April 2006 Archives

So well over a year ago Andy and I set out to learn Mandarin Chinese. Thus far I have been a complete failure. Andy has done a bit better but I'm not sure how far he's gotten since his trip to China. In any case, now that I'm about to go spend several months in a small cabin on the Lakes I'm hoping to get more resources together and get more serious. The unfortunate part is that all the native speakers I knew at OnStar are now out of touch. But in the time since I've found ChinesePod, a foreign language podcast which is excellent.

I had just gotten into it, but wanted to focus first on the more basic lessons. But just a few weeks after signing up, I've found that Slate.com is now heartily endorsing it as well, which has me more motivated and hopefully I'll be speaking much better in the next year.

Anyway, this is up here primarily for Andy, but if anyone else is motivated, check it out and we can speak bad chinese together. Any podcasting software will pick this up as a feed, but they also have all the episodes available (divided into four difficultly levels) for download as mp3, so any Luddites can step only into 1999 and pick up just mp3s. Its also available on the iTunes store.

Dance Monkeys Dance

(Not as useless as it sounds, though not as useful as it thinks)

If you have too much money and are trying to think of ways to get rid of it, here are two suggestions.

Support Civil Liberties and Free Expression

Started by Chris Bliss (the juggler/comedian responsible for the viral video of juggling to Golden Slumbers from Abbey Road), this is an organization dedicated to putting a monument to the Bill of Rights up in every US State Capitol. Presented as a counterpoint or alternative to the popularity of Ten Commandments displays, this monument will highlight the actual "source" of our laws in this country. In order to make it a movement rather than an exercise in personal vanity, he is only accepting donations up to $250, so individual donations are the primary source of income rather than corporate sponsorship. (NOTE: MyBillOfRights is moving ahead with raising money to put in their first installation (currently focusing on Arizona and Texas), and has applied for but not received tax-exempt status. As a result, donations are not tax-deductible at this time, but should be in the future.)

Bring Light to those who need it

In many regions of the world, sunset is still the primary roadblock at which learning, reading, working, and performing simple maintenance tasks stop. This makes less-fortunate areas that much less likely to be able to improve themselves, with less time to do so.

50lanterns is a non-sectarian charitable organization that gives solar powered lanterns to people in regions and communities that need them, allowing people to learn to read, learn new trades, and perform basic everyday maintenance that can allow them to move ahead instead of staying barely above water.

Just when I started to think South Park had outlived its usefullness, Matt and Trey have put together 4 episodes in a row that go back to the savagely brilliant (and mercilessly filthy) satire they started with. From Scientology, to the "Eff Chef" episode to the most recent cartoon wars, they've really kicked some ass. But then, on the latest episode, ComCentral has apparently bowed to the forces of censorship in the name of not getting blowed up.

Somehow, this makes the episode even more important. But then I can just download the original version on the 'net anyway.

NOTE: It is so incredibly rare that I agree with Michelle Malkin about anything that I just had to link to her on this, which was where I first saw it. But I'm sure there is info on it elsewhere.

Check out this exhibit by artist Ron Mueck, known for his hyper-real sculpture

Update: This may become a new regular feature, as I've recently become addicted to link filter (http://www.linkfilter.net )and I find a bunch of good stuff. So I may have a semi-daily "LinkFilter of the day" post to pass on the stuff I like so you don't have to sift, too. Thus, in that spirit, very good news:

Cell Division is reversible

A nice way not to celebrate

I'm not sure why you should bother going to see this, but do it anyway,

But if you don't, this says it all:

Found thanks to Linkfilter (again not sure if that's credit or blame)

My good friend Kyle Norris (who I'm secretly in love with, don't tell) just had a song she created with her friend Rachel Karabenick picked up by NPR's All Songs Considered for their Open Mic feature. Its outstanding (like everything else she does) and is just one more step along the path to her inevitable world domination. So how cool will you be when you can say, "Yeah, I was listening to her back in 2006".

Check it out here: Postcard

Or, if you subscribe to NPR's Open Mic on iTunes then it should already be there for you. I got surprised by seeing it on
my iPod a couple hours before I got Kyle's email announcing it. Which was awesome. Anyway, check it out and enjoy.

Just got back from "spring break" which wasn't much of a break but which was a lot of fun.

First on the agenda was Fire School, but on my way down I called my da and found out he was going to visit our good firends in Ohio whom I haven't seen in years, so since it was just an extra couple of hours driving I kept going past Toledo to spend the night and hang out with them which was great. We had a good visit, I got to meet Tanya and Larry's daughters (whose adorableness borders on criminal) catch up with Linda and Dave and Debbie, and had one of the greatest breakfasts of my adult life. I hope the next time I make it back sooner.

But that was just a short detour on the way to Marine Fire Fighting school in Toledo, which was too short, and too light on pra tical experience for my taste, but which was nonetheless very interesting and fun. I've got some good pictures to share which I should have up and available somewhere soon. I've also gotten my camera synched up so the other pictures I've been taking will start appearing here soon.

After fire school, I went up to Houghton for the 15 year Troupe reunion, which was also a great time. Met lots of new troupers and also some of the originals (old bucks) that I haven't run into before. I think I've tried to explain what a strange relationship Troupe is before in this space and mostly failed, so I won't try again now. Let me just say that falling back into troupe life is always easy, and makes you wonder how you had been without it.

I also got to see the latest STA shows, which was unexpected but fun. The first show was actually "The Help" which was a draft that Emily had put together around 2000 I think. I really hadn't expected it, and it kind of messed me up a little all at once, since she had kind of been hiding in the background of a lot of our thoughts anyway, and then to just run into her like that was hard. It was a good show, especially considering it hadn't been cleaned up at all and was basically a first draft. She would have been happy with it I think.

The second show was also great, an MMORPG satire that Lenny would have been proud of, very much carrying on the STA tradition of doing different theatre on the lowest budget with the crappiest production quality possible. While I was a little disappointed with how *really nice* our former playspace is (they've got a light grid now and everything.... spoiled brats) it was heartening to see them steal the chairs from the lobby (again) for set pieces. I was also highly amused by the "Lakeview Plaza Theater" ad on the back of the program, a running gag that Andy and I started which carries on, even though no one currently at Tech has even seen the show that the "No Cherry Coke" on the bottom refers to. So there's some small measure of immortality there I suppose.

I left on Sunday to catch up with Jeff in Marquette, which was also great since we haven't really gotten much of a chance to talk since I've been in TC and he went back to Northern. We had a great dinner and talked about family and military service and Quine's "Main Trends in Recent Philosophy: Two Dogmas of Empiricism", which is basically where we left off. I ended up staying a bit longer than I should have, but I thought actually sleeping a little was a good idea, and I was enjoying catching up again. But now I've returned to TC for another month, before I'll be out sailing.

A quick announcement tomorrow I think, and some sort of fire school info (whether its a photo essay or flickr stream) shortly after. But for now, to bed so I can hit the ground running tomorrow.