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A Grade-By-Grade Guide to Education
A general overview of what's being taught in public schools today, kindergarten through sixth grade. Plus, find out what else you need to get your kids ready for school
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"No, Mom! You're doing it the wrong way!" That's what Stephanie Elliot, a Scottsdale, AZ, mother of three, heard when she tried to help her kids with their math homework. Elliot knew she'd have trouble -- she just didn't expect it to start so early. "Even memorizing the multiplication tables is different," she sighs.
It turns out that a lot of what we remember from grade school might be obsolete now. "In general, everything's been bumped down," says Chip Wood, M.S.W., director of curriculum and instruction at the Gill-Montague Regional School District in Turners Falls, MA, and the author of Yardsticks: Children in the Classroom Ages 4-14. "Kids are being asked to do more difficult math and reading work than they used to. So what you remember learning in first grade is now taught in kindergarten, second-grade subjects are now taught in first grade, and so on." While each state's curriculum will vary a bit, here's a general overview of what's being taught in public school in each grade.
What you can expect: Gone are the days of free play, games, and songs. Most states now have full-day kindergarten with fairly academic programs that emphasize reading in groups, solving simple math problems (like addition and counting by tens), and developing writing skills.
-You'll find a lot of seat work and pencil-and-paper tasks as kids learn to master their letters, numbers, and writing short words like "to." (Reversing letters and numbers while writing is totally normal now.)
-Your child will be expected to sound out simple words (especially rhyming words) and learn to identify different parts of a book, such as the writer, the artist and illustrations, the title, and the story.
Don't be surprised if... Your child has a hard time sitting still to do all that work. It's expected, and a savvy teacher knows to let these kids move around a lot. For more on fidgeting and focus, learn when to test your child for ADHD.
First Grade
What you can expect: Teachers cover a lot of ground. In language arts, the students learn about different genres -- poetry, fiction, and nonfiction -- and how they are alike and different; they learn to read more fluently and move on to chapter books. They learn how to write and punctuate sentences. In math, first-graders are mastering addition and subtraction, how to tell time and count money, and the concepts of "greater than," "equal to," and "less than."
-Expect homework and worksheets to start in earnest this year.
-Teachers start to group students according to abilities, so there will be more emphasis on teaching reading and math to smaller bunches of first-graders.
Don't be surprised if... It's hard for your child to complete worksheets. "At this age, kids love doing their schoolwork, but they don't always like to finish it," says Wood.
Second Grade
What you can expect: This year kids will learn to read as well silently as they do aloud, and relate plots in books to real life. They'll keep reading logs, write simple stories, compare and classify shapes, practice solving math problems mentally (no more using objects for counting), and organize and display data in charts. In some schools, second-graders may start to learn cursive writing.
-Second-graders like a quieter, slower-paced classroom and really enjoy solo work. They also like to finish their work, but they don't always have the time they need to do so. What can help is breaking homework down into bite-size tasks -- for instance, spend 10 or 15 minutes on math, then move on to a 20-minute reading session, says Wood.
-A second-grader will be able to write a bit more neatly and starts to spell more words correctly (or at least less inventively) than he did in first grade, but his handwriting tends to be tiny -- and his drawings may be microscopic.
Don't be surprised if... Your second-grader is very rigid about what boys and girls can do and which gender he can play with, says Gwendolyn Mettetal, Ph.D., a professor of psychology and education at Indiana University in South Bend. Seven-year-olds like to classify people and things based on what they observe -- and they notice physical differences, including race.
Third Grade
What you can expect: Standardized tests begin this year, which means lots of spelling and math -- and more teaching to the test. Students will learn their multiplication tables, start division and fractions, and practice their writing, which must contain complete sentences and adjectives. Brief oral reports may be expected and cursive writing will be taught if it hasn't been yet.
-It's hard for kids to memorize facts at this age, says Wood, so help your third-grader practice her times tables and spelling by using flash cards at home. The computer is another option, but third-graders learn best with another person -- a friend or their mom or dad.
-Don't be surprised if... Your third-grader becomes a little conformist, says Mettetal. She'll start comparing herself to other kids and want to fit in, so give in occasionally on the cool outfit or accessory du jour. In third grade, the child who stands out too much will get left out socially -- and there's nothing wrong with avoiding that.
Fourth Grade
What you can expect: The big switch this year: Instead of being taught how to read, students now read to learn. From word problems to social studies lessons, kids need to be good (and fast) readers in order to keep up. Also on the agenda: more long-term projects, tackling long division, learning to add and subtract fractions, keeping a reading journal (instead of just a reading log), writing essays and stories, using rulers and thermometers to measure, and conducting experiments with gases, liquids, and solids.
-Fourth grade is difficult -- there's more work, and it's more abstract. But the kids are still concrete thinkers, so long division with large numbers and concepts like the universe can be hard to understand.
-In fourth grade, teachers ramp up the writing because most standardized exams require a composition test. Help your fourth-grader practice his skills by playing word games like Scrabble and Pictionary with him, getting a computer program that helps him write stories, and showing him the way you use writing at work and at home, says Wood.
Don't be surprised if... Your child's grades take a dip, says Wood. Fourth grade is tough both academically and socially. There are cliques and mean kids to contend with, and that can take up much of your child's energy.
Fifth Grade
What you can expect: In fifth grade, doing an assignment once is no longer enough -- students are now expected to review, revise, and improve. In math, your child will probably be identifying different types of triangles; working with fractions, decimals, and simple percentages; and learning about prime numbers. Science will be about simple machines and different sources of energy and motion. She'll also be reading longer, more complex books in different genres (biographies as well as fiction) and writing short research papers.
-Workbooks morph into hardcover textbooks (so expect a heavier backpack).
-In social studies, kids will learn about economics (the laws of supply and demand) and systems of government (including documents like the Constitution).
Don't be surprised if... Your kid likes spending time with you -- she'll do her homework nearby and enjoy being read to. That will probably change next year.
Sixth Grade
What you can expect: Changing bodies, changing schools. For most kids, middle school begins this year. That means different teachers for every subject, switching classrooms, and keeping track of schedules and assignments. School is a pressure cooker now, and your child is probably aware of his place in the pecking order.
-In language arts, teachers expect kids to analyze themes, plot development, point of view, and writing styles. They'll also learn to write persuasive essays.
-In math, she'll start prealgebra, calculate the area of two- and three-dimensional shapes, and learn statistical probability.
Don't be surprised if... Your moody sixth-grader pushes back when you ask about homework. You'll likely need to check his planner and keep in touch with his teacher to monitor his work. These kids want their independence, but they also need you as a safety net.


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Orexigen Therapeutics Inc. said Tuesday it is reviving its previously abandoned weight loss drug Contrave, after federal health officials outlined a plan that could bring the drug to market by 2014.
The surprise announcement returns Contrave to the race to be the first new prescription weight loss drug to reach the U.S. market in more than a decade.
Company shares leapt 95 cents, or 64.6 percent, to $2.42 in afterhours trading. The stock was trading in the $9 range before the FDA rejection of Contrave, which wiped out about two-thirds of its value.
The company said in June it would not seek U.S. approval for the highly anticipated pill because of the government's "unprecedented" demands for additional safety studies. The effort to develop weight loss drugs has been plagued by safety concerns for decades.
But the company said late Tuesday that the Food and Drug Administration has now agreed to a study which could be completed and reviewed by 2014. The study would involve 10,000 patients and take two years to gather the necessary data on heart side effects, according to the company.
"Orexigen believes that these design requirements are reasonable and feasible and provide the certainty required to reinitiate development of Contrave," the San Diego-based drugmaker said in a statement.
The FDA rejected Contrave in February because of concerns the drug could increase heart problems. Two other experimental weight loss drugs were rejected last year, raising questions of whether any new therapy for obesity could win approval in the U.S.
On a call with reporters and analysts, CEO Michael Narachi attributed the FDA's about-face to efforts by patient groups, lawmakers and the company itself.
"I think this was a multi-pronged effort that we built to create some momentum that helped the process," Narachi said.
With the U.S. obesity rate for adults nearing 35 percent, the FDA has acknowledged the need for new weight loss drugs. But the agency rejected two other drugs last year due to safety risks. Those drugs were made by fellow California drug developers Vivus Inc. and Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc. Vivus plans to resubmit its drug to the FDA next month, potentially putting it ahead of Contrave in the race to reach the market.
Contrave had been pegged as the safest of the new generation of obesity treatments because it simply combines two older, established drugs: an antidepressant and an anti-addiction drug to curb appetite. Four out of 10 patients taking Contrave for a year lost at least 5 percent of their body weight. Those results narrowly met FDA's guidelines for effectiveness.
But heart side effects have been a major concern with diet drugs, most recently with Abbott Laboratories' pill Meridia, which was removed from the market in October after studies showed it increased the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Currently there is just one prescription drug on the market for long-term weight loss: Roche's Xenical, which is not widely used. Several other generic drugs are approved for short-term weight loss, including phentermine.

subset: commoncrawl


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Orioles walk off winners against Royals
Baltimore beats Kansas City 3-2 on Saturday
Orioles walk off winners against Royals
Baltimore beats Kansas City 3-2 on Saturday
Nick Markakis singled in the winning run in 10th inning after two throwing errors by pitcher Danny Duffy laid the groundwork for the Baltimore Orioles' 3-2 victory over the Kansas City Royals on Saturday night.
The Orioles went eight straight innings without scoring before facing Duffy, who had pitched 8 1/3 scoreless innings on the season.
After Duffy (1-1) hit Jonathan Schoop to begin the 10th, the left-hander threw wildly to second base after fielding a bunt by David Lough. Jemile Weeks followed with another bunt, and on this one Duffy's throw went high and wide to first, loading the bases.
Louis Coleman replaced Duffy and struck out Nelson Cruz before Markakis hit an opposite-field liner that landed inside the left-field foul line.


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29 April 2009
$1 Small Beer
Martian Happiness
You're a utilitarian. Utilitarianism tries to maximize the net surplus of happiness over misery in the world. What if billionaire Larry Ellison's yacht makes him really, really happy?
This is what some call the utility monster argument. We would have to assume that Larry Ellison actually has capacities for happiness that are vastly greater than anyone else's. Ellison's yacht cost $200 million, and if we assume that $400 can repair an obstetric fistula, that means that the suffering relieved by 500,000 obstetric fistula repairs is not greater than the happiness that Ellison gets from his yacht. That, I think, is not physically possible. But if we ever encountered Martians who could convince us that they had a vastly greater capacity for happiness than we do, then it could be a problem.
Then the moral position would be to let the Martians colonize Earth and make us their slaves.
Yes, that does seem to be the implication of the theory. A lot of people do think that's a damning objection to utilitarianism.
28 April 2009
Idler Ants
But Idleness predominates in many lives where it is not suspected; for being a vice which terminates in itself, it may be enjoyed without injury to others; and is therefore not watched like Fraud, which endangers property, or like Pride, which naturally seeks its gratifications in another's inferiority. Idleness is a silent and peaceful quality, that neither raises envy by ostentation, nor hatred by opposition; and therefore no body is busy to censure or detect it.The New York Times, "To Fathom a Colony's Talk and Toil, Studying Insects One by One", 27 April 2009:
Dr. Dornhaus is breaking new ground in her studies of whether the efficiency of ant society, based on a division of labor among ant specialists, is important to their success. To do that, she said, "I briefly anesthetized 1,200 ants, one by one, and painted them using a single wire-size brush, with model airplane paint — Rally Green, Racing Red, Daytona Yellow."
After recording their behavior with two video cameras aiming down on an insect-size stage, she analyzed 300 hours of videotape of the ants in action. She discovered behavior more worthy of Aesop's grasshopper than the proverbial industrious ants.
"The specialists aren't necessarily good at their jobs," she said. "And the other ants don't seem to recognize their lack of ability."Dr. Dornhaus found that fast ants took one to five minutes to perform a task — collecting a piece of food, fetching a sand-grain stone to build a wall, transporting a brood item — while slow ants took more than an hour, and sometimes two. And she discovered that about 50 percent of the other ants do not do any work at all. In fact, small colonies may sometimes rely on a single hyperactive overachiever.
(via Jenny Davidson)
27 April 2009
Blasted Horrors
I thought about dedicating this column to Rick Bowes, who went to see Blasted with me in New York this past fall. It's not the sort of play you can invite just anybody to go see with you. Rick was a good sport about it. Then he reported me to the police.
I'll also note that yes, as of right now there is a problem of verb number and agreement in the second sentence. Entirely my fault. I'm terrible with even simple arithmetic. Among the wonders of online publication, though, is that such things can be fixed...
26 April 2009
How to Be Proved Wrong
For instance, last year I wrote a somewhat less than positive review of Nisi Shawl's short story collection Filter House. I even said this:
While I find it easy to believe readers will experience Shawl's stories in different ways -- such is the case with any basically competent fiction -- I cannot imagine how a reader who is sensitive to literature's capabilities and possibilities could possibly say these stories offer much of a performance.I certainly made a point of highlighting my subjectivity here: "I cannot imagine how...", but still. The intent is clear. I spent most of the review saying, in one way or another, that this book seemed to me the epitome of mediocre, and I tried to imply that it's inconceivable (INCONCEIVABLE!) that anyone would passionately disagree with such a rational perspective.
The greater the claims, the harder they fall... Within days, I had learned that Samuel Delany thought Filter House one of the best collections of science fiction stories published in the last decade or so. Delany and I have fairly different taste in fiction, but I deeply respect his readings of things, and even if I can't share his enthusiasm for a certain text, I've never felt like I couldn't understand what sparked and fueled that enthusiasm.
And now Filter House has been listed as one of the 7 best SF/Fantasy/Horror books of the year by Publisher's Weekly, and it has won a Tiptree Award.
While I will admit I still don't understand the acclaim, I have to say I was completely and utterly wrong -- dramatically, astoundingly, INCONCEIVABLY! wrong -- in thinking that it was an impossible book to see as an example of excellence. Plenty of very smart and sensitive readers have found it to be exactly that.
22 April 2009
Instead of a Post of Substance...
An inspiring triumph over preconceptions. (No, not my favorite song by a long shot, but a moment to be treasured.)
Cthulhu Mastermind.
16 April 2009
A Conversation with David Beronä
One fun bit of trivia I forgot to mention in the intro to the interview -- before David and I had any knowledge of each other, we were both reviewers for Rain Taxi, and you should definitely check out his review there of one of the most recent wordless books to gain a lot of attention, Shaun Tan's The Arrival.
13 April 2009
Coetzee on Beckett's Letters
Coetzee uses the occasion of a review to give a fine overview of Beckett's life and thought during the 1930s, as reflected in the letters. For instance:
A bit of internetting can answer some of the questions about money equivalents. This currency converter, for instance, lets us know that the £30 Beckett spent on the Yeats painting equals about $2,880.15 today. Not a minor investment, and, indeed, it would have been nice information to have in the book. Nonetheless, as just about every reviewer, including Coetzee, has pointed out, the scholarly apparatus in the book is vast and in many ways astounding and overwhelming.
Migrations of artists are only crudely related to fluctuations in exchange rates. Nevertheless, it is no coincidence that in 1937, after a new devaluation of the franc, Beckett found himself in a position to quit Ireland and return to Paris. Money is a recurrent theme in his letters, particularly toward the end of the month. His letters from Paris are full of anxious notations about what he can and cannot afford (hotel rooms, meals). Though he never starved, he lived a genteel version of a hand-to-mouth existence. Books and paintings were his sole personal indulgence. In Dublin he borrows £30 to buy a painting by Jack Butler Yeats, brother of William Butler Yeats, that he cannot resist. In Munich he buys the complete works of Kant in eleven volumes.
What £30 in 1936 represents in today's terms, or the 19.75 francs that an alarmed young man had to pay for a meal at the restaurant Ste. Cécile on October 27, 1937, is not readily computed, but such expenditures had real significance to Beckett, even an emotional significance. In a volume with such lavish editorial aids as the new edition of his letters, it would be good to have more guidance on monetary equivalents. Less discretion about how much Beckett received from his father's estate would be welcome too.
12 April 2009
Omit Needless Advice
The book's toxic mix of purism, atavism, and personal eccentricity is not underpinned by a proper grounding in English grammar. It is often so misguided that the authors appear not to notice their own egregious flouting of its own rules. They can't help it, because they don't know how to identify what they condemn.It's a wonderful take-down, the best I've encountered since Louis Menand's examination of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves ("Why would a person who is not just vague about the rules but disinclined to follow them bother to produce a guide to punctuation?").
The power and popularity of such books is astounding. Both books were quite popular in the high school English departments I worked at, and Strunk & White was often assigned to students. I'm not against teaching basic grammar (I've done it most of my years of teaching), but if you're going to teach grammar, don't teach from books that are, as often as not, incontrovertibly wrong.
11 April 2009
Silver Kelly and My Golden Age
Though it is April, Asimov's Science Fiction magazine likes to stick to the future, and so the June 2009 issue is now available. This is a particularly special issue, as it includes James Patrick Kelly's 25th annual June story -- the first was the June 1984 "Saint Theresa of the Aliens".
Last summer, Jim was the guest of honor at Readercon, where he was interviewed by John Kessel, and where I had the privilege of being on a panel about his work -- and of writing a little bit about him in the program book.
In honor of Jim's June feats, here is what I wrote about him last year:
by Matthew Cheney
originally published in the Readercon 19 souvenir book, 2008
I'm not alone in having a golden age, a time when science fiction was the brightest star shining in the galaxy of my life, but I may be alone in being able to tie that golden age to specific issues of a magazine and to a specific byline in those issues.
Yes, this is my golden age: Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, June 1985 to June 1990. And the hero of my golden age is James Patrick Kelly.
I was not quite ten years old in June of '85. I wouldn't even begin reading SF for a few months yet, but that doesn't matter (time travel has long been a fascination of mine). I didn't discover 1985 until the far end of 1986, when I got a copy of Gardner Dozois's Year's Best Science Fiction, Third Annual Collection. A year later, one of the teachers at my school told me a science fiction writer was coming to visit for six weeks, some guy named Jim Kelly. Nobody at the school had heard of him.
Rural New Hampshire in the mid-80s was not a haven of science fiction fans. I only knew a couple, and they were all associated with the local college where my mother worked. I didn't know anybody who'd published a book. Writers were gods to me -- all I wanted to do in the world was become one, and anybody who published in the places I read (primarily Asimov's and Dozois's anthologies) was more impressive to me than movie stars or presidents.
The school librarian, who had also been my third grade teacher and had fostered my love of writing, showed me some photocopied stories that had been sent along by the writer who would be coming to our school. They were copies of stories from Asimov's. "James Patrick Kelly!" I screamed.
"You've heard of him?"
"He's great! He's a real writer!"
(I had been made cynical by previous artists-in-the-schools visitors, because the writers always tended to be people who had published a couple of pieces of filler in mimeographed gardening newsletters.)
The moments of the first visit are deeply etched into my memory. My class was one of the last ones to arrive in the library, where Mr. Kelly was to give a presentation to a large group of us. I sat in the back, angling for a view. I think I expected him to glow.
He didn't glow. He looked like a relatively normal human being. (This was not disappointing so much as it was beguiling. Normal human beings publish in Asimov's? How is that possible?!) He talked about science fiction, about books, about writing. All I remember thinking is: When is he going to tell us the secrets? Writers, I thought, were people who had figured out secret ways to make perfect stories, and that's why they were published and the rest of us weren't.
The real fun began later, though, when I was part of a small group of students chosen to participate in a weekly series of workshops led by Mr. Kelly. In the first, we did some writing about school in the future, and then he asked if we had any questions about writing, science fiction, or anything, really. I was determined to ask some sort of question, but was so excited, so overwhelmed that coming up with one question threatened to fry my already addled mind. After somebody asked a question I considered idiotic, though, I couldn't resist -- I couldn't let this Great Man go home thinking we were all ignoramuses. I thrust my hand into the air. "This might be," I said, "a question nobody else really understands, because it is necessary to read Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in order to truly understand it, but if you will permit me, I will ask it anyway." If anyone in the room had previously doubted that I was the biggest nerd in the school, those doubts immediately disappeared.
"Go ahead," Mr. Kelly said, doing his best, I'm sure, to repress a giggle.
"Why," I said, "do you keep publishing stories in the June issue of the magazine?"
He explained that it had begun by chance, but then became a pattern, and now he was stuck with it.
Afterward, I brought him my treasured copy of Dozois's Third and asked if he would be willing to sign it. I told him it contained my favorite story of his, "Solstice". He smiled and wrote with a blue felt-tipped pen: To Matt -- My friend in Plymouth.
The workshops were the highlight of my life that year, and I wrote thousands of words of stories for them. On the last day, Mr. Kelly gave me his home address and told me to send him things when I wrote them. I don't think he quite knew what he was offering. Over the years, he received hundreds of pages of letters and stories printed by a dot-matrix printer on track-feed paper, all of it amounting to what is, I expect, a better blackmail file than the FBI could ever assemble for me. I treasured his letters to me more than any other object. He made suggestions about my stories, told me about books to read, and let me know what he was working on. He gave me various details about a story that eventually he told me he'd decided to call "Mr. Boy".
"Solstice" appeared in the June 1985 issue of Asimov's. "Mr. Boy" was the cover story of the June 1990 issue. They remain stories I return to with pure and utter joy.
My literary tastes broadened in high school, and my experience of life and the world became much different from what it had been when I first met Jim Kelly (yes, eventually I was able to bring myself to call him "Jim", as he told me to, but it was tough). We continued corresponding long after "Mr. Boy" was published, and I continued reading SF, though with occasional breaks for other things. Jim gave me my best high school graduation present, in fact: a copy of The Norton Book of Science Fiction signed by all the contributors who had been at the Sycamore Hill conference that year (Bruce Sterling included his email address, but I'd never seen one before and thought it was some sort of strange code for how to hack into a government mainframe).
Jim is one of the most generous and thoughtful people I've ever been lucky enough to have as a friend, and the story I have told here is, I know, not unique. He has been a mentor to entire generations of science fiction writers and fans. This was particularly valuable in the days before the Internet, when connectivity was difficult for those of us who lived away from major metropolitan centers. I was a kid besotted with Asimov's and science fiction in general, and having someone like Jim as a friend during those years deeply affected the adult I grew to be, and nothing I could say or do for him would be an adequate thank you.
The publication of "Mr. Boy", though, brought my golden age to its end. I'd known about that story from the time of its inception, and Jim had told me of his various struggles with it, his excitement when he sold it, his further excitement when he learned it would be the cover story. Getting to peek behind the curtains of the workshop like that, thrilling as it was, destroyed a certain innocence. I have no regrets about that -- golden ages should be shed, because they open us to other sorts of wonder, a plethora of more complex pleasures, and once we have moved beyond them, we can look back on our golden age as something perfect, something complete and pure, in a way we can look at nothing else in the world.
It's a risk to go back to things you loved when young, but I recently reread a lot of Jim's fiction from the first part of his career, before he started winning Hugos and Nebulas, before he became the King of Podcasting, before he edited marvelous anthologies with his partner-in-crime John Kessel.
His early fiction is far more varied in quality than his more recent work -- he has become a reliable master craftsman of the short story -- but it possesses a different energy, and when the stories are good they are good in different ways from what the more mature, and perhaps wiser, JPK writes now. (Even his first-published story, "Dea Ex Machina" [Galaxy, April 1975], at least has an intriguing first sentence: "An educated man among philistines is like a nymphomaniac among impotents; both are victims of inadequacy.") Stories such as "Still Time", "Saint Theresa of the Aliens", "Crow", "Solstice", "Rat", "The Prisoner of Chillon", "Glass Cloud", "Heroics", and "Home Front" mix solid and emotionally affecting character development with cultural and technological speculation that seldom feels particularly dated even twenty years after the stories' first publications. The stories benefit from a classical sense of balance and form that brings to mind Maupassant, O. Henry, and Shirley Jackson.
Rereading them, I realized that there are stories I wish were better known, stories I wish had gained the attention and respect that Jim's more recent work has. "Home Front" is a particular favorite of mine, a perfect example of an entire world being fit into a short story -- in this case, a world of war as televised entertainment. What is remarkable about the story is its mix of the global and the personal, a scope plenty of writers aim for but few are able to achieve in as satisfactory a manner. It is a story suffused with suppressed terror, and it manages an emotionally complex ending where the surface is one of sentimental patriotism and triumph, and yet an astute reader will pick up on the nightmare at the story's heart, the nightmare of children being pushed to revel in violence and war. The future in "Home Front" is bleak and desperate, but the tone and structure of the story urges us toward empathy, not scorn. We can understand what the kids feel, and we can be appalled by the forces that have legitimized those feelings.
I could go on and on about these stories -- I could rattle off vast theories about why "Solstice", "The Prisoner of Chillon", and "Mr. Boy" are more impressive as separate entities than as parts of the novel Wildlife (although I could also defend that novel against anyone who dared defame it!); I could tell you that "Heroics" and a letter from an Asimov's reader complaining that it didn't belong in a science fiction magazine are the twin items that launched me on a career of defending fiction against labels and definitions; I could exhort you to seek out the very different metafictional stories "The F&SF Diet" and "Daemon"; I could speculate about why "Death Therapy" is the only one of Jim's first seven or eight stories to possess the craftsmanship and imagination that would soon appear in every story; I could tell you how fond I am of the stories that make up the book he wrote with John Kessel, Freedom Beach; I could go on and on about the covers of Planet of Whispers (gasp! ack!) and Look Into the Sun (not bad!). But I won't. Because I've already said what I want to say, and what matters most, and I said it in the seventh grade, when even as the biggest nerd in my school, I knew one of the truths of the world:
James Patrick Kelly is great. He's a real writer.
06 April 2009
Short Notes on Various Books
The great and glorious Anne Fernald just posted a list of some books she's read lately with joy and happiness, and the two books on the list that I've read are ones I recommend without reservation: Tropical Fish by Doreen Baingana and Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys.
I first heard about Tropical Fish when I was in Kenya for the SLS/Kwani conference and Doreen Baingana was part of a panel discussion; I found her captivating. Later, a Ugandan friend (who also told me about FEMRITE) exhorted me to read the book. I did. I exhort you to do the same.
I don't remember when I stumbled upon Good Morning, Midnight -- I feel like the battered, crumpled paperback I've got has been with me for years, but I know I read it only a handful of years ago. Few other books have affected the prose of my own writing as deeply. Much of what I've written, and even some of what I've published, I could call my pre-Rhys writing -- aspiring toward a sort of lyricism that now I have little interest in. Good Morning, Midnight offers, to my eye's ear, a prose that I would rank in its stark, precise beauty with that of Paul Bowles, J.M. Coetzee, and even, to some extent, Beckett.
Meanwhile, much like Anne, I've been reading a lot without writing about it. I've felt like I either didn't have much to say about what I've read, or what I'd have to say has already been said by plenty of people. Here, though, are some quick thoughts on some of what I've read over the last few weeks:
I was looking forward to Jedediah Berry's first novel, The Manual of Detection, with so much excitement that I may have slaughtered it with expectations. Some of Jed's short stories are among my favorites of recent years, and I had high hopes for the novel, but those hopes were never quite met. It was a brisk and sometimes exhilarating read, but ultimately felt whispy to me, especially in the last third, from which I ached for much more. Much more what? I don't know. But more.
Similarly, I think Brian Evenson is one of the better contemporary American writers, and so my hopes for his new novel, Last Days, were unreasonably high. It's an interesting and sometimes harrowing book, but again I wasn't satisfied with it in the last third or so. (Matt Bell has written a comprehensive and thoughtful take on the novel here.) It's not that I didn't like either The Manual of Detection or Last Days -- I read them both, and neither ever really felt like a slog to get through -- but both left me unsatisfied, yearning for more complexity and depth and nuance and implication.
Then one day the mail brought both The Letters of Noël Coward and The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 1, 1929-1940. I wondered what the mail gods were trying to tell me (one friend replied, when I mentioned the coincidence: "I think it means you are either: an absurd gayist ... or a flamboyant abusrdist. Possibly both." I'll try for both). The Coward was a review copy, the Beckett a book I splurged on for myself. I tried reading the former for a bit, because I do have a certain weakness for good ol' Noël, but the letters are presented amidst a narrative of Coward's life, and I found it annoying, so couldn't continue.
The Beckett is a masterpiece of editing, a feat of scholarship, and utterly fascinating. I devoured half of the big book in only a few days (then stopped, ready to go again on the second half very soon). Gabriel Josipovici reviewed it, so I have nothing else to say.
Partly because of my "Murder, Madness, Mayhem" class, I happened to read some Robert Aickman stories and became obsessed. I had last read Aickman when I was about 17 or so, and I had hated his stories. I thought they were the most boring, pointless things ever written by any human being ever, ever, ever. Ahhh, youth! "The Hospice" and "The Stains" are now stories I am simply in awe of. I quickly hunted up the only two relatively affordable Aickman collections available on the used book market: Cold Hand in Mine and Painted Devils. They are full of exactly what Aickman says they are full of: strange stories. Beautifully, alarmingly strange stories.
Someone should publish an affordable paperback of Aickman's selected (or, be still my heart, collected!) stories. Tartarus Press published a two-volume collected stories, but it's going for at least $700 these days, and though I love Aickman, I can't spend $700 on him. Thus, I implore the publishing world to relieve my yearning and reprint a collection or two or eight of Aickman's stories in inexpensive editions! Someone? Anyone? Please? NYRB Books, I'm looking at you right now.....
Wanting to read some nonfiction about Aickman, I borrowed S.T. Joshi's The Modern Weird Tale: A Critique of Horror Fiction from a library and read the fairly astute chapter on Aickman. But I have to admit, my first thought on reading various parts of Joshi's book was, "What crawled up this guy's ass and died?" I know some people have thought the same about things I've written, so I didn't hold it against him. I was curious how Joshi is perceived within the horror community, though, because his rants against writers like Stephen King and Peter Straub seem so over-the-top to me that they actually work better as humor than as criticism, and he sometimes seems to get angry at writers for not fitting into his own narrow categories, for not agreeing with his (Lovecraftian) view of the universe, for not being more, well, Joshian. He has some fascinating things to say, but also ... not. Is he the Ezra Pound of genre criticism? The Cimmerian quotes Joel Lane (whose short stories I like quite a bit):
[Joshi's] Lovecraft biography is a serious classic. Joshi's recent book The Modern Weird Tale is a mixed bag, highly idiosyncratic and unfair, but full of good insights. His new book The Evolution of the Weird Tale, despite its grand title, is basically a collection of review articles; but it's enormous fun and less narrow than some earlier Joshi stuff. The Weird Tale, published in 1990 and covering the weird fiction genre from Machen to Lovecraft, is ambitious and dynamic but heavy-handed and too fond of extreme statements. Behind the veils of academic objectivity, Joshi can be seen to be a volatile, short-tempered, aggressive and highly intense young man. He has mellowed a little since, though his sarcasm can still wither at forty paces.As I prepared my class to watch an episode of Dexter, I read around in Jack the Ripper and the London Press by L. Perry Curtis, Jr. and Natural Born Celebrities: Serial Killers in American Culture by David Schmid -- both well worth reading, rich with insights.
Nowadays, I'm mostly doing research about British imperialism and its connection to mystery and adventure fiction. Fascinating stuff, which will, I hope, bring a new project to fruition...
SRD in PI
The article even included a quote from Philip K. Dick that I don't remember encountering before. Dick reportedly called Dhalgren "a terrible book [that] should have been marketed as trash." Gave me a good chuckle, that did.
I should also note that I discovered the profile via a particularly excellent collection of links posted by Ron Silliman.


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A fun place in a message board to go to - especially with friends you can flame.
The Winged Vampire's Retreat was a cool Ezboard to go to. I always went to the Battleground forum. Too bad it closed down. Ezboard is shitty now anyways.
by Bastardized Bottomburp September 21, 2003
A place where the only thing there is flaming. An example is Urban Dictionary.
This flame battleground is verybaised. I'm not Wapanese, but if I show one sign that I like anime, I get offensive entries written about me.
by dj gs68 September 06, 2003


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Hey there again,
This problem has returned to plague me when I got Windows 10. Whenever I shoot free throws in NBA Live 2005, there's a slight delay after I push the shooting button, and the "crosshair" on the board stops a touch later than I wanted it to. I fixed that problem by running the game as an administrator and setting the compatibility to that of Windows XP service pack 2, but even though I've done the same adjustments, the problem just won't disappear.
I know that it's possible to get rid of it, since I've gotten it to run without this delay problem on Windows 10, but for whatever reason it returned. Anyone familiar with this issue? Tried googling it, and no one on the Internet knows about it.


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Message Board
Louise Riveiro-Mitchell Message Board
Talk about the novels, new and used books that Riveiro-Mitchell has written!
Author Riveiro-Mitchell's Book Reviews
Autumn Sky
The story is set in the late eighteen hundreds in a time in our country that is untamed and free as those who lived in it. With the beautiful backdrop of Colorado territory the story weaves us through the mystery, love and passion of a strong minded Shayleen O'Malley. Returning home from five years back east Shayleen comes back to the land she loves and the man she vowed she would return to, Chance McCord, the handsome sheriff she has loved since she w...


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BTE Power Rankings on ThisIsBracketRacing.com
Ever wonder who's the best (or most successful) sportsman racer on the planet? While there is certainly never a concrete answer to that question, at ThisIsBracketRacing.com, we've developed the first comprehensive points system to attempt to determine the most dominant drivers of the season. The BTE "Power Rankings" is a simple system that compiles "Power Points" for sportsman racers based on final round appearances at NHRA, IHRA, and big dollar bracket racing events. It is the first formula of it's kind that groups "Class" racers and "bracket" racers together in an effort to determine the sportsman competitor that enjoyed the better season, nationwide, regardless of car or class.
Below are the current BTE "Power Rankings" for the 2011 season. View 2010 BTE Power Rankings | View 2009 BTE Power Rankings


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Indiana's Senator Dennis Kruse has introduced a bill (SB 89) in the Indiana General Assembly to allow the teaching of "creation science" in Indiana public schools. In a report just released by the Fordham Foundation, Indiana is listed as one of just seven states that earned an "A" for its science standards. This has been the case for many years. Indiana has been a shining star in the midwest on the map of those receiving that rating.
Not only does he seek to erode the Indiana science curriculum at a time when state leaders are trying to encourage high tech/scientific businesses to locate in Indiana, he is planning to waste Indiana taxpayer's money on costly lawsuits. When questioned about the constitutional issues involved, Senator Kruse replied, "This is a different Supreme Court. This Supreme Court could rule differently."
He made these remarks both on the Senate floor and in interviews with reporters. He called evolution a "Johnny-come-lately theory" and that religious "theories" have more merit because they have been around longer than evolution. According to Senator Kruse, the Constitution does not contain any statement about Separation of Church and State. Well, of course, those exact words are not there but the concept is defined in the establishment clause in the first amendment.
I was in the Senate gallery yesterday and one of our CFI-Indiana Friends of the Center captured the discussion from the live feed on the General Assembly website. Incredible!!
SB 89 in its original wording was:
The governing body of a school corporation may require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science, within the school corporation.
On second reading an amendment was approved which changed the wording to:
The governing body of a school corporation may offer instruction on various theories of the origin of life. The curriculum for the course must include theories from multiple religions, which may include, but is not limited to, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Scientology.
This version of SB 89 was passed by the Indiana Senate yesterday by a vote of 28-22. I was told in a conversation with a senator who was part of crafting and supporting the amendment that the intent was to make the bill unacceptable to the supporters of the original bill because they would have to include other religions and they were surprised when the proponents approved the amendment by acclamation the previous day.
What effect did this strategy have on the final vote? The sponsor of the amendment voted against as did others who had helped craft it. Senator Brent Steele told an Indianapolis Star Reporter that he voted against the bill because it included other religions. However, in a conversation I had with Senator Randy Head outside the Senate chamber, he told me that he would not have supported the original bill because of constitutional issues but voted for the amended bill because he thought it would not present these constitutional issues. In all, 10 Republicans, including Senator Steele, voted against the bill and one Democrat, Senator Lindel Hume voted for it. One of the Republicans who voted against it was my own Senator Brent Waltz. He had indicated earlier that he would vote against the original bill and voted against the amended bill. In an email reply to a person who contacted him, Senator Waltz stated, "Evolution is an accepted scientific fact and has been for almost a century. While good and honest people can derive different conclusions as to who or what began Life in the universe, the teaching of creationism should not be taught in Indiana schools."
In the discussion, Senator Tim Skinner spoke against it primarily because of the precarious position in which it would put teachers and local school corporations. He asked very probing questions of Senator Kruse. Senator Skinner had raised the same concerns in the committee hearing and was one of the proponents of the amendment introduced by Senator Vi Simpson but both he and Senator Simpson voted against the amended bill. I had a very good conversation with Senator Skinner in the hallway outside the Senate chamber and he indicated to me that the intent of the amendment was to defeat the bill by making it objectionable to its proponents.
The best speech of the afternoon was made by Senator Karen Tallian. She nailed it and hit it out of the ballpark with a rousing speech in defense of the Constitution and Separation of Church and State. You can listen to her speech here. Among her remarks were that she couldn't believe this was even being considered and that "the Constitution sheds a tear today that we are even talking about this." I sent a note in to call her out to talk to her but it seems she had already left. I did email her and thank her very much for her support and ask for a copy of her speech.
Now SB 89 is headed for the Indiana House where it must undergo the same procedure as it did in the Senate. As far as I can tell, a committee hearing has not yet been scheduled. The House is not scheduled to reconvene until Tuesday, February 7. We will be watching.


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disturbedesv wrote:Mac's by Fluor Field. The Hawks stuff was given to them so no one really cares but at least it's there lol.
CrimsonWazzu wrote:Funny thing I noticed when I was in Charleston for 6 months a few years back. Very few Panthers/Titans/Falcons fans, TONS of Stealers fans.
Kinda weird.
Return to [ THE OFFICIAL NET NATION FAN FORUM ]


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Ken Lay believes that simple is best.
The 20-year Edgartown resident holds 10 patents for inventions revolving around levers and fulcrums, two basic operations of the human body.
His latest and perhaps most ingenuously simple is The Bike Belt, a device that Mr. Lay estimated adds 30 per cent to the pedal power of the most casual bicyclist.
The device, marketed at $29, is composed of a wide belt connected to two short lengths of metal and bungee cord chains that are in turn attached to the bicycle frame. The goal of the device is provide resistance and stability to riders, allowing them to transfer more energy to pedaling rather than diffusing energy trying to remain firmly seated while pedaling, particularly during the most difficult biking maneuvers, going uphill and cornering.
"The bike stays with you and the chain limits slipping [of the biker's seat from the bicycle seat] and allows the center of energy mass to project maximum force to the pedals, generating at least 25 to 30 per cent more power," Mr. Lay said. In layman's terms that means, for example, if you are not slipping forward on the bike seat while climbing uphill, the extra power goes into pedaling. "Uphill climbing becomes a non-issue and you can cruise in the higher gears," Mr. Lay said on Friday afternoon.
After Mr. Lay demonstrated the pedaling aid on Summer street, a reporter Velcro-ed on the padded fabric Bike Belt apparatus and rode Mr. Lay's bike to feel the pulling power benefit of his idea. As Mr. Lay predicted, the rider felt mechanically connected to the pedal rather than to the toe clips. Mr. Lay is at work refining the first commercial model and expects a quick chain-release feature to be added to The Bike Belt in the near future. "The better the bike and the gearing, the more the effect is multiplied," he said.
The bike belt is the second commercial application of a Lay invention. The first, Tiger Clawz, is another lever and fulcrum device in use by patients at Windemere Rehabilitation and Nursing Center and by active working people, such as Mr. Lay, a master plumber by trade.
"I'm using it with our stroke population. The Tiger Clawz keeps their hands open and provides good base of support throughout the arm. It stabilizes the hand and wrist joint (during rehabilitation exercises)," said Todd Lyonnais, a physical therapist and director of rehabilitation at Windermere.
"The unit doesn't look special but the stability it provides my residents is excellent, like an arch support for the hand," Mr. Lyonnais said. Mr. Lay sees further application of the semicircular device, such as attaching to crutches and other walking aids.
Mr. Lay shows up as endlessly inquisitive, sounding more like a biomechanical engineer than a plumber. "The energy core of the human body is in the spine. Think of a whip. You have to move the handle first. The more energy you release with your hand movement the greater the speed and the 'crack' you hear at the end of the whiplash. The spine is our whip handle," he said.
"I like to build things that are ergonomically and exercise-based," around the principle of levers and fulcrums, he said. "Our arms and legs are just sticks. They become levers when a fulcrum is introduced," he said.
Mr. Lay has spent 30 years intrigued by the dynamics of human movement, a study he came to during the practice of Tae Kwon Do, a Korean martial arts discipline. "My master was the Korean national Tae Kwon Do champion, a very high honor in the Korean culture," Mr. Lay said. "After several years, he came to me and said 'To master this, you must become the whip and to learn how to move the handle (the spine) first,'" Mr. Lay recalled.
The 30-year application of the lesson has led Mr. Lay to an association with MVTV, for whom he will produce a weekly show for Island inventors this winter, reminiscent of Fore Inventors Only, a program showcasing golf aid inventors recently produced by The Golf Channel.
Mr. Lay's tinkering with ideas for stable bases has produced an everyday usable idea for people who use ladders in their work. "I found that if I use two ladders, one angled 15 degrees from the other, I had a more stable climbing base to work from. Of course, the higher I go, the more I reduce the angle between the ladders," he said.
Finally, Mr. Lay answered a question that has perplexed many Island residents. The white van emblazoned Bootie Lifter is his and advertises a product that, well, you get the idea.


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Dr. Yiu received his M.Sc. (applied biometry) and Ph.D. (physiology and biophysics) from the University of Southern California. He then completed a post-doctoral fellowship in lacrimal physiology at the Schepens Eye Institute at Harvard Medical School and went on to earn his M.D. from the University of Alberta in Canada. Dr. Yiu completed an internship and his ophthalmology residency at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia and a fellowship in cornea, external disease and refractive surgery at the University of Southern California's Doheny Eye Institute. After serving as the director of Doheny's Ocular Surface Center and co-director of Doheny's cornea division, Dr. Yiu joined the Wilmer faculty in 2011 and spent two years as the chief of the cornea division at King Khaled Eye Specialist Hospital (KKESH), Wilmer's affiliate hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, before returning to Baltimore in 2013.
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2 days ago
Wing injury prompts NRL rule change
The NRL has moved to outlaw shoulder charges in tackles where more than one defender is involved.
The proposed rule change will ban the use of the shoulder in any exchange other than situations where there is a one-on-one collision.
The move comes following the public outcry over Riley Brown's late hit on Souths halfback Craig Wing on Friday night, which ruled Wing out for up to three months after undergoing shoulder surgery.
Sydney Roosters hooker Brown was found to have no case to answer by the NRL match review committee.
The NRL announced there would be close scrutiny of similar tackles in coming weeks with a view to recommending a rule change if it is deemed necessary.
"We have already made changes to our own judiciary guidelines to ensure that shoulder charges can be treated as high tackles where necessary and it is an area of the rules we watch closely," NRL chief operating officer Graham Annesley said.
"Certainly if we see any trend developing that is against the interests of the game we will act on that trend."


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Games Monitor is a network of people with a desire to inform and monitor the Olympic process and the local impact. Final editions of Background papers 1, 2 & 3 were updated December 2015.
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This web page is marked up with Schema.org microdata. Much of the necessary microdata is embedded within the HTML that creates the display you see above. The data that shows below is formatted for machine-reading and rounds out the complete descriptive set for this resource. Want more info about all of this? Go here. You can also view the complete dataset for this resource the way a machine sees it here .Title: BP3 / Apparatus (State + Media): Briefing on London 2012 Olympic Games
Publication date 2016-01-01
Publication Year 2016
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Geographical Focus Europe (Western) / England / London , Europe (Western) / United Kingdom
Keywords olympic , london , cheyne , LDA , theguardian
Document type CaseStudy
Language English
URL: http://renniecenter.issuelab.org/resource/bp3-apparatus-state-media-briefing-on-london-2012-olympic-games.html
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