Jack of all Days

Our intellectual president: As a candidate, George W. Bush once asked, “Is our children learning?” Now he has an answer. “Childrens do learn,” he said Wednesday at an education event where he was taking credit for rising test scores and promoting congressional renewal of his signature education law. To create the right image, the White House summoned the city’s chancellor of schools, a principal, some teachers and about 20 eager students from P.S. 76. The visual worked fine. The oral? Not so much.

Got a test? Drink a beer: You may be hard-pressed to recall events after a night of binge drinking, but a new report suggests that low to moderate alcohol consumption may actually enhance memory. “There are human epidemiological data of others indicating that mild [to] moderate drinking may paradoxically improve cognition in people compared to abstention,” says Maggie Kalev, a research fellow in molecular medicine and pathology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and a co-author of an article in The Journal of Neuroscience describing results of a study she and other researchers performed on rats.

Big Brother is watching you: The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials. The personal travel records are meant to be stored for as long as 15 years, as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s effort to assess the security threat posed by all travelers entering the country. Officials say the records, which are analyzed by the department’s Automated Targeting System, help border officials distinguish potential terrorists from innocent people entering the country. But new details about the information being retained suggest that the government is monitoring the personal habits of travelers more closely than it has previously acknowledged. The details were learned when a group of activists requested copies of official records on their own travel. Those records included a description of a book on marijuana that one of them carried and small flashlights bearing the symbol of a marijuana leaf.

‘Gay’ penguins title tops list of challenged books: “And Tango Makes Three,” an award-winning children’s book based on a true story about two male penguins who raised a baby penguin, topped the American Library Association’s annual list of works attracting the most complaints from parents, library patrons and others. Overall, the number of “challenged” books in 2006 jumped to 546, more than 30 percent higher than the previous year’s total, 405, although still low compared to the mid-1990s, when challenges topped 750. “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, was published in 2005 and named by the ALA as one of the year’s best children’s books. But parents and educators have complained that the book advocates homosexuality. Other books on the 2006 list include two by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, “The Bluest Eye” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Beloved,” both cited for language and sexual content; Cecily von Ziegesar’s popular “Gossip Girls” series, criticized for sexual content and language; and Robert Cormier’s “The Chocolate War,” for language, violence and sexual content.

Federal judge dismisses lawsuit over use of word ‘rape’ in trial: A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit against a state judge who barred the words “rape” and “victim” in court, ruling that the accuser failed to prove the court should intervene. U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf also determined Tory Bowen didn’t provide enough evidence to show why her lawsuit against Lancaster County District Judge Jeffre Cheuvront wasn’t frivolous. Bowen, 24, argued in the complaint that Cheuvront violated her free-speech rights by barring the words from the trial of Pamir Safi, 34, who Bowen said raped her while she was intoxicated. Safi, charged with first-degree sexual assault, said the sex was consensual. The language restrictions, which also barred the use of the words “sexual assault,” were in effect for Safi’s first trial, last November.