Ubalblog

[  Mood: Distorted ]
[ Currently: Editing the Podcast ]
I love my friends. They are some of the nicest people I know. But some of them posses NO critical literacy skills. These are the well, meaning, earnest people that forward every email without applying any kind of filter. Case in point

Now when I received this, the bias of this piece hit me on the head with a 2 x 4. It was more than a little obvious.

What I also found fascinating about this email is the lack of reference to any CBC show. As a long-time, regular CBC listener, I can tell you that CBC does conduct polls all the time. When they want the answers to count, they hire a poling firm and then they site that polling firm repeatedly when they discuss results. Notice a lack of that in this "report".

Both those things have me starting to question the validity of this email.

Given that I have critical literacy skills, I went and did some searching on the CBC website. I found a poll. It is a web poll. You can find it here.

And right under the poll it says "This poll is not scientific, it is based on readers’ votes." So CBC knows that the poll does not necessarily reflect the views of all Canadians. They recognize that webpolls can be hijacked by special interest groups who get their members to flock to the website to influence the results. Or by people who write scripts to robo-vote.

And it gets even better. This is a variation on an email about a NBC poll that has been circulating for YEARS! Canadians can not even make up their own damn chain letters!

The person who created the email referenced above didn’t mention any of this at all. Most likely because it didn’t fit with their very blatant (and I suspect right-wing, anti-immigrant) Christian agenda. As a Christian and thinking person, I find that particularly offensive. Believe what you want, you can even tell me what you believe, but don’t you dare twist the facts (or ignore others) to make your argument work. That path is the way to some of the darkest places in human history.

So why is it that so many people on the web lack the critical thinking skills to winnow through this kind of thing? It is not an intelligence issue. I have seen some smart people forward emails like this. It’s not politics, because people on both sides of the spectrum do it. It’s not socioeconomic, again, all walks of life, all incomes forward this kind of stuff. It’s not age, because I know some younger people who forward this stuff all the time.

Now I will admit, when I first hit the net, I fell for a few of these, earnestly forwarding virus warnings to my entire address book. And then I learned the evil of Spam and Chain Mail and started to apply critical literacy skills to the Internet too.

And there is the crux of this. It seems that a significant proportion of people lack the basic critical literacy skills to be on the Internet. I try in my very small way to educate them. I play Hoax Busters and find the origin of the story and then forward it back. (Thank you Snopes.com.) If there is a grain of truth, I find it and put back the attribution. And some of the people mentioned above have stopped. Others now forward me the emails first to have me do the fact checking. Most are still doing it.

And I will keep doing it, because I like these people and I want to help them. But there are times I feel like I am trying to hold back a tidal wave. A tidal wave made up of people who should know better.

[  Mood: Happy ]
[  Currently: Eating Breakfast ]
Wore my shirt to work Friday, and as an elementary teacher it was a powerful lesson for my students and for me.

Colleagues spoke of their love of all things sci-fi and shared Star Wars jokes. And my students agreed that girls could like Star Wars. And that boys could like Barbies.

I also officially became the most popular teacher in the Primary division as I paraded through the halls in my Stars Wars shirt.

Thank you Katie and Katie’s mom for this opportunity.

[  Mood: Happy ]
[  Currently: Eating Breakfast ]
So I am not going to be in my usual sartorial splendour today. And no, it’s not because I am lazy.

In case you haven’t heard about Geek Pride for Katie Day, it is in honour of a little girl in Illinois who love Star Wars. She loved it so much that she had a Star Wars water bottle. Until the boys started teasing her, saying Star Wars is only for boys. She stopped taking her waterbottle and looked for a more "girly" one instead.

When her mom figured out what was going on, she wrote a blog post about the whole incident, which went viral.

Thousands of female (and male) Star Wars fans sent notes telling Katie that girls could like Star Wars and to feel free to be herself. Yes, I was one of them. Further to that, geeks world-wide have agreed that today, December 10 would be Geek Pride for Katie Day. As a show of support for Katie and all others like her, we will wear our Star Wars T-Shirts. Katie’s school is even having a Proud To Be Me Day, encouraging kids to wear something that shows what they are interested in, not matter what it is. Because it is 2010 and people should not be bullied because they do not fit outdated gender norms.

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[  Mood: Distorted ]
[  Currently: Eating Breakfast ]
So I read this article and posted it to Facebook with a note. Facebook decided people didn’t need to see all of that note. But it didn’t warn me it would dump half of it. So I decided to recreate it here.

Yup – this was me. And while I was never as heavy as this woman, I remember being called every name under the sun. Even by some people who I have friended on Facebook.

And the "helpful" family members telling me to lose weight. (My dad still does this. He means well, but come on.) Or the little notes my mother left me telling me not to eat the half jar of pickles, not realizing that it might be depression or an emotional release after a day of hell. An attempt to get endorphins any way I could.

I was a child, so I didn’t know how to handle these things. I changed. And not for the better. My grades tanked. I started missing school. I became obnoxious, almost as if I wanted to give them an excuse not to like me that had nothing to do with my weight. Anyone who knew me back then would have told you I was a difficult person to like.

So if you know a "fat kid" like me, be the adult that so many of us longed to have in their life. Support them.

[  Mood: Happy ]

Stephanie Plum is an icon of modern chicklit. With Janet Evanovich’s humourous writing, she has legions of fans who snap up the latest edition as soon as it hits the shelves. These same fans are also divided into team Ranger and Team Morelli, a reference to which impossibly handsome bad boy Stephanie will finally choose.

The problem with Evanovich’s work is, like many long running series, it is starting to get a bit stale. You know that Lulu is going to be on some crazy diet while wearing some crazy outfit, Vinnie is going to be doing something illegal or immoral with something animal, vegetable or mineral, Grandma Mazuer is going to try to open a casket at a viewing and that Stephanie will not have improved as a bounty hunter. And given that the series has at times become a literary paint by number, you just want Stephanie to pick a guy and move on.

You almost don’t want to go back, but you remember the laughs that Evanovich is able to deliver each volume, and you are like a junkie wanting more.

So it was with some shame and trepidation that I turned to the sixteenth instalment of the series. And I was pleasantly surprised. It seems that Evanovich decided that Stephanie`s world needed a bit of a shake-up. So Vinnie has been kidnapped by his bookie and if the ransom isn`t paid, he will be killed. This leads Stephanie, Lulu and Connie on a series of misadventures trying to capture enough FTAs to raise the money. When they realize that isn`t enough, they turn to crime and hold a large garage sale in the bail bonds office.

And this choice makes the story seem fresh and new, like a wind blew through cleaned out the old, dated parts of the Plum Universe. I was in such a good mood at the end that I almost forgave Evanovitch for ending the story with everything having returned to normal. I would have liked it better if she had found a way to have Connie running the bale bonds office from now on, with Vinnie relegated to FTA retrieval or figurehead status. Or maybe Ranger as the silent investor. Something, anything, so that volume seventeen wouldn`t be more of the same.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
[ Currently: Editing the Podcast ]

Protons can decay.

For science geek Will Tupence this news means his world has radically shifted. Nothing is permanent. Everything can eventually disappear.

What shocks Will is that no-one else in his life seems to care. His little sister continues to torture him. His friends continue with their Monopoly ritual and his teachers barely mention the event.

And then he accepts it and moves on, and the book barely mentions the proton decay again. Instead it focuses on Will realizing that he has feelings for his best friend Mi-Su and his nasty ongoing war with his younger sister Tabby.

As others have mentioned, the book almost seems like two separate works fused together, as if Spinelli was a little too lazy to rewrite the first half when he thought of something better.

It is still an eminently readable book, and Spinelli is a big name, so this will sell well. But this is not Stargirl nor is it Maniac McGee.

[  Mood: Sick ]
[ Currently: About to place a scholstic order. ]
Given the BBC List(s) that has (have) been bouncing around Facebook recently, I thought I needed to turn to a more Can-Con list. Below are the top forty novels of the last ten years as voted on by CBC listeners in the lead up to the 10th Anniversary of Canada Reads. I asked myself, how many of these have I read. Sum total = one. Am I a bad Canadian because I have only read one of these? I don’t think so, but I do think that I am poorer in my knowledge and understanding of Canada.

(To be fair to me, I started reading Book of Negroes, but stopped as I had just had my son and with the main character about to take a transatlantic voyage in a room full of pregnant slaves, I knew what was coming, and I knew I needed to walk away.)

So here we go: Bold if I read it. Italicized if I started it, but didn’t finish it.

A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews

Bottle Rocket Hearts by Zoe Whittall

Clara Callan by Richard B. Wright

Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant

Conceit by Mary Novik

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

Drive-by Saviours by Chris Benjamin

Elle by Douglas Glover

Essex County by Jeff Lemire

Far to Go by Alison Pick

February by Lisa Moore

Galore by Michael Crummey

Heave by Christy Ann Conlin

Inside by Kenneth J. Harvey

Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill

Moody Food by Ray Robertson

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

Room by Emma Donoghue

Shelf Monkey by Corey Redekop

Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki

Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb

The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis

The Birth House by Ami McKay

The Bishop’s Man by Linden MacIntyre

The Bone Cage by Angie Abdou

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan

The Fallen by Stephen Finucan

The Girls Who Saw Everything by Sean Dixon

The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe

The Stone Carvers by Jane Urquhart

The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden do

Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden

Twenty-Six by Leo McKay Jr.

Unless by Carol Shields

[  Mood: Angry ]
Just a quick note that I need to share before I go to bed.

I came across a link to this story via the Nerdist about a little girl in Grade 1 who didn’t want to carry her Star Wars water bottle because the boys in her class were teasing her, telling her that girls didn’t like Star Wars.

I dropped her a line, and I urge you all to do it too. Especially any women who may read this. Go viral with this. We have to let her (and the boys) know it is OK for little girls to love Star Wars. And someone find a way to get this to Lucas.

[  Mood: Amused ]
[ Currently: Editing the Podcast ]

Julie Kenner is one of my favourite authors. She of the "Good Ghouls Do" series and the "Demon Hunting Soccer Mom" series, her writing is usually full of humour and zany actions. The Givenchy Code follows in this tradition, except it is missing the supernatural elements.

This novel finds out heroine, Melanie Prescott, stuck in another series of dead-end jobs. She is studying math and history at university and is a wizard at codes. Suddenly she is sucked into a live-action version of a on-line video game she used to play.

Hunted through the streets of New York by a mad man, Melanie must trust, Matthew Stryker, a complete (and very handsome) stranger, to help her solve the puzzles and make it through the experience alive.

This book is a nice tour of New York and run through math puzlles and theories. It was a fun read. Not going to change your life, but like most of Kenner`s work, fun.

[  Mood: Happy ]
[ Currently: About to get ready for work. ]

I loved the Mortal Instruments series, burning through it at an incredible rate. So when I found out that author Cassandra Clare was releasing a prequel series taking place in Victorian London, I got very excited. As soon as it came in from the library, I put aside all other reading to immerse myself.in this book.

And I have to say, I came away disappointed. The action is interesting, and I like the take on the Shadowhunters in this time, but the characters left me feeling more of the same. Tessa is so heavily influenced by Clary it is ridiculous. She is an ingénue with mysterious powers who is swept up into the Shadowhunter world. You are left to wonder if she can master the powers in time to save herself and help her new friends. Sound familiar?

The character of Will is an even worse copy. An orphaned, angry bad-boy, she might have well called him Jace. That becomes doubly clear when (SPOILERS) you find out his parents may not in fact be dead. Jem, the soft-spoken young man with a mysterious illness also bears more than a passing resemblance to Simon.

It is the secondary characters that give us something new. Jessamine is the young female Shadowhunter who just wants to be a lady. The head of the institute, Charlotte, and her mad scientist husband, Henry, are also interesting.

This book is really only for the die-hard fan. The rest of you are going to find more of the same.

Needless to say, this won’t be making my After Harry list.