of the students whom they followed did not, in a typical semester, take “any courses with more than 40 pages of reading per week” and that 50 percent “did not take a single course in which they wrote more than 20 pages over the course of the semester.”

Emphasis is mine, just because it surprises/saddens me the most.

Really, what the hell is the point of going to (and paying for) college if you aren’t even going to try to learn anything?

activist musicians, emma’s revolution in Reading on 1/22/11 - Please help spread the word!

I saw this duo in K-Port a few years ago. They are upbeat and have a lot of energy, and are definitely worth checking out.

Award-winning, activist songwriters
Ivy Chord Coffee House, January 2011
This is a great concert series.
Spread the word to your friends and community!

L-R: Sandy O & Pat Humphries. Photo: Tom Wolff

emma’s revolution
Sat Jan 22 at 8pm
Ivy Chord Coffee House
Unitarian Universalist Church of Reading
239 Woburn St, Woburn $18 general admission/$16 students & seniors/pay what you can
Available online and at the door.

about emma’s revolution

Smart, funny and informative. Like Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart with guitars.

With hauntingly beautiful harmonies and powerful acoustic instrumentals that deliver the energy and strength of their convictions, emma’s revolution creates new standards in the art of social justice. Their songs have been sung for the Dalai Lama, praised by Pete Seeger and recorded by Holly Near.

emma’s revolution is the duo of activist musicians, Pat Humphries & Sandy O. Based in the Washington DC area, the duo won Grand Prize in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest for “If I Give Your Name”, about the families of undocumented workers killed on 9/11. “Peace, Salaam, Shalom” is sung around the world and has been called the “anthem of the anti-war movement.” emma’s revolution’s music has been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and Pacifica’s “Democracy Now!”

In the spirit of Emma Goldman’s famous attribution, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution,” emma’s revolution brings their uprising of truth, hope and a dash of healthy irreverence to concerts and peace & justice, labor, human rights, environmental, LGBT and women’s rights events around the world. Touring over 200 days a year, emma’s revolution has performed at hundreds of events from Canada, Chile, Korea, Scotland, England, Israel/Palestine, Nicaragua, Cuba and throughout the US spreading their message of peace and justice. emma’s revolution consistently delivers performances that are an uprising of hope and harmony so powerful audiences leap to their feet.