No spelling conventions!

Someone sent me a picture from a website called "Things that make you go Aahh". (Okay, here it is. Say 'awwww' and then get back to reading:)


And that's my point. These things don't make me say "aahh". They make me say "aww".

With the "H", "ah" is what you (I) say when confronted with some new point to ponder. But clearly, to the folks that run (or ran, it appears to be on hiatus) TTMYGA, "aahh" is what you say when confronted with teh cute.

We need spelling conventions for these things! How do I know when I see a site like this mentioned without context whether I'll find kitties or conundrums? (Okay, sure, kitties are the overwhelming probability, but still...)

(ps: if all you want is owls, not kitties or puppies or squirrels, then that picture is from this site)

One more for I and the Bird

Psst - got a late post (by one day) from a newcomer, so I've added it to I and the Bird. It's a nice one, too.

"Fine"? What does that mean, then

In the Family Almanac today, the writer says of her "computer-game addicted" son:

He says he isn't interested in anything but playing his game -- a game, I'm ashamed to say, I gave him years ago -- and only wants to work for the maker of the game or the gaming industry. That's fine with us, but I think he should finish college first or join the Air Force, where he could use his simulation skills; this idea didn't work out and counseling didn't work either.

Since we think he could get good marks if he tried -- he has no learning or mental disabilities -- we plan to delete the game from every computer in the house unless he gets A's and B's (or maybe C's) next month

"Fine" with her? Really?

Then why send the kid to counseling, and insist he join the Air Force "first"? Why delete the only thing he's interested in to force him to become what you want, if what he wants is actually "fine"?

Why not help him apply for a job in the industry and see for himself that (if!) they want him to finish his degree?

Be honest with yourself. His aspirations aren't "fine" with you at all, lady.

He didn't win. The argument changed.

Today Charles Krauthammer writes (my emphasis):

A decade ago, [James] Thomson was the first to isolate human embryonic stem cells. Last week, he (and Japan's Shinya Yamanaka) announced one of the great scientific breakthroughs since the discovery of DNA: an embryo-free way to produce genetically matched stem cells.

Even a scientist who cares not a whit about the morality of embryo destruction will adopt this technique because it is so simple and powerful. The embryonic stem cell debate is over.

Which allows a bit of reflection on the storm that has raged ever since the August 2001 announcement of President Bush's stem cell policy. The verdict is clear: Rarely has a president -- so vilified for a moral stance -- been so thoroughly vindicated. ... Bush got it right.

No.

The argument is over, but not because Bush "got it right", and certainly not because he won everyone over to his side. Because Thomson and Yamanaka have rendered the question completely moot.

The argument was always predicated on this "Given that embryonic stem cells are the only to do X" - the question being "is X worth it?" Now that predicate isn't true. The question doesn't have to be answered. X may be worth "it" but "it" is no longer the price. The argument exists purely as a philosophical debate now - and in that debate, on those terms, it is by no means clear that Bush's position is "right".

What "vindicated" Bush is not his "moral stance" but the advancements of science.

Which is pretty ironic, when you consider how thoroughly anti-science the man is.

Happy Birthday, Mark!

Today in Florida, Mississippi, in 1835 Mark Twain was born.

How to sum up this man in the few words of a birthday post? I don't think it can be done. Check the link for a bio and works. Go here for Boondocks' Twain site. And here are just a few quotes ... I could go on and on.

Only when a republic's life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it is in the wrong. There is no other time.

I am not finding fault with this use of our flag; for in order not to seem eccentric I have swung around, now, and joined the nation in the conviction that nothing can sully a flag. I was not properly reared, and had the illusion that a flag was a thing which must be sacredly guarded against shameful uses and unclean contacts, lest it suffer pollution; and so when it was sent out to the Phillippines to float over a wanton war and a robbing expedition I supposed it was polluted, and in an ignorant moment I said so. But I stand corrected. I conceded and acknowledge that it was only the government that sent it on such an errand that was polluted. Let us compromise on that. I am glad to have it that way. For our flag could not well stand pollution, never having been used to it, but it is different with the administration.

Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul.

We teach them to take their patriotism at second-hand; to shout with the largest crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter--exactly as boys under monarchies are taught and have always been taught. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place--the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else's keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan.

In the laboratory there are no fustian ranks, no brummagem aristocracies; the domain of Science is a republic, and all its citizens are brothers and equals, its princes of Monaco and its stonemasons of Cromarty meeting, barren of man-made gauds and meretricious decorations, upon the one majestic level!

The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive...but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born.

Happy Birthday, Minnie!

Today The Cuban Comet, Minnie Minoso (born Saturnino Orestes Armas Miñoso Arrieta in Havana, Cuba), is 86 years old.

His major-league career spanned five decades (1940s-1980s) and he made a couple of brief appearances with the independent Northern League's St. Paul Saints in 1993 and 2003, which make him the only player to have played professionally in 7 different decades. He played for the Indians, White Sox, Cardinals, and Senators, and was the first black White Sox player. "Mr White Sox", another nickname he had, didn't play regularly until he was 28, but his career numbers are impressive: a .298 batting average, with 186 home runs, 1023 RBI, 1136 runs, 1963 hits, 336 doubles, 83 triples, 205 stolen bases, 814 walks and 192 hit by pitch. His career ended with a .389 on base percentage and a .459 slugging average, combined for a solid .848 OPS. He was a 7-time All-Star. For his excellence in left field, he received the Gold Glove Award three times. He led his league in triples and stolen bases three times each.

Happy Birthday, Louisa

Louisa May Alcott was born today in Germantown, Pennsylvania (1832). As The Writers Almanac says,

She had started out writing sensational stories about duels and suicides, opium addiction, mind control, bigamy and murder. She called it "blood and thunder" literature, and she said, "I seem to have a natural ambition for the lurid style." She published under male pseudonyms to keep from embarrassing her family. But in 1867, an editor suggested that she try writing what he called "a girl's book," and she said she'd try. The result was Little Women (1868), and it was a huge success. Such a success that she felt obligated to keep writing more books in the same vein which distressed her, but she did it anyway.

You know, I've read a couple of those "blood and thunder" books - they're not bad at all. But I admit that when I was in junior high, I loved Eight Cousins... the sequel wasn't as good, though.

That editor was obviously the model for that horrible professor in Little Women ...

I and the Bird #63

	Thanksgiving Edition

When you go birding, you're never sure what's going to happen. Maybe you'll see the same birds you see every day. Not that that's a bad thing; I doubt there've been three days in a row in my life when I haven't seen a mockingbird (not counting when I was in Europe), but I still love to see them. Maybe you'll see the seasonal birds, who stick around all winter like the juncos I love, or all summer, like the geese who raise their babies at the pond. Maybe you see a transient who has no real business being here at all - how exciting is that? Or maybe he's not out of place, just hard to find - that can be the most exciting of all. But whatever you see, seeing anything is a lift to the spirit.

This I and the Bird has a mix like that - some regulars, here for every or at least most editions; some absolute newcomers, with their first offering; and some in between. We have video and still photography; wonderful words (even a poem!); birders at home and away from home; birders seeing birds they've never seen before, birds they love, birds they've been hunting their whole life, and birds they don't even know what they are; some science, some interviews, some book reviews ... and birds of every shape, size, age, and color. So settle in and enjoy.

John at DC Birding Blog has some Hits and Misses when looking for sandhill cranes.

Over at Trevor's Birding Trevor shares his Great Birding Moments #31: Glossy Ibis at last!

What would IATB be without a 10,000 Birds post? Corey shares a great moment with us in Rare Birds in Montauk: Breaking 300: "Yesterday was the day I would break 300 birds for the year in New York State. A plethora of rare-for-New York birds had been spotted way out east on Long Island."

Greg Laden wants to know: What bird is this? If you're good at guessing African birds, head on over to Greg Laden's Blog. Even if you're not, it's a very nice picture.

Tai Haku at Earth, Wind & Water shares a unique moment with us. "It all started with the noise of a baby crying; a newborn baby grey seal. I must have missed its birth by seconds but plenty of others were paying attention."

Axel Braunlich goes Birding Mongolia and on Khovd, 17 NOV 2007 finds quite a few birds - including at least one who's very far from home.

Nick Sly at Biological Ramblings saYs "I discuss size variation in gulls, after finding a very small black-headed gull" in Black-headed Gull size variation. (He shows us lots of pictures, too.)

Over at Peregrine's Bird Blog he's bragging about Another Couple of Photos in Birdwatch Magazine - you know what? He deserves to. Check out the nice pictures.

Ecobirder shows us a Snowy Owl at Tamarack Nature Center: "Of course when ever I don't have my camera with me some cool photo opportunity has to pop up...as soon as I finished work I ran home grabbed my gear and headed off to White Bear Lake."

YC Wee shares Helpless Little Heron chick: 4. Teach the bird to fish…": "It is my attempt at teaching a Little Heron chick to catch live fish prior to releasing it back into the wild when its flight feathers are fully developed." As he says, “Give the bird a fish and you feed it for a day. Teach the bird to fish and you feed it for a lifetime.”

Duncan of Ben Cruachan Blog offers "something a bit different from me this time": a bit of Doggerel with a happy ending.

Birdman shares "the joys of being grounded (both Russian birds and English bird-guide) by very welcome rain in an extremist's wildlife-friendly garden in Arusha (i.e. land of the Warusha people), in northern Tanzania" in Birds in Tanzania's Rain On Private Heligoland.

N8 at The Drinking Bird is seasonal with a post called In which I give thanks for North Carolina's birds: "All in all it was a nice morning of remembering why North Carolina birding is special, we may not have the cool winter finches or shrikes or owls that our friends up north have been drowning in this year, but our Woodpecker is a pretty good bird."

In another seasonal post, Amy Hooper of Wildbird on the Fly did some Indoor Birding when she went to relatives in Oregon for Thanksgiving: "I hadn't met one fellow, Steve. He kinda kept to himself and didn't say much that first day. I did notice him often looking through the dining room's glass sliding doors. Intrigued, I followed his gaze. Steve had his eye on the homemade feeder filled with seed."

Liza from the Egret's Nest also does some holiday traveling, and shares the Birds I Saw on my Thanksgiving Trip with us - there are plenty, too.

Wren at Wrennaissance Reflections says "I never saw a cormorant I didn't like": "Last week, I was back in Washington, DC, for a conference. The conference hotel was near the National Zoo, one of my favorite places when I lived in the area. My BFF Judy came to meet me during some down time at the meeting and we spent the afternoon hanging out with animals."

Your host here at the Greenbelt was also at a conference, mine in San Antonio. I saw quite a few Birds of the Riverwalk, some new to me and others not. Coincidentally, I too saw a cormorant!

Owlman offers us his first IATB post, If you build it they will come at Owl box - It's an owl's life!. He says, "As I mentioned previously I have had the owl box up for nearly three years now. The first two years were a bust although I did find owl pellets underneath the owl box both years. ... I corresponded with a couple of folks who have been successful at attracting Screechies. The prevailing wisdom was that clear flight path is more important than the winds. Based on the advice from the experts I moved the box on the new tree back to face west."

And so does Amila of Gallicissa. His is about a Water birds & Sea food trip in Sri Lanka: "A 2-day Water birds & Sea food trip was put together by me and Kusum (11-12 Aug, 2007) to catch the early arrivals of winter migrants & to increase our blood cholesterol levels measurably. We were joined by several of our birding buddies... Our overnight base was a private Bungalow close to Kalpitiya, named Turtle Point ... the highly sought-after Crab Plover close by. All my previous sightings of this Deccan avi-faunal zone rarity had been in the Talaimannar area in Mannar, so one of the ulterior motives of this trip was to find it in a site more accessible."

And one more IATB newcomer, TR, has gone home, From the Faraway, Nearby to Oklahoma. In Pilgrim at Canadian Creek he shares this with us: "Yesterday I spent some time exploring the banks of the Canadian River in appropriately named Canadian County when I flushed a pair of barn owls out of an old building. In all my travels by foot throughout this land I had never once encountered an owl. It has eluded me with great frustration since I was a child. Seconds later I spied a pair of great horned owls in a big Cottonwood tree - our eyes locked immediately and we held each other in a penetrating gaze that seemed to go on forever. Four owls in four minutes after 40 years of waiting and I knew this moment was mine."

Here's another newcomer who submitted a day late, but it's such a nice post that I'm adding it. So check out the free performance by Lucia at Pet Monologues. (well, the performance isn't by Lucia...)

Nick Lund has been away from IATB for a while, but he writes that he's "am starting a new blog consisting solely of interviews with birding people. My two recent interviews are with Bob Duchesne, the man who created the Maine Birding Trail, and Jed Hayden, a scientist who studied Least Bitterns in Maine." Of course you only get one ost here at IATB, so here's Bob Duchesne, but there's nothing to stop you from poking around over at The Birdist once you're there, nudge, nudge, wink, wink...

Somebody who should know better was birding in Mexico and also submitted late - but luckily for us as it's a great post. Jeff Gyr shares "Spark Birds": interviews with birders about "the bird (or birding experience) that somehow took you across the line from not-birder to birder."

GrrlScientist at Living the Scientific Life gives us one of her great book reviews: The Birder's Conservation Handbook by Jeffrey Wells: "this book presents information about the 100 most at-risk bird species in North America and what we can do to protect them."

And over at Birdfreak Birding Blog the Team are also talking about a book: A Contract With The Earth, whose goal is "to bind citizens to the issues of the environment through a wide array of efforts."

And that wraps it up for I and the Bird #63. Next time, December 13, will be at Iowa Voice. See you there, and don't forget to submit your posts.

I am such a geek...

My copy of Neil Whitman's Category Neutrality: A Type-Logical Investigation just arrived!T

here are a number of cases in English where a word with different meanings and different syntactic categories can be used with more than one meaning simultaneously...

Huh? You know, sentences like this:

It's a difficult place to cross or locate people once they are in the area.

Or this:

It makes it tough for him to get his things done and to bed on time.

This book is in the 'Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics' Series from Routledge, and I'm looking forward to making my way through it.

Geography, FOX-style

fev at headsup: the blog catches Fox in some shameless fear-mongering. (I know, what a surprise.)

Report: Iran Produces New Missile
Capable of Reaching the Mideast

I couldn't improve on his response in a million years, though.

Live Forum Tomorrow - Defend the Constitution

IN DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACY

We all know that something is very wrong in our country. The Rule of Law, the Balance of Powers, and our Constitutionally guaranteed Civil Liberties have been under sustained assault by an Administration that is brazen and unrepentant in its abuses of our rights and our founding principles. And, to make matters worse, the Democratic leadership of the House and the Senate have failed to exercise the Constitutional authority granted to Congress to stop those abuses and hold violators accountable.

The results? The powers of the Executive Branch have gone unchecked and its policies unchallenged. The Congress and the American people were deceived into an illegal and immoral war in Iraq, and those same deceptions and manipulations are being used to justify a new war in Iran. The government is spying on its own citizens, ignoring judicial protections and due process, denying the right of habeas corpus, and refusing to abide by international laws, treaties, and principles.

Our nation faces a crisis, yet its leaders, and the candidates campaigning for the Presidency, refuse to acknowledge or address it in any substantive way.
That's why it's time for: A DIALOGUE FOR DEMOCRACY.

This Thursday, November 29, Democratic Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich will host an unprecedented "Dialogue for Democracy" forum that will be streamed LIVE on the Internet at KucinichTV.com. Along with invited guests, Dennis will bring this crisis to the attention of the nation and the world so we can better understand what's wrong, and, more importantly, what we can do about it. The first segment of the LIVE broadcast begins at 11 a.m. and continues until 1 p.m. The LIVE forum will resume at 5 p.m. and end at 9:30 p.m.

AN INVITATION TO SPEAK OUT! The Kucinich campaign is also extending this open invitation to representatives of interested organizations and concerned citizens to participate in this "Dialogue" by sending an email to dialogue@kucinich.us. Tell us who you are, the issues you want discussed, and whether you or your organization would like to participate directly during any of the LIVE broadcasts.

OUR DEMOCRACY - YOUR DEMOCRACY - is at stake in this election. And there's something you can do about it. You can stand with the candidate who stands with you. The one candidate who isn't afraid to speak the truth, to give honest answers, and to lay out real solutions that don't protect the status quo. If that's the kind of leader you want, someone who will protect and defend YOUR interests and rights under the Constitution, consider making a contribution to the Kucinich for President Campaign today. It's your way of ensuring that your voice will continue to be heard throughout the debates, the primaries, and the caucuses.

DOUBLE YOUR IMPACT! Any contribution you make now through November 29th is eligible for federal matching funds. That means your $50 contribution becomes a $100 contribution. A $100 contribution becomes $200. BUT THE DEADLINE IS THURSDAY NIGHT, so please don't wait.

Click here to double the impact of your contribution so you can have an even bigger impact on the campaign, and on the future of our nation.

Defend the Constitution
The Kucinich Campaign

Once more about AQI...

Once again, there's an American on the BBC talking about the new strategy in Iraq. Abul Abed in Ameriya is essentially a warlord on the Somalia model - and he's our man there, to stand up against AQI and make the town safer. Granted, it seems to be working on the local level, but at the risk - closer to the guarantee - of undermining the new, central democracy that until very recently was our last actual excuse for being in Iraq. It seems like our strategy now is to create a fractured, warlord-ridden country that says the right things.

In the words of a Sunni sheikh who's joining up, "It's just a way to get arms". He describes the process like this:

"The Americans lost hope with an Iraqi government that is both sectarian and dominated by militias, so they are paying for locals to fight al-Qaida. It will create a series of warlords. It's like someone who brought cats to fight rats, found himself with too many cats and brought dogs to fight the cats. Now they need elephants."

But the point of this post is to note that the American soldier who was talking to the BBC reporter made a reference to AQI which was then identified as "al Qaeda". Not "al Qaeda in Iraq" (or Mesopotamia), but just "al Qaeda". Period. (Full stop, if you prefer.)

This is disingenuous at best and dishonest at worst. AQI is not al Qaeda. It's a young group that has little to do with the organization hiding out in Pakistan now and nothing to do with the group that attacked the USA back in 2001. Pretending otherwise is a good way to keep Americans agitated, but it's not any less dishonest than ... well, attacking Iraq over 2001 was in the first place.

Dodd? Did you mean Edwards?

Over at Wishydig is a odd, disturbing even, but cute story about Google's "did you mean...?" feature as applied to Presidential candidates. Oddly, if you do an image search on Chris Dodd it recommends you try John Edwards. All the other candidates get no "also try...".

Except Gravel - Google suggests Kucinich.

And Kucinich himself.

Google thinks you might really want images of Elizabeth.

Yeah... could be.

But poor Chris Dodd. He's really much more photogenic than Ron Paul, or Fred Thompson.

Give me your papers!

Blame it on Incunabular. His comment on my post about the Riverwalk stuck in my memory and when I saw Cloak & Dagger on the pay-per-view menu I watched it. I'd seen it before, ages ago, but didn't remember it all that well. It's pretty good, though it is silly that after the tour guide says he can't take any more people, there are all those empty seats on the boat...

Those old-style video games ... boy, they bring back some memories.

But of course it has the classic error of Cold War spy movies: The Soviet guard tells the American agent "Дайте мне ваши бумаги (dayte mnye vashi bumagi)" which is literally "Give me your papers." Unfortunately, in Russian, "bumagi" is "sheets of paper, pieces of paper". It's as if the guard is demanding Jack Flack's manuscript, or possibly his notes. What he should be asking for is Jack's документи (dokumenty), his documents, or just possibly his удостоверение личности (udostovereniye liichnosti), his proof of identity. But not his "papers".

Chuck Who?

http://www.dennis4president.com

As the makers of this video say:

"CNN's agenda was apparent during their November 15th "debate" as they tried to force the narrative to favor conservative corporate candidates. However, this attempt did not phase Congressman Kucinich, who has come back strong with the endorsement of a special friend. Chuck who?"

Donate $100 or more on December 15th, 2007. The goal is to create a one-day contribution of $10 million. Please spread the word and invest in your country this holiday season. There is no better gift to the world and future generations than a Kucinich presidency. Visit the following link to make your pledge:

www.December152007.com

If you can also contribute now, please do so. All donations until November 29th are eligible for matching funds through public financing. That means your contribution will be doubled!

Narrator: Manila Ryce
Writer: Manila Ryce
Director: Manila Ryce

Lying the world into war

This from today's Writer's Almanac:

It was on this day in 1095 that Pope Urban II, while on a speaking tour in France, called for the first Crusade to recapture Jerusalem from the Turks. There was no imminent threat. Muslims had occupied Jerusalem for hundreds of years. But Urban II had noticed that Europe was becoming an increasingly violent place, with low-level knights killing each other over their land rights, and he thought that he could bring peace to the Christian world by directing all that violence against an outside enemy. So he made up stories of how Turks in Jerusalem were torturing and killing Christians, and anyone who was willing to join the fight against them would go to heaven.

About 100,000 men from France, Germany, and Italy answered the call, formed into several large groups, and marched across Asia Minor to the Middle East. Nearly half of them died from exhaustion and sickness before they ever reached their destination. They began sacking cities along the way, and they fought among each other for the spoils of each battle. When they reached the trading city of Antioch, they killed almost everyone, including the Christians who lived there. By the time they got to Jerusalem, it had recently fallen into the hands of Egyptians, who were friendly with the Vatican. But the crusaders attacked anyway, killing every Muslim they could find. The Jews in the city gathered in the temple, and the crusaders set it on fire.

Pope Urban II died two weeks later, never hearing the news. But the crusading would go on for the next 200 years. In the fourth and last Crusade, in 1202, the crusaders never even made it to Jerusalem, but got sidetracked and wound up destroying Constantinople, which was at the time the last great city left over from the Roman Empire.

And why did we ask him, again?

The BBC reporter said to Nicholas Burns (Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs) that John Bolton is pessimistic about the Annapolis conference. Burns' response was quick, dismissive, and comprehensively so: John Bolton is not someone who has been involved in peace in the Middle East, nor is he an expert in the area, nor does he know anything about the problems, so he doesn't think Bolton is someone we should listen to.

That's a paraphrase - he was talking while I was feeding the cat and I couldn't get the words precisely - but the spirit of the quote is accurate. I have to admit I wondered why the hell Bolton's opinion was being sought by anyone. But then, there are so many people who have been involved with this administration - people who have been demonstrably wrong about everything for the past six years - whose opinions are eagerly sought by the media everyday while those who were right are ignored.

As far as Bolton is concerned, his MidEast record is filled with things like being "confident that Saddam Hussein has hidden weapons of mass destruction and production facilities in Iraq," "damned proud of what we did" to prevent an early ceasefire in the Israeli-Lebanese war last year, and stating that "life is about choices. The choices between an Iran with nuclear weapons or the use of military force. I think you have to look at military force." But he's a go-to guy for quotes about America's attitude toward the peace conference?

Yah, Condi has a chance to get Bush engaged here...

But I'll leave you with this Burns quote:

"I think there are better people to quote than John Bolton."

Monday Science Links

This weeks links to Science! (science science science...):

• Greg Laden from Greg Laden's Blog gives us a good lesson on The Three Necessary and Sufficient Conditions of Natural Selection (When you are done reading this post you should be able to: Make erudite and opaque comments to creationists that will get you points with your web friends. Write really tricky Multiple Choice Exam Questions if you are a teacher. Evolve more efficiently towards your ultimate goal because you will be more in control of the Random Evolutionary Process (only kidding on this third one...))


• Brian at Clastic Detritus shows us some cool photos of trace fossils - Rocks and Life. (Trace fossils are not body fossils; they are simply tracks and traces of organisms preserved in the rock record.)
  


• John at John Hawks Anthropology Weblog interviews Mica Glantz, who's in Kazakhstan "working on a reanalysis of Teshik-Tash [who] more closely resembles Upper Paleolithic modern humans from Central Europe than European Neandertals." Fascinating stuff.
  


• Prometheus at A Photon in the Darkness talks about "mild" hyperbaric oxygen therapy for autism and whether it works, and why.


• Chris at Highly Allocthonous talks about how the air we breathe became, well, breathable.


• And because it's Thanksgiving, a bonus: Brian at Laelaps on sexual dimorphism and why some have it and some don't - strategies for reproduction.

Enjoy!

The Week in Entertainment

TV: Caught up on some of last week's DVR'd stuff - of course I had to hold off on watching this week's till I'd seen last week's... it's almost enough to make you wish for the old days of totally stand-alone episodes with no continuity whatsoever. Torchwood: I cannot believe that BBC America censored the word "Jap". I figured there was more to Ianto than we'd seen, but ... woof, boy. And wow. Jack and ... Jack. The dance was sweet. The kiss was hot. Poor man. Cannot wait for the finale. Wow. Pushing Daisies: this show keeps on pleasing. "You would take money from blind children?" "I suppose I could pay my bills with blind kids' smiles, but their money would make it a lot easier." And Ellen Green's singing of "Morning has broken" actually brought tears to my eyes. House: I'm glad CIA doc is gone. And the movie was funny; I wonder if that's a special cut or the way they intend to run it? And who thinks that Amber the Cut-Throat Bitch and the guy Kai Penn plays (can't remember his name) are officially shoo-ins, now that House knows Cuddy wants them gone? (But I do wish House wasn't on Fox; I hate even seeing their promos, especially for the news.) Also watched Nova's Judgment Day; I thought it did an even-handed job, though personally I would have liked it to be a bit longer, with more trial scenes. I did get angry enough at people like Buckingham and Bonsall as it was, though, so it was probably a good thing. I just wonder how many people watched it who didn't already agree with the verdict...

Read: Lamb (for the NBL, review here), and The Sparrow, also for NBL, review coming on Dec 15. Ivory and Horn by deLint - how did I miss this collection when it came out? Delightful, as deLint always is.

Carnival of the godless

The 79th Carnival of the Godless is up at sexy secularist - in a long poem, no less!

Twas the month before Christmas, when - hey, what the heck?
Up go lights, decorations - all the holiday dreck!
Just this Thursday, we ate and we offered our thanks,
As next Christmas rolled in like an army of tanks.
All the stores are bedecked, all the streets are bedazzled,
And these holiday songs leave a man well-near frazzled.

What’s an atheist to do at the end of November?
How to kindle his hearth with a warm, godless ember?
Never fear, herded cats! Pour yourselves some eggnog,
Gather round for a godless, great carnival blog.

And great it is, too - way too many entries to single any out. What with the Boneyard and the Humanists, too, this Sunday will be crammed with reading ... or this week will.

Words from Robert Ingersoll - 15

Is it desirable that all should be exactly alike in their religious convictions? Is any such thing possible? Do we not know that there are no two persons alike in the whole world? No two trees, no two leaves, no two anythings that are alike? Infinite diversity is the law. — Religion tries to force all minds into one mould. Knowing that all cannot believe the church endeavors to make all say that they believe. She longs for the unity of hypocrisy, and detests the splendid diversity of independence and freedom.

Nearly all people stand in great horror of annihilation, and yet to give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself. Mental slavery is mental death and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul. In this sense every church is a cemetery and every creed is a epitaph.

Plea for Individuality and Arraignment of the Church, 1873

The Boneyard

After you've filled up on the Humanist Symposium, head over to the Self-designed Student for the latest Boneyard, your one stop for all of your paleo needs! Amanda says, "It's been an exciting few weeks for the world of paleontology and especially for paleo-bloggers!" And it has indeed. Go find out why. (hint: dinosaurs! Xenoposeidon! Nigersaurus! In fact, it's sauropods galore! and more!)

Humanist Symposium

Welcome to
the 11th Humanist Symposium.

Humanism is a way of thought that affirms the inherent dignity and worth of human life and our ability to seek truth, gain wisdom, and tell right from wrong through the application of reason.

One of the things humanists are associated with, sometimes (but see below) the main if not only thing, is atheism. It's not surprising that almost half of our submissions are on that topic - but only half. So let's get started.

First, we're people, many of us with families, and sometimes that leads to questions about the children. One such is, "What will children choose if they grow up in a mixed-religion household?" Jenny and her commenters wonder that in Choosing Religion posted at the so called me.

On the other hand, though, Deirdré Straughan describes how her daughter chose, and she uses that word deliberately, atheism in Raising a Non-Believer posted at Countries Beginning with "I".

And in case your children (or you) are wondering what that entails, Spanish Inquisitor tells us what's involved: How To Become An Atheist posted at Spanish Inquisitor.

But maybe all this atheism is just a trend? Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris - just the cool kids everyone wants to be like, until they're suddenly not cool any longer? Greta Christina looks at that theory in Godless is the New Black: Is Atheism Just a Trend? posted at Greta Christina's Blog.

Of course, for some folks atheism isn't a trend at all, or even a simple fact, but a painful necessity. Ebonmuse and his commenters offer some advice to an atheist about coming out to his in-laws,posted at Daylight Atheism.

And the Exterminator talks about someone for whom it's a choice denied in Join me in welcoming Name Withheld posted at No More Hornets - and his commenters do just that.

And in that post, and the comments, we see that atheism is like other parts of being human. But that shouldn't surprise us. Of course being human is far more than atheism, or theism for that matter.

Here are some posts that demonstrate that, beginning with a celebration of the Net and how it can introduce us to the best of ourselves: Paul Sunstone's musing on "the interconnectedness of humanity through the internet", How the Net Fascinates Me posted at Café Philos: an internet café.

What makes us human? One of the things that differentiates us from other animals is (we think) that we alone foresee our deaths. Helga Sombrofsky looks at that from a biological, evolutionary perspective in Life Without Death posted at Questions and Chaos.

Death, and knowing about it, thinking about it, certainly is one of the big things in life. Dwight Lyman thinks "strangely, it enriches life to know the truth" and tells us why in Fictitious Intermediaries & Death posted at thenakedatheist.

Another thing that makes us human? Ego. Cats may have it, but they're, well, cats: it works for them. For us, it can be a problem. therapydoc talks about balancing ego and self in Being Great and the Self in Self-esteem posted at Everyone Needs Therapy.

Another? We're "the learning animals." Alvaro Fernandez looks at human intelligence, and the need to stop thinking about it as fixed and to focus on improving everyone, in Is Intelligence Innate and Fixed? posted at SharpBrains.

And what's more human than money? Shaun Connell gives us one view of Money - Ayn Rand's - posted at Reason and Capitalism (though I have to warn you that, perhaps not surprisingly, there are a lot of intrusive ads).

One more thing humans can do is rise above their instincts. On another front entirely, Russell Blackford takes on the "ethical 'yuck' factor" and its proponents in Margaret Somerville is at it again: Shadows of the Endarkenment from Montreal posted at Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.

I'll finish up with a post that pretty much summarizes what we humanists are: a poem about giving thanks. It's by Cuttlefish, and it's called An Atheist Gives Thanks posted at the Digital Cuttlefish

So that's the Humanist Symposium's Eleventh Edition. The next edition will be at evanescent on December 16. Use this link to submit, and I'll see you there.

SEC East is ours!

Okay, we have to share it with Georgia, but since UT beat the Bulldogs it's the Vols that will play LSU for the SEC Championship.

LSU is, of course, mighty angry that they lost their shot at the national title. But they have to get through the Vols before they can really complain. If they lose to us, we'll have only one more loss than them over the season, though. Woot woot!

Go Vols!

NL: Lamb by Christopher Moore

(Note: I joined too late to read Gore Vidal's Julian, but I read it years ago. I have only vague memories of it, but they're positive ones.)

So. Lamb.

Let me begin by saying that I have now read everything Christopher Moore has written (so far). Not one book has been a waste of time, and some have been sheer delight. In that latter category fall (roughly in order) Coyote Blue, Island of the Sequined Love Nun, A Dirty Job, Practical Demonkeeping, and Fluke. Where does Lamb fall? Down towards the bottom - better than You Suck! and The Stupidest Angel but not quite as good as The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove or Bloodsucking Fiends. A good book, enjoyable and one I'm glad I read, but not something I'm likely to reread.

I'd also like to say that I'm grateful to the NBL for picking this one: although it had been recommended to me by a commenter, and although I love Moore, and although I had bought it, it has been sitting in my stack of to-read books for more than a year now and never got picked up. Some themes I just worry about. I didn't think Moore was going to write something like King Jesus (that is to say, outrightly heretical), but I wondered how (if) his brand of humor would translate to the Jesus story, or whether he'd abandon his usual style altogether and produce something either piously unreadable or boring, whether because too savage or too timid.

I should have trusted him.

On to the review.

Lamb is a peculiar book, which doesn't mean bad. It's actually quite good. Moore clearly did some research before he started writing, and because he chooses to end the story - the main story, the "Gospel according to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal", not the framing device - on Good Friday, with the death of Joshua ("Jesus is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Yeshua, which is Joshua," Biff tells us right away), Moore doesn't have to deal with the other Gospels, except in passing, or Paul or the rest of the New Testament and the whole Christianity thing. His story is about Joshua bar Joseph of Nazareth, primarily about his life from age 5 to 30. Oh, he doesn't ignore the three years of teaching, but most of the book is about the "missing years". He takes on the popular not-quite-heresy that Jesus studied in the east and gives it his particular spin. Joshua and Biff - let me pause a moment to sort out Biff for you. His name is actually Levi - he is, in fact, Levi the son of Alphaeus, who is mentioned briefly in Mark 2 and Luke 5 as a tax collector; Matthew calls this tax collector"Matthew", but he also refers to "a James the son of Alphaeus" who is, in this book, one of Biff's brothers - it's confusing, but then, there are a lot of little contradictions and confusions like that in the Bible. Biff is his nickname.

They head off to find the Magi so they can teach Joshua what it means to be the Messiah, since he's getting no messages from God on the subject. Moore sort of follows tradition here in making them African, Chinese, and Indian, but his "Chinese" Gasper is actually an Indian who lives in China - Moore has to have Buddhist monks in China for his plot, and also because he can't resist Jesus learning kung-fu - and his Balthasar, though African, lives in Afghanistan. (For those of you who've read other Moore, Balthasar is also involved with Catch.) And so what we get is Joshua's journey through the teachings of Lao-Tze, the Buddha, and Krishna in order to craft his own, unique message about the Divine Spark in each of us. When they get back to Palestine we get a condensed version of the three years of teaching, with an odd group of disciples (example: why is Thomas called Didymus, meaning The Twin? Because he has a imaginary twin brother), and Joshua having the authentic hard time convincing the Jews who are longing for the Messiah that (a) he is that but (b) that's not what they think it is. "We can't cast the Romans out of the Kingdom," he says patiently, "because the kingdom is open to all."

That's not a popular message in the Bible, either - or nowadays, for that matter.

I have to hand it to Moore with his ending, too. The first thing Biff writes is :"You think you know how this story is going to end, but you don't." And when Biff comes up with his plan after Joshua is arrested, I thought now I knew, but no. I won't spoil it, but it works if you've decided as Moore did: "theologically, I made certain assumptions about who Jesus was, mainly that he was who the Gospels say he was." That sets this book apart from debunking books or novels (like, say, King Jesus or Dan Brown...). But that doesn't mean that Moore has written a sober, pious bore either. I wouldn't go as far as the guy quoted on the back jacket and call it "sexy", but there is sex in it. (Not explicit, but you can figure out what's going on.) Biff is no ascetic. But the Magdalene is not a harlot, nor married to Joshua for that matter, and Joshua remains celibate (I don't think that's a spoiler). There's a lot of humor in it - whether you think it's funny will depend on your tastes, of course - but it's not sacreligous humor unless your standards are grimly narrow. (If they are, you're probably not reading a book subtitled "The Gospel according to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal" in the first place.)

As for what I alluded to earlier - the contradictions in the Gospels - Moore deals with it by not. After all, Biff wasn't around when they were written, or nor would he even have known the authors (here Moore follows scholars who assign none of the gospels to disciples, regardless of the traditional beliefs; Moore in fact has Biff assert that the Matthew he knew couldn't have written the book if he'd wanted to), let alone would he have known the later books, so how can he be expected to explain them? Moore decides to conflate some people (Mary of Magdala and Mary of Bethany) and separate others, and gives us continuity by having the same Roman around from Joshua's childhood to crucifixion (the centurion whose servant is healed). But he makes no attempt to reconcile the gospels to Biff's story: Biff's the eyewitness, the others were telling stories they'd heard from those who'd heard from others.

The question to ask is: Does it work? And the answer to that is, Yes. Yes, it does. The Joshua Biff knows is a believable guy, complex and at times irritating - and irritated - but never dull, po-faced, or preachy - even when he's preaching, remarkably enough. Watching him figure himself out reminded me a bit of watching The Motorcycle Diaries: would we have cared about Ernesto's youthful angst, self-doubt and -discovery, and travels had we not known he was turning into Che before our eyes? I don't know, and I'm not sure the question can be answered. Would we care about Biff and Joshua if we didn't know that (within the structure of the narrative at any rate) Joshua is indeed the Son of God? Again, I don't know. But we do know it, and so what we read plays into a much greater whole, and at least half the joy of the book is seeing how Moore aligns his vision with the larger one.

I don't live in Moore's universe. I don't believe that Joshua is the Son of God. But then, I don't believe in vampires, death's helpers, Native American gods, talking animals, angels, demons, or giant lizards, either, and that doesn't stop me from devouring Moore's books.

You don't have to believe in Jesus to believe in Joshua.

ps - want to join us? We read fiction, get six weeks per book, and there are no dues! Go here for details.

ACTFL 2007 VI: Day 3

Sunday was a half-day, and a number of people were already gone. But I still went to three very useful presentations.

First up was An-nyong! and Aloha!: Secrets to Successful Vocabulary Learning--and Teaching!! by Jennifer Hoover (Opelika City Schools) on "word knowledge, lexical memory, and practical research-based steps to help your students acquire the vocabulary they need". Among the techniques she showed us were doing crosswords and word searches with the clues in the target language, and having students do word maps for important verbs:

The key is David Wilkins' notion:

Without grammar, very little can be conveyed.
Without words, nothing can be conveyed.

Next, I had wanted to attend Reading Assessment Strategies: Theoretical and Practical Issues by Stanford's Kenric K. Tsethlikai [In light of research in the field of reading in a second language and the National Standards for Foreign Language Education Project, this session will examine classroom implications for reading instruction and assessment in college language instruction. Starting with the notion of assessment in the area of reading, the presenter will consider pedagogical practices and parameters for developing reading instruction and assessments.], but he had to cancel.

So instead I picked Maximizing Learner Strategies to Enhance Pragmatic Development: An Online Illustration, by Julie Sykes (University of Minnesota)and Andrew Cohen (University of Minnesota). It turned out to be sort of a sequel to one I went to at the LTE conference at CARLA back in June. The abstract read "This presentation demonstrates how language instructors can optimize their learners' online experience with pragmatics curricula by reinforcing the learners' use of strategies. Participants will receive guidelines for maximizing their students' knowledge of strategies for improving their learning and performance of pragmatics as well as specific ideas for implementation." This program uses a virtual immersion, with natives and empirical research, in order to teach pragmatics in a non-threatening but realistic and interactive environment. Very cool.

And I finished off the day - and the conference - with another by Andrew Cohen, this time co-authored by Noriko Ishihara (Meiji University), Teaching and Learning Pragmatics: Where Language and Culture Meet. This one's abstract read: "a new guide for the teaching and learning of pragmatics is described and illustrated through sample activities. Benefits and challenges associated with the teaching of pragmatics are discussed." Workshops for teaching teachers to teach pragmatics were discussed. I would love to go to one - I'll have to see if I can get it funded!

And so ended the conference. I had another day in San Antonio. I'll post once more with a few thoughts about various things and some pictures of miscellanea. I enjoyed this conference a lot - it was fun and educational. And you don't get to say that about much in this life, at least not sincerely.

ACTFL 2007 V: The Riverwalk / Paseo del Rio

The hotel we stayed at was on the Riverwalk, and, as I said before, we didn't go very far away from it. It's beautiful. Yes, it's a commercial, touristy thing (though on Saturday night the River Center Mall was swamped by local teenagers), but it's still beautiful. We walked around on it, ate a number of meals there, and took a boat tour on Sunday.

Just an aside ... this was a tourist tour, not long and not in depth, and I wasn't expecting a dispassionate look at the facts of Texas history or anything like that. But don't the tour guides wonder at some of the things they say? For instance, as we went past the spot where the first Catholic mass was said in San Antonio, the guide told us that the place, and the river, "didn't have a name until June 13, 1691, when Domingo Terán de los Ríos, who was on an inspection tour with Father Damián Massanet, named it after St Anthony." Okay, if doubtful, but after a brief pause she took up the next paragraph of her spiel, which dealt with the color of the water. "This water is not really green," she said. "It's clear. See the limestone? That's what makes it look green. If you take it up in a glass, it's completely clear. The Indians called it Yanaguana, which meant 'Clear Water'." Is it just me, or is that not a name???

Oh well. The place is absolutely beautiful, and San Antonians have every right to be proud as hell of it. Here are some of the many photos I took. To avoid too many photos (hahahahahaha) I'm putting the birds into a separate post, birds of the Riverwalk.

Steps down to the river level are everywhere on the streets.

This picture is from Crockett Street looking down.

That's the convention center in the mid-background, with the Tower of the Americas behind it.

This was right down from our hotel.

Also right down from our hotel; just cross a footbridge and you can walk to the convention center without messing with the street traffic (that purple bridge is inside the convention center).

The tour boats - there are also river taxis.

A footbridge, and part of the River Center Mall.

From inside the convention center grounds, our hotel (the big square one on the left, not the stepped one on the right which is also a Marriott and part of the River Center). You can usually walk in on either side of the river, but they're building another hotel and that side is blocked off right now. River taxis can come into the convention center and drop people off.

The River Center. Yes, it was Sunday before Thanksgiving.

The river entrance to La Villita.

(FYI, here's an informative site on the history of the San Antonio River and the Riverwalk.)

Raptors get no respect

On the way home from work Wednesday my friend and I saw a hawk being mobbed by little birds (couldn't tell precisely what).

"Raptors get no respect," said Jim. "You never see a bunch of rabbits chasing a fox."

148 years ago today

a book was published that forever changed the way we look at the world.

(hat tip to John Wilkins at Evolving Thoughts and John Lynch at Stranger Fruit)

merging verbs

Everyone knows we're slowing losing the distinction between lie and lay, a process not helped by the past tense of lie being lay, or lay's being regular (if oddly spelled) while lie is irregular and English loving to smooth out those irregulars. But it's not stopping there.

First, what's the difference between lie and lay? They're a clearly related pair of verbs; the first is intransitive (meaning it takes no object) and the second transitive (meaning it does). So, things lie, but are laid, that is, lie means "to be lying" but lay means "to put into a lying position" (granted the extended meanings, of course). It's useful to have a pair of verbs; you can use the transitive one without specifying the object, as for instance about hens: "Did the hens lay yet?" or "This hen is a good layer." and despite the absence of an overt object, one is clearly implied.

But if you say "Lie it down over there" people know what you mean. And if you say "Lay down and get some sleep" only wise-asses ask "lay who down?" (or whom). And that's the way things are going: the verbs are merging. People complain about it all the time.

What they aren't complaining about is the other two pairs of verbs that are undergoing an equal merging.

Set and sit, for instance. In this case, they're both irregular, though set is one of those verbs, like put, that doesn't inflect for tense at all (it does take the -s for third-person singular, and the -ing, but then every single verb in English does those). But alongside "set it down over there" and "sit down" you'll hear "sit yourself down". For a lot of people, this merge may be more or less transparent due to the similarity in the vowels. Just as pin and pen are homonyms for many people, sit and set are close enough that their merging may be unnoticed; you hear what you want to hear.

But what about the other pair? Raise and rise. They're like lay and lie in that the transitive verb is regular (in this case, regularly spelled as well) while rise is not. With raise/rise the nouns maintain the difference, too: a rise in prices or sea level, a high-rise building or "catching a ball on the rise" show things going upwards on their own; a raise in wages is one that someone has created.

Yet people are mixing these verbs up as well. A quick Google search this morning shows these intransitive uses of raise (in none of these is there an implied object, as in, for instance, saying in a poker game "Bob raises, John folds, what about you?"; each should be rises):

• A photograph titled "Mist raises from Tuolumne Meadows on a autumn morning"
• On an Italian translation web site, an offered "the fog raises away from its thinnest meshes" (which was corrected to "rises" by another reader)
• A music review says "His music is the perfect backdrop for the late nights of empty street calm, when the fog raises from below the streets and traffic lights flash."

And on the 13th of November (the day I started this post (though things intervened)) I heard a transitive use of rise - and on the BBC no less!

"Will this be an excuse to rise prices elsewhere?"

You can find more, too, if you work at it. Like this screen-saver ad: "Balloons are going to rise you into the sky towards the light of stars." Or quite a few songs with lyrics including the phrase "rise me up" or "rise me high". Or the Daily Reflections for Oct 10: "Lord, You rise me up from sleep and slumber. You rise me up from sin and death." Heck, I even found a poker guy(!) saying

Now thinking about that hand, he played 7, 2 off suit and at no time did he re-rise me, so did he think I was bluffing, well no in my opinion, if he put me on a bluff the correct move was to re-rise me, now when I bet £100 on the turn did he still put me on a draw maybe, but by then he should of folded, he knows that his pair of 7’s is no good, what hands can he beat not many ...What am saying is the more cards the he allowed me to see the more hands the were beating him, he should of folded or re-raised at no time should he just call.

For this fellow the two verbs seem to have merged completely: the bare form (used with did and to) is rise but the regular past is raised. Now there are some other things going on here as well: comma splicing; his spelling of "should have" as "should of" (as it sounds); and the very interesting use of "the" instead of "that", but for him "rise" is the transitive form. He's a Brit, or at least he's playing for pounds, but all that means is the merging of the verbs is going on more places than here.

Are we doomed to lose the distinction? Looks kind of like it. Which, for all that I'm no prescriptivist, is too bad. It's a useful one. But it looks as though lots of people are getting by without it, and I expect we all will find other ways to make it if we have to.

ACTFL 2007 IV: Day 2

Day 2 began with Second Language Reading: Going beyond the Sentence Level by Rumia Ableeva (The Pennsylvania State University). The abstract read "This presentation discusses the integration of discourse-based activities and heuristic tests into reading instruction. These approaches allow instructors to engage students in discussions, negotiation of meanings and critical thinking. The presentation begins with a literature overview related to teaching literary texts from this perspective. Then, pedagogical applications of literary texts are presented." This was an enormously useful presentation; looking at my notes, I've got five pages! We start with HD Brown's statement that "Language is more than a sentence-level phenomenon" - something I try to get my students to think about when they're reading or translating complex texts - and then worked on strategies for getting students to deal with the whole text. "The goal is not for the student to "get the right answer" but rather to formulate a rationale for an hypothesis based on concrete, text-based observations." A lot of helpful strategies here for building on common knowledge among students, negotiating meaning, and applying discourse strategies to enhance their comprehension.

I next meant to attend Meeting the Challenge of Grammar Teaching in a Communicative Classroom but it turned out, upon checking, to be for French (again!), including all the resources. I might have gotten something out of it, but I decided instead to attend Adapting the Integrated Performance Assessment for Content-Based Instruction by Diane Tedick (University Of Minnesota), Tara Fortune (University of Minnesota), Laurent Cammarata (University of Georgia), and Kazue Oda. The abstract: "This presentation describes an adaptation of the Integrated Performance Assessment (IPA) to maximize its use in content-based instruction (CBI). Strengths of the IPA model are highlighted, specific ways to adapt the model for CBI are explained, and detailed, teacher-developed examples of IPAs for a range of CBI contexts are shared." The IPA rubrics must be adapted, because "In the IPA, the content of the text is an excuse for language use, but in CBI the content is important." Also, the IPA cycle has presentation (such as reports or essays) after interpersonal (conversation or messaging), and it probably needs to be the other way around in CBI classes. Grammar must be more automatic for interpersonal performance, as there's no checking before you submit, so to speak.


Then my original choice of Grammar Does Have Meaning: Training Readers to Find Meaningful Detail turned out to be totally in Spanish, so instead I went to Learning Languages From a Distance: The Potential of Technology by Ann Tollefson (Language Associates International) and Thomas Welch. The abstract: "Presenters will examine current and upcoming distance-learning technologies, including selected applications of technology useable within a traditional classroom to expand students’ access to real-time language and culture. Standards for assessing the use of technology in language learning will be discussed. Input from the audience will be solicited and discussed." Again, good thoughts on integrating wikis, and a couple of good pedagogical wikis programs were discussed and modeled.

The rest of the conference I stuck with my original choices. Fourth up today was Interactive Technology: Connecting authentic language and cultural content with modern teaching methodologies by Christine Galbreath Jernigan (http://bilingualwiki.com) and Michel Hallot (El Dorado School District 15) - though, unfortunately, she wasn't there. I say 'unfortunately' because she was supposed to talk content while he talked tech, and without her the presentation, though it did contain some useful websites and ideas, was mostly about the tech, at a fairly basic level - touchboards and websites - which I didn't need. Not his fault, but this was the least useful to me; clearly most of the people there were eating it up. The abstract: "Affordable, user friendly technology encourages interactive activities, using the same skills students use when they surf the Internet. This familiarity and authenticity teaches language in a relevant cultural context. Technology becomes an integral part of the day-to-day learning process and outside activity in language labs or home/library computers." It certainly does apply to today's students.

And I finished up with a very useful - and the only one for Russian (except the one for absolute beginners) - "My Sweet Giraffe" or Tips on Teaching Culture by Mara Sukholutskaya (East Central University), though as it turns out, it was applicable to all languages and had examples in more than just Russian. Abstract: "Ever wonder how to address a loved one in Russia, Nigeria, or Korea? Or how to combine language and culture from your initial encounters with students? This session will enrich the cultural dialogue by offering ideas on selecting materials and building on varying levels of language competency in the classroom." This was about using short and (sometimes deceptively) simple proverbs and sayings to teach "a dialog of culture." Why? Because literature is long and often complex. Culture is "more than festivals and cuisine" and it deserves to be taken, and taught, seriously. But that doesn't mean we can't have fun.

This was the one session - very small number of people for the last one of the day - where someone was just a jerk. She was trying to get us to compare various cultural things and he was just irritating. For instance, she was talking about omens and asked what spilling salt meant in American, Russian, and Korean (that's who she had in her audience) cultures, and because he didn't get to answer for Russians, he interjected "But there's also хлеб и соль, bread and salt." Yes, there is, but that's hardly an omen and has nothing to do with anything we're talking about! I could say, "And there's also "putting salt on someone's tail," too, with as much relevance. Sheesh. And this happened every time she brought up an example. "But there's also..." or "I'd just like to say..." If you want to talk so much, submit a paper, guy. Otherwise, though, an enjoyable session with useful tips on cross-cultural awareness and games to play to make the learning more engaging.