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A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skillful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well — this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection, and sociality as a whole.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

Some things just piss me off:

In a feat of literary sleuth work, Ms. Heifetz, the mother of a high school senior and a weaver from Brooklyn, inspected 10 high school English exams from the past three years and discovered that the vast majority of the passages — drawn from the works of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Anton Chekhov and William Maxwell, among others — had been sanitized of virtually any reference to race, religion, ethnicity, sex, nudity, alcohol, even the mildest profanity and just about anything that might offend someone for some reason. Students had to write essays and answer questions based on these doctored versions — versions that were clearly marked as the work of the widely known authors.

Found via Metafilter. Requires NY Times registration.

We have left the age of postmodernism behind us and entered the age of pure crap: a song from Moulin Rouge is being used to sell Coors Light. There’s nowhere to go from that.

Fellow capper Buffoon passes along this story from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

New Century Media yesterday said it is not only dropping the format of KBTB-FM (95.7), it’s dropping the idea of playing entire songs.

Instead of The Beat, which featured dance and rhythmic hits, the station will be known as Quick 96, and will feature “only the best parts of your favorite songs.” The station plans to offer country, Top 40, rock and adult hits, and play short sections from each. Quick 96 said it will play selections from more than 400 songs each hour; the selections will be numbered, and listeners will need to log on to www.Quick96.com to look up the song title and artists.

A release from New Century said the format will “address the short attention span of today’s busy music fan.” Station officials weren’t available for comment on whether the quick format is permanent format or a stunt to set up a change to another.

And I thought radio in central Pennsylvania was bad…