{"id":3266,"date":"2008-12-18T18:15:44","date_gmt":"2008-12-18T23:15:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3266"},"modified":"2008-12-18T16:26:18","modified_gmt":"2008-12-18T21:26:18","slug":"thursday-various-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3266","title":{"rendered":"Thursday various"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>    <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>I just assumed we were past the whole &#8220;<em>Harry Potter<\/em> is bad for children!&#8221; But I guess Richard Dawkins <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/3255972\/Harry-Potter-fails-to-cast-spell-over-Professor-Richard-Dawkins.html\">didn&#8217;t get that memo<\/a>:<\/li>\n<p><\/font><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">The prominent atheist is stepping down from his post at Oxford University to write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in &#8220;anti-scientific&#8221; fairytales.<\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">Prof Hawkins said: &#8220;The book I write next year will be a children&#8217;s book on how to think about the world, science thinking contrasted with mythical thinking.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">&#8220;I haven&#8217;t read Harry Potter, I have read Pullman who is the other leading children&#8217;s author that one might mention and I love his books. I don&#8217;t know what to think about magic and fairy tales.&#8221;<\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">I do like that he&#8217;s willing to think about the issue critically. He&#8217;s actually <em>not<\/em> saying the books are harmful; he&#8217;s saying the <em>possibility<\/em> of their detrimental effect on children should be examined closely. But still, the underlying assumption &#8212; that children read these fairy tales and <em>believe<\/em> in them, that they are unable to differentiate fantasy from reality &#8212; seems to me rather flawed. It&#8217;s an assumption we usually see from fundamentalist Christian groups who are afraid that witchcraft will poison the minds of our youth. If nothing else, it&#8217;s interesting to see it come from the other side of the aisle.<\/font><\/p>\n<li><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><a href=\"http:\/\/karenhealey.livejournal.com\/730031.html\"><em>Twilight<\/em> Body Glitter<\/a> &#8212; now <em>there&#8217;s<\/em> something with a detrimental effect! [<a href=\"http:\/\/gwendabond.typepad.com\/bondgirl\/\" title=\"Gwenda Bond\">via<\/a>]<\/font><\/li>\n<li><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">&#8220;Michael Platt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s editorial on July 21, 2008 may have inadvertently left the impression that General Motors in some way supported neo-Nazis.&#8221;  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.regrettheerror.com\/2005\/12\/crunks_05_the_y.html\">Regret the Error<\/a> has many more. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.waxy.org\/links\/\" title=\"Waxy.org Links\">via<\/a>]<\/font><\/li>\n<li><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">A helpful <a href=\"http:\/\/xkcd.com\/518\/\">Guide to Understanding Flow Charts<\/a>, courtesy of xkcd.<\/font><\/li>\n<li><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">Job discrimination <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boingboing.net\/2008\/12\/15\/should-employers-dis.html\">against World of Warcraft players<\/a>? I don&#8217;t play &#8212; watching <a href=\"http:\/\/www.watchtheguild.com\/\">The Guild<\/a> is about the closest I get &#8212; but even so, what worker <em>doesn&#8217;t<\/em> sometimes lose focus or have erratic sleep patterns? These recruiters might want to check out <a href=\"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/2008\/05\/27\/analyzing-mmo-battles-to-build-a-better-workforce\/\">the counter-argument<\/a>.<\/font><\/li>\n<p><\/font><\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/font><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just assumed we were past the whole &#8220;Harry Potter is bad for children!&#8221; But I guess Richard Dawkins didn&#8217;t get that memo: The prominent atheist is stepping down from his post at Oxford University to write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in &#8220;anti-scientific&#8221; fairytales.Prof Hawkins said: &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3266\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[238,10],"class_list":["post-3266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-uncategorized","tag-various"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3266"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}