otoh

For the last few weeks I’ve had to attend ESOL training on Tuesday and Thursday nights. ESOL is what we call English for Speakers of Other Languages here in Florida and I’ll write more about it some other time. Tonight was the final night — we took the post test and turned in a portfolio. So on the way home I’m thinking I need to do something to celebrate that it’s all over, but I still have to go to work in the morning so that severely limits the choices.

I decided to stop at the grocery store and grab something to eat. Some kind of treat. Something decadent. A totally impulse buy. So I cruise the aisles. Hmmm, sushi? Well, yes and no. I’m hungry but that’s not really it. Ice cream? Dreamery is on sale and it comes in those handy single-serving containers. (Shut up.) Nah, keep looking.

Then, there it was. I haven’t had one of these in so long I can’t remember when the last time was. Empty calories. Completely unnecessary. No redeeming value. Twinkies!

So I decided I needed an image to go with this post (because it’s not like there’s a lot of great prose going on here). I fire up the trusty Google search and find the lovely picture above. But just like I had to eat two Twinkies (it might have been threee) I had to look at more than one search result. So I also found this Turing Test to determine whether Twinkies are intelligent. (OMG! Did I just wolf down sentient beings?) And this:

which would be a whole different kind of treat….

Technorati tags: On Impulse~blog~personal~otoh~sydca

Growing up in Kentucky it was common to see Robins, Blue Jays, Cardinals, and dozens of other types of birds that I never learned to identify. In Florida, of course, there are many that I still think of as exotic — pelicans, herons, egrets, and others for example. Even though I live near a lake*, this morning was the first time I’ve seen one of these in my front yard.

*It’s pretty hard to live anywhere in Florida that is not near a lake. Every puddle that doesn’t dry up in a week gets a name and has the roads detoured around it.

Technorati tags: otohPhoto: Egret~blog~personal~otoh

Keen-eyed readers will recognize the origin of this photo. I played around a bit with some of the effects in Irfanview. It’s a little darker than I’d like, but the detail holds up fairly well in the larger version. I would tell you exactly what I did, but since I was playing I didn’t really keep track. Besides, this way I can get another post out of it.

Technorati tags: blog~personal~otoh~photo~hnt~otohPhoto: Never Been this Blue

I am cursed. (I don’t mean I get cursed at, although I’m sure that happens pretty regularly.) Someone put a curse on me. I get occasional reminders. The street light above me goes out. Not all the street lights. Just the one above me. Anywhere in town — in any town. BLINK. The night gets a little darker. And I remember.

As curses go, I suppose that is relatively minor. But still, does anyone know how to cancel one of these things?

Technorati tags: Cursed~blog~personal~otoh

I’ve been watching some of the Curling in the Winter Olympics. I’m not sure why, but it seems that both the Men’s and Women’s teams for USA got an exceptional amount of coverage this time. Or maybe I just never noticed before…. I can’t say I find it really exciting, but the finesse they can put on a 40 pound stone is intriguing. It makes me wonder though, what is the difference between a game and a sport? And what are the requirements to be an Olympic sport?

So I looked on the “Official Website of the Olympic Movement” (kinda makes me wonder if there is an Official Turd of the Olympic Movement) and in their FAQs I learned that some of the requirements are:

To be included in the programme of the Olympic Games, an
Olympic sport must conform to the following criteria:

• 1.1 only sports widely practised by men in at least seventyfive countries and on four continents, and by women in at least forty countries and on three continents, may be included in the programme of the Games of the Olympiad;
• 1.2 only sports widely practised in at least twenty-five countries and on three continents may be included in the programme of the Olympic Winter Games;
• 1.3 only sports that adopt and implement the World Anti-Doping Code can be included and remain in the programme of the Olympic Games;

and

4 Criteria for Admission of Sports, Disciplines and Events:

• 4.1 To be included in the programme of the Olympic Games any sport, discipline or event must satisfy the conditions specified by this rule.
• 4.2 Sports, disciplines or events in which performance depends essentially on mechanical propulsion are not acceptable.

Anyway, I was watching Curling and wondering, “Is bowling an Olympic sport? Skittles? Tiddly-winks? Bocce ball?” Hmmm. Bocce and Curling seem to have a lot of similarities. (Except for the differences like indoor/outdoor, winter/summer, flat stones/round balls, size of target, number of players, etc. they’re exactly the same!) So I looked up the World Bocce League and found

Bocce has also become a tournament sport. Tournaments are held weekly, some carrying large cash awards for their winners. Bocce is now a part of the World Corporate Games, is an event in the Special Olympics, and is being proposed to be in the Olympics.

Apparently I’m a peripheral visionary. I can see the future, just way off to the side….

Technorati tags: Enough to Curl Your Heir~blog~personal~otoh

I swear I am not making this up. Read the story here. In Arizona, a “group of students from Rob Thompson’s World History class presented an Egyptian-themed project they cryptically referred to as ‘MFC.’ That stands for mummified cat.”

While I find certain elements of their execution [wait -- I mean the way they went about completing the project; they didn't kill a cat for this] questionable I have to applaud their creativity and willingness to go above and beyond the minimal effort most students put into projects. Without getting too deep into pedagogy (which is a big word teachers throw around that means the art and science of what we do as teachers — I’ll save that for my posts over there)… crap, where was I? Oh yeah, without getting too deep into pedagogy, critics of projects, portfolios, and other forms of alternative assessment are sometimes right that kids get credit more for applying pictures to posterboard with glue than applying knowledge to problems with rigor.

Here’s what I think went right with this project:

• Spent extra time outside of class (although a good bit of it was apparently on the day before the project was due)
• Documented the process with photographs
• Variety of materials — chemicals and the cat, of course, in particular
• Continuity of theme — they also built a sarcophagus and a pyramid for the presentation

Here’s what I think went wrong with this project:

• Student disemboweled the cat without wearing gloves (besides the ick factor, how about safety and sanitation?)
• Stereotypical gender roles (Yeah, I’m being picky on this, but a female student said, “The girls took on the responsibility of sewing the cat back up ‘because boys don’t know how to sew.’” I guess I should have had a female surgeon for this.)
• Cheesey presentation music — Also Sprach Zarathustra (Why not something… I don’t know, Egyptian? Hell, why not inject a little humor with Steve Martin’s “King Tut” or The Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian”? Maybe that’s not PC, but I think the ACLU would be trampled by PETA getting to this group.)
• Dangerous presentation effects — a homemade smokebomb (That alone would can you suspended if not expelled.)
• The teacher “replaced a hanging piñata in his room with the mummified cat.”

Disclaimer: Everything I know about this project is based on the one article I linked to above. I checked out the website for the school and they have no mention of it and no individual contact information. In fact, their “News and Events” page had absolutely no news and no events when I checked, just this:

“Welcome to the Coolidge Bears News and Events page. Here you will find our school newsletter, school and community events, information about school holidays, testing dates, and modified schedules. Check here often to remain informed.”

…and a cute little animated graphic. No news. No newsletter. No events. Maybe these students should take on the school website as a project?

Technorati tags: MFC? OMG!~blog~personal~otoh

As if having a heart on for you on Tuesday were not enough….

• The eyes are the window of the soul. ~ English proverb
• The eyes are the gateway to the soul. ~ Melville
• The quickest way to a man’s heart is through his chest. ~ Roseanne Barr
• The quickest way to a man’s heart really is through his stomach, because then you don’t have to chop through that pesky rib cage. ~ J.Jacques
• Laughter is the shortest distance between two people. ~ Victor Borge

Yes, I’ve recycled the shot from last week, but I played a bit with Project Dogwaffle. It’s a fine paint program (even the free version), but it’s not for the faint of heart… as it were.

Technorati tags: blog~personal~otoh~photo~hnt~otohPhoto: Another Piece of my Heart

The ancient Greeks recognized four elements: air, earth, fire and water. (In R&B, there is only Earth, Wind, & Fire.) When contemplating celestial bodies, things apparently (to them) not the same as this earth, they proposed a fifth element, some sublime, perfect substance, that permeates all nature. Seeking to identify this essential element eventually lead to discovery of atomic and subatomic structure and quantum theory. This fifth essence we know today as “quintessential” which has come to mean a representative or most typical example.

We humans like to believe that we have some something that is different from everything else in nature. Regardless whether one agrees with this supposition, most of us feel like there are things that we have not completely explained. I propose that there is a sixth element, a sexessence. This sexessential quality permeates, even directs or controls, all other elements.

• Air: Sexessence takes your breath away.
• Earth: Sexessence makes you feel dirty, in the best possible way.
• Fire: Sexessence makes you really hot.
• Water: Sexessence makes you really wet.
• Quintessence: Sexessence is the quintessential quintessence.

I just made up this philosophy of sexessentialism, so I’m still working out the details. I think that I see evidence of sexessence in many of the sites I visit though. Hmmm, time to do some more research….

Technorati tags: Sexessentialism - Part One~blog~personal~otoh

Happy VD (Valentine’s Day)! VD is one of threee American STDs (Saint’s Days — for St. Valentine, St. Patrick, and St. Nicholas) that have spread from their religious roots to afflict the secular world. Forgive me if that seems rash.

These STDs translate to familial love (Nick), romantic love (Valentine), and alcoholic stupor where you pretty much love everything in sight (Patty). Of the threee, VD is undoubtedly the cruelest. Despite the commercialism and the misdirected political correctness that have overshadowed the X-mas season, it’s still pretty much a time of charity and inclusiveness. And everyone is Irish on Patty’s day. (Many of us are still green around the gills for a couple days afterward too.) But VD makes sure that every single person knows just how alone they really are. I used to think we needed a Scrooge-like character to bah-humbug the whole ordeal, but I realized that just about every man and a growing number of women already fit the bill.

It’s no secret that VD was manufactured by greeting card companies. A greeting card company is a sect. Let’s talk about sects. (Not to be confused with the Birds and the Bees that I explained here.) A sect is a group adhering to a distinctive doctrine — in this case, that you are too stupid or too lazy to either tell your lover how you feel or write a coherent sentence on a piece of paper on your own. No, don’t write a note… buy a card! Yes, the cute photo of a bucket of puppies and someone else’s bad poetry are the E ticket. Think you might get lucky tonight? It’s all in the cards.

The only saving grace to VD is the availability of chocolate. Chocolate makes any holiday great. Just look at Halloween and Easter. Would we pay any attention to ghosts or bunnies in our modern world if there weren’t chocolate involved? I certainly don’t go looking for hard-boiled eggs or beg door-to-door for candy corn. Hell no, give me chocolate or give me death by chocolate….

Granted, I’m single and feeling particularly snarky today. But, in the spirit of VD, I have a big red heart on for you!

Technorati tags: Happy VD!~blog~personal~otoh

I think I’ve finally figured out the analogy of the birds and the bees. (Obviously, I’m a late bloomer.) What threw me off track, of course, is that one must understand flowers first. No one ever talks about the birds and the bees and the flowers. Apparently, knowing about flowers is assumed. (And we ALL know what happens when we assume….) So I looked online and found help on Wikipedia and this great illustration on Merriam-Webster Online:

A flowering plant produces pollen on its stamen. The pollen has to get to the pistil for the plant to reproduce. A limited amount of pollen might be transferred by blowing winds. Relying on getting blown is a very poor reproductive strategy. So the flowers also produce nectar, a sweet juice that attracts bees. Bees collect nectar to make honey. While the bees are busy slurping nectar, pollen sticks to their legs and gets transferred from the stamen to the pistil. (I can’t say with any authority that bees actually slurp, but since humans typically slurp soft drinks, milk shakes, mochas, and other sweet concoctions, it seems reasonable.)

Of course, it’s a lot more complicated than that. Sometimes plants produce nectar to lure prey rather than pollinators. (Does that sound like anyone you know? coughdragonladycough) I also find it rather ironic that we use such an indirect method as an analogy for (usually) very deliberate human coupling. (A subliminal warning against unwanted pregnancy perhaps?) Although I suppose it’s pretty apt that pollination is incidental to the bee getting what he really wants (procreation vs. recreation).

Pollination is all about sex and we all know what that buzz is like. But that only accounts for the bees and the flowers. What about the birds? Hmmm, I think I know now. Love is for the birds….

Technorati tags: The Birds and the Bees~blog~personal~otoh