Feeling sick. Not doing much of anything right now. Vegging. Surfing. Gonna watch a movie. I’m hoping to kick this cold by next week. I have a somewhat busy week ahead, as the last real week of classes for the semester. Play performance Monday. Tuesday, a lecture and review for an exam. Wednesday and Thursday, I’m having the writing students do an unusual assignment — writing me letters about my class. Thursday, a lecture on “The Canadian Identity”. Then that’s it. A final exam on the following Tuesday, and piles of essays to read but a lot of time to …
Month: December 2006
British TV Documentaries
Lately I’ve been watching a few downloaded documentaries from British TV. Most of the ones I’ve seen so far have been quite good. I will probably comment on Dawkins’ documentary on religion, bearing the provocative title Root of All Evil?, in a few days, but for now, I’m too busy to post about that at the length it deserves. However, I just watched Thomas Balmès’ documentary on Nokia’s ethical appraisal issues, titled Made in China, and posted the following review at AllConsuming. As much as I think it’s important to discuss the plight of exploited workers in factories in places …
More Mockery of Kim Jong Il? Oh Yeah!
A channel at Youtube devoted to mocking Kim Jong Il? You just know I’m subscribed now.
Take Anything You Want
This has got to be the weirdest “pro” English lesson I’ve ever seen: And this Korean dorm-made response is even weirder.
Cahoots Ad
That womens’ magazine I write for, Cahoots, has a new ad up. Check it out, pass it on. (PS I didn’t have anything to do with the ad itself. I’m just spreading the word.)
Such Denial, But Also Some Cool Awareness, and a Brilliant Film Idea
So one of my students raised, in a smaller-group discussion in class, the idea that Dr. Hwang Woo-Seok was defrauded by Americans who stole his work–scientific espionage!–and then sent fake results under his name to Nature.
Gaaa!
So my students blew everyone away with the scenes from their plays on Friday night. Now I know why: they practiced those 2-minute scenes like mad, and neglected the remainder of their plays. Which means now they have one week to master the other 18 minutes of their plays. Oh, and one student has done that very annoying thing that some students do, and that it seems someone, every semester, does when others are depending on their participation. She’s decided to stop showing up for rehearsals, both in-class and out-of-class. Luckily, another, very talented student has agreed to cover her …
C.R.A.Z.Y.
I just finished watching this movie, and posted a review over at AllConsuming. I don’t do that for everything I finish, but this movie deserved a review. I remember when I was a kid, my father said of Canadian films, “Well, you know, they film something like a bug, and the bug sits still, and you’re waiting for something to happen. Then the bug moves, but nothing happens. Ten minutes, you watch that bug, and then you give up. That’s Canadian film.” In some ways, he may have been right. Canada certainly can’t compete in the area of action, thriller, …
Late Night Laundry, Mr. Wolfram, and My Experience of Mobile Automata
Last night I was up late doing some laundry — a lot of my own, plus some of Lime’s, which needed to get done last night so that she could bring it back to the hospital early today. The place where she’s working doesn’t even provide a single washing machine for those members of staff working 80-120 hour weeks, if you can imagine that… their one night off is when they get to go somewhere else to do their laundry. Anyway, she was dead asleep but I was waiting for the dryer cycle to finish drying the load, so I …
Not So Bad, For Sometime Tired
Twenty-some minutes on the treadmill and varying paces; some weights for the upper body; about five minutes on the exercycle (I couldn’t handle any more of it); and a bunch of situps. I’ve been havinf aches and pains since, from the weights, but they good aches and pains, not bad ones.