Paned Emits

Let's take a walk down memory lane. Freshman year. Health class.

I was but a small, sickly girl and somehow the subject of massive flu epidemics was raised. A friend of mine and I decided it would be hilarious to predict how we were to die. We predicted I would die of a massive flue pandemic in the year 2010 and that he would die in the year 2012 for reasons I don't remember.

Let's fast forward three and a half years.

OH MY GOD, IT'S HAPPENING.

Maybe.

They're saying that over 150 people have died in Mexico... which sounds doubleplusungood to me. Except that no one outside of Mexico has died... and I don't quite understand why. Either way, they're pulling out the state of emergency stuff right and left and then telling people not to panic... which makes me turn my head in an inquisitive way. Mexico itself has pretty much shut down, it's ridiculous to read some of the reports coming out of there about the streets of Mexico City being empty. Which is only a little impressive until you realize that Mexico City is the second largest metropolitan area IN THE WORLD.

So yes, I'm quite interested to see how this all pans out. If any of you are interested, below is a copy of my Riddley Walker story which has a subject matter closely related to current events (which is totally coincidental... has nothing to do with the fact I wrote it this morning...)..

1.Mr. See De See wer every 1s Pot of Carry. Ben ther a chyld coffin or a woman done vomitit Mr. See De See myt wud go with a pot. That for them a rum for him. He done al right and the worl lookit him with re spekt. He make the sic wel and it ben a good sistem.
2.1 day Mr. See De See done seen 2 siclins in 1 day. He seen lots of siclins in lots of days but this wont no mal sicnes. This been a baddy that kylt folk. Sarz he callit and he tol the worl of it.
3.The worl was afeart wen he tol of Sarz but got careful for lots more kylt folk. Only acturely ther wer no lots more kylt folk. This got the worl mad at Mr. See De See, he done made them afeart for no raisen.
4.The worl said to Mr. See De See, 'You get moren a nuff a rum dont make us afeart for no raisen or well not give you no more.'
5.Mr. See De See wernt afeart of the worl. The worl and Mr. See De See had a good biz and no1 wud mes with him.
6.Then ther been a bloke he come to Mr. See De See with big Trubba. He and his woman and babbys al sic. His naminals been sic as wel. His nay boars been sic as wel. Every form he been a familyer of been sic.
7.Mr. See De See seeit this as big Trubba and he quick telt the worl. The worl worket quik and made pre pear rations for the A V In Flew paned emit. Lot of folks wer starvling and and freazing col from not wanting to go any wher for ther afeartnes of the A V In Flew. Hoal forms got kylt be cause no1 wud et ther naminals or crops.
8.This got the worl very mad. A V In Flew kylt les than col and starvling. The worl tol Mr. See De See, “Wer tired of your paned emits. You shunt mes with us like that. You been hy on power and a arum.” Stil folk went to Mr. See De See with ther sic folk.
9.The worl and Mr. See De See wer al right til al the babbys started turning sic. 1 day it was 3 then ther wer 9 then ther wer 27. Mr. See De See helpt some but givet some to Aunty
10.The folk yelt, “Our babbys! Why are you al cozy with Aunty now? Save our babbys! Tel the worl thers a paned emit!”
11.Mr. See De See sed “You dint want my help las time or the other 1. You yelt at me. Aunty and me got an under standment. She re spekts me and what I do for her.”
12.So the babbys of the worl kept goin to Aunty. Aunty likes babbys for she dint have none of her own. The worl was in morning and kept going smaler with out Mr. See De See to help. Thats why they been so weak wen Mr. Clevver got power.

No ovens for buns
My story is done

Really?

"Really?" was all I could say when I read this story from Yahoo. It is quite possibly the most upsetting thing I've read all year. No joke. And here is why:

They joked about the Russian misspelling of "reset" on the button before sitting down at an oval table with aides. "We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?" Clinton asked. "You got it wrong," said Lavrov, telling her "Peregruzka" meant "overcharge."

How do you screw that up? Does the State Department really have NO ONE fluent in Russian? On the flip side, it appears my services may be in high demand for the future...

ACHOO!

So the one good thing about being under the weather is that I get a chance to sit down, relax with a box of Kleenexes and read the newspaper.

This article in particular I found to be interesting.

And now I would like to juxtapose (a word I have never used before) that article with an excerpt from an article on the American Heart Association's website (source):

In February 2007, two new bills were introduced in Congress designed to give the FDA authority to regulate tobacco products: HR-1108, sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Tom Davis (R-VA), and S 625, sponsored by Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and John Cornyn (R-TX). The American Heart Association and several other health organizations support this new legislation.

Yes, putting more responsibility on the back of the FDA sounds like an excellent idea now, doesn't it? There are many, many, MANY things terribly wrong with this bill, but when we have peanut butter and syringes killing people, things that are 1) under the watchful eye of the FDA and 2) specifically NOT supposed to kill you, do we really need to have the FDA "protect" us from something that EVERYONE knows is bad for you?

I would like to think my father for the tip off about the article.

你們好！It's story time!

In my previous post, I mentioned something about etiquette for athletes. I imagine the rules are largely unspoken and common sense- things like don’t trash talk your coach or your teammates, be congratulatory of the other teams efforts, etc. Anyways, all of this got me wondering about codes of conduct in other professions… professions like teaching. Take for example the story below (I’ve already told you about this Jessie):

It was a dark and stormy end of second period; dark because Dr. B had the black curtains covering his windows, and stormy because 老師 (my Chinese teacher) and I were at odds. We were having a bit of a disagreement about Chinese poetry and the benefits of teaching it to students at our level. I was most frustrated by archaic nature of the vocabulary and the total lack of grammatical structure in the poetry and didn’t see how it was supplementing my knowledge of the language. Older Chinese poetry is highly structured and abstract… and when I say abstract, I mean really abstract. It is basically a bunch of characters thrown together without any regard for necessity of verbs or prepositions (rather, they’ll be there, you just wont know it because there are no inflections in Chinese and word order is so important in telling you whether something is the direct object or the verb or an adjective or a measure word, and so on) to give the poor reader any inkling of what’s going on. Now, to be fair, if I had a little better grasp of the language I might be able to extrapolate some meaning because I would know all the different connotations and denotations behind the characters. But I don’t. And it is very frustrating. And there is no grammar!
Anyways, back to the story. So 老師 and I were arguing about this, and she is talking about how this is the way that poetry was written back then and that we see this kind of blatant-disregard-for-grammar-style in English too. This stumps me, so I ask for an example. She then proceeds to talk about how there is no grammar Shakespeare. About this time I notice poor Dr. B (my English teacher) behind us listening to our conversation, about to have a stroke. I realize that there is no changing老師’s mind and I proceed to thank her and head to my next class before it became necessary to call and ambulance for Dr. B.

Now, I think this story illustrates a conflict in traditional teacher codes of conduct. 老師 was obviously giving me some bad information regarding Shakespeare. Of course Shakespeare observes rules of English grammar! His structures may be a bit twisted at times and his language difficult to understand, but grammatically his works are sound. 老師, a non native English speaker, didn’t catch this but it is something that Dr. B, an English teacher, would have known and preached. So in this situation, what was Dr. B to do? Should he say something to老師 and risk embarrassing her in front of on of her students or should he keep his mouth shut and allow this kind of misinformation to run rampant? Luckily for him, I know my way around a few Shakespearian works, so I caught老師’s gaffe rather easily, though I chose not to say anything to her about it. I think that knowing me and knowing that I would probably not be taken by老師’s assertion that there is no grammar in Shakespeare factored into Dr. B’s decision to stay silent. But what if he hadn’t known me, or hadn’t known that I wouldn’t be touched by the misinformation? It is a tricky situation, but I would hope that he would have stepped in and said something eventually. It may not have been wise to have done it just then when 老師 was standing right there, but I see little harm in setting the record straight once she was out of earshot. And perhaps his position as a teacher of English and native speaker would have been enough to escape offending her. I don’t know. Any thoughts?

A Quick Thought About the Election...

In browsing the headlines and news tags, one can't help but be assaulted by hundreds of mediums saying, in effect, "OOO! SHE DID THIS!" or "THIS IS WHAT SO-AND-SO SAID ABOUT HIM!"

It makes me wonder... who do they think they're writing to? I think what is happening is more preaching to the choir than anything else. They're writing for an audience that already agrees with them, and audience to will read their articles and say "YEA, SEE!?! I TOLD YOU!?!". They're not going to convince anyone like this... the people that oppose their views are just going to stick up their noses and launch another "But your candidate did this!" and nothing will have been accomplished.

I feel sorry for the people who have yet to make up their minds. It must be incredibly boring/ frustrating.

Swimmer's Gotta Eat Too Man!

As anyone who watched the Olympics at all this year probably has a pretty good idea, by way of Michael Phelps, as to how much a swimmer must consume to survive.

This is the best defense I can give for Kirsty Coventry, who recently took 100,000 USD from Zimbabwean President Bobby Mugabe. In case anyone has been in a coma the last few years, here is a little taste of the current situation. Price Controls and other idiot moves have pretty much left the country's currencey worthless and their economy in shambles.

But don't get mad at Kirsty. Get mad at Mugabe. For many things. Not just this. But also for this too, because if you can shell out 1ook to an Olympic swimmer, you ought to be able to throw a little bit of that towards not killing the rest of your country. Story here.

Change of Plans

I originally planned on writing a lovely piece on censorship (or Censorshit as I like to call it) and the Chinese censors recent infatuation with website blocking but got halfway through and lost interest. So instead I give you this, which is much more entertaining:



In other news, cable.

Recently we just got our cable "upgraded". We did not ask for this upgrade, I believe I speak for my entire household when I say that we were perfectly happy with our old cable. This new "upgraded" cable however, is crap. It keeps on restarting itself, taking several minutes out of program watching and deleting things off the DVR. I would like to take this time to express my great displeasure with Time Warner Cable and with the government. I know it is more convenient to have a cable monopoly but I can't help but feel like we would get better and cheaper service if the consumer had more choice. There was an article in the paper about the numerous complaints the companies have received regarding the new service, but thus far nothing has been done to fix problems. We are not amused.

On a happier note, OLYMPICS!

I have yet to decide whether or not I want Phelps to make history... I keep going back and forth on the issue. All I know is that holy crap!?!?! Where did the Chinese Women's 400 Free Relay come from?

Depressing stuff from the U.N.

I'm not going to pretend to know a great deal about the going ons of the U.N.

But this particular article has not done much to contradict the many negative things that I have heard about them.

You can find the article:
here

"The ban came after a heated session on Monday, when the representative of the Association for World Education (AWE), in a joint statement with the International Humanist and Ethical Union, denounced female genital mutilation, the penalty of stoning for adultery and child marriage as sanctioned by Islamic law."

Now I could understand why Egypt, Pakistan and Iran would get all up in arms if they were criticizing Islam for something like praying towards Mecca or their belief that Allah is the only god, but female genital mutilation (a dangerous, painful and basically cruel practice)? The stoning of adulterers (something that only applies to females in most places and the burden of proof for a man accusing his wife of adultery is really a joke)? Child marriage (I kinda want to put parenthesis after this one because I put them after the other two, but I don't really think that I need to elaborate)? These are legitimate issues that can/are causing harm. Oh, yea and free speech. That one is important too.

Girl's State, day 2

Boring and not fun. I'm eating way too much. It isn't healthy.
I do enjoy some of the people here. My roommate and her friends are really cool, as are my school friends.

We broke into committees today to try and come up with some bill ideas... it was kind of a fiasco.

I tried for a while to get people to make bills that actually had substance. Topics included: lowering the drinking age, making the Gardasil (sp?) vaccination compulsory for middle school girls, limiting eminent domain and annexation, the creation of a school voucher program, banning the display of cigarettes in gas stations (which Canada did), and the legalization of civil unions/ gay marriage.

My thinking was that I need not necessarily support these bills, just come up with good and interesting things to debate. In fact, I didn't agree with half of what I proposed (the only things I agree with are lowering the drinking age, legalization of civil unions/ gay marriage and limiting eminent domain and annexation in case you were wondering... actually I'm not sure how I feel about school vouchers). NOT ONLY did I have to explain to EVERYONE what voucher programs and eminent domain were but they just... gah!!! It was like I was speaking a foreign language! So I ended up just giving up and doing some awesome doodles while my group members wrote bills allowing only cute boys to come into our state and requiring that all lifeguards be hot. I continued to doodle, occasionally stopping to help them express their middle school ideas in heightened vocabulary or just in general bill format. It was really depressing. At least I got some cool doodles out of it.

The whole program is majorly flawed though fundamentally which I will expand upon later.

Went swimming. That was good. Talked to someone on the Catabwa team... she loves it and I'm going to meet the coach Thursday.