Researchers believe [children] can benefit from tales about the caped crusader, Superman and even Dennis the Menace in the same way they can from reading other types of literature, despite teachers and parents often being snooty about comics, experts say. According to the research, critics say that reading comics is actually a "simplified version" of reading that doesn't have the complexity of "real" books with their "dense columns of words and lack of pictures".
But scientists from the University of Illinois claim that reading any work successfully, including comics, requires more than just absorbing text. Professor Carol Tilley, from the department of library and information science, said that comics are just as sophisticated as other forms of reading, and children benefit from reading them at least as much as they do from reading other kinds of books. She said there was evidence that they increased their vocabulary and instilled a love of reading.
That's the general topic of the following BBC discussion panel:
Replace "men" with pretty much any other group of people and you wouldn't have time to blink before the BBC get smothered by lawsuits.
The idea appeared recently as well in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, which ended in the following assessment:
Think of this wonderful new world! No more war, rape or pillage! No more “The Man Show,” Spike TV or Jerry Bruckheimer movies! No more women getting blamed for men getting lost when it’s a man driving. No more computer crashes due to hard drives clogged with porn. No more wide receiver touchdown dances. Five out of six prisons turned into hospitals or community colleges. No more commercials for Extenze, Hair Club for Men, or beer for men with no sense of touch who need the can to turn blue to know that it’s cold. Sure, women would still have hissy-fits and bad hair days, and there’d be the rise of the occasional threatening woman—a Sarah Palin or a Hillary Clinton. But since women—even studies conducted by males prove—are by nature more cooperative, caring, loving, and nurturing than men, it’d all end in a big hugfest on Oprah.
Sorry, men, but the writing’s on the wall, right above the urinal: The world no longer needs you.
When in London I stayed in a hotel near Paddington Station, and then later on in my European trip stayed within a couple blocks of the main train station when in Rome. Either of those probably has more passenger trains in an hour than any Western Canadian city does in a year.
Canadians overwhelmingly support high-speed rail and believe Ottawa should provide start-up funding and investments on an ongoing basis, says a new poll. The survey, conducted by EKOS for the Railway Association of Canada, found that 86 per cent of Canadians would strongly or somewhat support introduction of high-speed trains in the country. Only nine per cent said they would be opposed.
