The writing revolution lives

mapHead: Keith Harrison

When one considers the brief given implicitly to most student writers, but NEVER examined, it goes something like this: You don’t know much about the recent history of Madagascar but your task is to write about it AS IF you do know something about it (you will get the vast bulk of your knowledge from sources, of course) and AT THE SAME TIME you should write as if you are not a person and must never use the first person. The brief is doubly incoherent at root. No wonder students hate writing essays…

Map Head has a great preview of a book by Keith Harrison: Echoes of “Godel Escher Bach” applied to the theory of teaching writing.

A few pictures of Aina

Because Daddy just can’t resist.

That’s Aina being very proud of herself for dressing up as a hula girl all by herself.

And this one is Aina on a walk through the forest.

In which I demonstrate why Staffan’s head hurts when his father tries to make a joke

What did Henrik Ibsen tell Edvard Munch about light bulbs and fishermen?
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
      A Norwegian joke.

What do you call a guy who puts on bowling shoes to go jogging?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

      A running joke.

What do you call a guy who can’t admit he likes Gucci leather underwear?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

      An in-joke.

What do you call MSG in a London cooking class?

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

      A tasteless joke.

Where was it in relation to a midnight dreary, once?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

      A-pun

YouTube – TUNAK TUNAK TELETUBBIES

Video for the day. Staffan loved it. I loved it.

YouTube – TUNAK TUNAK TELETUBBIES: “”

Conga Se Menne

Reggae for your sauna: http://www.congasemenne.com/ Surprisingly fun, and full of Upper Peninsula in-jokes, of which I understand very few.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Staffan has landed a part in Seattle Opera’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, March 27 – April 5th at the Meydenbauer Theater in Bellevue. We are very proud of you, kid!

Box of Smut

Occasionally the WordPress Blog Stats will provide something of interest. Today it turns out that someone searched for “box of smut” and came upon my humble blog.

It is hard to overstate what disappointment might have befallen this poor individual. And so, in the interest of multiplying the disappointment of smut-seekers worldwide, I offer this blog post. If you are searching for smut and have wound up here, you must really not know how to use the internet.

But it does remind me of that classic Tom Lehrer line — “I do have a cause, though. It is obscenity … I’m for it.”

Ditty Ditty Boing Boing

Boing Boing has a little game going in this thread — We can has games – Boing Boing: The idea being to write something on one of the standard Boing Boing themes.

I really should have worked on that design document instead, but oh well… not bad for an hour’s work. Here’s my entry :

`Twas Xeni, and the pesk of wits
Hid schneier and battelle in the make:
All cory were the jackinjills,
For the felder frau enrake.

We bare the Jardinsex, my Sis,
The punks that steam, the cats that lol!
We bare the BeeBee butt, and diss
The zuneious Craphound mall!'

She took her drupal script with tea,
Long time the lessig foe she wrought --
Podcasted she for BoingBoing tv,
And blogged a bit for nought.

And, as in breslin prose she squid,
The Jardinsex, with gama game,
Came hacking through the comic vid,
And dropping not a frame!

It's diffed, it's daft! through chore and craft
The drupaled text had wit and whack!
She got it grrrld, and with it urled
She permalinked her stack.

'Have you defrocked the Jardinsex?
Strum on my uke, my jesting Jill!
O roq la rue! Audrey! Adieu!'
She twittered back a thrill.

`Twas Xeni, and the pesk of wits
Hid schneier and battelle in the make:
All cory were the jackinjills,
For the felder frau enrake."

So far the early competition is a great parody of “My Favorite Things”, which is even funnier if you actually sing it. I’ll bet there will be plenty more.

365 Ain’t Bad

I guessed 371, it turns out to be 365. Not a landslide but nt a squeaker, either. I simply cannot believe that Indiana voted for Obama. Perhaps it was the basketball effect.

In the aftermath of the election there’s a lot of discussion about why America voted the way it did. Was it a vote against Bush or just a vote for change? Was it a vote for higher taxes or for lower taxes? Was it a vote for peace or a vote for more war in Afghanistan?

The best line I heard was from Bob Herbert: “Voters said no to incompetence and divisiveness” That pretty much sums up my vote in a nutshell.

The most clueless line I heard was Senator McConnell saying “I think there will be substantial opposition to moving America dramatically to the left, higher taxes, more regulation, more litigation, the whole kind of laundry list of left wing proposals”

Um, note to Senator McConnell: Obama only proposed raising taxes on people earning $250,000 or more. And guess what? Obama won that demographic 52-48. So if you actually look at the numbers, rich people in fact voted to give themselves a tax increase.

My Election Prediction: 371

Well why not make a prediction? I’ll say Obama 371, McCain 167, with the state of Georgia being the big surprise win for the Democrats.

In order to make 371, Obama would win battleground states Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. McCain would win Arizona, Indiana, Missouri and Montana. Jim Martin will beat Saxby Chambliss for the Georgia senate seat, and the Democrats will have 59 senate seats.

Also, for the next three months, FOX news will whine incessantly about how the election was stolen due to ‘voter fraud’. Ironically, while there won’t be any significant ‘voter fraud’, FOX news will find numerous stories of Republicans who ended up not voting because the lines at the polls were too long.

Voting technology problems will be rampant, and will be especially problematic in Pennsylvania, where Obama’s margin of victory will be much smaller than the polls would have indicated.