Leaving The Falls

I'm on a family vacation with the rents and g-ma. We're headed to Virginia for my cousins wedding, but we've decided to make a holiday out of it. I've tried to write in my notebook, but pen and paper, though I love it dearly, is simply too slow for me to record everything I want to say.
Niagara Falls was our first major stop. The other stops have been entertaining, but not much worth recording. Canada was interesting.
The Falls our gorgeous and the environment around them never stopped being interesting. While the hydro-electric and environmental facts and figures were fun, they are all just tourist attractions.
The people flooding the side walks, restaurants, and attractions blew my mind much higher than anything else did. Aside from international airports, I witnessed more cultural diversity then ever before. Families from America, China, India, India, Japan, South America, Armenia, and more I didn't recognize. The varied languages buzzed around me like swarms of bees. Many I could identify, but many more I couldn't.
Crossing the boarder meant no data through my phone, which meant no internet at all (the hotel charged and I despise paying for short connections!). Boy it's painful being without that constant connection. Not necessarily from addiction, but rather the convenience of researching at a moments notice. I could have learned/understood a lot more had I access to the web.
I spent a few hours on the patio in front of our hotel. There was a bar and brick pizza oven. There I found two Canadian girls that were pleasant enough to lean across the counter and answer my questions. I won't take the time to record everything they told me, but some of it I will.

1) The most annoying thing about Americans is they expect, when paying in US (Canada accepts the US dollar on par), their change to be in US. The girls told me many tourists will treat the Canadian currency as worthless (even through at the moment the Canadian dollar is worth more then the US). I apologized for their arrogance. Other then that they had no complaints. :)
I might mention here, when we returned to the states and stopped for gas I asked if they accepted Canadian. They do, but at 5%. I assume this meant they charged an extra 5%. Now this was one gritty gas station, and perhaps other places would have accepted it on par, but I was upset that the Canadians were so generous to take our currency on par (some places took the exchange rate into consideration), but here in America they added extra for giving them a currency that was more valuable. I suppose there may be costs in the conversion.

2) Milk and gas are way more expensive across the boarder. Gas was $4.71/gallon on the Canadian side, and when we crossed over it dropped to $3.77/gallons. Consequently, many Canadians living in Niagara Falls cross the boarder to buy milk and gas. The younger of the two girls (just graduated high school) told me that she was just getting use to crossing for gas alone. And sure enough, when we filled up in Niagara Falls, NY we saw an SUV with Ontario tags pulling away and headed back towards the boarder. :)

3)  I haven't verified this yet, but I will. They told me that teachers make around $90,000 a year in Ontario. Food for thought, maybe I'll move to Canada to teach. :).

[Revision]: Researched the question, and this site says the only place I found $90,000/year was with 6 years of education (that's fine) in the Yukon ... no thanks...  

Oh, and the drinking age in Canada is only 19. But waitresses must go through an actual course to be allowed to serve alcohol. It's called Safe-Serve and the one girl I spoke to that has hers said she did it online. She said, "If I let you get really drunk and you drive away and kill yourself then I'm liable."  Interesting idea, adds incentive for the bar staff to watch their customers' intake.

Now we're headed to a Vineyard named after mom in the "Finger lakes"

Protesting Christians

Over the past two days our campus has been invaded by radical, militant, Wisconsin preachers. As far as I know, they have been doing this, going campus to campus, to spread a rather unsavoury message for many years.  Those of us that were there felt equally, faith or no faith, religion or none, Agnostics, Atheists, Christians, Pagans, Buddhist, etc. that these intruders were spreading a message that we did not agree with, a dangerous message, and a humorously absurd message.  

I did, however, have a few people approach me to ask, "why don't you just ignore them? You're only giving them more  power."  This may be true. Drawing extra attention to, and creating a more entertaining spectacle did enhance the broadcasting of their message. But the protesters did something far more important than undercutting these twisted "preachers'" power. We took a stand to say that Washburn does not support intolerance, misogamy, and ignorance. That the students at Washburn are open-minded, loving, and tolerant. The University should be proud of it's students after yesterday and today.

"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. "

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Grass Death Machine

I was thinking while walking back from class and watching the giant man sitting atop the exceptionally large lawn mower cutting the grass on the football fields between campus and the dorms I live in. I had on flip-flops and the freshly cut grass caught under my bare feet and between my toes. Like millions of tiny green corpses lined up across the entire football field.  This made me wonder, what would it be like if grass could bleed as though it were human?  What a mess even a personal push mower would create across a front lawn! And if the "blood" wasn't green would we even take the trouble to mow?  And would we think twice about lopping off the heads of so many tiny organisms, or would we just done more protective clothing so as not to dirty our old work tennis shoes?  Doesn't that seem cold? Just lopping off the heads of living things and leaving their bodies to rot atop their, albeit still growing, remains.
I think if we were to view plants as living sentient organisms then we would see the things we do to them far more brutal and gruesome than the things that happen to animals. Not that I am fore animal cruelty or butchering, but it seems that people that don't eat meat because of the cruel treatment of livestock and instead devour salad after salad after tofu hot dog are, at some level, hypocritical.
We grow plants and harvest them, just as we do livestock. And if those plants were considered living, sentient organism at the same level of animals then why is it okay to massacre them to save the lives of our future cheeseburger?
What is it that makes the "animal" a higher organism than a plant? That it has eyes? That it makes noise? Or is it the complicated way in which the organism is constructed? Perhaps the level of intricacy that is found in an organism is what defines it's level on the hierarchy of nature.

I'm not certain of the answer to this, and I may come back and revise what I'm writing now, but for certain I will continue to devour both plant and animal equally. :D

Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, are some works that we must teach in high schools. I'm not against that. I think they are great pieces of literature with beautifully written lines of poetry. However, for the average high school aged student the task of trudging through each line of Shakespearian English is less then exhilarating. Which is my main concern. Why are we forcing students to READ every line of a play? For many students, reading a play in general can be a difficult task, what with a lacking description of action and so much left to the director to decide. Added on top of that is a version of English no longer used in today's society (so much for making the text relevant). 

So here's my idea. We have the students WATCH the play (as it was meant to be enjoyed) while following along in the text. It wouldn't hurt to have them writing down quotes that they particularly enjoyed. And stopping between scenes to discuss what happened, new developments in the characters, and translating some of the more difficult lines. This would save a tremendous amount of time and the students would understand the plot way more in depth than they would were they just reading the lines.

 

But don't think that is it. We have to make the experience meaningful and enjoyable for them (yes I believe that it's important to make enjoyable lessons). Either the instructor cuts certain sections or the students are set free to find their own selections of the play. The cuttings must fit into an assigned time frame, groups are divided so to supply each section with the proper amount of players, then the students spend a few days learning lines, blocking scenes, and coming up with props or other add-ins they choose. Then, for the final show, each section performs their selection from the play to the class. Make an event of it! Invite others to come see it! Ask the drama department if you could borrow the stage for a day or two. Make the students OWN the play. Guarantee they will find the experience meaningful and they will have an understanding of the text that goes deeper than just grazing over it and taking a test. 

Side note:

My prof. mentioned this book, From Hinton to Hamlet to the class. I am adding it to my lists of books to buy. Seems like a worth while read. Connecting Young Adult Literature to the classics. Making the classics meaningful to the students. Because that's what it's all about. 

If we can't make the lessons meaningful and relevant to the student, then we're wasting our time. 

What this is....m

I want to blog. The idea if writing to a massive audience sounds like great fun, and opens the opportunity to discuss interesting topics. But being that I am interested in a wide range or topics there is no way for me to come to a single theme for this blog.  So I think I'll just make this a place to toy with ideas, opinions, and writing. Now with luck I can attract some followers, but more importantly, people that will comment and discuss intelligently. 

Have you seen those odd little bar codes in the bottom corner of a magazine, on a billboard, or even in the Union?  These odd looking squares that look like a defective checkerboard? Well these handy little things are called Quick Reference codes (QR Codes)!
The reason I wanted to post about these little guys is I was amazed at how quickly they are gaining popularity in America. The first time I saw them, however, was during a few weeks a spent in Japan. QR codes were EVERYWHERE! Every poster, sign, table decoration, and handout had one! I asked one of my friends what the purpose of these things were and he showed me. Flipping out his cell phone he snapped a quick picture of the code, hit okay, and was instantly taken to a website.
"Why aren't these in America?!" I asked. And now I'm seeing them slide their way into American advertising, but I have yet to see many people that already know what they are and how to use them.
Most smartphones now have the software needed to read them. Android recently included the components needed to scan the QR codes, and if you have a Droid or iPhone you can download the "Google Goggles" app.  Play with these things and scan around.  You can even create your own!
And I didn't explain this too well so I linked the Wikipedia page for QR Codes

Scan this to see my other blog on your phone!

Music in the 21st Century

So, a few days ago I was in a heated conversation with my friend over the revolutionary abilities of technology and the creative arts. I was advocating that the ability to use new music producing software, like Garageband or Music Studio, opened new avenues for people that didn't have the time to learn the various instruments that are required to produce intricate songs. Then, low and behold, I check my RSS feeds and saw a new post by David Warlick entitled "Tech for Creativity". He wrote about using Music Studio, during his long airtime, to write a song for his wife. I listened to his song and was amazed that, while flying 27,000 miles above the ground, he produced "Brenda's Song" which included piano, flute, choir, and strings. This is what I was talking about! The ability for creative people to express themselves without having to learn five instruments, record each piece, then weave them all together! This is what I love about the 21st century.