Poets Reading Poetry: Billy Collins

Poetry is meant to be read aloud, but rarely is. As Oscar Wilde once said, "A poet can survive everything but a misprint."

So, cutting out the middle man, here is where we'll post famous poets reading their own poetry--the words off the page and in your ears, as they intended. And hopefully nothing is lost in the process.





In the separate--but often connected--worlds of academia and poetry, few ever garner major popular attention in our modern world. Yet, Billy Collins is about as close as what we have to trendy and fashionable in those worlds today.

From 2001 to 2003, Collins was the U.S. Poet Laureate, and for good reason. His work is lauded for being approachable, accessible, and admirable. It's often humorous and light, but without being flimsy. Collins regularly finds a slice of our everyday lives and remarks upon it, seemingly with a joke or two, but always with an underlying message to be had.

Approachability with Collins doesn't simply stand with his poetry, but with the man himself. In a world where famed writers often align themselves with Ivy League or elite institutions (ahem, Toni Morrison, Junot Diaz, etc.), Collins has chosen to work at places like Lehman College, Sarah Lawrence College, SUNY Stony Brook Southampton, CUNY, and Rollins College.

He's gone on tour to read his work with singer/songwriter Aimee Mann. He regularly appeared on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion radio show, and was even animated as himself for a PBS show about an animated dog called Martha Speaks. Collins has also given multiple TED talks, one of which was voted as one of the 100 best ever given. His approachability and popularity has become so infectious, that when signing a contract with Random House, he was given a six-figure advance, something unheard of in the world of poetry.

In the reading of "Marginalia," Collins' voice rarely is too animated, nor is it monotone. It's a voice that's straightforward, the kind you'd expect to hear while talking over coffee with a friend. It's accepting and observational and just wants to talk about your respective days.


Marginalia, by Billy Collins

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
'Nonsense.' 'Please! ' 'HA! ! ' -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
why wrote 'Don't be a ninny'
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls 'Metaphor' next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of 'Irony'
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
'Absolutely,' they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
'Yes.' 'Bull's-eye.' 'My man! '
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written 'Man vs. Nature'
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages; 
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
'Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love.'

NPR wants your Twitter poetry. Calm yourself.

That insatiable desire to yawn you just felt by reading the letters "NPR" is a natural reaction to the hushed, baby-whisper, dulcet voices that come from their on-air personalities.

Now, to really amp the excitement level, NPR wants your poetry in honor of National Poetry Month. Not just any poetry, though. They only want Twitter poetry. NPR even has firm ground rules, including that you can't write an epic poem and take a photo of it as an attachment, nor can you involve art in your work. They only want 140 characters of poetry--in essence, a haiku.

To submit a poem via Twitter, they've given it the hashtag #NPRpoetry, which is almost as sleep-inducing a hashtag as their on-air programming.

Somewhere, the great haiku writer Matsuo Basho just passed out from boredom. And that's sad, as he's been dead for hundreds of years.

If alive today, Emily Dickinson would've been a homeowner on HGTV.

Lover of a good garden.

"I just love to entertain," Emily Dickinson would say, head tilted back, hand to chest, a lilt in her voice. "Having guests by, a great meal, some wine while sitting in the garden--it's what I love."

Emily Dickinson was born in the wrong century for HGTV fame though, otherwise she'd be a regular at Pier One and Crate and Barrel. And while not a socialite on the scene in her day, guests often visited Dickinson's family home in Amherst, MA, where an extensive garden once covered 14-acres. Now, the Emily Dickinson Homestead, in conjunction with archaeologists from the University of Massachusetts, are working to recreate the grounds at the reclusive writer's home as they were in the mid-19th century.

Already in the works is the rebuilding of a glass conservatory that once existed at the home. According to NPR, archaeologists are digging for old plant stems and seed remnants in order to have a concrete idea of what sort of flowers and vegetables existed on the property. The hope is that in a year's time visitors to the museum can feel as if they've been transported to a different era that inspired the poet.

"[V]isitors may be able to roam among varieties of asparagus, corn and beans that made up the original Dickinson vegetable garden," they say.

And if Dickinson was on the ball, this would all come full circle and she'd make a bean and corn salsa over some roasted asparagus for her guests while entertaining.

Los Angeles Times critic asks if Shakespeare and Cervantes ever sort of had a connection.

"What would Cervantes do..."

Later this week is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, which means all the crazy lovely little anecdotes and what the--? cute side stories are burrowing out of the woodwork to commemorate the Bard's life and work.

Cases in point:

NPR talks about Shakespeare's love of scenes based around large meals--mainly because people die shortly thereafter in his dramas. It's like your family's Thanksgiving if everyone gave in to the simmering turmoil over grandma burning the candied yams again.

The Guardian looks at "Bed tricks and broken women: Shakespeare's guide to love," in case you thought the glory days of romance involved bathing once a month.

And the Los Angeles Times resorts to daydreaming that Shakespeare is somehow connected to Cervantes.

It's true. Cervantes died 400-years ago this year as well. In fact, it was 400-years ago this week, too (although by different calendars--Julian vs. Gregorian--just play along). But the Spanish Cervantes and the English Shakespeare almost assuredly never met, one of the greatest shames in literary history. The closest connection ever posited is that an elderly Shakespeare adapted an early partially-translated segment of Cervante's Don Quixote and named the second rate play The History of Cardenio. And even that's a stretch connection.

That's it. That's the only relation between two of history's greatest writers who died nearly the same time, separated by a relatively small gulf of water.

And it's probably the only time Shakespeare's attempt at a similar work paled in comparison to another.

This Week in Science!!!

A career in writing will lead to premature aging and a healthy dose of personal humiliation. But science and medicine is where you'll make money, fame, and the respect of your parents. As a result, we might as well pay attention to what they're doing in those fields.

So it's time to take another peak at anything going on in the world of science and medicine this week.


Starting off with:  Murder on the prairies.

story one:
Prairie dogs are adorable serial killers.

Alleged serial killer.

The prairie dog might look cute and pose for casual photography, but that's just so you'll let your guard down—which is what ground squirrels are apparently doing in their midst.

John Hoogland of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science tells the website Gizmodo that after studying wild prairie dogs in Colorado he can faithfully report the first documented case of a mammalian herbivore killing another mammalian herbivore on a routine basis, purely to wipe them out. In essence, prairie dogs are blood-lusting murderers the likes prime time crime dramas have never seen. We potentially have the next NCIS franchise created right before us.

In Hoogland's study, 163 ground squirrels were killed by 47 different prairie dogs for no other reason than the squirrel existed as competition for food. Being an herbivore, the prairie dog held no desire to eat the squirrel—it just wanted the squirrel dead, preferably in a fairly macabre manner.

But how messy a murder are we really talking here? As Hoogland tells Gizmodo, "Prairie dogs will chase ground squirrels—usually babies—and if they catch them, they shake them violently. While they’re shaking, they’re biting the back of the neck to sever the vertebral column. Sometimes they grab by the head and literally debrain the baby. It’s violent, savage, and awful." Or, as Hoogland also tells NewScientist, the murders are "quick, subtle and unanticipated."

As opposed to all of those anticipated baby animal murders I've been hanging my hat onto. Thankfully they're subtle about it though. We want to keep it classy after all.



story two:
Your cat is slowly trying to drive you insane.

Plotting world domination one step at a time.

Mr. Whiskers has long had it out for you. Eating your plants, coughing up hairballs onto the carpet, or bringing a dead bird home, you've suspected he's up to something. And it turns out he might be doing more to mess with you than you imagined.

Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite found in cat feces, among other places, has been linked to a variety of potential mental health disorders, from schizophrenia to higher rates of suicide. Now, a report published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry says there's a correlation to people with toxoplasmosis having inexplicable rage—and not just because Mr. Whiskers has decided to use your living room chair as a scratching post.

Called "intermittent explosive disorder," it's defined as having moments of unexplained, violent, angry eruptions out of proportion to the situation. Individuals with toxoplasmosis (most likely from Mr. Whiskers) show signs of having the disorder with higher frequency than those who do not.

The parasite doesn't affect cats, in fact it's beneficial. As IFL Science notes, "From a cat’s perspective T. gondii is more symbiont than parasite. Cats spread it to rodents, whose behaviour changes to make them easier to catch."

That's right. Like any criminal mastermind, Mr. Whiskers dopes up his prey before going for the kill. That means he's just playing the long game with you until he gets his chance.



story three:
City birds are buff and smart. Country birds are jealous, potentially.

Soon to be mayor over all of this.

Forget felines overthrowing humanity. Birds are one up on them.

First, pigeons were found out to be expert radiologists in the making, now researchers say city birds exploit their environments better for survival compared to country birds. As a result, they're stronger and smarter, too. This is the sort of personality profile usually only seen in fraudulent eHarmony ads.

Scientists at McGill University performed a small study and say urban birds are more resistant to infection, perform better on cognitive tests, are better problem solvers, and probably know where ALL the best restaurants are downtown.

Fifty-three bullfinches from different parts of Barbados were studied, and researchers found city birds had a bolder temperament and could open drawers faster when looking for food than country birds, who are apparently demure and less likely to lead a life of petty theft when jonesing for a bite to eat.

One look at the size and intelligence of Big Bird from Sesame Street proves all of this about city birds anyway.



story four:
Now rats are diagnosing disease.

Would appreciate a cantaloupe once in awhile.

World domination at the hands of long derided city "pests" is slowly building, as rats are now being trained to detect tuberculosis.

The Hero Rats program, run by an NGO called APOPO in Tanzania, has taught 29 African giant-pouched rats to detect the deadly—but curable—disease which afflicts 10 million people a year, and kills over 1.5 million. Typical lab testing with technicians is slow and laborious, but the rats can detect roughly 100 samples in 20 minutes. Lab technicians would take nearly four days analyzing such a volume.

As part of the program, the rats learn to stop and alert someone if they smell TB on a sample from a patient. As a reward, they receive a small piece of banana. Robin Toal, community manager at APOPO, says the rats are free to retire whenever they want from the program.

Huh?

"As soon as we think they don't want to do it, then we'll happily let them retire," Toal tells NPR. "And they can live out their days lounging with their friends, snacking on watermelon, running on wheels, chasing their tails, whatever they want to do."

Clearly rats can't be that intelligent after all or they'd have learned to negotiate for better benefits. A bite of banana or watermelon? It has to be a complete Edible Arrangement or they go on strike.

Like hiking? Fan of poetry? Very patient? You might find millions in buried treasure.

Yup. Somewhere out there.

Eccentric millionaire, avid hiker, and occasional poet Forrest Fenn wrote a jaunty, rhyming poem detailing the whereabouts of a treasure chest he filled with gold and gemstones--and buried somewhere nondescript in the Rocky Mountains.

Buried six years ago during the Great Recession, Fenn tells NPR he did it to brighten people's moods, have them venture outside, and see nature. And nothing motivates people to see the great outdoors like the smell of sweet, sweet cash.

Tens of thousands of people have reportedly searched for Fenn's chest, buried somewhere between his home in Sante Fe, New Mexico, and the Canadian border at an elevation over 5,000ft. That's right, if you find the chest you're at least hauling that thing a long way down. But after finding a buried fortune you'll be walking on air, or can at least hire someone to carry it for you.

The only hint to where it's buried is in the following poem written by Fenn in his self-published book, The Thrill of the Chase:

As I have gone alone in there
And with my treasures bold,
I can keep my secret where,
And hint of riches new and old.

Begin it where warm waters halt
And take it in the canyon down,
Not far, but too far to walk.
Put in below the home of Brown.

From there it's no place for the meek,
The end is ever drawing nigh;
There'll be no paddle up your creek,
Just heavy loads and water high.

If you've been wise and found the blaze,
Look quickly down, your quest to cease,
But tarry scant with marvel gaze,
Just take the chest and go in peace.

So why is it that I must go
And leave my trove for all to seek?
The answers I already know,
I've done it tired, and now I'm weak.

So hear me all and listen good,
Your effort will be worth the cold.
If you are brave and in the wood
I give you title to the gold.

"No one knows where that treasure chest is but me," Fenn tells NPR. "If I die tomorrow, the knowledge of that location goes in the coffin with me."

Wait-wait-wait. Is that a hint? Did he just offer a hint? I think he offered a hint. Is it going to be buried with him? Or is he going to be buried in the chest?

That is what an eccentric millionaire would do after all.

Walt Whitman wrote a letter for a dying soldier to his wife.

Walt Whitman has been labeled many things, but humble is not one of them.

The same Walt Whitman that gets guff for being cocky about his writing ability is also the same Walt Whitman modest enough to spend many days during the Civil War visiting hospitals filled with wounded and dying soldiers, writing letters for them or simply sitting down to have a chat.

Jackie Budell, a specialist with the National Archives, tells NPR that a letter discovered by researchers in February is only the third known document written by a solider to his family, but done in Whitman's hand.

"He just literally visited people. And he bought stationery and he would bring it with him and he would offer to write letters home for them," she tells NPR's Michel Martin. "Many [soldiers] were illiterate but also many were just too sickly to write so he would offer to do that."

One such sickly soldier was Robert Nelson Jabo, a French Canadian living in New York state who was a Union soldier dying in a hospital too far away to reach family. Whitman sat down with Jabo to write the following:


Washington, Jan. 21, 1865(6)

My Dear Wife,

You must excuse me for not having written to you before. I have not been very well + did not feel much like writing – but I feel considerably better now – my complaint is an affection of the lungs. I am mustered out of service, but am not at present well enough to come home. I hope you will try to write back as soon as you receive this + let me know how you all are, how things are going on – let me know how it is with mother. I write this by means of a friend who is now sitting by my side + I hope it will be God's will that we shall yet meet again. Well I send you all my love + must now close.

Your affectionate husband,
Nelson Jabo

Written by Walt Whitman
a friend.


"I think Walt's time was the most important gift that he was giving these men," Budell tells NPR. "Really they just needed someone to sit by their side."

As did Jabo. He died from tuberculosis shortly after this letter was written.

He never made it home, he never saw his wife.

Norwegian library discovers it has one of the rarest Ottoman-era atlases.

When we all think of Norway, we conjure images of frostbite, Bjorn Borg, and a connection to the Ottomans. If Oslo isn't a Nordic interpretation of Istanbul, nothing is.

And that connection continues today, as a research librarian at Norway's National Library stumbled upon a rare Ottoman atlas buried deep in the archives. So rare, in fact, that it's only one of possibly 14 known left in existence. And how did he figure out the rare Ottoman atlas was, indeed, that?

From Reddit, of course.

Anders Kvernberg, the librarian at the center of this story, could make out that the atlas was Ottoman and from 1803, so he posted a picture of it on /r/MapPorn on Reddit, just for fun. As way leads to way, someone commented on his picture and let Kvernberg know it wasn't just any atlas, but the Cedid Atlas Tercumesi, the first atlas published in the Muslim world. Only 50 copies were ever made, with one being given to the sultan of the Ottoman Empire at the time, Selim III. Today, only 14 known copies remain, although some estimates suggest the total is closer to 10 copies.

So how did such a rare book end up "lost" in a library? The atlas was cataloged originally when they came to own it 60-years ago, but after being stashed away it went unnoticed during a digital cataloging years later, and remained "lost" until Kvernberg stumbled upon it.

If only there was a map to all the lost maps in the world.



Bjorn Borg is Swedish, but you didn't even notice that, did you? Because Sweden, Norway, and Finland are really just one giant snowy land mass filled with blonde people and ABBA.

photo: Cedid Atlas Tercumesi on /r/MapPorn

What is the carbon footprint of every individual text message you write?

Jesus's footprints are made up of miracles and not carbon, I assume.

Everything we eat, drink, use, drive, and operate leaves a carbon footprint. The question is how much of a footprint? Are we talking Bigfoot footprints? Jesus walking in the sand footprints? Global-panic-because-we're-all-going-to-die footprints? Just how big?

Someone recently asked NPR's All Tech that question, specifically about the footprint of a text message. There's a solid chance that if you're reading this you're going to send dozens, if not hundreds, of text messages today. So what sort of damage are you really doing besides being antisocial?

All Tech turned to Mike Berners-Lee, the author of the 2010 book How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint Of Everything, and all-around impact calculator at Small World Consulting at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom. This is his life. And the result of your texting addiction? Fairly minimal.

According to Berners-Lee, assuming we only focus on the actual text message itself and the ability to transmit it (thus, ignoring the manufacture and distribution of the phone to begin with), each text leaves behind 0.014 grams of CO2e. Are you writing 1,000 texts a day? Perform the math accordingly. Berners-Lee notes that in 2010 the estimate for all the world's text messaging carbon footprint was 32,000 tons of CO2e per year. It's probably edged up a bit in the ensuing six years.

That sounds like a lot, but the world produces 50 billion tons of CO2e per year. Writing texts is barely a drop then. So how does this compare to other forms of communication?

Text message:  0.014 grams of CO2e per text
Email:  4 grams of CO2e per email
Letter:  140 grams of CO2e per letter (assuming the letter weighs 10 grams, is made of recycled paper, and is later recycled again)

Berners-Lee says it would take 10,000 texts to equal the carbon footprint of a letter.

But admit it--you're really concerned about one thing here: Does your addiction to emoji use affect the text message carbon footprint?

The answer is no. It's the same as any other character typed into the text box.

Phew. Or, better said:

Applying to college? Are you an "L-B-B" or maybe an "R-J"?

It's that time of year when colleges and universities are beginning to comb through applications for the coming fall semester.

Combing is a bit more precise than it is in reality. So how do schools really decide whom to accept and whom to reject?

Well, according to NPR, there's no universal rhyme or reason. NPR sat in at a small conference room at the College of Holy Cross (where all the students rejected from Boston College end up) while an admissions team of three looked over a small sampling of 23 applicants already narrowed down from a larger pool. This admissions team gave each student's application roughly two minutes before making a decision.

And how does Holy Cross motor through those 23 applicants? With acronyms. Per NPR:


They'll spend about two minutes on each before deciding whether to accept or deny admission, or place the application on hold.

To speed things along, the committee uses a lot of jargon, like "L-B-B" for late blooming boy, and "R-J" for rejection.

If it sounds like they're cutting corners, know that before the committee meets around the table, each application gets a close look from two of the members.


Yes, because "rejection" with 3 syllables is so much wordier than "R-J" and its 2 syllables.

Of course, there's no specifics about how close a "close look" actually might be. That's part of the mystery of it all. A close look could be three minutes! That's 50% longer than the two minute examination!

Remember that years from now when your former college is looking for a donation.

Or you can go to Dunkin' Donuts and save yourself the hassle.

You'll never look at olives the same way again.

Confederacy of Dunces bridged the gap between Pulitzer-winning cult classic and outright classic sometime in the 1990s. When exactly, no one knows. The 1990s were a confusing time in American pop culture. It was a moment in history when we thought Winona Ryder might have a career, and that Johnny Depp was too odd to maintain one. What'd we know?

I'll admit, I spent the better part of a year thinking Confederacy of Dunces was channeling Doris Kearns Goodwin before I finally knew what it was all about. Not the civil war? It's about an overeducated fat guy in New Orleans who sells hot dogs from a pushcart?

And so it is. And like all pieces of literature that gain classic status in the 21st century, there's now a cookbook in its honor. Because if your nostrils don't flare at the delightful smell of hot dogs stewing in their own juices for a solid 12hrs, very little in life will.

While Confederacy of Dunces alludes to plenty of gastronomical curiosities, the cookbook is really about the delicious coronary bypass that is New Orleans food. That includes a recipe for jelly donuts, which the cookbook's author, Cynthia LeJeune Nobles, shares with NPR.

The recipe notes that the dough only requires 2.5 hours of rising time before you get around to frying--but it's preferable you wait 12 hours.

That's just wait time. That doesn't count making that dough. Or frying it. Or inserting jelly into each. And making a glaze. And sprinkling it with sugar. Sixteen hours later you, too, can devour four fluffy doughnuts in 35 seconds.

But the guilt and shame will last a lifetime.

Anne Bernays is cooler than your great-grandmother. Sorry, but it's true.

He can appreciate it.

Anne Bernays is the author of a number of a novels, a teacher of writing at Boston University, Boston College, Holy Cross, and other locations, and a winner of multiple awards.

Anne Bernays is also 85-years old, and rocking punk rock blue hair.

In an essay on NPR, Bernays explains becoming a great-grandmother was the impetus, but so was the passage of time of being anonymous. But after dyeing her hair a shade of blue only Johnny Rotten or Billy Idol could rock, people started brightening up around her, shaking her hand, appreciating her a little more."While young people sparkle like diamonds, old folks are invisible — except, as I discovered, if you have bright blue hair," she writes.

Now let's see your great-grandmother try this over this Thanksgiving. It'll brighten the holiday.

Ernest Hemingway loved too much, or didn't know how.

Author A.E. Hotchner was friends with Ernest Hemingway during the final years of the famed writer's life. In 1966, a few years after Hemingway committed suicide, Hotchner published Papa Hemingway--a biography that Hemingway's fourth wife contested in court (and lost).

Now, at the age of 95, and in the final years of his own life, Hotchner has a companion biographical piece about the Nobel laureate, called Hemingway in Love.

Speaking in an interview, Hotchner details some points of emphasis on Hemingway's various marriages, and how Papa longed for an earlier time near the end. "What he's talking about, really, are his first two wives, Hadley the first and Pauline the second," says Hotchner. "In my experiences with him at the tail end of his life, he was reliving the mistakes he made, being in love with those two women at the same time."

Well, if love was ever simple, then there would be no writers.

GED passing rates plummet--and for prisoners most of all.

Last year, the General Educational Development (GED) structure was changed, some say to a more difficult collection of tests. Gone was the availability to take the high school equivalency exams with a pencil and paper. Now, only students with computer access were allowed to complete the process.

This change to the modern age of computer and internet availability appeared to be fine, if not outright inevitable. Yet while statistics show high school graduation rates have risen marginally, those taking the GED are not only struggling to keep up, but in many cases the number of successful graduates via the GED program is dropping--and chief amongst those struggling are prisoners.

Internet and computer availability is supremely lacking in America's prison system. Concerns about safety and the ability to monitor prisoner activity online is one concern, while on-site testing rules and the ability to train teachers are others. Meanwhile, a segment of the civilian population often views computers as a luxury item bestowed upon criminals, and thus shouldn't be supplied.

This draconian behavior of focusing on the punishment angle and not on the correctional angle is what causes a drastic likelihood that prisoners will end up back in jail. According to an NPR report, "A study by the Rand Corporation found that every dollar spent on correctional education programs saves $5 in reincarceration costs. Since the change to the more difficult test, no one has been collecting data on GED pass rates by inmates — but experts say it's clear they are down."

And, it should be noted, not just down for prisoners. In 2012, 401,388 individuals passed the GED test. in 2013, knowing the testing structure was changing, 540,535 passed the barrage of exams, creating a bump. 2014--the first year of computerized testing with the new tests--saw only an estimated 86,000 pass out of 248,000 who attempted to earn their GED. The drop-off is dramatic.

The drop-off is so dramatic--and the cost to take the tests (roughly $120) is so prohibitive to economically disadvantaged people--that some states, like New York and over a dozen others, have either dropped the GED tests or are in the process of creating their own high school equivalency exams.

Moreover, the GED is overseen by the American Council on Education (ACE), a nonprofit organization that owns the trademark on the GED. As of 2011, ACE brought in Pearson, a British company best known for their textbooks and test administration, and turned the GED into a for-profit venture. By 2014, Pearson was solely responsible for developing the test, despite ACE's oversight.

While studies show that attaining a GED typically doesn't translate into a higher economic status, it is still usually the only opportunity available to a large segment of the American population--prisoners included--to improve their life. As Stephen Steurer former executive director of the Correctional Education Association, tells NPR, "We put so many people in prison who are uneducated, and we put them there without any resources [...] We have a golden opportunity when we put people in prison to educate them."

If Steurer had his way, prison wouldn't simply be punishment; prisoners would be forced to educate themselves. "Make part of their sentence that they achieve some skills with some sort of certification that means they can get a job that pays some kind of decent wage," he says.

It's strange, isn't it? The United States has the highest rate of imprisonment in the world, and this country takes the one opportunity to "correct" these individuals in a "correctional" facility, and decides to not only eliminate that opportunity --but make it financially profitable for an international company to earn that money on the backs of the most vulnerable in this country.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.




Yes, I have experience teaching in prison. And as I said before...

Full disclosure: I have worked on educational programs through a prison. Some of the smartest, most gifted individuals I've ever known were men who committed a violent crime--often, usually, a crime of passion. A crime I could commit. A crime you could commit. A crime any of us would commit if placed in the same situation, position, or bearing in life.

And these same men I'd trust with my life, despite the fact that some might have already taken the life of another. Because they accomplished the one thing most any of you reading this cannot do--that I cannot do--and that is correct what needs correcting in ourselves.

Poems as a password?

Researchers at the University of Southern California think they've solved a conundrum in our everyday lives.

How do we create a difficult password to crack, but remember it ourselves?

Kevin Knight and Marjan Ghazvininejad, a scientist and Ph.D student, respectively, at USC's Information Sciences Institute, believe the answer lies in metered, rhyming poetry. In short, by using a string of 60-bits (ones and zeros), then translated into verse form, a computer program can generate rhyming couplets that they claim is more difficult to hack--and easier to remember--purely because of the randomness of words, as opposed to something along the lines of "Be3fCake!29."

Knight and Ghazvininejad thought of using existing published poetry, but the reservoir of known work numbers only in millions. Using a computer generated rhyming couplet from the 60-bit string of ones and zeros allows billions of poetic options.

Some sample poems used from their site:

1.) Olympics crystal hurricanes 
afraid or Scorpions explains
2.) Supporters posted standardized 
exactly bandwidth synchronized
3.) And optimistic absolute 
entombed the growers Institute
4.) Dakota polka nominees 
the endless arrow Lebanese

Sure, it's as nonsensical and obscure as poetry created by any 10th-grader. But not only will it make a better password, it's the only time you'll ever see the words "polka" and "Lebanese" in the same poem.

German organization offers free college education to those seeking asylum in the country.

Kashif Kazmi, a 21-year old Shiite Muslim from Pakistan, fled his homeland in May to seek a better life somewhere in Europe. After traveling through nine countries, he ended up in Germany, seeking asylum and protection from Taliban-controlled regions that put the minority Shiites in danger. Kazmi's sisters and father still remain back home. "And I'm so homesick," he tells NPR.

In order to find a way to bring the rest of his family to Germany, Kazmi needs to pursue higher learning--and an opportunity might have arisen for just that

Kiron University is a Berlin-based online program aimed to refugees. As NPR notes:

"Kiron University students take courses online for the first two years, working toward a bachelor's degree while they apply for asylum and acquire the paperwork and qualifications needed to enter a partner university, local to where they are, to complete the degree."

Because he is not a German citizen, nor does he have that above-mentioned required paperwork as an asylum-seeker to act as a foreign student studying in the nation, Kazmi is denied to attend local universities. Yet, with Kiron University, that changes the equation.

As Markus Kressler, co-founder of Kiron, notes, upwards of 50% of third year students leave their schooling, opening up seats which random universities want filled. And who has their asylum papers filed usually after two years? Refugees, who should have two years of online classes under their belt as well. It all makes sense, assuming Kiron can attain the funding to supply scholarships for these students--which is what Kressler is working on.

In the meantime, Kazmi is all set and will be amongst the first to try the Kiron Program.

As he told NPR, ""Today I am a refugee, but tomorrow, I hope so, I will be in the position to be able to support others."

All Nobel Prize winners get an abstract painting with their award?

Along with a large pile of cash, medals to wear around their necks, a framed certificate, a black tie dinner with over 1,000 of Sweden's nearest and dearest, and bragging rights that they can lord over everyone in their field--all Nobel Prize winners in every category receive a painting. The art, commissioned by the Nobel committee, is supposed to be inspired by the theme of the winner's work, as NPR explains.

Artists have about one week to get their color selections to a calligrapher, who writes up the certificate in matching colors. Final paintings are submitted by mid-November, before the December dinner.

Of course, the artists all have priorities. Watercolorist Hasse Karlsson, one of the artists used by the Nobel committee, pays close attention to the announcements, mainly because time is tight. And all those announcements that say, "Three doctors from such-and-such country won the Nobel Prize in Medicine today," is not what Karlsson wants to hear. He's on a clock.

"So if they are going to be three, then it will be stressful. So I hope they will be one or two this time," Karlsson tells NPR.

Well, with that kind of attitude, Karlsson isn't going to win a Nobel any time soon. He'll always make a painting, but never receive one.

That is if they awarded a Nobel Prize in art. They don't.

Semantics.



photos: Nobel Foundation

Philosopher accused of plagiarizing white separatist journal. No, really.

Slavoj Žižek is one of the world's leading modern philosophers, a scholar and thinker with a tendency to call his students "boring idiots" who write "shitty papers." In other words, he's subtle.

Now Slavoj Žižek is being accused of plagiarism, and not for stealing from Noam Chomsky or Aristotle--but a white separatist magazine called American Renaissance, which I imagine is only the classiest of white separatist magazines.

A blogger found the nearly identical passages between the philosopher and American Renaissance in which Žižek allegedly plagiarizes heavily, a giant swath of copying largely unseen outside of a lazy 5th-grader's essay on the War of 1812.

NPR reached out to Žižek, who replied via email that a friend of his wrote the passages in question, and that he--Žižek--didn't plagiarize at all. "As any reader can quickly establish, the problematic passages are purely informative, a report on another's theory for which I have no affinity whatsoever; [...] In no way can I thus be accused of plagiarizing another's line of thought, of 'stealing ideas.' I nonetheless deeply regret the incident."

Deny, deny, deny--and then drop in a "thus" and a "deeply regret"--it's straight out of the elitist academic public relations plan. But Žižek continues with the charm, going full-on CAPS when he replies to NPR again, really driving home the point that he's entirely not to blame.

"I find it difficult to consider plagiarism using a brief resume of a book written by a friend FOR THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF ME USING IT. If this is plagiarism, then quite a few academics I know are plagiarists," Žižek writes.

Throwing everyone under the bus is straight out of the Panic 101 handbook. Apparently the key to not writing "shitty papers" is to allegedly steal from the upper crust of white separatist journals--all while being a deadbeat and having your friend do all the work.





photo: The Guardian



Doesn't Žižek kind of look like a lower-level James Bond villain from the 1970s? Not the mastermind thwarting Bond, but some Eastern European strongman with a group of henchman that die way too easily at the sight of a British secret service agent?

Charles Wright is the new United States Poet Laureate.

Charles Wright has won the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and pretty much every other award poets can win outside of a Nobel.

Odds are you barely know of him though.

That might change--maybe--now that he's been named the newest Poet Laureate of the United States, replacing outgoing Natasha Trethewey.

Unlike Thethewey, or other former national poet laureates like Billy Collins and Robert Pinsky, Wright doesn't plan to spend much time in the spotlight while holding the position.

"I'll probably stay here at home and think about things," Wright told NPR. "I will not be an activist laureate [like Trethewey, Collins, etc.]...they had programs. I have no program."

Ooh, boy. I don't know about you, but I can feel the excitement crackling in the air.

Nobody knows for certain where Cervantes is buried?

Go figure. Miguel de Cervantes--Spain's answer to England's Shakespeare, and most famously the creator of Dox Quixote and the first modern novel--was apparently buried without anyone knowing exactly where.

The belief is that Cervantes is buried somewhere in the walls or foundation of the Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians, where a dozen nuns ranging in age from 23 to 92 live. The next logical question is why would Cervantes be buried in a convent? Because those same nuns helped negotiate his freedom when Cervantes, as a member of the Spanish navy, was kidnapped by pirates and held captive for five years. On his death bed, Cervantes wish was to be buried with the Trinitarians.

Fast forward 400 years, and no one is exactly certain where in the convent Cervantes is buried--if at all.

The convent's secretary, Maria Jose, tells NPR, "For 400 years, we have kept Cervantes' last dying wish, to be buried here. We have passed down the memory of the documents that registered his burial here, even though the documents themselves have all since been lost."

"Memory of documents" isn't the most helpful arrangement, so now scientists are utilizing ground-penetrating radar to find the body, using Cervantes own detailed history of his physical ailments, gunshots, and general wounds to identify the body. (After all, Cervantes had a rough go of it in the navy. He was shot in the chest twice alone.) If found, an excavation might occur, although ultimately the plan is to keep his body with the Trinitarians.

For that, Cervantes' dying wish remains.