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Harry Potter and the Pint of Liquid Courage

Jessiebanana — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:17:35 -0700

By TARA PARKER-POPE
Published: July 27, 2009

Hermione is tipsy. Neville is serving drinks. Ron is sipping mead and Harry is partying with his professors.

Does Hogwarts have a drinking problem?

As Harry Potter fans crowd movie theaters to catch the latest installment in the blockbuster series, parents may be surprised by the starring role given to alcohol. In scene after scene, the young wizards and their adult professors are seen sipping, gulping and pouring various forms of alcohol to calm their nerves, fortify their courage or comfort their sorrows.

The movie, based on J. K. Rowling’s sixth book of the series, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” is as much about coming of age as it is about the wizarding world. Love potions and adolescent yearnings are central to the evolving story line, and Harry, Ron and Hermione enjoy new freedoms as 16-year-old students at the mythical boarding school Hogwarts, including unchaperoned trips to a pub in the nearby town of Hogsmeade.

But recreated on the big screen, the images of teenage drinking are jarring. Previous Harry Potter movies have shown drinking, but this one takes it to a new level.

In one scene, Harry, Ron and Hermione order butterbeers at the pub, and Hermione ends up with a frothy mustache. While it’s never been entirely clear whether butterbeer is alcoholic, it seems to have an effect on the normally uptight Hermione, who acts tipsy walking home as she throws her arms around the boys.

As the mother of a 10-year-old Harry Potter fan, I was taken aback by the reaction of the young people in the theater. They snickered at Hermione’s goofy grin and, later, guffawed when an inebriated Hagrid passed out. While I don’t think my daughter fully understood what was going on, I wondered how other parents, educators and addiction experts would react.

Liz Perle, a mother of two teenage boys and the editor in chief of Common Sense Media, which reviews books, movies and Web content aimed at children, said she was bothered by so many scenes showing alcohol as a coping mechanism.

“Hermione is such a tightly wound young lady, but she’s liberated by some butterbeer,” she said. “The message is that it gives you liquid courage to put your arms around the guy you really like but are afraid to.”

Other parents were less concerned. Daniel Isaacs, a New York advertising copywriter, said his 9-year-old daughter didn’t notice the drinking scenes. “The Harry Potter universe is not our own,” he said. “Trying to put 2009 American norms into play seems kind of silly.

“Plus, in a world where dark wizards are kidnapping or killing people on a regular basis, a little under-age drinking is the least of their problems.”

Overseas audiences may respond differently to the drinking scenes. In England, the legal drinking age is 18, but 16-year-olds can order alcohol if they’re eating a meal. (Even by those standards, the teenagers in the movie were flouting the law: during the pub scene, no food was served.)

Alcohol educators say that they don’t want to ruin the fun, but that parents should be aware of alcohol’s role in the Harry Potter series, the books as well as the movies. Several studies suggest that movies influence teenagers’ behavior when it comes to drinking, drugs and tobacco. An Institute of Medicine committee on under-age drinking has said there is “a strong possibility” that youth exposure to alcohol through movies contributes to early initiation of alcohol use.

A 2007 study of nearly 5,600 German teenagers looked at the relationship between drinking activity and exposure to American movies. Even accounting for variables like friends’ drinking habits, the researchers found that children with high exposure to alcohol in movies were nearly three times as likely to binge-drink as those with the lowest exposure.

Similarly, a study of 3,000 adolescents found that those who were most often exposed to smoking in movies were nearly three times as likely as others to try smoking. In a striking finding, the study concluded that in more than half the times that a child in the study tried a cigarette, the decision was linked to having seen smoking in a movie.

Alcohol experts say this does not mean that children shouldn’t see the new Harry Potter movie. It actually presents an opportunity for parents to talk to their children about alcohol, says Dr. Christopher Welsh, a University of Maryland psychiatrist and addiction specialist.

“I hope parents can talk to their kids and tell them even though Harry Potter made that seem fun, that it isn’t O.K.,” said Dr. Welsh, the author of a 2007 article about alcohol use in the Harry Potter series, published in The Journal of Child and Adolescent Substance Abuse.

Warner Brothers, which released the movie, said the drinking scenes were “open to different interpretations.”

“One of our main objectives in bringing the Harry Potter films to the screen has been to remain as faithful to their original source material as created by J. K Rowling,” the company wrote in an e-mail message, adding that the wizarding world “should not be held to the same standards as the real world.”

A spokesman for Ms. Rowling said she was not available to comment.

Alison Turner, a British expatriate who owns Signature Bites, an Internet brownie business based in Florida, said that while watching the movie with her 14-year-old stepdaughter, she did find herself briefly musing about the alcoholic properties of butterbeer. But she said their post-movie conversation focused on broken hearts and unrequited love.

“I think the alcohol angle washed over me because of the magical context of the film - this isn’t a real school, real teachers or real students - so it’s almost like the drinking isn’t real,” she said. “I wonder how many kids even know what mead is.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/health/28well.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=harry...

Teaching "Twilight"???

stephley — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:22:10 -0800

Soon, students at Cambridge University will be getting a new supplement to their educations: books from Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series.

According to BBC News, a newly-opened Cambridge center for the study of children’s literature (they call it a “centre,” naturally) will cover, among other things, Twilight, the Harry Potter series, and video games as works of literature.

In an interview, the soon-to-be director of the center/centre dismissed suggestions that Twilight and other contemporary series are “trash,” and even said that academics had something to learn about the ethical development of young people from children’s series and video games:
BBC News:

Professor Maria Nikolajeva, who will be the centre’s first director, said it was important to get an understanding of what was influencing young people.

She said: “It’s easy to say that these things are just kids’ fashions or that they’re trash, but I don’t believe that’s good enough.

“If what we regard as trash is popular with young people, we need to know why and whether, as researchers and teachers, we can offer them something that addresses the same needs but also deals with these themes in a critical and ethical way.”

She added many trainee teachers did not understand the significance of the latest children’s books or films when they went into the classroom.

“Studying this can help us deal with questions which are important not only for the children themselves, but for adults as well,” she added.

http://www.geekosystem.com/twilight-cambridge-literature/

Vanity Fair Interview with Rob

care0531 — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:03:07 -0800

It’s been exactly one year since Twilight, the teenage-vampire book series turned film franchise, became a worldwide phenomenon, launching brooding, reluctant star Robert Pattinson into the celebrity stratosphere. Not since Leonardo DiCaprio’s Titanic era has there been a young actor so rabidly hunted by teenagers and paparazzi alike-enough that mere sightings of him with his co-star and rumored paramour Kristen Stewart make for international front-page news. For the cover story of Vanity Fair’s December issue, contributing editor Evgenia Peretz interviews Pattinson, Stewart, and a host of Twilight insiders for an intimate profile that describes how he landed the role of Edward Cullen, distills the essence of his appeal, and explores his discomfort with the hormone-fueled frenzy he inspires among his fans. To read “Twilight’s Hot Gleaming” and see Bruce Weber’s exclusive photographs of Pattinson (only available in the print edition), pick up a copy of the December 2009 issue of Vanity Fair, available on newsstands in New York and Los Angeles on November 4 and nationally on November 10. For outtakes not available in the print edition, click here.
Peretz, who, as it happens, profiled DiCaprio in 2004, follows the Byronic British actor from the Comic-Con convention in San Diego to the Waldorf Towers in New York City, as he prepares for the November 20 release of Twilight’s sequel, New Moon. There are no wild nights out at clubs-even if he could go out without being mobbed, Pattinson would prefer to curl up with a good book.

Rather than working his way through supermodels, Pattinson, who’s been living out of three suitcases for the past year, has been feeling overwhelmed, self-conscious, and guilty. “I’m trying not to drown,” he says in his hotel room at the San Diego Hard Rock Hotel, which is littered today with beer bottles, old scrambled eggs, a half-eaten Twix bar, and a dirty pair of jeans on the living-room floor. And he notices that he hasn’t made his bed. “Oh, God. Sorry about that.” “I’m unbearably self-conscious about stuff,” he admits. To the point where, while filming scenes before the army of New York paparazzi that has been following him around, he is terrified that his “ass crack is showing.”

Raised outside London in a small village, with a wavering desire to be either a musician or an actor, Pattinson is painfully modest about his talent and looks, and eternally confused by his fans’ devotion.

Despite the fact that he is an exquisite beauty-with perfectly formed red, red lips and a face that might have been dreamed by the Romantic poets-he thinks he resembles “a cartoon character.” One of his legs is longer than the other, which makes him look, he assures you, “like an idiot.” He’s sure he’s driving people crazy by constantly talking about how he can’t leave his hotel room. And he sees his inability to relish his fans’ reverence as his own shortcoming. “I guess I’m not the type of guy cut out to do a franchise,” he says. “I’m not much of a crowd person.”

Pattinson’s first role in a major film was a bit part in Harry Potter, which ended up bringing him to the attention of Twilight’s producers. But if he had his way, he’d stick to playing awkward, tortured outsiders.

[Pattinson’s director from the indie film How to Be, Oliver Irving,] recalls, “he’d make his eyes water and get himself all worked up ... slapping himself and doing everything he possibly could to make him feel ill,” while passersby wondered what the hell was the matter with this guy. When you play a weirdo, he explains, “You can always have an excuse... He’s a weirdo!”

But Pattinson’s behavior was far from antisocial during the filming of Twilight. In the evenings, director Catherine Hardwicke remembers, Pattinson was “always drunk,” entertaining Stewart and other members of the cast in his hotel room with his guitar. A “nervous attraction” was brewing offscreen.

“What Rob and Kristen had is a multitude of feelings for each other. Complex feelings for each other,” says Hardwicke. “It was what we needed. Complex, intense fascination.”

Pattinson, for his part, says of Stewart: “She’s influenced how I’ve done all the Twilight stuff. It’s quite nice to have someone who is genuinely indifferent to the whole spectacle of everything.” For the record, however, Pattinson says the rumors of a love affair are false: “It doesn’t make any difference what you say [to the tabloids]. I’ve literally been across the country [from Kristen], and it’s like ‘Oh, they were on secret dates!’ It’s like ‘Where? I can’t get out of my hotel room!’ ” Stewart is even more emphatic: “It’s so retarded,” she says. “We’re characters in this comic book.”

Final Harry Potter movie to be made into two films

justingirl1989 — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 06:01:44 -0700

The “Harry Potter” books may be complete, but there are still three full length films coming, to make a whopping eight Harry Potter movies in total. The movie version of the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, will be in theaters at the end of this November. And the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which was chock full of plot that sped by at a breakneck pace, is going to be split up into two films in order to cover all the stuff that happened. (Rowling has not definitively ruled out another book, saying “I will not say never, but I have no plans to write an eighth book.” She later clarified that if she did write another book it wouldn’t be for at least another 10 years.)

The films have made around $4.5 billion at the box office, and that’s not counting the books and merchandise, which are said to make the franchise worth $15 billion. So you can’t blame them for wanting to milk this for all it’s worth, but it’s also supposedly to be true to the plot of Deathly Hallows:

Warner Bros. Pictures and the producers behind the $4.5-billion film franchise featuring the beloved boy wizard will split the seventh and final novel in the J.K. Rowling series into two films.

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I” will hit theaters in November 2010, followed by “Part II” in May 2011, a decision that is being met around the world with fans’ cheers but also plenty of cynical smirks. The publishing industry is learning to live without new “Potter” releases, but Hollywood just pulled off a trick that will keep its profitable hero on his broom into the next decade.

Any twist in the “Potter” universe is the stuff of global news bulletins. The books were a publishing sensation. And to an entire generation, the film saga has become a heartfelt touchstone on the level of “The Wizard of Oz” and as culturally and commercially ubiquitous as the “Star Wars” series. For all those reasons, everyone involved in the franchise is jumping forward to say an eighth film would be to serve the story, not the bottom line.

Daniel Radcliffe, the star of the franchise, said it was the dense action of the final novel that made the decision, not any executive or ledger.

“I think it’s the only way you can do it, without cutting out a huge portion of the book,” Radcliffe said. “There have been compartmentalized subplots in the other books that have made them easier to cut - although those cuts were still to the horror of some fans - but the seventh book doesn’t really have any subplots. It’s one driving, pounding story from the word go.”

The same could be said about the relentless “Potter” franchise, which hit screens for the first time in 2001. The five “Potter” films to date have averaged $282 million in U.S. grosses, but the overall receipts go well beyond that. The faces of the stars stare out from DVDs, video games, tie-in books, toys, clothing, candy wrappers and a staggering array of other items. By some estimates, the brand represents a $20-billion enterprise, and that’s without the planned “Potter”-themed complex opening next year at the Universal Orlando Resort in Florida.

[From The LA Times]

I’ve read all the Harry Potter books and have seen all of the films, in most cases right when they came out. At first I was a big fan, but by the fourth book, The Goblet of Fire, I thought that the tone changed and that Rowling was trying to cram too much in. This didn’t stop me from devouring the rest of the books and films, so it’s not like the quality dropped that much, and maybe it was inevitable that they evolved and grew along with the characters.

The last book was disappointing to me, and I know a lot of you will disagree. I will admit that I read it quickly and could not put it down and that it was very entertaining. It just didn’t get into the characters enough for me and it seemed like too much was happening on a surface level. I also was kind of baffled by the afterlife subplot, and thought that part was totally unnecessary. You could almost tell that Rowling was harried when she wrote it, and that she was trying to tie up all the loose ends instead of get into the motivations and psychology of the characters. The end part where everyone was married and happy bugged the sh*t out of me, too. (I know this is said to have been written well ahead of the final book, and that Rowling was supposedly doing everyone a favor by letting us know. She should have saved it, IMO.)

I’ll see these movies, and they’re going to be blockbusters that are entertaining and engaging, like all the other Harry Potter films. Even though I thought Deathly Hallows was the “worst” Harry Potter book, that’s definitely relative. It was still fun to read and full of compelling scenes, and the films are sure to be the same. The last Lord of The Rings movie, The Return of The King, could have easily been broken up into two films too, but it kept my interest until the end. And I would have paid $20 to see it.

source: celeb*tchy.com

End Tango Makes Three.. most banned book

Myst — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 08:22:48 -0700

This isn't a review and I didn't feel like posting this on 4.0I've read this book when it first came out and I have to say it's pretty darn cute. Doesn't advocate anything really and is based on true story.

Gay penguins book is most banned
Authors, artists and musicians are due to gather at a library in San Francisco to protest against the banning of books in schools and libraries in the US.
The event, part of the 27th annual Banned Books Week, has been organised by the American Library Association.
Since 2001 bans on 3,736 books and other materials have been requested.
In recent years, And Tango Makes Three - based on a true story and centring on gay penguins in New York's Central Park Zoo - has had the most ban requests.

The book's authors are Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell.
Reasons given by organisations and individuals for their requests to get it removed from public shelves, include "anti-ethnic, anti-family, homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group".
Other works featuring in the most-challenged books list for 2008 include Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials and Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner.
Parents' concern
Pullman told Britain's Guardian newspaper that he was glad to be on the list.
However he added: "Of course it's a worry when anybody takes it upon themselves to dictate what people should or should not read."
The association said the aim of the annual awareness week, which ends on Saturday, is to remind US citizens not to take their freedom for granted.

And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell

His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman

TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle

Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz

Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky

Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar

Uncle Bobby's Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen

The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini

Flashcards of My Life, by Charise Mericle Harper

Among those at the San Francisco Public Library event will be authors and musicians Ben Fong-Torres, Richie Unterberger and Roy Zimmerman.
They plan to stage a number of performances and defend controversial books.
In 2008 the American Library Association recorded 517 ban requests. Seventy-four were successful.
The organisation recorded that the most common reason given was that contents were too "sexually explicit".
Other classic literature subjected to complaints include JD Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
The Harry Potter series by JK Rowling also feature on the list.
Earlier this week, it was claimed that Harry Potter author JK Rowling missed out on the Presidential Medal of Freedom because some US politicians believed she "encouraged witchcraft".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8284509.stm

Micro - Pig

samantha999 — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:46:31 -0700

I really want two of these wee piggies. I will name one bacon and the other sausage.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6267381/Micro-pi...

The pets, which grow to be just 14in tall, have become so popular that they are now almost impossible to get hold of in Britain.

They have even been snapped up by celebrities, including Harry Potter actor Rupert Grint, who plays Ron Weasley.

"Demand for micro pigs is soaring and we are inundated with enquiries every day," said Jane Croft, 42, who breeds them.
"It's amazing how popular they have suddenly become and just how many people want pigs as pets."

Micro pigs are much smaller than a standard farm pig and weigh 9oz, about the size of a tea cup when they are born.
At two years old they are fully grown and weigh in around 40-65 lb and are around knee height at 12-16in tall. They can live for up to 18 years, but make popular pets as they are low maintenance, quiet and surprisingly clean.

"Micro pigs make fantastic pets as they are very low maintenance. You don't have to take them for walks and they have very few health issues," said Mrs Croft, who runs Little Pig Farm in Christchurch, Cambridgeshire.

"They don't make much noise, they are easy to lavatory train and once they have bonded with you they are very loving.
"They are actually very clean and never mess in their bedding and are just so adorable.

"They are also highly intelligent and are the fourth most intelligent species after man, monkey and dolphin.

"They really are the perfect pets, I don't know why people haven't thought of them before."

Micro pigs are also good alternative pets for people with allergies.

"Lots of people are allergic to cats and dogs but you can't get allergies from pigs as their skin is very similar to ours, and the have hair not fur" added Mrs Croft.

"We've had many parents buy pigs for their children who suffer from fur allergies."

The Little Pig farm has been getting 4,000 hits a week and at least 60 emails and 40 phone calls a day from people all over the world, including America, Russia, Spain and even Australia.

The pigs are crosses of Miniature Pot Bellied pigs with Tamworths, Kune Kunes and Gloucester Old Spots to create their tiny, colourful Micro Pigs, which are sold for between £195 and £700.

The size of the piglets get smaller with every litter with Peanut the piglet believed to be one of the tiniest adult pigs in Europe.

She weighed just under 2kg at twelve weeks old and now lives indoors with Mrs Croft as a companion to her dog and sleeps on the sofa.

At 13 months she has almost stopped growing and is just 12 inches tall.

Rowling completes post-Harry Potter book

justingirl1989 — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 06:18:43 -0700

LONDON - J.K. Rowling has completed her first book not to feature teen wizard Harry Potter an illustrated collection of magical fairy stories titled "The Tales of Beedle the Bard."

Only seven copies of the book are being printed, Rowling said Thursday. One will be auctioned next month to raise money for a children's charity, while the others have been given away as gifts.

Rowling drew the illustrations herself and provided the handwriting for the five stories that make up the collection of fairytales.

"The Tales of Beedle the Bard" is mentioned in the final Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," as a gift left by headmaster Albus Dumbledore to Harry's friend Hermione, and provides clues that help destroy evil Lord Voldemort.

"'The Tales of Beedle the Bard' is really a distillation of the themes found in the Harry Potter books, and writing it has been the most wonderful way to say goodbye to a world I have loved and lived in for 17 years," Rowling said in a statement.

The volume, bound in brown morocco leather and mounted with silver and semiprecious stones, will be auctioned at Sotheby's on Dec. 13 with a starting price of $62,000. Proceeds will go to The Children's Voice, a charity that helps vulnerable children across Europe.

"Deathly Hallows," the seventh and final installment in Harry's adventures, was published in July. The seven books have sold nearly 400 million copies and have been translated into 64 languages.

Rowling told the British Broadcasting Corp. that the book of fairytales had helped her say goodbye to Harry's world.

"It's not about Harry, Ron and Hermione, but it comes from that world," she told BBC radio in an interview broadcast Thursday. "So it's been therapeutic in a way."

Rowling said she was working on a new book, "a half-finished book for children that I think will probably be the next thing I publish."

On Wednesday, Rowling and the makers of the Harry Potter movies filed a lawsuit against RDR Books, a small U.S. publisher that plans to bring out a companion volume based on the Harry Potter Lexicon fan Web site.

Rowling has said she plans to produce her own encyclopedia of the wizarding world and says the book would infringe on her intellectual property rights.

source: yahoo!news and the associated press

The prepared text of President Barack Obama's back-to-school address

harmonyfrance — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 07:48:14 -0700

The prepared text of President Barack Obama's back-to-school address scheduled for Tuesdays, as released in advance by the White House:

Hello, everyone - how's everybody doing today? I'm here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we've got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through 12th grade. I'm glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it's your first day in a new school, so it's understandable if you're a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you're in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could've stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn't have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday - at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn't too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I'd fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I'd complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."
So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I'm here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I'm here because I want to talk with you about your education and what's expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I've given a lot of speeches about education. And I've talked a lot about responsibility.

I've talked about your teachers' responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I've talked about your parents' responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don't spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I've talked a lot about your government's responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren't working where students aren't getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that's what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you're good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer - maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper - but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor - maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine - but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a senator or a Supreme Court justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life - I guarantee that you'll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You're going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can't drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You've got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn't just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you're learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You'll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You'll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You'll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don't do that - if you quit on school - you're not just quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country.
Now I know it's not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that's like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn't always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn't fit in.

So I wasn't always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I'm not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our first lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn't have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don't have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there's not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don't feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren't right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life - what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you've got going on at home - that's no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That's no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That's no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up. No one's written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That's what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn't speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I'm thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who's fought brain cancer since he was three. He's endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer - hundreds of extra hours - to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he's headed to college this fall.

And then there's Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she's on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren't any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same. That's why today, I'm calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education - and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you'll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you'll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn.
Maybe you'll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you'll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don't feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.
I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work - that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you're not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won't love every subject you study. You won't click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won't necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That's OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who've had the most failures. J.K. Rowling's first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can't let your failures define you - you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn't mean you're a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn't mean you're stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one's born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You're not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don't hit every note the first time you sing a song. You've got to practice. It's the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it's good enough to hand in.

Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don't know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust - a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor - and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you're struggling, even when you're discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you - don't ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn't about people who quit when things got tough. It's about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best. It's the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what's your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I'm working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you've got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don't let us down - don't let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_obama_school_speech_text

Harry Potter Bookends Recalled By Giftco Due to Violation of Lead Paint Standard

tdsollog — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:46:46 -0700

Harry Potter Bookends Recalled By Giftco Due to Violation of Lead Paint Standard

NEWS from CPSC
U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission
Office of Information and Public Affairs Washington, DC 20207

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 23, 2008
Release #08-404

Firm's Recall Hotline: (888) 448-6728
CPSC Recall Hotline: (800) 638-2772
CPSC Media Contact: (301) 504-7908

Harry Potter Bookends Recalled By Giftco Due to Violation of Lead Paint Standard

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed.

Name of Product: Harry Potter Bookends

Units: About 36,000

Importer: Giftco Inc., of Vernon Hills, Ill.

Hazard: The paint on the bookends contains excessive levels of lead, violating the federal lead paint standard.

Incidents/Injuries: None reported.

Description: This recall involves poly-stone bookends painted and shaped in the characters of the Harry Potter book series. Bookend characters include Harry Potter, Hedwig and Hermione, and Crookshank.

Sold at: Elementary school fundraising programs, discount and dollar stores nationwide from June 2004 through January 2006 for between $3 and $28.

Manufactured in: Hong Kong

Remedy: Consumers should immediately take the recalled bookends away from children and return them to Giftco for a refund.

Consumer Contact: For additional information, contact Giftco Inc. toll-free at (888) 448-6728 between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. CT Monday through Friday, or visit the firm's Web site at http://mail.giftcoinc.com

To see this release on CPSC's web site, including pictures of the recalled product, please go to:
http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml08/08404.html

Eclipse Actor Says There Will Be Five Twilight Movies

Emma412 — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 09:02:34 -0700

Get ready for much more Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart.

Eclipse's newest cast member, Boo Boo Stewart, claims there will be five flicks in the Twilight saga altogether -- two more than previously announced.

"I heard there's going to be three more movies," Stewart, who plays wolfpack member Seth Clearwater, tells Access Hollywood. "Eclipse, Breaking Dawn and there should be one more."
The actors' rep also confirmed to Access that an additional film is in the works.

Three movies in the series -- Twilight, New Moon (out Nov. 20), and Eclipse -- have been confirmed by production company Summit Entertainment. Breaking Dawn is the fourth and final book in Stephanie Meyer's series.

According to Access, the fifth film could either be a brand new story, or producers could choose to split the last movie into two separate films like the Harry Potter franchise.

Summit did not return calls for comment to Access.

http://www.usmagazine.com/news/eclipse-actor-there-will-be-five-twilight-movies-2009228