from the comments
I know what is and isn’t dessert, and how to name a hard drive.
The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz
Denis Avey is 92 now, a resident of Bradwell in the Peak District. His house, hidden down a narrow lane, overlooks a bowl-shaped valley disappearing eastward into the mist. Here, in this restful place, he summons memories, only recently unlocked, of that terrible place; and one of the most remarkable feats achieved by a British serviceman during the Second World War. When thousands would have given anything to escape Auschwitz, Denis Avey was trying to get in. And in mid 1944, he succeeded.
(via the browser)
Amusement rides in the car park
quote out of context
In India and Sri Lanka, where the struggle is most intense, more than 400 elephants and 250 humans are killed each year. Sharks, by contrast, kill fewer than half a dozen swimmers a year worldwide.
A Gift to Cindy from Pinky Diablo
Big Phil
Making Sentences First
Before the essay, make students learn to write a great sentence.
This brief article by Andy Selsberg, in today’s New York Times, presents a fine approach to writing instruction. I have done similar things in my classes, assigning micro essays that have a strict limit of 250 words. I like to push students to be concise. Many of them suffer from habits of writing short choppy sentences or rambling patchwork sentences filled with comma splices, mixed tenses, and thoughts that don’t make it to the end of the journey. The first order of business is to get them to see that there is a problem, and that concentration can transform a smear of words into a structure that seems to hold up a world. As Selsberg notes, this method allows a teacher to “give everyone serious individual attention.” I often find that my own editing suggestions and comments on such brief essays exceed the number of words produced by the student.
from the comments
My only specialty, such as it is, is that I can hear a person’s voice once and I have it–I’ll be able to recognize it years later. I’m not good with names though, so my identification of a voice might be something like “That’s that guy we bought the potatoes from at the farmer’s market when we first moved here. The specialty I really need is a voice in my head that says Daryl, you dumbass, you are telling the same stories again.
from the comments
I can tell you where a paragraph of information is in a book I have read based on the shape of it, but not the exact wording.
coming out of sleep
See Anemone.
Recently remembered.
Kansas City. December 2010.
Speaking of weird
The Iowan remembers numbers. Someone will say, “What was my address and my number on the Upper West Side in 1985?” He remembers. “Okay, what about Jill’s parents’ number when we were living in London in 1977?” Same result. The funny thing is the Iowan is not very good at math. I do better calculating the everyday stuff in my head.
But it gets weirder. As a grade schooler, Mr. Boudreaux had a password for something I was helping him with, an online computer game maybe, I can’t remember exactly. I asked him for the password. He reeled off a long list of numbers. “Are you reading those from somewhere?” I asked him. No. Okay, make up another one. He dictated something, which I wrote down, then had him repeat the sequence. He did it easily. “Are you seeing those numbers in your mind?” I asked. He said no, it was just something he could do. This aren’t special numbers, birthdays, etc. His laptop, for instance, has a password that is a long list of random numbers.
I can barely remember my own telephone number and address. I’m not sure I have a specialty. How about you?
headline of the day
Florida State Lawmaker Takes Heat For Bill That Would Require Teaching Of ‘Non-Evolution’
from the comments
P.S. Shouldn’t there be a planet named Clitoris?
Or at least a mouthwash.
I’d buy that mouthwash.
But then I wouldn’t know where to find it.
Update:
Right next to the Crest.
Dear Andrewflock
Does the rule still apply if you’re using a lighter? Forgive me if this has already been covered; I missed the review session.
headline of the day, II
Subway riders brawl over passenger eating spaghetti on the train
headline of the day
Pluto-Bound Probe Sprints Across Uranus’ Orbital Path
Your business card sucks
Don’t miss the rebuttal.
the most amazing golfer the world has never seen
And a clever advertising campaign as well.
screenshot, recent footage
girls making gun sounds
There are a ton more, but the intro/outro to the videos definitely gets quickly tiresome. (via)
Jungle Cats
This is the sister-in-law’s jungle cat Sugarfoot. He actually is the “sweetest” of her batch. Still, no petting. When SIL and her husband moved from Arizona to Chicago, they had problems finding a vet who would do home visits. The cats are big and don’t do well in cages. You also don’t want to be hauling them through the hallways and foyers of Chicago condo buildings.
The Iowan says it is spooky to spend the night there. You have to lock the bedroom doors because one of the cats can twist open the doorknob. Then, when you leave the room at night, “their glowing eyes follow you. Like they’re looking at their midnight snack.”
from the archives: April 10, 2008
That does it. This is it. 1979 marked some kind of something, the likes of which we may never again witness.
Published in 1979: India’s brilliant How to Care for a Guinea Pig.
I can never get enough of this.
from the comments
As an atheist, I find myself in an unusual position here when I argue that dangerous aspects of human behavior are not clearly subject to scientific reduction. This seems, initially, to fit in with religious views I don’t wish to support–to wit: that there is a kind of “knowledge” that may be called such without need of test, and that the warrant for this understanding is the fact that humans have for so long regarded such knowledge as essential. I take a somewhat different view: humans have been concerned with religious matters for ages–but this is evidence of irrationality and fear, not of knowledge that is somehow above the need of questioning. In the situation under discussion in the thread posted, the standard model of what is likely to result from the reactor problems is only part of the question. But whereas some derisive commentors jumped instantly to comments like “I guess space aliens could invade and we could nuke them and destroy ourselves,” I would be more inclined to note that people watch other people running away, and then they run, and then economic disruptions shut down manufacturing of all sorts across the world–and so on, to the point that much suffering occurs regardless of questions about specific core meltdown consequences.
from the comments
I had a dog I was afraid of at first. He looked like a white German Shepherd. He would not approach me, would stretch out on the floor staring up at me with the saddest eyes, like my fear was hurting his feelings. He protected me through some scary times when I moved to D.C. He got old and sick and in his last days I was crying because I was upset. And for the first time ever, he turned away. I knew that was it. And it was. I’ve never had a pet since.
