Tag: books

literature

Butterflies In The Sky No More

Posted on

It is with great sadness that I report that a beloved television show of mine is ending its run today. After 26 years, “Reading Rainbow” is going off of the air.
My all time favorite episode was about the book titled Gila Monsters Meet You at the Airport. Another great episode was about The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash and on the theme of eating, I really loved the Gregory the Terrible Eater episode which was about a very picky goat who would only want to eat fruits, vegetables, eggs, and orange juice, and refused the usual goat diet of shoes and tin cans.
Reading Rainbow debuted in 1983 – a tremendously formative year for me (I was six) as “Return of the Jedi” debuted in the theaters and GI Joe and He-Man also debuted on TV. Put it this way, while I’ve seen a lot of things in 2009, I don’t think anything thing I’ve seen had the transformative effect that one of those shows I listed above had on me, lest the power of those four shows combined.
It seems that no one — not the station, not PBS, not the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — will put up the several hundred thousand dollars needed to renew the show’s broadcast rights and while the funding crunch is partially to blame, the decision to end Reading Rainbow can also be traced to a shift in the philosophy of educational television programming.
The change started with the Department of Education under the Bush administration, he explains, which wanted to see a much heavier focus on the basic tools of reading — like phonics and spelling. I know the basics are important but I still feel compelled to say “boo.”
“Reading Rainbow” will live on in repeats and on DVDs and really, just as the show always told us, we shouldn’t be watching television anyway. Take a look – its in a book. Reading Rainbow.

tech

New Designs, Devices and User Experiences for 20008

Posted on

The new year always brings new resolutions. Mine this year is twofold: to try and post more frequently and to change my eating habits. For the first one, in the words of Michael Pollan, the author of In Defense of Food, I plan to “eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”
For the second, as my first post of the year, I thought I would share some spiffy new designs, devices and user experiences that are in store for us in 2008 and beyond. These are really, really cool. I’m not easily “wowed” these days but over and over again I found myself scratching my head and thinking “how do they come up with this stuff?”
Check out the Innovative Designs and Devices and User Experiences of the Future courtesy of Smashing Magazine.
I love the Bluetooth Laser Virtual Keyboard, the Hi-Tech Office: Eclipse Partitioning System and the Reactable. Most of these are spec only and not for sale which is good for me – it limits the temptation to run out and buy them today.