Book reviews for parents

Common Sense Media search page.

Bad Books for Kids: A Guide to the World of Youth Literature & What You Can Do About It from Touchstone Magazine.

Book reviews for parents and
Teen Lit: Now Without Witches! from Focus on the Family.

St. Mary's in Joplin, Missouri

“The neighborhood around St. Mary’s was scoured clean,” said Bishop James Johnston of Springfield-Cape Girardeau. Bishop Johnston was preparing to travel to Joplin today with the director of Catholic Charities of Southern Missouri. “Our biggest challenge will be addressing the needs of the grade school, which was just flattened, and pastoral care for families in the parish.”
All that remained of the church were some walls and a large cross.

Read more at http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/a-town-devestated/
and http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1102027.htm

Choices in Majors

At the Wall Street Journal, Harvey Mansfield complains about "meathead" majors.

In this happy season of college graduations, students and parents will probably not be reflecting on the poor choices those students made in selecting their courses and majors. In colleges today, choice is in and requirements are out. Only the military academies, certain Great-Books colleges and MIT (and its like) want to tell students what they must study. Most colleges offer a cornucopia of choices, and most of the choices are bad.

(For the complete piece, do a Google News Search for "Sociology and Other 'Meathead' Majors.")

Top 10 misused English words

A list of the top 10 misused English words at Listverse.

I welcome any attempts at a single sentence that uses all 10 words incorrectly.

Hat Tip: First Thoughts.

EPA administrator defines engineer

According to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson:

An engineer is somebody who can formulate a problem and then solve it.