New Adventures of Queen Victoria by Pab Sungenis for September 29, 2010

That’s very efficient of the censors, because when you think about it the dictionary contains every other book.

Riverside County is obviously going for the “Fahrenheit 451” model. If nobody knows how to read, it’s much easier to censor them.

Again- please be fair & balanced: they banned the dictionary published by the character Webster, from the tv show “Webster.”

Spider-Man’s dictionary? Of course they banned that. He’s a comic book character and everyone knows people who read comics are illiterate.

Next they’ll ban Strunk & Wagnall because it sounds dirty to their grammars.

It’s “Menifee”, isn’t it? It is MW, and they claimed it wasn’t “age appropriate”.

I think they should ban the censors. I think that will be the most effective thing.

..the uneducated have formed a tea party…my favorite bumper sticker read:Ban Bumperstickers…

Why not just ban anything that might make you think?

Coyoty, I think you’re mixing up Funk & Wagnall’s Dictionary with Strunk & White’s Elements of Style (still the best book on writing style)

That URL for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund:

http://cbldf.org/

“Feel Free To Read!”

Ban is a roll-on deodorant and most of the ban-nuts do in fact stink so…

well, then ban Ban

Is it fair to ask what was the literacy rate for the population of Elizabethan England?

At the risk of being branded a racist, How can someone register to vote if they can’t read? I am to base my vote on TV and radio alone? Books, newspapers magazines, and Internet have no relevance in modern society? Excuse me, how is this racist? Perhaps in the 19th century, but now?

While banning Webster’s Dictionary is, to put it mildly, extreme, I’m surprised Her Maj isn’t suggesting this to be the perfect time to replace that rag with a proper Oxford Dictionary.

I saw a bumper sticker: “Illiterate? Call 1-800-READ-NOW for assistance”

Protestantism encouraged people to go directly to the Bible (rather than through an intermediary), and therefore more people learned to read themselves. But not a lot. I found a couple of estimates: W-10% M-30% during Elizabethan times, and: “Male literacy in England slowly and steadily increased from ten percent in 1500 to forty-five percent in 1714 and to sixty percent in 1750. Female literacy in England increased from a mere one percent in 1500 to twenty-five percent in 1714 and to forty percent in 1750.” (John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997) 155.) It splits by class, according to the Encyclopedia Brittanica: virtually all the nobility, half the yeomanry, 10% of husbandry and none of the peasants.

Does texting count as literacy?

I’m so embarrased, I live in Riverside. Speaking of math illiteracy, yesterday I was at JoAnn”s Fabrics, and there was this poor guy on his first day working the cutting table. He was completely flummoxed by basic fractions; he couldn’t figure out that .5 is 1/2 yard. What a sad way to go through life.

The Humble Independent School District of Texas has found a clever way to avoid the embarrassment of banning books: ban the author! They disinvited Ellen Hopkins to their annual winter literacy festival. The URL is probably too long to post properly:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100929/ustime/08599202235600;ylt=Aqgp6GvSc3YnUnba4H3zJpO9IxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTNmb2docmtjBGFzc2V0Ay9zL3RpbWUvMjAxMDA5MjkvdXNfdGltZS8wODU5OTIwMjIzNTYwMARjY29kZQNtcF9lY184XzEwBGNwb3MDNgRwb3MDNgRzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0b3JpZXMEc2xrA2NlbnNvcnNoaXBkaQ–

Aw, Funk. You’re right, cdward.