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 dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful. Well then, in Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant.”

Just to clear up the confusion: This was Tolkien, not that drunkard Poe. (in jest)

Source

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 a fraction of the bandwidth. Not that I care about bandwidth having a server in my office, but I stream talk radio all day long and I feel bad sometimes when I see someone trying to download a 30-second clip that’s 4MB during the day.

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 tribe leaders, Shaka Zulu, rise and fall in a single paragraph; And he got a detailed account! Most of the people mentioned only get their one sentence.

Which leads me to todays question: What do you want your sentence to say?

I’m serious, keep it to yourself or post a comment, but I hope that everyone reading this thinks about it for a second.

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 joined forces with American industry to plan an image make-over by issuing guides for Americans travelling overseas on how to behave.

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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 17^th century through early 20^th civilizations around the world. Specifically, European industrialization and expansions throughout America and Africa. For the time being anyway. This class is moving well outside the realms of Europe and into various tribes and factions in Africa itself, the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire, and who knows what else (well the syllabus I suppose). At any rate, this evening in class I was moved to near tears… but not over anything in particular. Just the fact that I felt so enormously privileged to sit amongst my friends and discuss (the style of our professor is to teach through pure discussion) events that shape our lives today. It awes me to have the ability to talk about events and lives that took place centuries ago, and to find true parallels that exist in the way we conduct ourselves today. Learning is the greatest gift that we can receive and give in return.

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 will allow others to view the ones that are best!

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.)