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December 10^th, 2008 commemorates the 60^th anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The first article of the declaration states, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." But, unfortunately this is still not the case for many people around the world.

This year's UN theme is "dignity and justice for all of us". We, here at Penguin, would like to showcase some well-known and less well-known human right's activists who have worked hard to make their countries more just places.

One of only three women to win the Nobel Peace Price, Aung San Suu Kyi has published many of her writings. Aung San Suu Kyi was elected in 1988 as the Prime Minister of Burma but was immediately placed under house arrest by a military junta. Between 1995 and 2000 she was allowed to move about the country freely but could only leave Burma, if she never returned. Unfortunately, in 2000 she was placed under house arrest again where she remains today. During her period of "freedom" Aung San Suu Kyi wrote several books. Read two of them:

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Dear Ixchel:

Okay, so maybe the goddesss of fertility and childbirth isn't exactly an obvious choice for Alexis Gray, aka "she who cannot manage to sustain a relationship to save her life, and is way not in a position (or mindset) to think about starting a family," but when Leah gave us our team-building assignment to write a Dear Santa letter to one of the Maya gods, I automatically gravitated toward you, so I'm going with it. I think it's probably your connection to weaving- I've always loved fabric, and probably would've gone into fashion if it hadn't been for Izzy pushing me into finance. But anyway... what do I want this winter solstice?

Leah said it's okay for it to be totally "me-me-me," even though according to some people, I'm always all about me. But the thing is, we've all got a more or less unlimited budget, since the Nightkeeper Fund is fat enough to fund an army of hundreds rather than the dozen magi and handful of winikin support staff we've actually got. I can pretty much buy what I want, which for a long time was what I thought I wanted in life. Unfortunately, I'm finding that the carte blanche sort of takes away the specialness of a big purchase. That's why I'm still mostly wearing my old courtesy-of-eBay couture (with a few strategic additions, of course), and while I've decorated my suite, I haven't gone overboard. At least not by my standards.

» Patrician McCarthy will discuss her book about the Chinese practice of face reading as well as the different elemental Taoist personalities.

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Patrician McCarthy, The Face Reader, Podcast