Archive for April, 2006
Cellar door is a combination of words in the English language once characterized by J. R. R. Tolkien to have an especially beautiful sound. In his 1955 essay “English and Welsh”, commenting on his affection towards the Welsh language, Tolkien wrote: “Most English-speaking people…will admit that cellar door is ‘beautiful’, especially if [ READ MORE ]
Olive Fingers Baby Hop Dance On a lighter note (for me), I’m using VirtualDub now to recompress and clip the videos. It’s about a 6/1 compression ratio using the Windows Media Player 9 codec. What does this mean for you? Longer files with a fraction of the download time. What does this mean for me? Longer files with [ READ MORE ]
Now that I’ve been getting in to this history book required by class, I’ve seen how quickly they tend to cover large areas of history. I have a hard time with subjects where several political leaders or philosophers are described in one or two sentences. Heck, I’ve even seen one of the most powerful African [ READ MORE ]
Do you think the rest of the world doesn’t like us? Well, so does our government. Here’s what they propose we do about it: The reputation of the “Ugly American” abroad is not, however, just some cruel stereotype, but – according to the American government itself – worryingly accurate. Now, the State Department in Washington has [ READ MORE ]
I was looking forward to this history class for some time now; above and beyond just looking forward to learning about cultural origins in general. I had no idea what to prepare for. So far we’re taking a general “survey” approach to 17th century through early 20th civilizations around the world. Specifically, European industrialization and [ READ MORE ]
Selected Photos, All Photos There’s quite a few in there so take your time. We’ll offer guided tours in person when time permits! The first link will show you images that we’ve personally selected as our favorites. If you come across others that you enjoy then please rate them with the stars below the image. That [ READ MORE ]
In light of Johnathan’s new fascination with flicking the light switch on and off, here is some scientific/mathematic proof that every time you switch on the light, you don’t “burn up enough power to run the light bulb for 30 minutes.” (Contrary to our parent’s attempt to rationalize the ban of this activity.) [ READ MORE ]