Children's Book Illustrators for Obama

(via Fuse #8)

Fundamentals

McCain still thinks the economy is fundamentaly strong. Mark Fiore's animated site has more on this silliness. (tip to Norm)

(photo unattributed)

Who Is the Biggest Loser?

I was listening to the SGU this week and they were rehashing their Dragon*Con experiences and of course got to talking about the costumes. Bob mentioned these movie quality Iron Men and there were plenty of other characters that looked like they just stepped off a movie set, especially Star Wars folks like Darth Vader and Boba Fett. Steve joked about a kid in a lame Halloween mask and black t-shirt, wondering why he bothered when there were these pros walking around and Rebecca said she thought the guys in the expensive suits that clearly took many man hours to manufacture were bigger losers in her eyes.

Yes, people go over the top for that stuff and no, that's not why I was there. But I still have to respectfully disagree with Rebecca. The guy in the Boba Fett costume walked into one of the venues and beside me someone shouted, "Boba!" Boba turned and a bunch of us took pictures. For all I know the guy is a night shift manager at a Wings and Weenies. He really could be a total loser. But his costume rocked and for that weekend at least, he was Boba Fett. What's so wrong with that?

Cool T-Shirt

Reader Photographs

An amazing assortment of photographs of people reading. Do linger over these wonderful images.

André Kertész: On Reading

(via Norm)

Epileptic

This is a graphic novel by the French artist David B. It's the story of his childhood and what his family endured because of his older brother's terrifying and incessant epilepsy. He, his brother and his younger sister have a wonderful time for a few years until the seizures hit. It takes place primarily in the 60s and 70s and the medical doctors suggest sketchy and dangerous surgery. David's brother, Jean-Christophe decides he'd rather try macrobiotics because of an article he's read. The family begins a journey down the rabbit hole of woo including acupuncture, massage, even exorcisms. They join colonies and cults. Nothing works and of course much of it even crushes their hopes. Jean-Christophe becomes lazy in David's eyes, but how can he function when a bone-rattling seizure is always just around the corner? He becomes violent, full of rage.

This is the perfect medium. If you enjoyed MAUS or Persepolis you'll love this. David B. was actually a mentor to Marjane Satrapi, creator of Persepolis. If it had been another Dave Eggers/Augustin Bourroughs tale of a screwed up childhood it wouldn't have been as remotely interesting. The art and the visual metaphors David B. has created are amazing. The ghost of his grandfather is the long-beaked black bird on the cover. The epilepsy is a black and spiky dragon slithering through the house.

I'll add two more images, dark but undeniably powerful. Click on them to see them bigger. David B.'s thought of what a medical procedure might be like and the family reacting to strangers when Jean-Christophe has a seizure in public. Powerful stuff indeed.

Happiness

...is nice 'chops





Create your own motivational posters at Motivator.

Doug is fond of them. (This one is especially great.)

Read!

Awesome, really. You've probably seen this by now, but man I love it. Chad nailed it. And hey, bathroom reading is something pushed by Jim Trelese in his Read-Aloud Handbook. I know my daughter already sees it as the perfect reading spot.

Spell With Flickr

Spell with Flickr.

Yes, It's My Birthday

Pencils my wife had made up as part of the party favors. Nice. I'm sure they'll find their way all over my school in no time.

China Earthquake Photos

My friend Chien-Min took this and more photos of the damage from the recent earthquake. Click the link to see them full-sized, the way they were meant to be seen.

Make Your Own News

Danny over at The Whiteboard Blog, linked to this fun newspaper-generating tool. Make your own authentic-looking newspaper clipping. Post it, print it, fool the students with it--many uses pop to mind. Let me know of any others you can imagine...

Friday Quote

"A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature."

--Henry David Thoreau

Inspiration for today's quote comes from this awesome bit of graffiti tagging.

(via Bookninja)

Now THAT'S a Tattoo!

This is from Carl Zimmer's amazing Science Tattoo website.

Happy Earth Day

Like the New Banner?

Yes, I take a lot of pictures so I thought I'd try to pretty this place up a bit. Didn't have any Ninjas per se, so I went with a little more Zen-like thing.

Wake Up!

This might help. It's called Clocky and if you hit snooze too many times it rolls around the room forcing your sleepy self outta bed.

Throwing Fish!

This is my (mega-ninja) friend Merlin. We went to college together. We were both goof-offs to some extent (but he was a much smarter goof-off). We'll get back to him in a moment.

During teacher planning week they showed us a motivational video about these guys at a big international fish market in a city who made their job fun by really performing for their customers and making a big show of throwing the fish and just making their "boring" job a ton of fun. It was motivating and as you watched you wanted to be one of those guys.

Then I had to sit through four (!) two-hour (!) slide-show presentations that turned my brains into tapioca pudding. I've mentioned this problem in this blog previously.

Which brings us back to Merlin. He recently gave a slide-show presentation at the Googleplex on how to deal with your email called "Inbox Zero." I've mentioned and linked to these before. Now he has written a post about how he made this presentations so darn good. Please read it if you or anyone you know needs to do a presentation and feels the need to use a slide-show (Powerpoint, etc).

Most important rule: 10-20-30. No more than ten slides. No more than twenty minutes. No font smaller than 30pt. Now go and throw some fish!

I love the British! The Wellcome Collection is now totally free.

Go. See. Download and share with students. It can be a little slow right now but did I mention that it's FREE and oh so wondrous?

I dig pictures of brains, but don't worry, they have much much more to view.

I love the internet!