edumacation

I've done some sprucing up of my UVa Homepage as of late--to include the classwork that I've been doing.

http://www.people.virginia.edu/~mjl6p/
I've also managed to do some blogging for my classroom management class.

http://mattlindatuva.blogspot.com
However, one of the strategies I learned in my reading class was the cinquain (say, "sank-CAN"). You can follow the link above to find more information. However, here is my cinquain for the current Middle East crisis. Guamo, this is for you.

Lebanon
crushed, demolished
wailing, mourning, dying
an unending cycle of violence
proud Phoenicia

I'd like to recant something

Holy balls...ok, nevermind. I had no idea that Israel was going to go this far. I take back what I said about proportional or justifiable. I've been intending to write this post for days, but even Bush beat me to the punch on this one.

The BBC's world affairs correspondent, Nick Childs, points out that Mr Bush also emphasised how troubled he was by the mounting casualties,...

However, what gets me is the man comforting this "woman" in this picture. First of all, they both look like Jon Stewart. Secondly, it looks like the "man" is fondling the "woman's" boob. Thirdly, is this the most sympathetic group of Lebanese the BBC can photograph in Tyre? I thought the number one rule of tugging at our heartstrings was finding the refugee equivalent of Angelina Jolie or Haley Joel Osmont with a limb blown off. Preferably a leg discreetly covered by pants. That way they can have the Tiny Tim thing going on.

teacher re-education camp

Okay, so I've been in education classes for the last few weeks, and this week, I'm taking too simultaneously. My fifth chakra has been acting up lately, so I'm going to vent.

I KNOW that I can be a better teacher. I have appreciated my Reading in the Content Area class for that very reason. It has shown me some concrete steps that I can take to be a better teacher. However, I am wary of teacher-teachers who believe that in order to be a better teacher, said teacher needs to BELIEVE the correct things about teaching.

Now, as someone who actively rejects the idea of enlightenment, or higher levels of consciousness, I find this hard to swallow. It strikes me of this odd blend of modernist positivism with Christian ethics. If you have FAITH in the good (or subscribe to the correct CREED of goodness), then you will be MEASURABLY better. I mean seriously, isn't that what so many people in today's society honestly believe? Shouldn't there be a beautiful ambiguity between faith and reason, between creeds and theories?

The whole idea that one has a world-life philosophy upon which one acts is childish. For example, I believe that I should be nice to my wife, but I certainly am not always as nice as I could be or believe that I should be. Oftentimes, I think am I saying to her (or to anybody) what I mean, but that meaning is lost in the ambiguity and brokenness of my words. Of course, judging myself based on my world-life philosophy is useful, but then I run into the thorny question of what is nice? I could then go ahead and create a philosophical definition for nice, but then I will spend the rest of my life chasing down categories.

The problem is, the sages have known for years, that language cannot contain our thoughts as correctly as we want. I suspect that language cannot even describe the universe as correctly as we want. Therefore, any statement of philosophies will only be a hollow echo of an original idea, which in itself, is only a piece and not the whole of the universe, which, in its wholeness, can never be grasped by the human mind.

On another note, how about this piece of tragicomic irony. The Shuttle Discovery returned safely to this terrestrial sphere just as Israel invaded Lebanon. Yet, almost 3 years ago, the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded somewhere over Palestine, Texas carrying an Israeli astronaut. I'm going to presume to read this augury as meaning that humans are locked into our selfish, arrogant, and sinful nature, which we cyclically transcend and affirm.

How's that for a world-life philosophy?

The Girls Guitar Club

When I was in Richmond, J.J. Toughstuff and I watched some episodes of Mr. Show with Bob and David. Some serious IMDb action later, and I found this gem from two of the castmembers. Jalalabad always complains that funny girls aren't given their due in today's society. Well, here's some funny girls that successfully posted a 13-min. comedy clip on the internet. "Mary Lynn Rajskub and Karen Kilgariff's Girls Guitar Club realized in short film form."

no peace without justice?

That is something people like to say, without thinking through the possible contradictions to their worldview. However, let's get pragmatic for a second.

I don't think that people who criticize Israel's policies or actions as a nation are "anti-semitic" any more than I think it is "un-American" to criticize the Iraq War. I will say this, the Iraq War was wrong, unjust, illegal, stupid, and poorly planned. Israel's current war in Lebanon may be one or two of the above things, but it is not unjustifiable or disproportionate. If one consider's Israel's war in Lebanon as compared to Syria's actions against Lebanese or her own citizens, or as compared to Russia's dealings in Chechnya, or China's treatment of Tibet, or the American invasion of Iraq, Israel is making a good faith effort towards a just peace.

Israel IS a crusader state, an example of Western Imperialism or Colonialism and a throwback to another era. That does not mean it has no right to exist. Almost every nation on earth owes its borders and ethnography to Western Imperialism. Don't we give the Albanians rights to order their own affairs in Kosovo? Don't we allow the Japanese to deny citizenship to any but "pure-blooded" Japanese? I'm sick of all the liberal carping about how bad Israel is. Here's a good example.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour criticized the rising toll, saying the shelling was invariably killing innocent civilians.

"International law demands accountability," she said in Geneva. "The scale of the killings in the region, and their predictability, could engage the personal criminal responsibility of those involved, particularly those in a position of command and control."

So where is the international accountability for Hamas, Hizbollah, King Saud, the Assad family, Ahmadinejad, or even Bush or Cheney? Let's face it, human rights lawyers, in another time you would have been Franciscan monks throwing up their hands at the injustices of the world. In fact, Franciscan monks probably did more to stop wars than human rights lawyers do.

The fact of the matter is, Israel is under literal attack from all sides. Hizbollah, Hamas, Iran, or Syria don't care about peace. If they did, they would stop firing rockets at the Israelis and negotiate. Negotiating means to be willing to give something up to get something else. The Israelis have done plenty of giving up. They left Sinai, they left Gaza, they left Lebanon. Sure, they captured that territory in war, but when's the last time we demanded that France give back Strasbourg, or Poland give back Breslau. How about the fact that France still has colonies, the largest being French Guiana?

I'm sick of all the hand-wringing over Israel's retaliation in this matter. Surely it is horrible that Lebanese civilians are being killed. TIME Magazine tried to make us aware, however, most of us are blissfully ignorant of the horrible slaughter in the Congo.

The Arab states are either going to have to completely destroy the nation of Israel or accept its continued belligerence. They can't have it both ways. Of course, the Ummah could always try and make peace.

more of the samevidya excitement

I was showing Jalaila how to use Photo Story on her new laptop, and we created this beauty. Enjoy!

the meanings we mean

So today while I was enjoying the hippie goodness of my Nature's Path Cereal, I heard this story on NPR and it stopped me cold. This is exactly what I'm going to be studying about today in Richmond at about 5:30, and it mentally prepared me to be willing to listen to what my teacher had to say. Instead of dismissing it all with my favorite line, "Those who can't do, teach; and those who can't teach, teach teaching." So, the iceberg is the crucial image here, and I'm waking up to the fact that I've been teaching Latin only at the tip of the iceberg. This is a tremendous breakthrough for me, and hopefully it will make me a better teacher.


For instance, I wonder what the iceberg can tell me about this. Janna and I were driving home from my niece/goddaughter, Hazel's, baptism, yesterday. (Hazel, by the way, looked incredibly precious in her mother's old baby clothes.) But from the sublime to the offensive. On this trip, we stopped to fill up or relieve ourselves (or myself) in several gas stations which were in a more or less rural area. As per local tradition, many ridiculously thoughtful things are left inscribed upon these bathroom walls. I had the idea, upon which I did not act, that I should add to the conversation by posting something such as the following.

Osama is my president!

Viva the Towelheads!

We're here, we're queer gay-married terrorist abortion doctors who burn the flag so get used to it!

Camelhumpers unite, you have nothing to lose but your right to buy statues of skeletons riding motorcycles made in China by slave labor!

Their is no God but Al-lah and his prophet is whup-ass!

Join Al-Qaeda! See the world! Get some virgins! Call 1-888-2N4-MFBI.

Now imagine all that written in sharpie above the toilet paper next to, "Be here at 4:30 on Mondays for some head." Maybe next trip.

one year closer to death

So, the State Farm people called me today to be "the first to wish me a happy birthday" and give me a chance to rush down to their office to sign up for life insurance before I become so hopelessly old that my premiums would double. Unfortunately for the State Farm people, I already celebrated an early birthday with John and Judy. Judy and I were both born on the 8th. However, John actually shares a birthday with my cousin, Jon, who both share the same birthday as the Tom Cruise character in Born on the Fourth of July. This occasioned a making of cards for both John and Judy. Of course, when I saw this picture of Judy as a cub-physicist at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, I had to put it on the card.


Anyways, I added some pictures from our Shenandoah adventure onto Flickr. Why don't you enjoy them while I slowly go through the process of dying. Hopefully, it will take me a very long time.

nine to the power of threesuperman cum jesus

So you know you're old when your bicycle technician is apologizing to you for f***ing up your bicycle and you realize that you were old enough to be his middle school teacher. By the way, there are three things I don't like to reveal about myself—my age, my height, and my weight. But, since the Barefoot wine was on 2 for $9 special at Food Lion, let's just come out and say it. I'm almost 27; I'm not quite 6'2"; I'm a little more than 190 libra. That was hard.


So, in bicycle news, I got a monster bonus—I guess it was a fixed amount of money per year that you've been at the school—so it's enough to buy a new bicycle. I'm going to get a real bicycle. I don't know where, I don't know when, but Performance Bikes is having a sale. I know I should support small local business. But when that leaves you stranded in the middle of nowhere, whether it's on the shores of Lake Michigan or Lake Anna, it's time to try a national chain.


Anyways, speaking of Lake Michigan, although Phil is one of my sexiest friends, I took no pictues of him, Tom or Chewy. However, instead of uploading pictures to Bebo, I've uploaded them to Flickr on which I made an account for my EDLF 505 class. So, there are the pictures from the trip to the Midwest, enjoy.

On that note, Spencer and I repeated a tradition from last year, and went to see Superman Returns on opening night. So, I don't know if I'll give away any SPOILERS away, but I do want to say a few things about the Superman franchise and superhero movies in general. As per my discussion with Guamo and Chewy, Superman, of course, is too perfect a hero. In fact, Superman is so powerful of a superhero, that every Superman plot demands kryptonite to create any sort of conflict. As long as Superman is Superman, you know he's going to save the spaceplane, stop the robbery, etc... As per rewatching Batman Begins with Phil, Superman is not like any other superhero, in that he is not a man—hero being related to the Latin "vir" or German "herr" meaning "man"—but rather, he is an alien masquerading as a human, an alien with supernatural, godlike powers. To this end, Brian Singer decided to make a strong stylistic choice to identify Superman with Jesus, and less emphatically, Lois Lane with Mary Magdalene. Thanks to the Passion of the Christ, which I believe is directly referenced in the film, and The DaVinci Code, Singer's references are timely, if not well-thought out.

You see, as Spence and I discussed (or disgust, which is it, Eminem?) Superhero movies are our equivalent of the plays of ancient Greece. Surely not only Sophocles wrote a play about Oedipus. However, Sophocles was able to connect that myth to something timeless and enduring, just like Batman Begins was able to connect to the idea of "fear" and "terror" to the Batman myth. In fact, it seems like contemporary filmmakers are returning to a classic aesthetic, in which novelty is not nearly as important as fidelity to tradition.

However, making Superman into Jesus, although a reasonable mythological comparison, falls short theatrically. Superman is a lost soul. He wants to know who and why he is. Jesus is an answer if not THE answer. Yeah, I said it. The comparison is not really novel, but ballsy. The movie is an enjoyable and somewhat thoughtful spectacle. Going on opening night might have been too much if it were not a tradition. However, I have to say, although one has to pay a $2.50 service fee for Fandango, we did get to skip right past the line of sheep-like ticket buyers.

However, what is up with animals-rebel-against-their-human-masters-children's-movies these days? Is this some sort of Al Gore movie tie-in, or are we truly reaping what we have sown in terms of environmental catastrophe.

Since I've gone all over the map today, the only thing that can tie all of this together is a picture of Bush and Koizumi together at Graceland.