Archive for June 1st, 2007

Book Sales Growth Expected to be Slow

Friday, June 1st, 2007

little parrothead 21 Book Sales Growth Expected to be SlowOver at Yahoo! News I read that sales of books are expected to grow only about 3% per year for the next few years. Bad news! Of course, I’m biased, but I think that reading books is the best, most productive pasttime – well, next to sailing, books are the best, most productive pastime there is.

Why is the decline in reading so bad? Reading build our brains up. Its the mental gym. Read alot of good books, newspapers, and magazines, and your mind will be as buff as any steriod enhanced body builder’s torso.

In my many years of teaching, I found students more and more limited by their ability to think on their feet, read critically, comprehend the world at large, or to even have a strong vocabulary. Maybe the gene pool at the college where i worked was draining dry, but I think that this is more of a trend nationwide. Bad News! Today, with the internet, more and more well educated workers are available to fill my former students’ jobs. The world is flattening, in some regards, as Thomas Friedman argued in his excellent book.

UFO sited over Lake Mendota in Madison, WI

Friday, June 1st, 2007

ufo over lake mendota UFO sited over Lake Mendota in Madison, WI

 

little parrothead 21 UFO sited over Lake Mendota in Madison, WIOn the morning of Friday, June 1, 2007, a UFO was spotted over Lake Mendota in Madison, WI. This amazing photo, taken from one of the University of Wisconsin webcams aimed at the lake shows a large, somewhat indistinct, object floating or flying above the lake just after sunrise. Looking carefully at the leftmost area in the photo, just beyond picnic point, what appears to be an enormous waterspout is also visible. Strange occurences such as this are not uncommon in this midwester state’s capital, however, Rummy Botts, our roving, street-level reporter, has informed us that this is somewhat unique.