A bit of the DIY web...

Just in case anybody needed to know how to make an annoying web page.

I'd suggest broken links, outdated content, and animated gifs. Of course, other people have different ideas about what sucks.

The mother of necessity's kid...

Not that I've ever been trapped in the forest with a can of coke and chocolate bar, but if so, I hope I'll remember this article

My mommy tells me so...

I'm a winner.

It's the whole Pasta for Pennies thing, you know. My school's campaign does really well, and I'm kinda in charge of it and all.

But more importantly today is the fact that my wife's school's campaign just finished up today (they'll probably clear about $5000 - awesome), and they had a big raffle going.

Instead of the way that we run our raffle (the coordinators aren't allowed to win), she put in tickets and let me drop my $20 for thirty tickets spread among various baskets.

I won, of course, and am now the proud owner of...

• $25 at Wings & Rings
• $20 + a free appetizer at PF Chang's
• four free Chili's kid's meals
• five free video rentals (along with half price rentals for two weeks after each one) at Family Video
• $3 at Red Robin
• 1 free appetizer at Johnny Carino's
• $10 at Jocko's World Famous Chicken & Seafood
• $25 at Texas Roadhouse
• Two BOGO's to the Beach
• Two free entrees at Applebee's
• $10 at Fat Wally's
• and a decently useful greeting card organizer from Barnes & Noble

Other than the time my name got pulled out twice to win mugs for having sold two whole magazine subscriptions when I was in third grade, this is the best day of my life.

Anybody know of any kids who like eating at Chili's?

On second thought...

I've blogged about the revolutionary food designs of some chefs today, but after reading the specifics of one multi-course meal at such a restaurant, I'm not so sure that I'd really enjoy the experience.

Apparently, Mick Jagger was right...

Anybody need a job?

It's possible that my near-debilitating fear of heights just might preclude me from taking the job, but if you need something to do and you're in Cincinnati, this Enquirer lead just might be the right job for you.

And after going through the Purple People Bridge Cl!mb website, I'm kinda tempted to give it a try myself...maybe on September 19th. But I think only if my little friend can go with me.

Oh, and a quick holy schnikies shout out to George freakin' Mason! Go Patriots!

Literate reviews...

I dig McSweeney's.

Admittedly, I don't necessarily understand McSweeney's, but I dig it.

There are a number of things that read like jokes, some that read like reader-created blogging, some that read like literary analysis. I don't have any real clue whether it's even a real magazine or if it's just web-only. But there's a lot of entertaining stuff there.

Today's example of McSweeney's entertainment is the new food reviews column - clearly written by readers and absolutely hilarious. Great stuff.

Here's a sample...

Red Baron's Stuffed Pizza Slices: Sausage and Pepperoni

Submitted by Agnes Borden

After five minutes, only my burps seem to want to recall Red Baron's Sausage and Pepperoni Stuffed Pizza Slice. A wholly unnecessary experience, noted only for its too-thick crust that's drier than my elbows midwinter and those tasty little sausages that are clearly a collage of meats. Not a terrible late-night snack, but for more bang for your buck, I'd recommend anything that doesn't impersonate real food—like candy. Oh, Red #5, how much do I love thee?

or...

Hershey's S'mores

Submitted by Gina Hyams

Hershey's new S'mores candy bar does not taste like a campfire.

or...

Colorless M&Ms

Submitted by Michael de Leeuw

In the midst of the grayest, coldest winter in thirty-seven years, the candy man has taken the last pigment from my bleak existence. I commute, I work, I eat lunch, I work late, I go home. Daylight wakes me up but does not sustain me and does not figure into the rest of my life. My office building is a tower of ugliness in lower Manhattan, and I spend far too much of my life—my prime—here. Somewhere outside, there is a nineteen-year-old film student drawing on her cigarette and getting used to the mouth-feel of her new tongue stud. I will never meet her. Somewhere outside, there is an ignored old man on a park bench with a head full of stories that would captivate anyone who would dare to listen. I won't dare to listen.

And now Colorless M&Ms. They are white, black, and shades of gray. I try them after lunch. They disappoint. I know I am losing my mind: it's the same candy! I work on a brief and distractedly reach for more. Again, they are not the same. I have lost my mind. I walk down the hall and everything is black and white and gray. I feel panic set in. I duck into a conference room to compose myself. I lean my face against the cool window and look out on the chunks of ice floating in the Hudson River. They are gray. The snow in Battery Park is gray. Tomorrow, I will buy Skittles.

And there's so much more...

Ice, ice, baby...

TDugan loaned me a couple of issues of Seed, a new magazine about the intersection of science and culture. Don't know that I'm sold on the magazine just yet, but it did have some impressive pictures and a neat graphic style.

Four of the pictures come from a D.Hirmes and are really beautiful photos of ice forms. The artist's website is very much that of an artist - lots of stuff that isn't explained but is just what I'd call artsy. It's not all my kind of stuff, but then again, neither is all of this stuff.

Not as geeky as it sounds...

Cooking for Engineers is a site that does a great job showing you exactly what you're supposed to do to make any of their recipies. They include pictures of the various stages of the process, give visual organizers at the end of each recipie to recap the process, and they test various adjustments to the recipies to make sure things are working about as well as they can.

I've tried a few of their recipies and have had good luck so far.

Along the same vein is America's Test Kitchen who produce Cook's Illustrated which is easily my favorite cooking magazine - no ads, wonderful use of the scientific method, great recipies, neat visual style - but their online presence is behind a paid registration that I don't want to pay for. Their primary cookbook is, however, the best I've ever used. Amazing recipies.

Now, get cooking...

Fantasy sports...

Ah, fantasy sports. I've been a player of fantasy sports for a long while now, having been part of a rotisserie baseball league when I was in high school. I've seen drafts - serpentine and normal - and auctions. I've been in first place and last in football and baseball.

This year, though, I've decided to consult some interesting sources for my knowledge. First there's McSweeney's with a great lineup made up of the finest of video game non-athletes. Then there's a few articles about the greatest video game athletes of all time.

In my league (12 teams, full MLB, ten categories, head-to-head), here's the lineup that I ended up with...
click to enlarge

Mummble away weird man...

I love the internet because it provides me with international pop music proving that crappy tastes abound the world around.

Today, enjoy Chacarron!

If I was president...

In Chapelle's Block Party there's a great moment when Wyclef Jean is playing an organ and singing a simple song called "President" with the Central State Band. The song as it's appeared on cd isn't nearly as nice, but I'm hoping that the movie soundtrack has 'Clef's film version.

On an only slightly related note, I found a really cool game from Cable in the Classroom and the History Channel called eLections: Your Adventure in politics. It's a fun little game taking you through the process of becoming president of these here United States. There's balancing spending, campaigning in various states, fundraising, choosing your platform, and dealing with issues along the campaign trail.

My first time through, I ended up with 307 electoral votes. I'm hoping to play again and see how close I can come to Reagan 1984 or FDR in 1936...boo yah!

PS - New high for me of 357 electoral votes. Not in FDR/Reagan territory yet, but moving upward.

Matt & Trey make a suggestion...

Looks like Matt & Trey are ready to deal with the controversy of Isaac 'Chef' Hayes's departure from the show. They'll just start off the tenth season with a special "The Return of Chef!" episode.

It's good to know that these guys have no shame whatsoever. I enjoy that in my comedy.

iTunes gets the French kiss-off

Looks like France is being all French again.

This time they're working on passing legislation that would force Apple to be more open with their iTunes music format. The law still has one more house - the French equilivent to the Senate - to pass before it's fully law, but things look promising. If the law passes, iPods would have to be opened to playing formats other than Apple's proprietary format, and iTunes would have to play on mp3 players other than just iPods.

I'm not entirely sure whether those things would be good ideas or not. I'm going to have to think about this for a bit...

To get some other coverage of the story, check out PC Pro or ABC News - each offers a slightly different spin on things.

Oh, and yes, I am enjoying my snow day. Are you?

Play around...

Right, so it's in a foreign language, but the game's easy enough to understand. See if you can top my high score of a massive 75 points.

Bring it, pansies...

The little purple one gets weirder...

Seven tickets to a private concert at the Little Purple One's private Minneapolis abode...kinda makes me want to buy the stinkin album...reviews aren't great so far, but it's a gimmick that just might work...

I am curious about how the winners can be folks who either buy the album or download the single from iTunes. Is he splitting it up three & four or what? Where are the odds better?

I need to know these things...

Well adapted...

Last night Karlen asked me if I wasnted to go see V for Vendetta, and I am loathe to pass up a chance to go see just about any movie in the theater, so off to the Rave this afternoon.

It's a pretty standard answer to any movie that's been adapted from a book that I want to say read the book - it's better, and I'll get that out of the way now.

It's a faithful adaptation. There are a few changes that were made from the book that do make for impressive on-screen moments, and the added moments don't detract from the story. I don't know that they add all that much to the story either, though, even if they do make the ultimate scene a little more visually impressive.

I don't know that the movie will be reviewed all that well because it's a political allegory (oddly enough, one written as a commentary on the Thatcher administration) that plays as a very damning critique of some of the things that are happening today (an impressive trait for a work of graphic fiction to be relevant and current a quarter century later). It's not the kind of thing that loads of people are going to go to as a popcorn flick and just come out of the theater raving and cheering. It's a thinker, this one is.

Alan Moore's work is phenomenal, and it retains almost all of its power on the big screen. Hugo Weaving does a great job of acting behind the mask, and Natalie Portman does a good job of putting on a British accent.

It's a rough film with a big message buried in there (not terribly deeply, either), and one that's worth seeing. I'd go matinee for it, but it's a big screen treat.

My Saturday Morning Ritual...

Every Saturday morning I get up and flop on the couch. Karlen heads to go for one of her weekly runs - today downtown for sixteen miles - and I surf the net, stopping at the various blogs and movie trailer sites that I enjoy. Usually, 'round 8:30 The Batman flips on, and I begin the day's real work - typically for my KSU classes - when that fades away.

Today's little nuggests from that surfing time are four movie trailers...

The Breakup

I've been very untempted to see this movie since the first couple of previews, but this one is changing my mind. The other trailers have suggested a very snarky, nasty movie showing the breakup between the two leads. This one suggests a chance of (and I assume a near-guarantee of) - reconcilliation.

La Mujer de Mi Hermano

I don't know what the title means - something about of my brother, I think. A bunch of foreign language films on Apple iMovies today. This one looks like a pretty standard formula - brother sleeps with sister-in-law, but it looks like a stylish take on the formula.

Trust the Man

I like pretty much all the actors involved here - especially Maggie Gyllenhaal - and like the feeling that the trailer produces here. The discussions of love and relationships is a subject that is always ripe for a good movie.

Drawing Restraint 9

This is clearly an artsy movie. Heck, anytime a movie description includes a phrase like "...symbolically tracks through the construction and transformation of a vast structure of liquid Vaseline..." it's an artsy movie. For some reason, though, this one intrigues me. Sort of the same intrigue that I get from The Fountain but, I'm guessing, with a lot less linear a storyline.

Anybody looking for a good coach?

There is much sadness in the world. My good friend - Brian Sullivan - is no longer the head coach at Brescia University. Brian did resign on his own terms and is currently looking for a new position - preferrably in the Indiana / Kentucky area.

He's an absolute coaching stud who put together the single hardest schedule (for his level) in the history of basketball this year - even opening at Assembly Hall against IU (check the pictures here if you don't believe me.) And he's willing to run rockin' fund raisers for his team if the budget's not exactly up to rockin' standards.

So, if anybody's got an opening and is looking for a coaching up and comer...

------

Oh, and IDTMI research staff points out that the velcro crop in California has shown a serious rebound. Good news for those of us who have been hating the recent $3-per-foot velcro prices.

But who will feed the childrens?

Apparently Isaac Hayes is all cool with South Park as long as their targets aren't his religion. Either he's finally figured out that it's all fn and games until you lose your own eye (it's still funny when other people lose theirs) or he's just got a thin skin covering his faux-Chef body.

I'm guessing that he's a weenie - though "(Theme from) Shaft" is still one of the finest songs ever made.

Having a lil' party...

Ah, a fine Sunday afternoon matinee in Springdale...just the right place to catch a cheaper showing of Dave Chapelle's Block Party...just me, my wife, and five other folks.

From what I've heard from friends and students who have seen this film, it's not playing to huge crowds, which is really a shame. It's an excellent movie that left me with a great feeling throughout.

First, a bit of a disclaimer, this is not a Dave Chapelle comedy film. It's not Half Baked or a collection of a bunch of Dave's comedy skits from his shows. Instead, this is mostly a concert film intercut with some funny moments of Dave interacting with the performers and concert-goers. Apparently the lack of comedy annoyed some folks.

Most of the reviews, however, have been totally positive, and they're well-deserved. The film does a wonderful job of showing the joy the Dave has in setting up this event - a day-long block party with music (Kanye West, the Fugees, Dead Prez, Mos Def, the Roots, Erikah Badu, Jill Scott, and a bunch more that I didn't exactly recognize) and food for a few hundred fans and friends of his. It's a massive collection of talent for one stage, and Dave apparently did everything he could to keep the concert from getting out of hand with press - inviting everybody to a location in Chinatown and then bussing them to Bedford Stuyveson where he puts on just about the best concert experience I can imagine.

Admittedly, it's not a film that's necessarily marketed to a pudgy white guy like me, but it's a great film. The pacing was wonderfully done by director Michael Gondry - beginning with the harder-core rap acts and fading into the soulful R&B of Scott & Badu by the end, letting the movie come together into a celebration of a comedian with a - then new - $50-million contract who just wanted to kick back and have a blast with some of his friends and favorite artists.

It's a hell of a party, and I whole-heartedly recommend it to anybody regardless of race, creed, color, or mood. No matter how you go in, you'll come out in a good one...

Two one-panel laughs...

Funny stuff that's come along in the past few days...the second one from Disco Stu next door...the first one's from a comic called Speed Bump and the second from Brewster Rockit!

Good news...

At least there is some good news in the world. It appears that sales of cigarettes have hit a 55-year low. There is some reason for celebration also in that it appears that high school seniors are smoking at an ever lower rate each year, suggesting good news for the future.

The article attributes the decline to cigarette corporation settlements, public smoking bans, increases media attention, and lots of other things. Clearly, it won't be on this new movie.

Now, if we could just get sales of supper fat quadrupple cheeseburgers to hit an all-time low, we might be able to do something about America's bigger problem.

Yippee!!!!

You Passed 8th Grade Science

Congratulations, you got 8/8 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Science?

From Erinberry's blog...

I'm really starting to love the whole blogsphere thing...just yesterday I got a comment posted from Erinberry - who runs her own blog titled Jesus Was Not a Republican. She posted something about my IB post a couple of weeks ago.

And in the process of checking out who this Erinberry was, I found an amazing link that she's pointed out to a spectacular juggling performance that's well worth watching. I honestly have no clue what the guy's doing during part of the performance. His hands are moving so amazingly fast.

Thanks, Erinberry, for taking the time to drop a word or two my way. I'm gonna wander through your archives and return the favor.

More tasty fare...

I've mentioned all the nasty, fatty, gross, heart-killing foods before, but this one is clearly different. This one has a donut for a bun and includes bacon and cheese. How can that be bad?

Santa Fe is for weirdos...

Karlen and I spent our honeymoon in Santa Fe, and it's a gorgeous place - really beautiful. It's a really neat place - very much artistic and historic. The climate is beautiful as is the landscape around the city.

And it attracts its fair share of artistic weirdos like Adam Horowitz - not the Beastie Boy but rather the creater of Fridgehenge. It's the kind of thing that only a society that is truly comfortable can create.

Don't get me wrong, I've got a soft spot for the people of the world who create things of beauty - even things of weird beauty. Take, for example, the recreation of Stonehenge that Karlen and I made on another trip we took together. We called it Fruithenge.

Right...I'm off to dinner in Hamilton and a show of support at the HFS production of Cinderella. Wish me luck, folks...

Not a langostino...

Okay, this article is not about the thing that makes Long John Silver's lobster bites, but it is about one freakish crustration. A hairy lobster? Werid...

Ah, the sweetest science...

I'm a hotmail kinda guy (for the non-work emails, you know), and each time I log in to hotmail, I get a list of three or four stupid little articles that hotmail wants me to click on. Usually they're pretty innocuous, stupid things. Today, however, one of them caught my eye - Love: 10 Crazy Scientific Facts. It's nothing thrilling or marvelous, but it's kinda neat to read.

So tasty...

The blog tastingmenu.com is rolling out their 2006 Independent Food Festival & Awards, and I for one am simply drooling. There are five days worth of awards - only two have been revealed so far.

May I especially recommend day one's Most Addictive, Counterintuitive Dried Fruit and day two's Best Things to Stick to Your Marshmallow, Chocolate Better than Morphine, and Best Wicked Indulgence for $4.

I'm eagerly looking forward to the next three days.

And on a side food note, the malted rice krispies on CandyBlog look pretty tasty, too.

Maybe I should go ahead and eat something before I start to digest my own stomach at this point...

Politics - be warned...

I know that this is a blog linked from my school website, and because of that I have to be awfully careful about what I post here. My position as a teacher is not to sway my students toward or away from most issues (well, except toward the whole doing-homework-is-good issue), and as such, I tend to simply avoid most controversial topics so that I'm not seen as promoting one side or another.

Today, however, could be a rather important day in the whole Blue State-Red State schism that we've seen building and growing here in the US. Choose your news coverage:

• US state tightens abortion laws - BBC
• South Dakota bans most abortions - CNN
• Gov. Rounds Signs Bill Banning Most S.D. Abortions - FoxNews

Whichever your side on this issue, it's pretty likely that there will be a fights.

Clap Hands, folks...

Entertainment Weekly this week points out a couple of awesome videos from YouTube.com. The first and more entertaining is probably the combined performance from James Brown, Prince, and Michael Jackson - all at the peak of their pwers, sometime around 1984, I'm guessing. Seriously freakish and phenomenal video. The second is a clip of Beck performing "Clap Hands" with an orchestra of folks eating dinner while performing. Good stuff...

Ask a Mexican!

I've got some very minor connection to Orange County because Orange High School is the only school that's raised more money than Princeton High School in the past few years for Pasta for Pennies, so this morning's story on the Today Show caught my attention.

it appears that there's a column in the Orange County Weekly called Ask a Mexican in which people write in their questions regarding Mexicans, and a Latino answers them.

Offensive? Honest? Informative? From what I can tell, yes in some amount to all three of those.

Bunches of links...

I follow a bunch of other blogs daily - checking in to see what they have to offer...and today I present you with some sort of sickly circular thing where I link to links that were linked by other link linkers...

• 30-Second Bunnies Brokeback Mountain
• Video of Microsoft redoing the iPod package
• A free USB drive from Microsoft?
• Live intro for The Simpsons
• 3d street art

These come from a few blogs that I really enjoy...

• Technically Overboard
• Dan Century
• Junk Food Blog
• Candy Blog
• Dial B for Blog
• Chooky Fuzzbang
Collected Editions
• Kyle's Self Indulgence
• You Know It.
• Random Musings of a Twisted Mind
• My Musical Radar
• In Deference to My Idols

A rose by any other name...

It seems so simple: lobster bites. Long John Silver's has added a new menu item "just in time for lent", as the press release says. It's a little cheap for lobster (like $3 instead of like $20), admittedly, so I assume that it's some sort of lobster bits that couldn't make it into high quality lobster for real restaurants - maybe a little worse for you, but there's nothing wrong with that. Little bits of lobster are still lobster, admittedly, just in a little smaller package. Right?

Maybe...

Turns out there's this thing called a langostino or, as it's sometimes known, a squat lobster or prawn. It's not exactly a lobster - kind of more a lobster. It's a distinction that's been fought in the past in a class action suit that went so far as to be covered by NPR. The suit is apparently still pending in court, but the FDA has approved Rubio's calling their burrito a langostino lobster burrito. From what I can find on Rubio's website, though, they just chose to not offer whatever the burrito's called anymore. Don't know if it was because of the lawsuit or declining sales or what, but I'll admit readily that after doing all this research into the issue, I'm really tempted to go wandering to LJS's to try the lobster bites to see if they're more shrimpish or more lobsterish.

Two stunners...

First off, I think my wife may gain about fifty pounds based merely on the newest Ben & Jerry's flavor. It's ice cream and beer - combined! Seriously, this could be very bad for her chances at the Flying Pig. For me, the Berried Treasure looks a lot better.

And even more impressive is a new game that is being promoted in this preview video. The game is called Spore and is one of the most impressive games I've ever seen. If you'd like some still pics, they're here.

The game starts as a unicellular creature who you can start to evolve in various ways which allows the game to shift to a multi-cellular creature (that you can again evolve in various ways. From there, you get to move from sea to land to then begin a civilization. Your creatures can go from villages to cities at which the game shifts more toward a Civilization game and then toward more of a Risk game. From there, you're able to leave the planet and head into space where you can discover other lifeforms and interact with planets that have been evolved and terraformed by other players who have been playing their versions of the games.

Seriusly, the scope of this game is so phenomenally vast, from unicellular to exploring space, that I can't imagine how big this thing has to be. It's the perfect game that could be played forever. Absolutely forever without ever worrying about reproducing yourself or getting bored.

The video is long - 35 minutes - but it's one that's well worth watching. Let me please implore everybody (Becky, Joe, GRob, especially) to carve out the time to watch this one. Oh my freakin' lord...

There is no way that I can properly describe the scale and scope of this game.

Watch the video, please.

PS - If you're interested in Spore, here's a longer version (~1 hr) of the video with some clearer graphics and more explanation from the lecturer.

Nixon...Jefferson...Muffley...Luthor...

I love Wikipedia so very much.

Today's thrilling Wikipedia find is this list of fictional US Presidents. Sure there have been more concerns of late as to the veracity of Wikipedia's information (seems some kids being trained to evaluate information sources decided to write that Saddam Hussein had stinky feet), but let's be honest, where else can you look up lists of Lilo & Stitch experiments, fictional music groups, made up words on the Simpsons, companies in Atlas Shrugged, or any of a hundred other fictional things.

A picture's worth a thousand blogs...

So, you're in a store looking at the newest gadget or DVD or cd or whatever, and you're tempted to go ahead and drag it to the checkout. But is it any good? Well, you could leave the store, head home, log onto the internet or pick up a magazine and go through a bunch of reviews...or...you could snap a quick picture of the UPC and get instant feedback from a whole bunch of blogs. It's not a possibility just yet, but if these folks have their say, it will be within a year or so.

Holy Schnikies...My Eyes...

Seriously, why do videos like this and this exist? Is it just to occupy the bandwidth of morons like me and you or is there some greater purpose to the entire endeavor?

Mom says eat your veggies...

There are two sides to this story here...on one hand, I see good things in parents being able to help guide their children's eating habits...on the other hand, what will happen to the junk food industry's massive hold on the school market?...

And if you haven't seen Super Size Me yet, check out the DVD...

Guerilla artwork...

Not that I'm endorsing this kind of behavior or anything, but it's kinda cool...

Oh, and the campaign's over - except for counting the last of the change and calling businesses to get matching donation checks. There is much relief...

Decisions being made...

I teach at a high school that offers the International Baccalaureate (IB) program. It's not something that most folks are familiar with, but it's an impressive educational program.

Quick summary of the IB program from my experience with it...feel free to skip it if you know this stuff already...

The IB program is an internationally-recognized, high-standard of education that's administered out of Wales (you know, like next to England). If a student successfully completes the program, their education is impressive and thorough enough that they could go to pretty much any country and head to university with good success. Students who get the IB diploma have to take rigorous courses in science, math, native and foreign languages, social studies, philosophy, and (oten) fine arts). We've had the program for twenty or so years here at PHS, and anybody who comes out of it is really studly.

Turns out that Upper St. Clair HS - near Pittsburgh also has the IB program - or at least they had the program. The school's website describes themselves thusly...

Welcome to the Upper St. Clair High School website. Three times recognized as a National Blue Ribbon School and named as a New American High School by the Federal Department of Education, Upper St. Clair High School is a four-year, comprehensive school with a strong emphasis on preparation for college.

In their second controversial act since they came into office, the Upper St. Clair school board voted to cease their IB program.

According to the article discussing the decision, the board's professed reason for cancelling the program was a smple cost-cutting measure, as the smaller class sizes often required a larger per-pupil expendature than was being made for the rest of the student body. Comments made before the final board meeting, however, suggested that the board also felt that the IB program promoted non-American values.

Local newspapers wrote editorials about the issue leading up to the final vote, and residents were able to comment both before and after the final - for now, anyway - board meeting.

We've not - that I know of, anyway - heard any such complaints or rumblings of removing the IB program from good ol' PHS, and I certainly hope such rumblings never come our way, and I do understand that in times of financial shortage, certain services have to be curtailed, and all...but...

The IB program is not, in any way at all, anti-American or Marxist - as some notes in the articles suggest were threatened. The program does require students in some courses to read materials that explore disparate philosophies - governmental, economic, moral - and to then come to conclusions on their own, and often to further question those conclusions as they learn more and read further.

---

In retrospect, this whole issue (at least the anti-American charges) come from a similar vein as yesterday's post for me. I would much rather that I - and my students and all people, in general - be given as much open knowledge as we can give them. Let me - and them - come to whatever conclusions.

Cutting off access to information to keep people thinking your way is no way for leaders in a free society to behave. It's hackneyed and cliche, but the mind is like a parachute, it works better when it’s open.

---

Ipromise that tomorrow's post will be back in the Antonio Banderas blog vein - totally frivolous...

Amazing...seriously...

I am amazed at what my students are able to accomplish that is often quite far outside the realm of anything that we're teaching them.

Today's example begins with a couple of my students pointing out that their band had a little side project (Salute Your Schwartz Studio - check PureVolume.com if you're interested, but be warned, the first track is way foul in the language milieu). Apparently, the three gents have put together a recording studio in one of their basements. They've bought a nice mixing board (check the picture), mixing program, soundproofing, and a bunch of recording equipment. Neat enough so far, good kids record music in basement, right?

Well, there's a little more to that. Turns out that they've got a benefactor fronting the money, they've got a plan to pay the investment back, and they're using the new digs to start their own recording business - cutting tracks for other PHS bands, recording mom's boss, and being engineers so little girls can send trumpet recordings to Grandma. It's apparently a serious business, the kind of thing that sends them on to music production careers (their current futures). I, for one, am amazed and impressed. I know that when I was in high school, I didn't have nearly that kind of drive and creativity and initiative. Phenomenal...

Kind of makes me think of another couple of my students (and former students) who have a DJ business. He'd bought a bunch of DJ equipment when he was in high school (and has done a bunch of favors for our Pasta for Pennies campaign - feel free to donate online) and has built up that start into a decently successful business now that he's in college.

Seriously, the students that I teach amaze me. They do it consistently within the confines of my classroom, but it's what they do outside the walls that throws me for such a loop. They are incredible.

If anybody ever tells you that the current generation is a bunch of wastes, tell 'em to stuff it. Send 'em my way, and I'll tell a vastly different tale.

I can't tell you about this...

Apparently, the current administration falls down on a different side of the disclosure fence than do I.

Today, it is being reported by various news agencies that a number of government documents that were declassified by an executive order of President Clinton are being reclassified, a process that has increased in speed under the current Bush administration. The program was apparently begun with so little fanfare or public aknowledgement, that the reclassification has been taking place for seven years before it was noticed on a large enough scale that it made the news.

Many of the documents being reclassified are already available to the public in CIA and other agency publications, on websites, and through research done by numerous historians.

As the National Security Archive's coverage states,

"Every blue ribbon panel that has studied the performance of the U.S. defense establishment and intelligence community since September 11, 2001 has emphasized the need for less secrecy and greater transparency," said Aid. "This episode reveals an enduring culture of secrecy in the U.S. government and highlights the need to establish measures prohibiting future secret reclassification programs."

But this has not deterred the reclassifiers.

I'll admit it freely: I prefer a transparent government to a hidden one. There are certainly appropriate times when information should be marked classified, but I'm all in favor of erring on the side of telling the citizenry more rather than less. Let us decide what is important. Give us the information and let us figure out what's wheat and what's chaf. Don't hide them both from me and say that the decision was made for me.

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And don't pretend to be a geek burger store and then take away my local geek outlet. C'mon...

Oh, but do bring back Rampage. It was, after all, one of my favorite video games back when there were these things called arcades.