making fun of oklahoma high schoolers

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/279410

This is slightly better coverage than some of the other articles, in that they actually supply the questions. What they _do not_ mention is that Strategic Vision is a Republican polling organization.

I'm not entirely certain what they're up to with this, but given that conservatives paid a conservative polling organization to get this outcome, I, for one, would be asking what's up. Like, did they repeat this on many small groups of Oklahoma high school students until they got the result they were looking for?

It bothers me that MSNBC political talk shows repeat this as kind of a "lighter side" story without mentioning who did the study, either who paid for it or who did the work. It feeds into a Conservative Southerners Are Stupid narrative, and it feels a little too much like we're being led right down a garden path. And often, that doesn't end well.

_Heroes at Risk_, Moira Moore

Taro and Lee are back in High Scape which, on the one hand, is experiencing so few "natural events" (earthquakes and similar) that other pairs of Source and Shield are being re-assigned to other areas that might actually need them. On the other hand, there's some weird plague at the river front, and everyone seems to have gone mad for "casting", and is using human ashes as part of their spells.

Inevitably, Lee gets curious and breaks the law to get hold of some books to try to understand what people are believing and doing. She's quite shocked to discover that this highly irrational crap has been going on for a long time, for all that it has only recently become the fashion. A group of merchants (including a guy who owns a string of bordellos) is attempting to recruit Taro and Lee for who knows what, and Lee is sick and getting sicker.

Oh, and Taro keeps shielding events happening somewhere else a long ways away and it's really messing with Lee. Then the Empress dies and they get invited (ordered) to attend the coronation, where the heir proves to be Even Worse than expected.

Huge cliffhanger at the end here, so, (a) don't start with this entry in the series and, (b) consider waiting until the next book is out before starting this one.

Grrrr.