It’s odd, the things you find out. Isaac Asimov died from complications related to AIDS, which he got from tainted blood. And it was kept secret until both he and the doctors who treated him died. See Locus for more about the controversy that ensued.
Let’s Go 4A Unit 3 Interview Sheet
Here’s an interview sheet for my Let’s Go 4A kids, where they can practice using the past perfect (was going, was doing).
Be Verb Handout, Unit 3 of Intro A
This handout is for a somewhat advanced Intro A class. We won’t work all of the structures in the first class, just say the first 3 or 4. But the interview will be the fun bit of class. The secondary bit will be assigning people to write, using either questions or in declarative form, a personal ad for the newspaper. It’s the same as what’s included as a handout in the teacher training files uploaded on the same day, and I think it’ll be a fun exercise.
Teacher Training Lesson Plans
This is a lesson plan for this summer’s teacher training session, for use with Unit 6 of the TELL ME MORE! ESL textbook. Some of it is highly cryptic, and might not be much use to anyone but me. But I’m putting it here anyway. If nothing else, they illustrate one principle of my teaching (and also of my learning strategy when it comes to a foreign language), which is, hammering away at a given structure until it comes somewhat naturally.
Mistakes and Weaknesses
Lately has been a complicated time for me. One of the things I have learned is that life is absolutely complicated, no matter how much we simplify it. It is complicated not just because of the other people in life, which is what is usually suggested by people. But life is also complicated because of what we are.
My Old Man And The Web
Well, I went ahead and, in an act less of narcicissm than curiosity and a desire to tabulate all the links containing any info about me online, I googled myself. Come on, like you’ve never done it? I found the stuff I already know about, plus some odd hits containing references to my dad. He had been working in quality assurance and also some R&D, I think, in the food treatment industry. Here’s a link where he is mentioned in connection to pea micronization, hemp sterilization, and on standards in Canadian grain regulations. Nice bit of oddness, that. :)
Mark Twain Scrapbook
Over at Second Story Publications I found a link to a beautiful project called the Mark Twain Scrapbook. This is an exquisite and interesting digital scrapbook bio of Mark Twain. Nice-eu, as is said in Konglish.
Romanticism and Nations
Ever since about a month ago, I’ve had a kind of niggling little problem eating away at my thinking. At that time, I was discussion nationalism and the rule of law with my famous Northstar class. I asked the class about what they thought of the Geneva Conventions and the justifiability of war… basically asking if the idea of a “just war” philosophy or tradition is acceptable, since the validity of that idea is something the code outlined in the Geneva Conventions to some degree implies. One of the students got herself into what I thought was a conundrum. Except that …
Vampires… Communists… oh my.
This is amusing.
Matrix 2, Animatrix…
Over the last couple of months I have not seen a lot of movies. I have been busy enough to actually miss, in the theater, several movies that I was actually interested in seeing. Perhaps the only movie I have managed to see in the theater in the last couple of months is the new Matrix: Reloaded sequel. However, one of my friends here has become a sort of movie dealer to me… he feeds me CD-ROMs with downloaded films on them, and I watch them. Among the many films he has thus made available to me was the Animatrix …