Blogroll

Little Red Book story big fat hoax

The story of the U Mass-Darmouth student who claimed to have been visited by Homeland Security after requesting Mao’s “Little Red Book” via interlibrary loan turns out to have been a hoax.

People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to.

Malcolm Muggeridge

Happy Festivus!

In the immortal words of Frank Costanza in describing the “holiday” he invented, “There must be a better way.”

May your Festivus pole have a very high strength to weight ratio, the grievances against you not too extreme, and the feats of strength painless yet amazing. A few Festivus miracles wouldn’t hurt either.

The tradition […]

Marginalia, jottings and promotion

There’s an interesting discussion of Jesus and the Gospel — What Really Happened? at Slate’s “the breakfast table.” New urban legend or frightening reminder of Bush’s America? It is unclear whether a U Mass-Dartmouth student was visited by Homeland Security agents because he checked out a copy of Mao’s “Little Red Book” via interlibrary […]

South Dakota book notes

The South Dakota Center for the Book has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for The Big Read, a national program to encourage reading by asking communities to read and discuss one book. According to the news report, Brookings and Sioux Falls will read To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

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Book Review: Fog Facts (2005)

Larry Beinhart’s Fog Facts never quite settles on whether it wants to be a Bush-bashing book, a book on the failings of the mainstream media or both. Ultimately, it probably doesn’t matter because there are better efforts out there in each category.

Supposedly, the book’s theme is that there are certain facts or significant news […]