Monday, January 31, 2005
According to the USA today, 1 in three US students is retahded.
Posted by Daev @ 11:54 AM CST [Link]
Z1 times and themes
Okay monkeys, here's the dope thereupon: [more]
Posted by Daev @ 05:17 AM CST [Link]
Friday, January 28, 2005
At the Voki we watched the movie Blow from 2001. Recollect that this film was about the bigtime drug smuggler who pretty much created the coke market in the 70s.
[more]
Posted by Daev @ 06:37 PM CST [Link]
This is interesting:
MARK RICE-OXLEY, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR - Annoyed at how their
upscale neighborhood has been ruined by incessant traffic, local
authorities [in London's Museumland neighborhood] are planning to unveil
a radical solution Monday: remove the conventional insignia of the road
- traffic lights, white lines, guardrails, sidewalks - and create a
single "shared space" for everyone, motorized or not.
At first glance, the idea seems a little reckless. After all, it is only
the presence of the crossing signals on Exhibition Road that seems to
keep the bewildered, stray tourists from a nasty accident. And
governments the world over have long since concluded that the safest way
to avoid catastrophe on the roads is to segregate vehicles from
pedestrians.
Posted by Daev @ 06:11 PM CST [Link]
AMERICAN PROGRESS - A top Chinese economist, Fan Gang, says his country,
which finances a large portion of America's debt, has "lost faith in the
stability of the U.S. dollar" and will begin investing in a "more
flexible basket" of currencies. The announcement comes as a result of. .
. fiscal policies which are leading the dollar towards a dangerous "free
fall" that could imperil the U.S. economy. "The U.S. dollar is no longer
- in our opinion is no longer - (seen) as a stable currency, and is
devaluating all the time, and that's putting troubles all the time," Fan
said. The dollar "hit a new low in December against the euro and has
been falling against other major currencies on concerns about the
ever-growing U.S. trade and budget deficits."
Posted by Daev @ 06:04 PM CST [Link]
IT's Harvey Pekar Appreciation Day at the Choppin' Blog.
Harvey is the all-American anti-hero. He is best known for his long-running auto-biographical comic book, American Splendor, which was the basis for the 2003 Cannes award winning film of the same name.
In his comics, he details the mundane minutiae of Our Man, your basic blue-collar nudnik a-workin' his crappy fileclerk job, scraping together bucks for his jazz LP collection, living off a steady diet of peanut butter and soda.
He doesn't draw himself; he writes a script and blocks it out in frames with stick figures. The actual illustration has been done by the likes of R. Crumb and many other baddass artists.
Anyhoo, here's a coupla audio things with Harvey. An interview on On Point (ca.9 min). And a conversation on Wad'ya Know? (at 11 minutes).
Posted by Daev @ 07:31 AM CST [Link]
Thursday, January 27, 2005
To mark the birthday of Lewis Carroll, here's The Hunting of the Snark: an Agony in Eight Fits. Very funny.
Posted by Daev @ 02:20 AM CST [Link]
The answer is "C". It seems counter-intuitive, seeing as the bulk of the text belabours the fact that HD films are too large for a single normal DVD, but there you have it. The amount of improvement perceivable when watching an HD-DVD film versus conventional DVD film on an HD-TV screen is minimal. At least, that's what the text said.
Posted by Daev @ 01:07 AM CST [Link]
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
I felt so under the weather today I could hardly finish a sentence. And I thought this was funny: Cubic Cliche Comix.
Posted by Daev @ 08:14 AM CST [Link]
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
I'm sick today. Spent the better part of Sunday and Monday in my bunk. But we will still have our test on Wednesday. Just don't give me any crap.
Posted by Daev @ 09:37 AM CST [Link]
Monday, January 24, 2005
Oh boy. Just look at it coming down. It's the first really good snow of the year.
We're still having the test tomorrow, so dress warmly.
Posted by Daev @ 07:00 PM CST [Link]
Sunday, January 23, 2005
The Books. Precocious homemade music using a guitar and some sound editing software. And here is a story about them from public radio.
Posted by Daev @ 02:40 PM CST [Link]
Saturday, January 22, 2005
Cough...
Posted by Daev @ 09:55 PM CST [Link]
Well Joshua Herbert Walker Christ on a pogostick. Apparently, some believe that Spongebob is light in his loafers. It must be nice to have so much time on one's hands to create such a paranoid delerious reality that one even suspects innocuous cartoon characters are out to bugger them.
update: another story posted where you don't have to sign in. If you scroll down you can watch the video in question.
update update: I watched video in question--it starts at around 2 minutes--and I don't think it turned me gay. But I also just noticed that if I just got some new curtains this room would look fabulooous.
Posted by Daev @ 09:30 PM CST [Link]
Friday, January 21, 2005
Ten years ago, on a cold dark night
Someone was killed, 'neath the town hall light
[more]
Posted by Daev @ 08:31 PM CST [Link]
Tonite at Voki we watched Rushmore in OmU.
[more]
Posted by Daev @ 08:22 PM CST [Link]
Oh confound this slippery dripping wet whipping windful weather.
Bless my bile-brown oven and her blazing red-hot heart of coal.
The blasted sky over this town can't seem to make his mind up
As if it were raising and wrinkling eyebrows.
Waxing and waning ominous and calmly cool and collected.
Sprouts of obtuse-angle rain and yes, hail.
And I thought last night was lousy weather for making the rounds
To the clubs to hand over the posters
In that cozy copyshop shortly before eight
I unwisely layed that retched tattered wreck of a batwing
Stupid soaking umbrelly on the worktable
Thus endangering entire villages in A4 and A3
Despite the plastic bag.
That was nasty, but brother, today it blows.
Posted by Daev @ 07:26 AM CST [Link]
Q: What's the difference between humor and odor?
A: Humor is a shift of wit.
Posted by Daev @ 04:17 AM CST [Link]
Thursday, January 20, 2005
photos of Scruffydog with a mamabear. Just joshing; it's really a Lil Wee albino black bear.
Posted by Daev @ 05:39 PM CST [Link]
It's inauguration time and gosh do those boys know how to indulge themselves.
A look at this week's festivities by the numbers:
$40 million: Cost of Bush inaugural ball festivities, not counting security costs.
$2,000: Amount FDR spent on the inaugural in 1945…about $20,000 in today's dollars.
It gets better...
More Here.
With sources!
Posted by Daev @ 04:37 PM CST [Link]
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Finished a painting over the weekend. Well, It's not quite finished; I'm having Mr Ford over tomorrow for advice on how to make the background a little more interesting in a backgroundish way. [more]
Posted by Daev @ 05:55 PM CST [Link]
I was walking with a ghost
I said please, please don't insist
Posted by Daev @ 11:21 AM CST [Link]
Here's a nice bit on About.com dealing with using connectors to make your writing style. Let's face it: we all have room for improvement and pie.
We've covered these all over the course of two semesters, you'll surely recall. But here they are in a nice little bundle.
Ha-cha-cha-cha.
Posted by Daev @ 10:19 AM CST [Link]
Monday, January 17, 2005
It is the 299th birthday of Benjamin Franklin, a most remarkable dude. He invented the Franklin stove, which he never patented because he designed it for the good of the people. What a sport.
Posted by Daev @ 07:20 AM CST [Link]
Friday, January 14, 2005
AT the VoKi tonight we viewed Polanski's Chinatown from 1974. It's as clever, nuanced and intriguing as one might expect from a thirty-year-old.
Jack, Faye, and the whole dang cast do a real bangup performance. It is beautifully shot. And while the story thrives on wheels within wheels and the protagonists hard-boiled PI chic, it all comes crashing down at the end in a beautiful, muddled tragedy one might expect in the real world.
After that one long shot of the escaping white car that far in the distance down the street in Chinatown never makes the turn, we land in a world of needless death, a rush of chaos where we know longer no who was good and bad. The credits rolled and we wondered where justice and resolution were to be found.
We were full of questions that, thankfully, never were answered in a sequel. All we could tell ourselves was to forget it; it's Chinatown.
ERRATA: Sorry. They did plan a trilogy, which is why Jack refused other PI roles other than that of Jake Gittes. A sequel was filmed in 1990, The Two Jakes and directed by jack himself.
Posted by Daev @ 06:08 PM CST [Link]
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Sample reading comprehension test
Here is a test from a coupla years back. scroll on down to see the text, and then on down again to see the questions and answers.
Note that my handwritten answers are not what your answers should look like; it was hastily written so that I can read it, not that others can read it. Please write more neatly than I did.
Posted by Daev @ 06:32 PM CST [Link]
Son of a proverbial gun. That dude in class today was absolutely right.
Social Engineering is basically the art of compromising systems not by slick hacks, but rather by acting and playing off the gullibility of personel. here here and here.
Like I said today, who could have thought such an innocuous sounding term could mean something so insidious and nefarious?
Posted by Daev @ 06:21 PM CST [Link]
Monday, January 10, 2005
I should write a word or two about end o' semester tests. So here goes.
L1: You have a reading comprehension test. You'll get a text--probably an article from the internet--related somehow to computers and around 1,000 words in length. You'll have to answer around a dozen questions in English. I changed my mind and now I would like to give the test on the second to last day so that you can get your Teilnahmeschein on the last day. Okay?
L2: You guys will have both reading and listening tests. Listening involves a recorded text of around 8 minutes length, then around a dozen questions.
Testing takes place in the last two lessons.
Z1: Okay, this is different than what I said last week, so pay attention. The writing test will not be "take home", but rather you will be given one of three tasks. A) You will need to write a cover letter for a job application where I give you the needed info, B) you will be given a topic and then you will need to write a couple hundred words over it, C) the wildcard task, which is so secret not even I know what it is.
Secondly, you'll have an oral test. Next week, we'll pick out about eight topics. Next, we'll set up appointment times for the students to come in on the last day in groups of three. On the day of the test, each student will draw a topic, then he or she will need to speak about that topic coherently for five to ten minutes. The other two students are also to join in on the discussion.
Refresher: I already have your test ready. We'll do it on the second to last day. We'll grade it and hand out Teilnahmesheine on the last day.
Posted by Daev @ 12:09 PM CST [Link]
China and India both know about underground UFO base in the Himalayan border area deep into the tectonic plates. Now so do we.
According to the few locals people on the Indian and Chinese side, this is where the UFOs are seen coming out of the ground, According to many, the UFO underground bases are in this region and both the Indian and Chinese Government know this very well..
Personally, I feel suspicious when reading a news article that employs a Schulzian double full stop..
Posted by Daev @ 11:36 AM CST [Link]
According to the Oracle of Bacon, Mike has a Bacon number of 3.
Michael Seezen was in Fourth Protocol, The (1987) with Ned Beatty
Ned Beatty was in Just Cause (1995) with Laurence Fishburne
Laurence Fishburne was in Mystic River (2003) with Kevin Bacon
Posted by Daev @ 06:09 AM CST [Link]
Sunday, January 9, 2005
What a relaxing weekend it has been.
Posted by Daev @ 10:13 AM CST [Link]
Saturday, January 8, 2005
It's bageltime.
Posted by Daev @ 10:32 AM CST [Link]
Friday, January 7, 2005
On this day in 1927 the first commercial telephone connection between New York and London was installed. The signal was transmitted by radio, and later in the thirties by underwater cables.
Posted by Daev @ 04:34 AM CST [Link]
Thursday, January 6, 2005
Oh dear. Did you kids read this in Ad rem ? [more]
Posted by Daev @ 06:21 AM CST [Link]
Wednesday, January 5, 2005
As it turns out, I have a few more pictures from my last day in Nashville and the flight over. here
Posted by Daev @ 07:41 PM CST [Link]
Monday, January 3, 2005
Confound this crappy weather as it whispfully whips up chilly wet winds and slippery shivering sidewalks.
Due to a combination Jetlag-from-hell and cold virus one-two punch I spent the better half of Monday in bed. I hope I am well enough to teach tomorrow.
Oh yeah I almost forgot. Here the final bunch of photos from Nashville. Arrrrr.
Posted by Daev @ 06:23 PM CST [Link]
Sunday, January 2, 2005
Back in Dresden and boy, I had a delightful flight. The weather was pleasant, we had strong tailwinds speeding our way, the layovers were short.
On the first leg I had to sit next to a woman who was so fat that you couldn't put the armrest down. But she seemed to realize that I was bummed out about sharing half my seat with her, so she made an extra effort to be cool.
As I was sitting at the gate in Dulles, I was suddenly panic-stricken with the suspicion that I had forgotten how to speak German. "Say something German," I told myself, which only made matters worse as I kept drawing blanks on anything worthwhile saying in German. Eventually I settled on "where's the toilet," and caught myself muttering that outloud intermittently to the bewilderment of the other passengers.
Posted by Daev @ 05:32 AM CST [Link]
Saturday, January 1, 2005
Happy new year. This is my last entry from Nashville. I'll be home on the 2nd.
I've had a great time here, although it's never long enough.
Anyhooters, here is a short video of Keddie's little trick.
Posted by Daev @ 04:33 AM CST [Link]
