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| September 20, 2007 |
-
Belgium
is breaking up, the Dutch-speaking Flemish and
the French Walloons just can't get along anymore.
Unlike Czechoslovakia, looks like this will be an ugly
divorce.
- Canadian
looney now worth more'n a dollar. Also, didja know about the
Japanese
housewives doing online currency speculation?
- Some blogger documents his
99% Lindt
Chocolate taste-test. Also, surprisngly, as they'd
declared the opposite in 2000,
M&M/Mars
Says No to any change in the choco definition.
- In the world of automotive restoration it's
sometimes called NOS, for New Old Stock -- auto
parts, decades old, usually in now-tattered,
original packaging. An online outfit called
Jack Berg
Sales calls their electronics
vintage brand-new
and they have some neat stuff.
|
| September 18, 2007 |
|
I was given an apple today, a perfect Red Delicious.
Also for the first time this past week, rode my bike
to class, 'stead of driving. This isn't remarkable
just 'cause school's a little beyond my peddling comfort
zone, but because I was going to teach, not learn. And
in an email, a student from Spain addressed me as "Professor."
|
| September 16, 2007 |
An excerpt from the new
Gibson
where the protagonist is on her mobile
talking with her mother:
She said that [her] father was fine, except
for having contracted, in his late 70s, a
fierce and uncharacteristic interest in
politics. Which her mother didn't like,
she said, because it only made him angry.
"He says it's because it's never been this
bad" her mother said, "but I tell him it's
only because he never paid it this much
attention before. And it's the Internet.
People used to have to wait for the paper,
or the news on TV. Now it's like a tap
running. He sits down with that thing
at any time of the day or night, and starts
reading. I tell him it's not like there's
anything he can do about any of it anyway."
"It gives him something to think about. You know
it's good for people your age to have interests."
"You aren't the one who has to listen to him."
|
| September 10, 2007 |
Been reading
a
great little US history, a bilingual volume, English on the
left pages, Japanese on the right -- but the
illustrated sidebars appear only in nihongo,
and some of the pictures are unfamiliar, for example.
The caption's something like 'advancing Northern
soldiers turn to the South' but even Solomon in all
his glory was not arrayed like one of these top-hatted
warriors -- I dub them, the Uncle Sam Regiment. (As
usual, click for bigger.) It's a happier, more intense
time than usual with the books now as I'm alternating
between an Iain Banks
Culture
novel and the new Gibson, Spook Country.
|
| September 3, 2007 |
Labor Day and the end of Summer, many days
of leisure, come to an end -- this schedule one of
the payoffs for being a teacher. Already though, both
my classes are now begun, so many new people to know.
Japanese is on hiatus until the end of this month,
meanwhile must endure an all-day teacher-teaching class
September Saturdays to maintain my credential -- that
tedium begins this coming weekend. The classes are
taught by an old guy who lost his voice somehow but still
speaks unaided, you just have to strain to hear him -- but
when he teaches, he uses a throat mic with a special
PA setting that amplifies and distorts his voice such that he
sounds very like an Ebonite in that first season Outer Limits,
Nightmare
(the episode with Martin Sheen as Private Dix).
For this holiday weekend, some tidying up at home,
including a harsh cull of audio cassettes, slipped into the
dumpster along with some excess VHS -- magnetic tape
is no longer welcome in the 21st century, but the
weaning, so difficult. A quick inventory shows I've
reduced my total to about 250, excluding the Joe
Frank archive.
Once so essential, now obsolete: a newspaper
story says the phone company's discontinuing
their automated time service as of September 19th
since nobody uses it anymore. Dammit, I use it,
to set my inside clocks; although my 'watch'
is the clock in my car's dash which I set
according to what they say on the radio.
The first book I read (more details
about that under April 19, 2002 in
the archives) but
it wasn't until now that I saw the Kon-Tiki
documentary. I'm flabbergasted -- you mean,
Thor H. took a movie camera with? Incredible,
what an adventure, in glorious black&white.
|
| August 26, 2007 |
A student loaned me a Japanese etiquitte book and
this is a detail which looks to me like, Truckin'
(See Crumb, R) or strutting. Select the thumbnail
to view all the complete trio; their captions are
currently beyond me but the title's "Examples of
Bad Walking."
Update: the verb for this guy is "swagger."
- Asperger's, with more etiquette plus Steve Reich in
Parallel
Play by Tim Page in last week's New Yorker.
I identify strongly with about 50% of his story; the
other half I'm thinking, what a weirdness!
- Shuttle launch photos, taken from the air --
1 and
2, at
the ever-fascinating airliners.net.
- Historical WTF:
Oklahoma
City sonic boom tests of 1964.
- Latest school outrage:
Youth
suspended over sketch of a gun. More news:
city-wide drug testing proposed,
EPA to "flush out the details."
|
| August 19, 2007 |
Tomorrow, the first day of a new class; today, the
melon man at the Mountain View farmer's market. Way
more varieties are available here, in contrast to the
usual back-East choices of cantelope, honeydew and
watermelon. For example I was recently enjoying a
Crenshaw melon but this guy doesn't grow those, says
they're too much hassle. I get Rocky Sweets from him,
those are on the left in the photo -- they're like a
cantelope on the outside, colored like a honeydew
inside but with a different flavor, creamy even.
Sampled the Anana next to it which was like
ambrosia -- will return next week for one of those.
|
| August 15, 2007 |
Just back from a trip up north, three views therefrom. Two of the
new Santiago
Calatrava bridge in Redding and below, the amazing Burney Falls.
|
| August 8, 2007 |
Japanese final tomorrow, then a month's
break from the nihongo. Apropos nothing,
today's thumbnail, not a flag but the logo I
photographed on a bus I rode in Krakow, Poland -- that
was almost two years ago, now.
- In the news, Scientists
reveal secret of levitation (by reversing
the 'Casimir Force'). Air bags, WTF? Also, an
update
on the chocolate definition struggle (no change, yet).
- Scary:
the
Losing War on Junk email, by Michael
Specter, in the New Yorker. Given
the magnitudes, I'm surprised it still works
at all.
- Saw a picture of a big old building I
didn't know, and there was no caption! So
I
asked the hive mind and an hour later discovered
it's Schloss Johannisburg, outside Frankfurt.
|
| August 1, 2007 |
|
Although I'm currently on the summer break from
teaching, I'm very busy now with the final sessions of
this sophmore-level Japanese class. It meets four times
a week and requires what seems like an inordinate
amount of time every day studying at the library, as
well. They've handy dictionaries as well as the
internet diversion, with limited free printing, and
I've learned how wearing earplugs makes this
environment tolerable for extended periods. All together
I'm in an ideal zone for language learning now, since
I've got the time, the resources and the inclination.
And it's so hard to believe I'm being taught kanji
in an academic setting -- practicing all these new
characters and adding them to my pictoral vocab is a
joy.
|
| July 26, 2007 |
Two parties today, marking the end of summer
school -- the first, in the morning, the class
I shared with another teacher; plus my 'real' class,
in the afternoon. This picture shows me with
the Japanese students from the later.
|
| July 19, 2007 |
|
Oy I'll be glad when summer school ends next week. Just
too much going on now what with the additional burden of
Japanese, which is way more intense this quarter. (And
archaic -- instead of the usual white-, blackboards.
Actually, the even worse green blackboards.)
My previous class at Foothill began in January with a
diverse class of around 35 students. By June, at the
end of the second quarter, attrition had reduced our
number to six, none of us Asian and only one
of college age. At my new school, De Anza (with
its ancient furnishings), I'm the only white person in
an all-Asian class of college kids, the ethnic shift
due to the different demographics of Cupertino vs.
Palo Alto. I'm handicapped ('cause for most of 'em,
this is just review of stuff they had in junior high)
but the teacher cuts me major slack. She's okay, not
bad but makes no effort to utilze any recorded media,
her traditional methods matching the chalk in her
hand -- for example, she makes us memorize dialogs.
In my own morning class, one of my favorite students
has returned from last fall, a Korean with the sweetest
disposition but in tears yesterday, she was describing
her predicament: they have a 'vacation home' on a lake
somewhere near Victorville (eh? that's the desert, down
there between Vegas & LA) and they'd loaned it to a
friend with family of three children, one an infant.
Crisis: the key she gave them is not opening the lock
and she was imploring me: "But I just used it last
week!" Until that morning the travel-weary family
apparently slept in their car, as the house is remote,
far from anything like a motel and yet on old Route 66.
(No Bahgdad Cafe?) She was contemplating driving down
there immediately (an 8-hour trip) but another cellphonecall
during class, the family's given up, on its way back,
defeated. Oh the shame.
|
| July 15, 2007 |
- Follow-up on toilet hovering, from an
enthusiastic proponent:
The
Art of Hover-Pissing. Want to read more, see the
metaFilter
response.
- Recent
Jon
Carroll column on astronauts, New York City,
bottled water, and more.
- NPR's Nina Totenberg annoys me because of her
lock on the Supreme Court report -- she's always
the voice I hear quoting the judges, and I wonder,
why her? Why always her? (I wish
they'd get someone in there who'd imitate each of
their individual mannerisms.) But she has
her fans, obviously -- over in the
NPR
Shop a special version of that cliche
public broadcasting premium is now available -- the
(sold out)
Nina
Totin' Bag!
|
| July 10, 2007 (updated) |
Heard on the radio how Doug Marlette died today.
I don't read him anymore but his editorial
cartoons and "Kudzu" comic strip were a definite
part of my 1980s. In a rainy car crash, similar to
what happened out here recently with author David
Halber-something -- as a passenger, honored guest,
being driven to/from an engagement (in this case,
a high school musical production of "Kudzu" -- the
mind reels. Nasal doing a rap song?) To be sure, the
South will mourn his passing.
Washington
Post obit
|
| July 9, 2007 |
- From last week's New Yorker
Postscript
for their cartoonist, J.B.Handelsman:
"Sometimes something historical gives you a better
perspective," he said in a 1980 interview. "You can
see the latest dumbness as just the end of a long
line of dumbnesses that have been taking place for
thousands of years."
-
Hollywood
in need of Japanese, and
Japan
goes Koo-Koo for Kit Kat Choco Bars. One of my students
recently gave me one of those green tea variants, which was
quite tasty (although I generally eschew Kit Kats, 'cause
they always taste kinda stale, to me). Another
one of my current students is in a band,
MegaBabe
(first time I've posted a MySpace link.) My own
nihongo studies have ratcheted up; I'm
taking the third class at the other school now, which
uses a different textbook. Among my new classmates,
ironically, is one of my former students.
- In Psychology Today,
Ten
Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature.
|
| July 7, 2007 |
|
Heinlein
at 100 by Ted Gioia. Thinking about the famous
author reminds me of the sample scans from
the kids' books compiled at
Dreams
of Space.
|
| July 4, 2007 |
- Like the guys in "Breaking Away" we swam at an
abandoned quarry, in my youth. Imagine a hotel there,
like
in China -- looks like waterfall. I'll probably
never stay at that one, but the Ostel in East Berlin is
another story -- see some pictures in a
photo
gallery and
this
Forbes article claims it's 'budget'
but I couldn't locate any rate information online
(and I doubt that Forbes' definiton of budget matches
my own).
- Speaking of trips to Germany, on my first I paid a
memorable visit to the
Deutsches
Museum in Munich. Back home in DC it seems I'll be
missing the
Modernism
Show at the Corcoran, which only lasts through the
end of this month. The connection is a neat Czech
car from the 1930s called the
Tatra.
That Dark Roast Blend post describes it in detail, and
mentions another unusual car on display at the D-Museum, the
Rumpler
Tropfenwagen (but the one I liked best was their
early-70s Porsche 911 with a stainless-steel body,
polished to a mirror finish). These vehicles may have
been relocated to their new
Traffic
Museum across town but back to the Corcoran, for
the time being their
visitor
info page has a photo of the Tatra on display there.
|
| July 1, 2007 |
There's another one!
I became so annoyed with these plastic water pods
people litter everywhere I started picking 'em up
and putting 'em into the recycle bin. Recently I
learned the local Recycling Center's less'n a mile
away and gives cash payout, which just doubled this
year (the CA CRV). Therefore, my hunting/gathering
activities have escalated, aggressively, and now
include "Dumpster diving."
Although I use a Brita filter now, for several years
I'd keep a special bottled water in the fridge, but
never in that most common one-pint size -- just too
much plastic waste. More on the water racket in the current
Fast Company,
Message
in a Bottle by Charles Fishman. Quotes:
- At Whole Foods, the upscale emporium of the organic
and exotic, bottled water is the number-one item by units
sold.
- Americans have never wanted water in cans, which
suggest a tinny aftertaste before you take a sip. The
plastic bottle, in fact, did for water what the pop-top
can had done for soda: It turned water into an anywhere,
anytime beverage, at just the moment when we decided we
wanted a beverage, everywhere, all the time.
- 38 billion water bottles are pitched into landfills
every year--in excess of $1 billion worth of plastic.
- Americans went through about 50 billion plastic
water bottles last year, 167 for each person.
Says soft drinks still sell more units than waters but the
H20s are gaining. In my scavaging for #1 plastic
I encounter way more waters than soft drinks. And I'm
wondering, do you think we'll ever see beer in
plastic bottles with twist-off tops?
|
| June 24, 2007 |
|
The radio session was fun. Haven't been to a college
station since the mid-80s at WMUC. The old tape carts
have been replaced partially by Minidiscs. The time
went by way too quick; maybe I'll have to do a
Part 2 next year.
|
| June 21 - Solstice |
|
I'll be on the radio this Saturday. A part of my
usual weekend routine involves tuning in to Robert
Emmett's soundtrack show on KFJC. For the first hour
of the upcoming program we'll be spinning some
platters together, and you can catch it all on
their
netcast at 9AM Pacific time, noon Eastern.
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