The list includes some amusing entries, which I’ll link to below. Included are both great American classics and innocuous modern hits.

	The Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort Restricted minors’ access in the Topeka and Shawnee County, Kans. Public Library (2009) because a group contended that the material is “harmful to minors under state law.”
	The New Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort Challenged at the Nampa, Idaho Public Library (2005) along with seven other books because “they are very pornographic in nature and they have very explicit and detailed illustrations and photographs which we feel don’t belong in a library.” The library board approved policy changes that restrict children’s access to any holdings that may fall under the state’s harmful to minors statute and barred the library from buying movies rated NC-17 or X.
	The Day After Tomorrow by Robert A Heinlein Removed from the Beardstown, Ill. High School library (2008). A parent requested its removal and a committee determined the novel “rather very adult in nature” and, because the library already had a large selection of other valuable science fiction and spy literature, the committee elected to remove the book from the high school’s circulation and donated it to the public library.
	Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Retained in the Coeur D’Alene, Idaho School District (2008) despite objections that the book has too many references to sex and drug use.
	To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Retained in the English curriculum by the Cherry Hill, N.J. Board of Education (2007). A resident had objected to the novel’s depiction of how blacks are treated by members of a racist white community in an Alabama town during the Depression. The resident feared the book would upset black children reading it.
	The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman Retained by the publicly funded Dufferin-Peel Catholic School District in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada (2008) with a sticker on the inside cover telling readers “representations of the church in this novel are purely fictional and are not reflective of the real Roman Catholic Church or the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
	Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer Removed from and later reinstated in the middle school libraries of the Capistrano, Calif. Unified School District (2008). The books were initially ordered removed by the district’s instructional materials specialist, who ordered that the books be moved from middle school to high school collections. That order was rescinded and the books remain in the middle school libraries. Challenged at the Brockbank Junior High in Magna, Utah (2009), by a parent over sexual content in the Mormon author’s fourth novel, Breaking Dawn.

I’m looking forward to see what foolish conservatives, religious nuts, and other assorted groups of close-minded individuals try to ban next year. As usual, the rule on banned books is “if you don’t want to read it, no one is forcing you to check it out!”

This is a one-of-a-kind prototype of a 12″ action figure (doll) of Ernest Hemingway. It comes with a typewriter and a shotgun. A child can roleplay, pretending to roam in Africa, fish in Cuba, hunt in Michigan, and write the great American Novel. Much more fun then GI Joe and Barbie.

Christian traditions depict her as an icon of dangerous female seductiveness, for instance depicting as erotic her dance mentioned in the New Testament, or concentrate on her lighthearted and cold foolishness that, according to the gospels, led to John the Baptist’s death.

Often the subject of fine art, below I have gathered as many examples of Salomé in painting or sculpture as possible, and arranged them chronologically. If you can think of any that I’ve missed, please leave a link in the comments!

Salome with the head of John the Baptist (1488) Tempera on Panel by Sandro Botticelli

Salome with the Head of John the Baptist (1515) by Titian (Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome)

Salome (1515) by Cesare da Sesto

Salome receiving the Head of John the Baptist (1527) by Bernardino Luini

Salome (1530) Oil on Board by Lucas Cranach the Elder

Salome (1610) Oil on Canvas by Caravaggio

Judith with the Head of Holofernes (1613) by Christofano Allori

Salome (1865) Oil on canvas by Pierre Bonnaud

The Tatooed Salomé (1876), Oil by Gustave Moreau

Salome and the Apparition of the Baptist’s Head, watercolor by Gustave Moreau

Salome (unknown) by Gustave Moreau

Salome (1875) in watercolor by Gustave Moreau

Salome dancing before Herod (1876) by Gustave Moreau

Salome in the Garden (1878) in watercolor by Gustave Moreau

Salome (1870) by Henri-Alexandre-Georges Regnault

Salome (1889) Oil on Canvas by Leon Herbo

Salome (1890) by Ella Ferris Pell

Salome (1893) in Pastels by Odilon Redon

Salome (1897) by Alphonse Maria Mucha

Salome (1900) Oil on Canvas by Lovis Corinth

Salome (1906) by Franz von Stuck

Salome (1907) by Vardges Surenyants

Salome (1909) Oil on Canvas by Robert Henri

Judith I / Giuditta I (Salomé) (1905) by Gustav Klimt

Judith II / Giuditta II (Salomé) (1909) by Gustav Klimt

Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist (1910) Oil on Board by Adolf Frey-Moock

Salome (1914) by Gaston Bussiere

Salome (1923) starring Alla Nazimova

Salome (1918) lost film starring Theda Bara

My current favorite is this one:

“Hello Son,” it said, tentacles waving. — G. Sulea

ANGLERS

ANGLERS, alias HOOKERS; petty Thieves, who have a Stick with a Hook at the End, wherewith they pluck Things out of Windows, Grates, &c. Make ready your Angling Stick; a Word of Command used by these petty Villains, to get ready the Stick with which they perform their Pranks, and as a Signal of a Prey in Sight. In the Day-time they beg from House to House, to spy best where to plant their Designs, which at Night they put in Execution.

It’s a classic.

The BBC article has some commentary:

He died in his home in the Moscow area, where he had lived with his wife Natalya, at 2345 local time (1945 GMT), Stepan told Itar-Tass. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sent his condolences to the writer’s family, a Kremlin spokesperson said. French President Nicolas Sarkozy described him as “one of the greatest consciences of 20th Century Russia”. “His intransigence, his ideals and his long, eventful life make of Solzhenitsyn a storybook figure, heir to Dostoyevsky,” he said in a statement.

Solzhenitsyn served as a Soviet artillery officer in World War II and was decorated for his courage but in 1945 was denounced for criticising Stalin in a letter. He spent the next eight years in the Soviet prison system, or Gulag, before being internally exiled to Kazakhstan, where he was successfully treated for stomach cancer.

Yes, apparently fans of the Bible have pretty terrible SAT scores. Draw what conclusions you will about the role of religion in modernity. Personally, the data just confirms the old suspicion that reason flourishes in the absence of superstition. Nonetheless, growing up in a conservative American household, I read the Bible a dozen times through, and it didn’t hurt me. It’s all in how you approach it, I suppose.

The other interesting data is what books are positively correlated with high SAT scores, and therefore intelligence. The top books correlated to 1100/1600 SAT score or better are as follows:

• Lolita
• 100 Years Of Solitude
• Crime And Punishment
• Freakonomics
• Catch 22
• Atlas Shrugged
• The Alchemist
• Cats Cradle
• Enders Game
• Life Of Pi
• Pride And Prejudice
• East Of Eden
• Jane Eyre
• The Great Gatsby
• The Kite Runner
• 1984
• Anna Karenina
• The Catcher In The Rye
• The Lord Of The Rings
• Quiet On The Western Front
• Shakespeare
• A Wrinkle In Time
• Alice In Wonderland

I’m not sure that this project is statistically sound, but it’s interesting nonetheless. Other commenters have noted that in addition to religion, African-American literature gets a low ranking. This probably has more to do with SAT score biases than anything.

Riding in the benzo, poppin my colla
See some fine wenches, I hafta holla
Diamonds, gold, and all the mighty dolla
I’m oedipus bitch, the original balla.
I bust out my 9, to light up your impala.
Fuck that police!

Thanks to George Bush’s No Child Left Behind policy the teacher was forced to give this inebriated student a 61% for his creative efforts. Much to my shame, I’m unable to locate the citation in any of the translations of Oedipus that I posses, but my friends assure me this is a truthful rendering of the original Greek.

The first, most startling thing about the book is that love between men and boys was considered not taboo, but the most ideal course of nature, so that what we might call today homosexuality and pederastry were simply mentoring and affection. Probably the lifespan of the Greeks had something to do with it, as they lived at most half of what we do now. Interesting, as well, is the idea that the only form of true love is between two men, for the purpose of attaining virtues and sharing intellectual discourse.

My favorite bit is Aristophanes’ speech about the nature of Love, where mankind originally had two heads, eight limbs, etc, and was sundered in half by the gods. So love is literally us trying to reunite with our missing half:

That’s how, long ago, the innate desire of human beings for each other started. It draws the two halves of our original nature back together and tries to make one out of two and to heal the wound in human nature.

OPERATOR: 911. What is your urgence?
CALLER: Operator, I need an ambulance. I think I just cut my finger off in the blender …
OPERATOR: (The sound of a cigarette being lit, then an exhale.)

We should do this for all of our favorite philosophers.  I call Jean Jacques Rousseau!