Stupidity makes me sad, as Sheldon would say

Language School Blogger Fired for Writing About Homophones

A social media specialist for a Utah language school that teaches English to non-native speakers says he was fired for writing a blog post about homophones—words that sound the same, but carry different meanings—because his boss was afraid readers would think it was about "gay sex."

Tim Torkildson told the Salt Lake Tribune that shortly after his lesson went up, Nomen Global Language Center owner Clarke Woodger fired him, complaining "now our school is going to be associated with homosexuality."

"I had to look up the word" Woodger said, according to the account Torkildson published on his personal blog, "because I didn't know what the hell you were talking about. We don't teach this kind of advanced stuff to our students, and it's extremely inappropriate. Can you have your desk cleaned out by eleven this morning? I'll have your check ready."

Okay, obviously there's probably more to the story than just this, but it seems to me the school's owner shouldn't be in the education business. And no, their school is now going to be associated with stupidity, not homosexuality, in my opinion. Here's the Salt Lake Tribune article:

Paul Rolly: Blogger fired from language school over ‘homophonia’

Homophones, as any English grammarian can tell you, are words that sound the same but have different meanings and often different spellings — such as be and bee, through and threw, which and witch, their and there.

This concept is taught early on to foreign students learning English because it can be confusing to someone whose native language does not have that feature.

But when the social-media specialist for a private Provo-based English language learning center wrote a blog explaining homophones, he was let go for creating the perception that the school promoted a gay agenda.

Here is Torkildson's personal blog, iwritetheblogggs. Thanks to Carl Hylin, who commented on a Facebook post about it, thereby allowing me to see it and be horrified.

I disagree with the statements, but support the right to state them

Steven clued me into this in a few of his posts:

The controversial post that's getting quite a response: An Economic Case Against Homosexuality

One response, calling for the conservative government information and political science librarian at Purdue University to be fired: Purdue students protest librarian's blog post

Another, rebutting the oeconomic arguments as made: In response to the "Economic case against homosexuality"

I do not think a faculty member should be fired over free speech written on a personal web log, as some students are requesting. Bert Chapman is certainly allowed his beliefs, and nothing he says would constitute hate speech or incitement to hate, per se. But his arguments are, well, flawed, and the FGI rebuttal outlines this pretty well. There's a big assumption that HIV is pretty much the result of rape and 'morally aberrant' sexual practices (it's easy to condemn practices as 'morally aberrant' due to religious definition, but since morals do vary from culture to culture, I'm not sure you can blame a global crisis on such).

In my opinion, Mr Chapman is taking a belief that is primarily religious based on his interpretation of dogma and is trying to legitimise it by making it seem to make good oeconomic sense. Such an argument may win over those who don't know how to think, the type of person who may be swayed because something 'sounds good' (primarily those who would agree with him on religious grounds in the first place), but the numbers do not support it, so it is doomed to failure. At least when you argue from religious belief you rely on statements that may or may not be argued against, depending on how they are stated. (You can't, for example, logically argue with a statement that starts with 'I believe...' because that is an opinion.) When you argue oeconomics, the numbers really must support the case--and these don't.

10 library blogs to read in 2009

For three years, Blake from LISNews has chosen 10 blogs librarians should read. Here are this year's:

• Alternative Teen Services yalibrarian.com (Feed)
  
• Brave New World bookseller-association.blogspot.com (Feed)
  
• Closed Stacks closedstacks.wordpress.com (Feed).
  
• David Lankes quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/blog (Feed)
  
• David Lee King davidleeking.com (Feed)
  
• Designing Better Libraries dbl.lishost.org/blog (Feed)
  
• In The Library with The Lead Pipe inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org (Feed)
  
• Livejournal: The Society for Librarians* Who Say "Motherf*@!%r (Feed) or Library Lovers' LiveJournal (Feed)
  
• Open Source ILS Vendors, choose your favorite.--The Liblime Folks: blogs.liblime.com/open-sesame (Feed) and/or blogs.liblime.com/developers (Feed)--The Evergreen Folks: evergreen-ils.org/blog (Feed)
  
• Planet Cataloging planetcataloging.org (Feed)

For descriptions of each, read Blake's post.

Okay, I have not done dishes, or trash, or even sat in the comfy chair. I blogged for an hour instead. I am such a geek.

PS, here's hoping for a full recovery of a fellow medical librarian

***SEE UPDATE BELOW***

I didn't really read much of my RSS feeds, including news, over the week I was on vacation. I have 600 in my reader right now, and I went through a few earlier today. But one thing I did see was unfortunate, and I thought I'd mention it here. David Rothman, a medical librarian whose blog I read and who was named as a Mover and Shaker in Library Journal last time they came out with the list, had a heart attack a few days ago, followed by a quadruple bypass within 24 hours. There was a 90% blockage. David doesn’t smoke and is primarily a vegetarian, but apparently there is a family history of heart problems. He's not that old (he looks to be in his 30s or early 40s at the most). He and his wife were blessed with a baby this summer. I'm hope he's doing better now.

To put a face to a name, you can see David in a video shot earlier this year as part of a plenary session called Web 2.0 Principles and Best Practices: Discovering the Participatory Web at the MLA annual meeting in May. He was the first presenter. He gave a great talk, and has a definite sense of humour. Or there's a nice article about him called 'Direct Effects: David Rothman, Community General Hospital' with a picture. Again, best wishes, and I hope everything turns out for David and his family.

UPDATE: Please see the next post for the real story. Basically, the David Rothman who had the heart attack was not the medical librarian who blogs at davidrothman.net. Their names are very similar, and it appeared in my library feed because David H Rothman (who did have the heart attack) is involved with E-Books.

Thanks to David (no H) for putting me straight, both in the comment below and on his blog. Sorry for the confusion/alarm, and a personaly apology to David for any misunderstandings that may arise. I've tried to update this in such a way, both with a new post and editing this one, so it'll make it through searches and RSS feeds okay.)

I hope to Gods this doesn't turn viral. I'll have more understanding for gaffes that politicians and reporters make (although I still love Biden's assertion that FDR addressed the country on television in 1929, when he wasn't president yet, no was there television. Hey, I'll still vote for him, even if he has a weak sense of history. At least he knows he's running for vice-president, which is more than you can say about Sarah Palin.)