Those of you who don’t work in a school, don’t work in a library, or don’t have a child in school, probably haven’t heard about the Accelerated Reader program. It involves students being allowed to pick a recreational reading book from a list of pre-approved books that match their assessed reading level and then being tested on their comprehension in order to gain a certain number of points that often apply to their final grade. I can think of few ways to better make children hate reading. The vendors of this program charge for each test purchased, so schools can purchase only a limited number of tests. Meaning that there are many fewer books to choose from than is really good for a growing mind, and there is a huge disincentive for schools to buy tests for books that have a higher reading level than the grade levels they teach, so the better readers are required to read books that are far too easy for them. That pretty much sums up why I don’t think that the AR program is great. Unfortunately, it’s really popular and easy to use.

The measurement of reading level for the tests (and for most reading-level assignments by almost anyone) is done with a formula that only takes into account the difficulty of the words and sentences, not the complexity of thought or age-appropriateness of the ideas raised. The Color Purple, therefore, has a fourth grade reading level. Look up the reading level of your favorite books at AR’s sales web site.

Michael Jackson’s rebuttal will be airing on Fox opposite NBC’s Must-See Thursday line-up next week. Why Fox? “because they ‘packaged it with the best sensitivity to Michael Jackson’, according to Jackson’s spokesman Stuart Backerman.” Er, yeah. Sensitivity is the watch-word over at Fox. I only hope it gets fed to Canada, so I have a chance of seeing it.

Yes, this is another rerun from the Smelltone blog, but it may be going away at any moment, and I’d hate for our readers to miss out on the opportunity to say “soft and gently stretched.”

A list of the top 5 most popular ringtones got passed around my office recently. It came from Modtones, and turns out to be Verizon-specific. My ringtone is not available at Modtones, but I also don’t have a Verizon phone. As you might expect, a google search turns up a lot of matches, many of them from the UK, where ringtone commerce is more firmly established. Drawing conclusions based on what appears on these lists is left as an exercise.

The verdict is in: Don’t piss off Microsoft.

This is so cool: take a quick look at today’s front page— of 159 different newspapers!!!! Take the pulse of the world, and forgive my use of multi-bangs.

Large-brained ex-Python Terry Jones wants to preemptively defend himself against his neighbors, under the Bush “Doctrine.”

More loyal reader contributions for the knittingly inclined: Knitter’s Review, Knitty, and Dangerous Chunky.

I googled my cousin-in-law the other day, and ran across this mp3 of one of her songs. Perhaps because I have trouble writing anything that’s not transparently autobiographical, it strikes me as an interesting choice of theme for somebody who to all appearances is blissfully married.

Michael Jackson is shocked, shocked, I tell you, that he comes off as a complete freak in a new documentary about him that involved following him around for months. He can’t understand how it happened. And his pal, the spoonbending jerk, Uri Geller, didn’t see it coming.