NCAA President Mark Emmert was speaking to major-college athletic directors when he announced that a one-year moratorium of conference realignment would go into effect at the end of the 2011 football season.
“This has gotten out of control,” Emmert said. “The Big 10 has 12 teams, and the Big 12 has 10 teams, and next year the Big 12 will have 9 teams. The Pacific 12 has midwestern teams. It’s gotten to the point where college conferences can’t count and don’t know their geography.”
Emmert continued. “Teams from the Big 12 are trying to get into the SEC, Big 10, and PAC-12. Big East teams are going into the ACC. Teams from the Mountain West are going into the WAC, or teams from the WAC are going into the Mountain West. The Big 12 is trying to get teams from the WAC, Mountain West, and Conference USA. Several conferences are on the verge of turning into 16-team super-conferences, and the idea of super-conferences is giving me a super headache.”
“Do you really think a one year moratorium will calm everything down?” an athletic director asked.
“It’ll calm me down,” Emmert fumed. “I’ll need a year just to figure out what conference everybody’s in.”
Reading might be overrated. Not the ability to read, but reading for entertainment, reading just for the sake of reading. To most literate people (even dysfunctional literates), we might look at somebody who doesn’t enjoy reading and pity them for all the wonderful experiences they have missed. A reluctant reader (somebody who hates reading) would in turn look upon us literates and pity us for all the experiences we’ve missed because we’ve been wasting our time reading.
Since people don’t like to do what they don’t enjoy doing (that made sense when I first thought it), people who don’t enjoy reading aren’t going to read just for the heck of it, especially teens (or Young Adults, as book sellers categorize them). But sometimes we can force Young Adults to do things they don’t want to do (school, chores, music lessons), and reading is sometimes one of those battles that parents choose to fight with reluctant readers.
A reluctant reader is not the same as a dysfunctional literate. A reluctant reader can read but doesn’t like it. A dysfunctional literate likes to read but might have really bad taste.
Trying to get a kid who hates reading to read on his own is probably a losing battle. But if you’re absolutely determined to get a reluctant teen (Young Adult) to read, then here are a few books you might want to try.
WARNING! These aren’t necessarily the best YA books out there, but these are books that might interest a teenager who hates to (but can) read. Also, this is an incomplete list because I’m sure that there are other books out there that can be added; I just haven’t read them or seen reluctant readers read them.
BEST BOOKS TO GIVE TEENS WHO ARE RELUCTANT READERS
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton- Pony Boy, Soda Pop, and Darry live on! Every kid sympathizes with the greasers, even kids who are Socs but don’t realize it.
Full Tilt by Neal Shusterman- An amusement park of death. And a baseball cap with an extended middle finger. And a humorous reference to Moby Dick that doesn’t make fun of the name Moby Dick. This book borders on brilliant.
Gym Candy by Carl Deuker- High school, football, and steroids. It’s not a classic by any stretch, but a lot of boys who don’t like to read will read it.
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger- Just enough cuss words and attitude to keep a kid interested.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins- For girls. Yeah, it’s violent, but it’s well-written and has a point, and at least it has nothing to do with vampires.
Different Seasons by Stephen King- It’s not meant to be YA literature, and it’s wildly inappropriate for teens, but boys like the short story “The Body,” and it’s even better if they think they’re not supposed to read it. There’s a story within the story with vomit, lots and lots of vomit. Teens who hate reading love reading about vomit.
WORST BOOKS TO GIVE KIDS WHO HATE READING
Harry Potter and the…– Reluctant readers hate Harry Potter. The books are too long, and Harry’s time is over.
Any classic literature- Yes, these stories are timeless and treasures, but for most reluctant readers, there is never a good time to read a classic. They’re long and boring (from a reluctant reader’s point of view), and even when they’re not boring, they’re written in a boring way that makes non-boring things boring.
Any abridged classic- Yeah, your intentions are good, but the abridged versions are just as boring and will collect just as much dust as the originals.
For boys, any book written by a girl, about a girl, or has a girl on the cover (unless it’s one of… those kinds… of books).
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand- Great book to give as a gag gift before handing out the latest Call of Duty game to a teen that hates reading. Also a great way to see how a reluctant reader handles disappointment.
FINAL NOTE
If you’re trying to get a teenager who hates reading to read any of our suggested books, remember, there is no guarantee of success. Also remember, there are other important skills the kid might have that you can encourage or exploit, like rigging free cable or fixing the car. Some of those skills might be more valuable than reading just for the enjoyment of it.
Morgan Freeman was the voice of God in some movie and played the President of the United States in some other movie. Image via Wikipedia
I deleted this blog post because it was kind of stupid, and it doesn’t fit this blog’s purpose. At the time, I was experimenting with search engine algorithms (that’s a whole different topic), and I learned what I needed to learn (and I can write about that another time), but I ended up with dozens of stupid blog posts that aren’t appropriate for my blog’s purpose anymore. I’ve kept other stupid blog posts that actually are appropriate content for Dysfunctional Literacy.
I deleted this blog post because it was kind of stupid, and it doesn’t fit this blog’s purpose. At the time, I was experimenting with search engine algorithms (that’s a whole different topic), and I learned what I needed to learn (and I can write about that another time), but I ended up with dozens of stupid blog posts that aren’t appropriate for my blog’s purpose anymore. I’ve kept other stupid blog posts that actually are appropriate content for Dysfunctional Literacy.
This photo may not picture ALL of the U.S. presidents, but there’s a good chance that it pictures the best U.S. president in the last 50 years. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Ranking U.S. presidents might be fun on a slow news day, but the problem is that the rater’s biases always kick in. One group with biases may call Ronald Reagan the best president ever while another group with biases believes his policies hurt the poor. One group thinks Abraham Lincoln saved the country while another group holds him responsible for the War of Northern Aggression. One group loves Teddy Roosevelt because he saved football, while another group, usually wives and girlfriends, hates Teddy Roosevelt because he saved football.
WHY BOTHER RANKING PRESIDENTS?
With an election coming up, the American people will decide who their/our next president will be. When making that decision, we should look back on our recent presidents, determine which ones were most successful, then see which current candidate is most similar to our most successful former leaders.
Plus, it gives us an excuse to take cheap shots at politicians.
WHY NOT RATE THE BEST PRESIDENT EVER OF ALL TIME?
Are you delusional? Rating all the presidents would mean researching presidents like Taft, Harding, and Fillmore. Let the presidential historians do the research.
In fact, presidential historians have devoted pages and pages (and even more pages) to presidential analysis when most people have already made up their minds and will never be persuaded to reconsider no matter what the overwhelming evidence may be. To save you lots of time (and save us from writing a lot of stuff that nobody will read), we have our PRESIDENTIAL ANALYSIS AT A GLANCE!
PRESIDENTIAL ANALYSIS AT A GLANCE- THE LAST 50 YEARS
JFK- He might have turned out to have been a great president, but we’ll never know, so we can’t say that he was the best (unless you absolutely hate every other president… which would be understandable).
LBJ- He chose not to run for a 2nd and ½ term because things were so bad, and his Democratic replacement got landslided, and nobody looks back at his presidency fondly.
RHM (Richard Millhouse Nixon)- Yeah, he had to resign, but if he hadn’t begun normalizing our relations with China, who would be holding our debt right now?
Gerald Ford- Too short a presidency to rate, and he lost to Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter- A killer rabbit and “national malaise.” If you’re going to create a negative catchphrase like “national malaise,” make sure your opponent gets stuck with it, not you.
Ronald Reagan- Any president would be proud to have a “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” moment. On the other hand, Iran/Contra was a mess, but the American public has a high tolerance for scandals that involve protecting the U.S. and destroying its enemies.
George H.W. Bush- The American public looks back kindly on this former president, but he lost re-election, and you can’t be the best in the last fifty years if you lost your re-election bid.
Bill Clinton- Yeah, the impeachment proceedings were a mess, but the U.S. public has a high tolerance for scandals that involve getting some extra-marital action and lying to federal grand juries about it. Wait! No, we don’t! How did he manage to get away with that?
George W. Bush- Maybe the American public will look on him more favorably twenty years from now, but when your approval ratings are in single digits, then you can’t be the best in the last fifty years.
Barack Obama- Once again, maybe twenty years from now we’ll look back more favorably… okay, probably not. Let’s see if he gets re-elected first.
WHO WAS THE BEST PRESIDENT IN THE LAST 50 YEARS?
As stated earlier, political biases affect the decisions of whoever is rating the presidents. To negate this, we need a president who can appeal somehow to both sides of the political aisle.
Therefore, the best president of the last 50 years was the one who made monolithic debt-driven government spending possible (liberal appeal) while at the same time promoting self-accountability in government (conservative appeal). And that president is…
Richard Millhouse Nixon!!!
President Nixon began the process of normalizing relations with China and bringing them out of communism-induced backwardness. Without this outreach, no other country would have been able to handle all the debt that the U.S. has accumulated over the last 30 years. So on one side of the political spectrum, President Nixon should be seen as great because he made huge, out-of-control federal spending possible.
Also, President Nixon is the only president to resign in mid-term, thus sparing the country from an ugly impeachment battle. No, he did not exit gracefully. And maybe he did not resign for the purpose of promoting accountability in government, but he resigned, and the country (after a rough spell) recovered and has done better than ever (at times), proving that that no single person is so important that the country can’t function without him.
A president that promotes self-accountability in government while also setting up the nation for out-of control federal spending? This makes President Richard Nixon THE BEST U.S. PRESIDENT IN THE LAST 50 YEARS!
The best part of this is that we can say “Tricky Dick! Tricky Dick! Tricky Dick!” and pretend we’re engaging in historical analysis.
I deleted this blog post because it was kind of stupid, and it doesn’t fit this blog’s purpose. At the time, I was experimenting with search engine algorithms (that’s a whole different topic), and I learned what I needed to learn (and I can write about that another time), but I ended up with dozens of stupid blog posts that aren’t appropriate for my blog’s purpose anymore. I’ve kept other stupid blog posts that actually are appropriate content for Dysfunctional Literacy.
Do you really want to tell or hear a racist joke that badly? Well, then, here you go... Image via Wikipedia
The problem with telling a racist joke is that no matter how you tell it, somebody is probably going to be offended. Vocal inflection, word choice, and nonverbal delivery are all important when telling a racist joke because one misstep can mean irreparable damage to your reputation or physical well-being. Racist jokes are usually very dangerous to tell, but what if there were a racist joke you could tell without getting punched out, fired, or sued? That would be the BEST RACIST JOKE EVER!
***
A racist was driving down the street, marveling at the inferiority of all the drivers around him.
“Look at that stupid (colorful, racist expletive),” the racist said. “Driving with the bass turned up so high the pavement shakes. What a dumb (colorful, racist expletive).”
“And look at that stupid (colorful, racist expletive),” the racist said, staring at another car. “The hood and trunk of his car are moving up and down so much it looks like the car is humping the street. What a dumb (colorful, racist expletive).”
“Now look at that stupid (colorful, racist expletive),” the racist said. “Driving so slow that he’s causing a traffic jam. What a dumb (colorful, racist expletive).”
Then the racist noticed a police car behind him with its siren on.
“Of course, I’m the one that gets pulled over,” the racist muttered.
“Sir,” the police officer said after the racist rolled down his window. “Are you aware that you just ran a red light?”
“I’m sorry, officer,” the racist said. “I don’t see color.”
Charles Dickens. Is he the greatest writer of all time? Perhaps! Image via Wikipedia
Or maybe it was Mark Twain! Image also via Wikipedia
HOW DID WE DETERMINE THE TOP 2?
There is no perfect method to figuring out who is the greatest writer of all time. I didn’t want to put it to a vote because it would have taken too long, and there are far too many of those 64 option brackets going around nowadays; it’s become trite. Putting together a bracket where the winner of Jules Verne vs. H.G. Wells meets up against the winner of Leo Tolstoy vs. Fyodor Dostoyevsky would have been a disaster on so many levels. To avoid that, I found a scientific method to narrow the choices.
I counted author titles in Classics Illustrated comic books. A book can’t be considered a classic if Classics Illustrated never made its own version, so I gathered my collection (please don’t ask why I just happened to have a collection lying around) and counted books per author. That narrowed the selection to five prolific authors. Below I list the honorable mentions and why they didn’t make the FINAL CUT.
HONORABLE MENTION
- God- The Bible– Yeah, Classics Illustrated never made a version of The Bible (at least it’s not in our collection). We feel kind of funny giving God “Honorable Mention,” but he does have an unfair advantage over the other more mortal authors. We want to at least acknowledge God and hope God understands… please.
- William Shakespeare- Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, Taming of the Shrew– Are you kidding me? The only reason Shakespeare didn’t make the final cut was because he wrote plays. Yeah, if he had written Spider-Man the musical, it would have been awesome, but playwriting (as difficult as it is) leaves out narration, a crucial component when being considered a candidate for BEST WRITER EVER! If he had written a few novels, perhaps he’d win. Maybe his estate can magically find a few lying around.
- Alexandre Dumas- The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Corsican Brothers– It’s too bad he was French. Unfortunately, the books were written in French and had to be translated, so we cannot judge the quality of wordsmanship. Yeah, that’s unfair to foreign books, but other countries can make their own lists.
- Jules Verne- Twenty Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in 80 Days, A Journey To the Center of the Earth, From the Earth to the Moon, The Mysterious Island– Great science fiction, but science fiction is too small a niche (and then there’s that translation thing again).
- H.G. Wells- The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, Food of the Gods, Island of Dr. Moreau, The First Men in the Moon, In the Days of the Comet, and a bunch of really intellectual stuff- Again, science fiction is a small niche, and his books (by today’s standards) are incredibly boring.
WHY AREN’T ANY RECENT AUTHORS BEING CONSIDERED?
First of all, no recent authors have Classics Illustrated comic books based on their novels. Second of all, I don’t know if any modern authors will still be read 50 years from now. Will readers three generations from now say, “Heeeeere’s Johnny,” and automatically associate it with The Shining?
Yeah, I know it’s from the movie, not the book.
MARK TWAIN vs. CHARLES DICKENS
The title of this article kind of spoiled the suspense, so let’s rate our two of the finest authors of all time.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL- BEST STORY EVER!
A Christmas Carol is probably the best story ever written. Not only is it a great story, but it was one of the most influential stories of all time. However, it has Christmas in the title, and that cannot be overlooked when determining the GREATEST WRITER OF ALL TIME! At a time when we must be sensitive to everybody’s religion, or lack thereof, we must hesitate to reward someone who wrote a story with such overtly religious overtones. No, the story is not really about Christmas. Yes, the themes in the story are deep. Yes, this is probably the most referenced/parodied/borrowed from story of all time. But Dickens put the word Christmas in it, and an author with his foresight should have recognized that you must not offend anybody’s religious belief when writing the most influential narrative of all time.
THE MUSICALS
Oliver (based on a Charles Dickens novel) is a waaaayyyy better musical than Tom Sawyer (based on a Mark Twain novel), but judging a novel by its musical is like judging a college football player’s career by what he did in the NFL, and that is not allowed. Dickens’ status as a writer would be upgraded because of the Oliver musical, but I don’t know about musicals, so Dickens might actually be downgraded here except it wasn’t his fault that his book was made into a popular musical.
MARK TWAIN vs. SAMUEL CLEMENS
Mark Twain had a cool pen name… or Samuel Clemens had a cool pen name. Pen names are cool. Charles Dickens didn’t have a pen name, and with a last name like Dickens, he should have. Dickens. Ha ha.
WHOSE BOOKS ARE EASIER TO READ?
Um, well, I can finish Mark Twain books way more easily than I can finish most Charles Dickens books. Great Expectations, I’m sure it’s great (it’s in the title), but I have never been able to… uh… The worst part is that I can’t blame it on a poor translation.
THE SECOND BEST OPENING LINE EVER!!
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
Only “Call me Ishmael” stands out as a better first sentence in a novel, and that’s (maybe) debatable.
TWAIN’S GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS
Tom Sawyer– The scene where Tom Sawyer convinces everybody else to paint the fence for him is one of the BEST SCENES EVER! And the trick can actually work.
Huckleberry Finn– Yes, the novel has n-words, but at least that makes it relevant today (see Dysfunctional Literacy’s article “Huckleberry Finn, An Old Book with N-Words” https://dysfunctionalliteracy.com/2011/05/08/an-old-book-with-n-words/ ).
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court– A premise that gets ripped off almost as much as A Christmas Carol.
The Prince and the Pauper– When Disney makes a Mickey Mouse version, you know you’ve arrived.
DICKENS’S GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS
A Christmas Carol– Scrooge Duck, Bill Murray, Patrick Stewart, and a bunch of old actors whose names I can’t remember. BEST STORY OF ALL TIME!!
Great Expectations– At over 600 pages, the only expectation I have is that I will never finish it.
Oliver Twist– “May I please have some more?” It’s not as enduring as “Thank you, sir. May I have another?” but for a musical, it’s remarkably memorable.
A Tale of Two Cities– If this book had been about 150 pages longer, I probably never would have finished it.
Hard Times– It’s supposed to be great, but I know I’ll never read it.
FINAL VERDICT
When you have an awesome responsibility like choosing the best writer ever, you have to put your own biases aside. Yes, Mark Twain is an American writer. Yes, Mark Twain is easier for me to read. But even I have to recognize that Charles Dickens wrote the BEST STORY EVER! And that Charles Dickens also wrote the SECOND BEST OPENING LINE EVER! And that Charles Dickens also wrote a book that became one of the most popular musicals ever! And that Charles Dickens wrote a bunch of books that are highly regarded even though I’ve never read them.
Therefore, as much as it may dismay me because I really like Mark Twain, I must declare that Charles Dickens is the GREATEST WRITER OF ALL TIME!
Sarah Palin was on a bus tour in a Republican primary state, and journalists who kept insisting she had no chance of becoming president kept on following her. After a rousing speech, she took questions from the press, who kept asking her if she was going to run for president. When she refused to give a yes-or-no answer, they badgered her by telling her the polls had her in single digits.
“Polls are for strippers to dance around and Russians to conquer,” Sarah Palin said. “My decision will not be based on polls.”
After much bantering back and forth, a family at the back of the crowd finally started chanting, “Four, three, two, one! Tell us if you’re going to run!”
“Wow!” one journalist said to another. “Palin should know things are getting bad when even Tea Partiers are getting impatient with her.”
“Tea Partiers?” the other journalist said. “That’s Sarah Palin’s family.”
I deleted this blog post because it was kind of stupid, and it doesn’t fit this blog’s purpose. At the time, I was experimenting with search engine algorithms (that’s a whole different topic), and I learned what I needed to learn (and I can write about that another time), but I ended up with dozens of stupid blog posts that aren’t appropriate for my blog’s purpose anymore. I’ve kept other stupid blog posts that actually are appropriate content for Dysfunctional Literacy.
Dysfunctional Literacy 