Are you smarter than a politician?

See if you can’t fix the following sentence:

My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars.

See who said it, along with commentary from Dick Cavett, here.

Extra Credit Alert!

WANTED: Copies of Wednesday’s Grand Rapids Press (just the first section). Will trade for extra credit. Will also accept first sections of other Wednesday papers. Bring them in Friday if you have them!

National Book Award Finalists

The best in American fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people’s literature – the Top 5 in each category were revealed today. Winners announced November 18. 

Forced to leave home – for playing music

Another sign of the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan: Haroon Bacha, one of the area’s most popular singers, has been forced to flee to the US because playing music is considered “un-Islamic.”

Column of the Day – Bonus Edition

Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, takes the McCain/Palin campaign to task for allowing speakers at their rallys to use Barack Obama’s middle name to insinuate he is a terrorist:

The real affront is the lack of firm response from either McCain or Palin. Neither has had the moral courage, when taking the stage, to grasp the microphone, turn to the presenter and, right then and there, denounce the use of Obama’s middle name as an insult. Instead, they have simply delivered their stump speeches, lacing into Obama as if nothing out-of-bounds had just happened.

Let’s get all mavericky on these words and phrases

Barbara Wallraff’s new blog presents a list of words and phrases that just need to go away. Now.

"Downward spiral" in Afghanistan

For those of you reading The Kite Runner, gloomy news from Afghanistan. The Joint Chiefs Chairman says the situation there is very bad and will only get worse in the coming year:

The sobering forecast comes as a draft report by American intelligence agencies has cast serious doubt on the ability of the Afghan government to stem the rise in the Taliban’s influence there, and as the Bush administration has initiated a major review of its Afghanistan policy.

The price of censorship – Banned Books Week

For J.K. Rowling, challenges to her books doesn’t keep them from flying off the shelves – she makes five pounds every second ($8.85 US), according to Forbes magazine.

Today’s Banned Book

So many challenged and banned books, so little time. Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five is part of my Top 10 Favorite books (banned or otherwise). He survived the bombing of Dresden after being captured by the Germans in WWII, and left us this “post-modern anti-war science-fiction novel.”

In the interest of equal time for opposing viewpoints, here’s Linda Harvey’s take on the “smoke screen of hypocrisy” behind Banned Books Week. Not sure how much credit I should give to an article that appears with an ad promoting “how you can flush 5-20 pounds of waste from your colon,” so I’ll let you decide. So it goes.

UPDATE: Just found this from “banned” author Philip Pullman (The Golden Compass) – Linda Harvey’s efforts are futile.

Nobel Chief Thumbs Literary Nose at American Writers

Seems that European authors are the only ones worth reading, according to the Nobel Literature Chief:

“The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature,” Engdahl said. “That ignorance is restraining.”

And American writers respond with a verbal volley of their own:

“You would think that the permanent secretary of an academy that pretends to wisdom but has historically overlooked Proust, Joyce, and Nabokov, to name just a few non-Nobelists, would spare us the categorical lectures,” said David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker.

It’s a step above “Your mama!” and “I know you are, but what am I?”