Is it just me or does Blogrolling.com seem to be to experiencing some serious technical difficulties.
Archives for February 2008
Jack Babbles About His Life
Berkeley: City of Tolerance and Love
Good old Berkeley, it should take Philly’s slogan and adopt it as its own. Then it could be Berkeley the city of brotherly love unless you are a marine in which case we want you to drop dead.
(CNN) — Berkeley, the famously liberal college town in California, has taken aim at Marine recruiters, saying they are “not welcome in our city.”
Republican lawmakers in Washington fired back this week, threatening to take back more than $2 million of federal funding to the city as well as money designated for the University of California-Berkeley, the campus that became a haven of protests during the Vietnam War.
The battle erupted after the Berkeley City Council approved a measure last week urging the Marine recruiters to leave their downtown office.
“If recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders,” the item says.
It goes on to say the council applauds residents and organizations that “volunteer to impede, passively or actively, by nonviolent means, the work of any military recruiting office located in the City of Berkeley.”
It is a good thing that no one in Berkeley is homeless and that there aren’t any drug problems there. It is a good thing that the schools are amazing and that there are a wealth of amazing jobs for the people to choose from.
Good to know that the perfect city exists.
Do you speak Ikea?
I found this article in the Guardian and thought that it was kind of interesting.
“It involves learning Swedish and a lot of Scandinavian place names, unfortunately, but that accomplished you will never again be fooled into thinking that Julfrid could ever be a dining table rather than a straw goat. For Ikea product names follow a system: because the company’s founder, Ingvar Kamprad, is dyslexic, he found that naming products with proper names and words made them easier to identify.
Sofas, coffee tables, bookshelves, media storage and doorknobs are named after places in Sweden (Klippan, Malmö); beds, wardrobes and hall furniture after places in Norway; carpets after places in Denmark and dining tables and chairs after places in Finland. Bookcases are mainly occupations (Bonde, peasant farmer; Styrman, helmsman). Bathroom stuff is named after lakes and rivers.
Kitchens are generally grammatical terms, and kitchen utensils are spices, herbs, fish, fruits, berries, or functional words such as Skarpt (it means sharp, and it’s a knife). Chairs and desks are Swedish men’s names (Roger, Joel); materials and curtains are women’s names. Children’s items are mammals, birds and adjectives.”
An Overwhelming Amount of Work
I hit the gym a couple of times this week. Normally a couple of hours of basketball and some time in the steam room serve as the perfect cure to stress, but this time I wasn’t so lucky. This week they just didn’t quite do it.
For some reason the basketball games were less than satisfying. Maybe it is because I spent too much time playing with guys who weren’t just better than me, they were substantially better. The ego told me that I could keep up with them. The ego said that if I played smart and worked harder I could find a way to make it work.
But unless you are exceptionally skilled basketball is a team sport and I couldn’t carry the team by myself. It was frustrating. I don’t back down from challenges. I may choose to walk away because it is smarter, but I don’t back down.
Ego can be an effective tool. You just have to know how to channel it. Perhaps I made a mistake this time. It won’t be the first or the last time I do that.
I probably should have chosen different guys to play with. I try to play with better players because they can help you to improve your game, they can push you. The trick is to make sure that the level of competition is not so far superior that you can’t compete. That was my mistake, made like Icarus and flew too close to the sun.
So here I am at the tail end of the week and I still have an overwhelming amount of work. It makes me want to scream. It makes me want cry. It makes me want to laugh. Perhaps it makes me want to all three. I don’t really know.
Here is what I do know. I am standing on the edge of this incredible canyon. I can choose to look down and panic because of the height or I can choose to try and find a way to blaze a trail down to the bottom, walk through it and then find a way back up.
It is going to be a long couple of months.
Vocabulary Time Part 6
It is vocabulary time again. Here is part one, part two, part three, part four and part five.
the fear of foreign hospitality (worry about foreign hotels)
(a) (Class. Antiq.) A house for the reception of strangers. (b) In the Middle Ages, a room in a monastery for the reception and entertainment of strangers and pilgrims, and for the relief of paupers. [Called also Xenodocheion.]
1. One who refuses to join, or withdraws from, a trade union. [Cant, Eng.]
2. A stick, cane, or club terminating in a knob; esp., such a stick or club used as a weapon or missile; a knobkerrie.
effulgence \i-FUL-juhn(t)s\, noun:
The state of being bright and radiant; splendor; brilliance.
[Webster 1913 Suppl.]divaricate
To diverge at a wide angle; spread apart.