Meet Blaze

Meet Blaze.

Good bye, Spike

Spike died...probably of coccidia; which the vet didn't find until another ferret developed it. . He just got so sick, that he stopped eating, wouldn't take his medicine and just got sicker and sicker.

ferret weigh in

Enkidu: 2lbs 9.5oz; 1.176kg

Wolfie: 2lbs 0.25oz; 1.014kg

Spike: 2lbs 4.25oz;

Spike joined us on January 26, 2011.

(Loki left us on January 2 , 2010)

Demonizing the other

It never ceases to amaze me how people from opposite political ideologies can take the same argument and use it against each other. I posted on Martin Niemöller's poem of injustice on the part of the Nazis and the enlightened self-interest involved in speaking out against injustice. In the comments section, someone just posted this:

That poem is one of the most heart-wrenching writings in the Western world. It makes an irrefutable point about moral clarity.

I just wrote to a woman, an enthusiastic supporter of the current american president, and mentioned this poem. She said, "I don't study war history."

I was stunned! These are the people who put a non-citizen in our White House.

My response:

Actually, Obama is a citizen. http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthcertificate.asp

I think that we all need to speak up, though, when we see injustices taking place, regardless of political orientation.

Talk about being stunned! Usually, I wouldn't consider someone this xenophobic to (need to) take the part of Niemöller against a more liberal individual. I would also hope that the more liberal individual wouldn't disagree with the sentiments expressed in the poem; of course, taken out of context, it's impossible to know with what exactly the woman alluded to was taking issue. As far as not studying history, I suspect that there are many of all ideologies guilty of this.

It's the normal thing, at least in the United States, to accuse the other side of ignorance or malice. I suspect that we probably all have more in common than we are led to believe by those seeking power through the spread of fear.

One of my favorite facebook quotes from a colleague

C... will be on the 13th floor of [Our favorite campus building]. All day. There are unanswered questions about Ezekiel's use of Egypt. I'm going to invent them and answer them. That's what a scholar does.

It's funny, because it's true!

5 children a day accused of being witches in Nigeria - EVERY DAY!

Photo: ©Robin Hammond

And being accused of being a witch means a horrible life, or often death for the poor child.

If the parents aren't willing or able to pay a preacher to chase out the devil, then the child is abandoned, or mutilated, or killed, or a combination of that.

"The deeply held belief by the people of Akwa Ibom State and the Efik speaking communities in Cross River State cuts across all tiers of society. Widely read and travelled academics and local villagers fear such children. This fear stems from the belief that a spiritual spell can be given to a person through food and drink. The soul of the person who eats this spell will then leave the body to be initiated in a gathering of witches and wizards. The initiated person will then have the power to wreak havoc, such as causing diseases like HIV/AIDS, malaria, hepatitis, typhoid, cancer. All accidents, drunkenness mental health problems, smoking of marijuana, divorce, infertility, and misfortunes are seen to be the handiwork of witches and wizards. In recent times it is believed that children have become the target for initiation by the elderly witches as they are more susceptible to their spells and are quicker in action."

Children are chopped with machetes, burned with acid and buried alive. All this is done in the name of Christianity! If you are a Christian, please demand that your church take a stand against such practices by other so-called Christians!

Below are links to a documentary on this atrocity "Dispatches: Saving Africa's Witch Children"..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUJSME0TORw Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7C8Znyf510 Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE8epBkSPfo Part 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYG-h1avVrc Part 4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nH8ZJbJ9lY Part 5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXUKF8dHf4A Part 6

To donate funds to care for these abandoned and traumatized children, go here:

http://www.steppingstonesnigeria.org

10 things that my addiction to the Twilight series of books has brought to my attention (Now with all new bonus reflections!)

1) Wow…look, that’s that plot curve thing that they talked about in high school…is the really long flat part an extended exposition or really slowly rising action?
2) The opportunity to live vicariously through the romantic lives of imaginary people while my own life is limited to surviving grad school.
3) The realization that my disagreements with the casting in the film adaptation are evidence of everyone reading a different story, even though they’re reading the same book. I greatly suspect that I’m not reading the story that the author wrote, but I really like my version of it!
4) Relatively cheap thrills. I’ve been reading and rereading the same books for the last few months.
5) Improved Spanish skills through my reading of the series in Spanish.
6) Basic literature courses might be more effective at encouraging reflection on literature if they start with pop literature that people would actually enjoy reading multiple times. How much do you really see of a book the first time through, particularly if you don’t care to read it?
7) A reaffirmation of the effectiveness of formula fiction and the tastes of the masses. The first time I realized that everyone might like something because it was actually gratifying was when I read Anne Rice. Before that, I’d been rather elitist, assuming that if the masses loved it, I shouldn’t bother.
8) I really am annoyed by inconsistency in imaginary worlds. It’s OK if pigs fly, but they had better always be able to fly or have a good reason for not being able to do so!
9) Not all translators are created equal. It’s possible to be a professional translator without mastery of the source language.
10) German books are more expensive than English or Spanish books.

And a bonus reflection: Reading the stories in languages other than my own (which is the original) has caused me to read more slowly. I find myself stopping to consider what a foreign word might have been in the original English. Reading it in other languages creates the necessary distance to contemplate more than just the plot, but rather the phrasing as well. Also, I've noticed more foreshadowing (though this might just be an artifact of having read the same story multiple times.) It will be interesting to see if my experience reading it in English feels different after having read it in Spanish and German.

And another: I've had many discussions with colleagues about the dangers and merits of using American media translated into German for the purpose of teaching German. Arguments against such a thing are that translations do not use the same sorts of phrasing and structure as German works and they do not have the same cultural relevance. My thought is that, at least at the lower levels of language learning, that it doesn't really help to read only stuff originally in German with the ideal of developing native-like sensibilities and phrasing. Frankly, if you continue with the language, then you will have plenty of opportunity to work on that. However, for introductory study, I think that it makes a lot of sense to read things written by people from the learner's culture because such works are likely to express things that the learner would like to be able to express. Maybe a native German would never think to say X, Y or Z, but I would, and it would be nice to know how to make myself understood. This isn't to say that you shouldn't read German works by German authors when learning German. Of course it is important to have authentic materials to learn cultural understanding. On the other hand, if you are reading a best-seller in translation, I think that the argument could be made that it has become part of the German culture as well, or at least part of a subculture. I mean, to take an example from music, I think that the Beatles are as much a part of German culture as they are of American, though the exact place that they have varies by such things as whether the person understands English or just hears the music and probably also the age of the listener.

my new T-shirt

Front text:
Language is a tool!

Back text:
"No form of language is
cognitively or linguistically
superior to any other in any
absolute sense outside of
particular contexts"
(J. Cummins, 2000; p. 77).

Front:


Back

recipe for yummy

Well, I'm currently enjoying something that I threw together last night:

• 1lb ground turkey,
• a robust dash of Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning,
• 1 package southwestern veggie blend (corn, black beans, chopped peppers),
• a bit of V8 juice,
• 1 cup whole grain noodles (uncooked),
• a bit of cheese crumbled, cut, or otherwise made small (1/2 cup?),
• a can of pineapple,
• salt and pepper to taste.
• (water or milk to keep everything moist as needed)

1. Brown the ground turkey with the creole seasoning and maybe some salt and pepper (do not drain)
   
2. Add water, juice from pineapple, and a splash of V8
3. Add noodles and cook until noodles are about half-way done
4. Add veggie blend and pineapple
   
5. Add cheese and mix in until melted into sauce
6. Cook until noodles are done and the sauce ceases to be soup.
7. Enjoy.
   

The cheese and the tomato aren't identifiable as such in the finished product, but they definitely add to the flavor.


Very tasty. Probably could feed about 4-6.

Wolfie takes an interest in SLA

Here's Wolfie perusing my Second Language Acquisition shelf.

Note on the distinction between living and dead languages

If you aren't able to watch a mainstream movie in the language that you are studying, then the language you are learning is not a living language.

(unless, of course, it is a language that simply isn't spoken by enough people with enough money for them to have made movies in that language.)

Let's take some examples:

• Italian: yep, you can watch movies in Italian
• Latin: nope...no mainstream movies in Latin
• Modern American English: yep, you can watch movies in English
• Old English: nope, not a living language (Think the original Beowulf.)
  
• Egyptian Arabic: yep, you can watch movies in Egyptian Arabic
• Classical Arabic: nope, not a living language - try watching a movie after you've figured out how to read the Qur'an...you'll be sadly disappointed.

Independence in America becomes isolation and loneliness

I've been saying this for years. Now I'm hearing a program on the radio about a book that says the same thing:

The Lonely American by Jacqueline Olds and Richard S. Schwartz.

Basically, we spend so much time being being independent that we forget to have connections to people. Then we wonder why we get depressed.

More fun than a...

...ferret in a box lid!

Fuzzy Ferret Frenzy!

Here are Wolfie and Enkidu going at it again! It's so nice to have happy ferrets in the house!