The book’s heroine, a scrappy 10-year-old orphan named Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.“Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much,” the book continues…. Librarians from all over the country, including Missoula, Mont.; upstate New York; Central Pennsylvania; and Portland, Ore., weighed in, questioning the role of the librarian when selecting — or censoring, some argued — literature for children.“This book included what I call a Howard Stern-type shock treatment just to see how far they could push the envelope, but they didn’t have the children in mind,” Dana Nilsson, a teacher and librarian in Durango, Colo., wrote on LM_Net, a mailing list that reaches more than 16,000 school librarians…. But some librarians countered that since the heroine of “The Higher Power of Lucky” is 10, children older than that would not be interested in reading it.“I think it’s a good case of an author not realizing her audience,” said Frederick Muller, a librarian at Halsted Middle School in Newton, N.J.
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Mummified body found in front of blaring TVAnother reason that automatic bill pay is not for everyone…Police called to a Long Island man’s house discovered the mummified remains of the resident, dead for more than a year, sitting in front of a blaring television set.The 70-year-old Hampton Bays, New York, resident, identified as Vincenzo Ricardo, appeared to have died of natural causes. Police said on Saturday his body was discovered on Thursday when they went to the house to investigate a report of a burst water pipe.”You could see his face…. The home’s low humidity had preserved the body.Officials could not explain why the electricity had not been turned off, considering Ricardo had not been heard from since December 2005.Neighbors said when they had not seen Ricardo, who was diabetic and had been blind for years, they assumed he was in the hospital or a long-term care facility.
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I’ve owned my domain McDev.com for almost 10 years now. Over those years, I’ve used numerous email addresses for it.
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Teacher exposes kids to porn via spyware – to be jailedWINDHAM, Connecticut (AP) — Until recently, Julie Amero says, she lived the quiet life of a small-town substitute teacher, with little knowledge of computers and even less about porn.Now she is in the middle of a criminal case that hinges on the intricacies of both, and it could put her behind bars for up to 40 years.She was convicted last month of exposing seventh-grade students to pornography on her classroom computer.She contended the images were inadvertently thrust onto the screen by pornographers’ unseen spyware and adware programs.Prosecutors dispute that…. She says she tried to click the images off, but they kept returning, and she was under strict orders not to shut the computer off.”I did everything I possibly could to keep them from seeing anything,” she says.Prosecutor David Smith contended at Amero’s three-day trial that she actually clicked on graphic Web sites.Several students testified that they saw pictures of naked men and women, including at least one image a couple having oral sex.Computer consultant Herb Horner testified for the defense that the children had gone to an innocent Web site on hair styles and were redirected to another hairstyle site that had pornographic links…. And pop-up blockers that can prevent so-called porn storms are now in wide use.Amero and her supporters say the old computer lacked firewall or antispyware protections to prevent inappropriate pop-ups.”What is extraordinary is the prosecution admitted there was no search made for spyware — an incredible blunder akin to not checking for fingerprints at a crime scene,” Alex Eckelberry, president of a Florida software company, wrote recently in the local newspaper.
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This warrants a touching honorarium and subtle memorial graphic?… She accomplished not a single thing in her life that was worthwhile. God forbid that Paris Hilton were to die.
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