School Day Two

Today the vice principal (because he's your pal!) showed all the teachers this video:



Yes, I can be a softy, but it made me water up. A fantastic story about what one person can do to change their immediate world. As the saying goes, "Think globally, act locally." If everyone made that kind of difference the world would be transformed. Anyhow, it's a reminder of some of the things I hope to accomplish as a teacher.

Education Help Part I

Though not vast in number, my readership is steeped in wisdom and knowledge. From time to time as I create lessons this year I will come to you all for ideas. So here, in all its glory, is part one of the ongoing series "Education Help."

In a couple weeks we will be talking about September 11th with a bunch of 7th and 8th graders. I am looking for a short video (5-10 minutes) to be shown at the beginning of class that A) sums up the story of what happened (these kids were only five and six years old at the time) and B) has good imagery and video. Does anyone know of a short film that fits the bill? Ideas on where to find one?

Bob Casey

The video clip in the previous post is Dennis Kucinich at this year's Democratic National Convention. It's a message too many Americans are missing, instead opting for sound bites and media talking heads. Take a look.

At the convention, prominent members of the Democratic Party parade onto the stage throughout the day for their five to ten minutes of glory. Kucinich was great. Below is a good quote from former Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania:

McCain likes to call himself a 'maverick,' but he votes with George W. Bush more than 90% of the time. That's not a maverick; that's a sidekick.

True and a good zinger. Something to keep in the memory box.

Kucinich is Kool

Go Dennis Go!

Word.

I am sitting here watching the final day of the Olympics and the showed a montage about the Winter Olympics two years from now in Vancouver, British Columbia. After the montage the old white-guy announcer uttered this gem:

Word. Book your reservations for Vancouver. It's da bomb.

Yes, yes, it is da bomb.

I've lost track...

Here's a new one.

Welllll, let's see here... Oh, I got it! I own so many pairs of underwear I've lost track of how many. Shoot, I own so many pairs of socks I've lost track of how many. So, there's precedent here.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised anymore, but McCain never ceases to amaze.

WTF Olympics?

I'm not one to complain about the Olympics. In general it's utterly and completely awesome; an awe-inspiring display of human specimens doing incredible things. Today, however, I turned on the TV (obviously I didn't have to change the channel because it's always on NBC during the Olympics) and on came Women's Competitive Dance Jump Roping (I don't know what they call it). There wasn't much jump roping, actually, but mostly jump rope throwing, twirling, and person-cradling-using-a-jump-rope. It was more like a Vegas show rather than an Olympic event. Not as bad, I guess, as when there was Solo Synchronized Swimming. I kid you not.

UPDATE: Wow. Swallowing my words right now. I just watched another bit of Rhythmic Gymnastics (that's what it's called) and it was unreal. Picture this: One girl throws a hula hoop about 25 feet into the air, another girl does a front handspring, as she rolls out of that handspring she chest bumps the hula hoop back into the air another 25 feet into another flipping girl's hands. Wow.

Bambi

I just ran out side at 12:05am, in my underwear, bb gun a-blazing to defend the homestead from a pillaging bandito... by the name Bambi.


This year in the middle of the summer, for one reason or another, the dear have descended upon the gardens of La Grande. Normally they are up in the mountains all summer, enjoying the great human-less expanse. Unfortunately, this year they've decided the glitz and glamour of the big city is preferable to rural living, which has been bad news for the beans, squash, and tomato plants.

Now time for some shuteye so I can stay awake for tomorrow's "Deer Be Scurred" stakeout.

Babies

Some facts about last year's Oregon babies and their moms, gleaned from a short article out of The Oregonian:

Youngest mother: 11
Oldest: 55
Highest number of previous deliveries by a mom: 14 (shizzam!)

Bonus factoid that made me lol:
Least common names: Pirate (boy); ESPN and God (girls)

ESPN is funny enough, but God? Zam.

Drive Thru

At 1am tonight I drove by McDonald's and the drive thru had four cars in it, sitting, idling, waiting.

Seriously people?

It's terrible for your health, relatively expensive, awful for the environment, and those folks were sitting in line burning $4/gallon fuel (as well as their precious time) for the "opportunity" to pay for all that bad.

Anyhow, whatevs, people do what they want. But, if any of you ever see me waiting in a four-deep McDonald's drive thru line at 1am, then you'll know it's time to ship me off to the funny farm.

It got me thinking about how much fuel is burned waiting in car lines. Here are a few examples that popped into my head: food drive thru, bank drive thru, and parents waiting to pick up kids from school. Throw in red lights and the numbers probably grow exponentially. There must be millions of hours worth of idling ever year in the United States alone.

Nothing much to add here other than daaaaaaaaaaaaamn.

Another Blog

Some of you know them, some of you love them, some of you wish both applied to you. Whichever it is, they're now online.

Richie (one of my former players) and Jeff (not one of my former players) started blogging over at LG's Finest, with a mix of sports, thoughts, and stories out of La Grande. Go check'em out... especially if you ever had a crush on Richie's sister.

Time Article Numero Dos

Last night (as I sweated my ass off in 90+ degree temps, where's my aluminum?!?!) I mentioned a second article in the Time magazine that caught my eye. This one, entitled "Pain Amid Plenty" is about a topic that gets little attention, but that I find strangely fascinating: Food aid to Africa.

It is something that gets little attention when people talk about foreign policy. A couple weeks ago I asked a good friend who is very bright what she thought about the subject. After a long pause she confessed, "I dunno, I haven't really thought about it much."

The article says that the world has spent billions of dollars in food aid to Africans which has not necessarily been money well spent. Instead of teaching people how to grow their own food, we've simply provided it for free. Not only has that created dependent societies, it has also undermined the existing farmers: they have gone out of business because it is impossible to compete in a market flooded with free food. Not only that, but populations have continued to grow in areas that cannot sustain so many people.

So what to do? It appears one option, and perhaps the best, is to shift resources to agricultural training so that Africans can sustain themselves. I'm all for it. Western nations won't forever be available to ship food to these nations, so let's help them achieve self-sustainability sooner rather than later.

At only a few hundred words it's a quick read, go check it out.

Sweaty Pits

Last night I read the latest issue of Time magazine an came across two articles of interest. The first (perspiration... errr, inspiration for this post) is about sweat and antiperspirants. Basic premise: Antiperspirants work because they plug your sweat glands with an aluminum-based compound, people are using stronger and stronger antiperspirants, therefore people are putting more aluminum into their body. Question: Is this a bad thing?

According to the article, research indicates there is no connection between the use of antiperspirants and cancer or Alzheimer's disease... but color me skeptical. Seventy years ago they didn't think smoking was bad for you and look how that turned out.

Anyhow, don't be scurred... just aware.

African Mail

I couldn't post about this until now because I didn't want to ruin the surprise for Serena, but here's a story I've been looking forward to sharing.

As most of you know Serena is in Swaziland (okay, don't go there, it hasn't been updated in months). To be the good friend I am, I sent her a package right after she left. Serena told me to use red ink on the package and also to reference Christianity. Apparently to Swazi mail workers red ink signifies important government documents and tampering could mean trouble. Furthermore, many are devout Christians and are more likely to respect the integrity of a package with Christian references.

We all know that a little Tylenol does good, so a LOT of Tylenol does better. Right? I applied this flawless logic to my packing technique:

The upper left reads, "Love they neighbor, not their personal mail." -Jesus
Across the bottom, "Jesus is Lord. Amen."


The back was a bit rich. On the left:

Jesus said, from verse 12 of The Book of Mail, "I most love those that open packages only intended for the recipients hands. Amen."

On the right a little poem, "God is good. Jesus is just. FYI This is for Serena. The above-mentioned desire it so."

Did it make it safely? Yesssssir.

McCain+Plagiarism=Not Surprised

Did John McCain really lift text from a Wikipedia entry? It was in high school that I learned plagiarism is unethical. I learned in college (b/c that's when it became popular) that using Wikipedia as a source of information for an essay is unacceptable. Now we have John McCain copying information from Wikipedia to use in a speech as he runs for President of the most powerful country in the world.

I shouldn't be surprised anymore, but it seems like each week McCain outdoes himself on the Ridiculous Scale.

Lin Hao

I missed the opening ceremony of the Olympics last night, but caught a recap this morning. They highlighted a nine-year-old Chinese boy who was leading the Chinese team into the stadium along side 7'6" Yao Ming.


Apparently he was given this honor because of heroics he displayed when his school was destroyed during the earthquake a few weeks ago. After his school collapsed he helped one of his peers out of the rubble. Instead of staying away he risked his life by returning to the school and dragging a second student to safety. Why? In his words:

I am a hall monitor. It's my job.

It made my eyes water.

Cycling Analytics

Last week I got together with Brian, the founder and "captain" of the local bicycle and triathlon racing club Oregon Trail Racing. He is a faculty member at Eastern Oregon University in the sports science department and has developed a cool lab for videoing cyclists for the purpose of analyzing their pedal stroke and posture. I had developed a knee pain while training so he was going to take a look in order to determine if my bike setup was the culprit. You can check out videos from the session here (I couldn't figure out how to embed them, any experts out there?).

It was awesome; I felt like a professional athlete. He had reflective balls and tape all over my body, big spotlights, and multiple cameras focused on me. As you can see from the videos I was not on a traditional trainer, but instead on a new setup called "rollers." It was a unique sensation pedaling away, not going anywhere, yet not falling over.

We learned that my seat needed to be raised and pushed back in order to get a fuller extension on the down stroke. Sure enough, after making the adjustments I went on a 30 mile ride with no pain. Since then I've done hill climbs and a 60 miler with no pain at all. Not only is the pain gone, but the ride is generally more comfortable. Hooray!

Let's All Be Exact

I saw this price at Safeway over the weekend:


As they say, "Every penny counts." Indeed. It's long past time we get rid of the penny. It costs more than a cent to make a penny and no one (except, apparently, Safeway) uses or cares about them. I've seen the poor guys tossed on the ground because they were more trouble than they were worth. Let's round to the nearest nickel, give ole Abe another home, and move into the 21st Century.

They're Not All Dead

I snapped this shot the other day while down at the garden. This little guy was pollinating one of my squash plants. A gorgeous sight:

Harvest Time!

My first harvest was today, hooray!!!!

I stopped by for my weekly day of watering and thought a few beans looked ready, so pick pick pick I went.

And pick... and pick.

My estimate that my pockets would suffice was waaaaaaaaaaaaay off, so my brilliant mind turned my shirt into a bag. Three pounds of beans later and I was on my way home. Wonderful!

Below are three pictures: 1) The beans; 2) The garden plot; 3) The little plot on the side.




I'm up to about 10 squash, do I hear "bumper crop"?

100K

No, not my future teacher salary... or perhaps it is with a bit of inflationary assistance.

100,000 meters is how far I traveled this morning by bicycle with Joshua. It was a fantastic ride up to the wind farm and around the valley. Hopefully a few pictures later from his camera. Now breakfast time at noon.

Environmentalism

Reading this post over at Washington Monthly's blog reminded me of a conversation I had with a Republican at the Union County Fair a couple days ago. He was advocating massive expansion of domestic oil drilling (specifically offshore and in ANWR) and prefaced the discussion with something to this effect, "Don't try and use global warming as a reason not to drill because I don't believe in it."

My response, "That's fine. There are lots of other reasons not to expand drilling: oil spills, air pollution, habitat disruption, short-term solution, etc."

It was good timing, then, that the above-mentioned post was written. In short it says that environmentalists need to lay off of the global warming mantra and talk more about dirty air, filthy water, lost animal habitat, ruined forests, dead lakes, trash everywhere, etc. In other words, there is a lot more to environmentalism than global warming.

I certainly agree, although that does not incline me to put the fight against global warming on the backburner. Instead, let us highlight that "saving our planet" means more than just reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Not only is this the correct thing to do, it is also practical. There are many people out there who are not interesting in global warming but who are willing to take on air pollution because their child has asthma, clean up rivers because they love fishing, or pick up trash because they want their surroundings to be beautiful. It's long past time we find allies wherever they may lie.