Scare Tactics – Why are Liberian soldiers wearing fright wigs? By Mark Scheffler Why do Liberian boy soldiers cross-dress? What’s with the fright wigs? Mark Scheffler’s answers to this question are quite interesting, and indicate that the traditions involved go back farther than one might imagine.
Wow, the lunch plan I had fell through. It’s shocking to have a day with nothing happening between 10am and 3pm. Maybe I’ll actually have a nap tomorrow… I’ve been adding a lot to the ESL section of this site, which may or may not escape the notice of regular readers since the entries usually don’t make it onto the main page. (I backdate them in order to prevent it from happening, though tonight I’m gonna try change the code so the ESL stuff can be properly dated and just not show up on the main page. Anyway… between that …
Here’s an interesting enough blog by a (French? I’m guessing from the rare and few grammar mistakes and the name) foreigner living and teaching/studying in Seoul.
(Here’s a joke that’s all about ESL, but also makes a point about the “listen and repeat” passive learning that happens where students just learn common conversational phrases and don’t learn how to express themselves. I typed it out for a friend’s email and then thought I might as well post it here…It’s a great joke to tell when teaching Koreans and they say,”I’m fine thank you, and you?” everytime you ask them “How are you?” even when they look tired, sick as hell, or whatever… Even if it depends on a little awkward use of English, it’s still amusing. …
Sometimes, you can find something useful in an advertisement. For example, a kind of Asian Amazon.com-like company… If I hadn’t clicked on an innocent little link, I might never have found this site, where one can order books by all kinds of authors (like the new works by Iain Banks and Kim Stanley Robinson and Greg Egan, as well as classics by Philip K. Dick and Olaf Stapledon… things that are, I can testify, practically impossible to find in Korea. Oooh, I am gonna begging some friend with a credit card to give me a hand with an order… Wheee. …