I'm halfway done with my PhD program! Yay!
A week ago I deposited my qualifying papers. Now, I just have to defend my papers next semester, and if I pass, I get
a Master's degree in Linguistics. Whew.
I just graded my last HW set, so I'm completely done with the semester.
I'm going to Lexington, Kentucky, where I will spend Christmas with my girl Rachel and my Dad's side of the family. We stay at my Uncle Norb's, who with my Aunt Tammie are great hosts to Rachel and me. I love staying there.
I'm also going to visit Nana and Aunt Debra in the Fort Lauderdale, Florida area, for the New Year's time. I'm looking forward to being in a tropical climate in the winter.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Sunday, November 19, 2006
The Worst Side Of A Man
Two things bring out the worst in a man.
Inordinate power. Inordinate desperation.
More than 100 Iraqis per day die in their streets.
Genocide occurs in Sudan.
The mob-like Russian and Eastern bloc governments assassinate dissenters.
These people in the world do what they wish not to do. Peace is far from the mind and conflict suffocates.
What power is held must be used, and weakness never shown or yielded... except through display of many dead bodies, or your own. The alternative is mutiny by those wolves that surround you, circling, drueling with dreams of your demise.
With no choice in the matter of survival, action must be taken. Become a thief, join a militia, prostitute yourself. Sell your body to the highest bidder, or disappear into the shadows. Your other choice is slavery, or death...probably both.
Religion is the excuse.
Religion is the solution.
Let's figure it out...
Inordinate power. Inordinate desperation.
More than 100 Iraqis per day die in their streets.
Genocide occurs in Sudan.
The mob-like Russian and Eastern bloc governments assassinate dissenters.
These people in the world do what they wish not to do. Peace is far from the mind and conflict suffocates.
What power is held must be used, and weakness never shown or yielded... except through display of many dead bodies, or your own. The alternative is mutiny by those wolves that surround you, circling, drueling with dreams of your demise.
With no choice in the matter of survival, action must be taken. Become a thief, join a militia, prostitute yourself. Sell your body to the highest bidder, or disappear into the shadows. Your other choice is slavery, or death...probably both.
Religion is the excuse.
Religion is the solution.
Let's figure it out...
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Good Sandwich
I just made an excellent sandwich ^_^
Ingredients:
whole wheat bread, 2 slices
portabella mushroom, 1
cheddar cheese, 2 slices from a block
hummus, 2 tbsp
capers, 2 tsp
spinach, a few leaves
So what I do is take the head of a portabella mushroom. Then I lightly oil and salt a frying pan and fry the mushroom. I spread some hummus on a slice of bread, and put some capers on the hummus. Then I take the fried mushroom out of the pan and put it on the bread. I cut a couple slices of cheddar cheese, and add that along with some fresh spinach leaves. I put the whole thing in the frying pan and brown the bread. I found that the spinach and cheese makes the sandwich unstable in the frying pan, so you might try adding it after frying the bread.
Enjoy!
Ingredients:
whole wheat bread, 2 slices
portabella mushroom, 1
cheddar cheese, 2 slices from a block
hummus, 2 tbsp
capers, 2 tsp
spinach, a few leaves
So what I do is take the head of a portabella mushroom. Then I lightly oil and salt a frying pan and fry the mushroom. I spread some hummus on a slice of bread, and put some capers on the hummus. Then I take the fried mushroom out of the pan and put it on the bread. I cut a couple slices of cheddar cheese, and add that along with some fresh spinach leaves. I put the whole thing in the frying pan and brown the bread. I found that the spinach and cheese makes the sandwich unstable in the frying pan, so you might try adding it after frying the bread.
Enjoy!
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
City Boxers
Sorry for the hiatus ^_^;
Hmm.
So I recently bought a couple pairs of boxers from City Boxers. I've worn each a few times and I do enjoy them quite a bit. Being a poor grad student, I bought from their bargain section, which really gets you some great prices that beat most store prices even with shipping. Here is a photo of one of the pairs I got. The flannel is really soft and the material is very high quality :-) And they're all made in the USA, to boot!
An attribute I look for in a company I purchase from is an evident passion for the product they produce. You can clearly see it throughout their website, from the front page description of the company, to the made-to-order customizability of all their boxers, to the forums where the owner answers questions and responds to comments enthusiastically. I expect I will be a repeat customer.
Hmm.
So I recently bought a couple pairs of boxers from City Boxers. I've worn each a few times and I do enjoy them quite a bit. Being a poor grad student, I bought from their bargain section, which really gets you some great prices that beat most store prices even with shipping. Here is a photo of one of the pairs I got. The flannel is really soft and the material is very high quality :-) And they're all made in the USA, to boot!
An attribute I look for in a company I purchase from is an evident passion for the product they produce. You can clearly see it throughout their website, from the front page description of the company, to the made-to-order customizability of all their boxers, to the forums where the owner answers questions and responds to comments enthusiastically. I expect I will be a repeat customer.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Father's Day, Wandafar, Ubuntu Linux
Last week I was deciding what to do for my Dad for Father's Day. I was looking at sending down some high quality beer(where he lives is in a "dry" county). The shipping was so expensive, though, that the idea came into my head that I could just go take something down to him myself, and pay him a visit over the weekend. And so I did. On Friday I stopped at the Walnut Street Tea Company and got him a variety of loose teas. Then I drove down to Glasgow, KY in about 6 hours and surprised my Dad with myself and the tea.
In case you didn't know, my Dad runs a one-man farming and wildlife preservation operation. He calls the place where he lives Wandafar. He's planted about 2500 trees in a huge field on the property to lend a hand to the banks of a creek running through. His focus in his agricultural production is to provide all the food he needs for himself, using as little unnaturally-provided resources as possible. That is to say, he wants to be completely self-sufficient. I admire his work and to visit him and see what he's doing is truly an impressive experience, one that you won't have almost anywhere else these days.
I'm slowly migrating my system over to Ubuntu Linux 6.06 presently. Linux is a major alternative to Windows, and is completely free and open. It is not owned by a particular company, and anyone can use and modify it, but some companies like Red Hat have built their own proprietary version of Linux that you can buy in most electronics stores these days. Even then, though, the Linux core remains open. Ubuntu is a version or "distribution"(aka distro) of Linux that is said to be the most userfriendly these days. It is a free and open source distribution, as are the many programs it is packaged with. I seem to like it well enough, once I got past the initial learning curve and difficulties with certain aspects of it.
Linux for years was designed primarily with the most tech savvy in mind, since the masses were assumed to be locked into Windows. So most Linux distributions are unfit for general use. Only in the past couple years with the rise of the free and open source Mozilla Foundation's Firefox as an alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer(boooo!) has there been a push to make Linux suitable for anyone to use. In my opinion Ubuntu is still not ready for anyone to use, but with some improvement it could be.
Why is it important for programs to be free and open source? Because it allows for a community to be created around a piece of software in which anyone can improve it and fit it to the community's needs. It also promotes an adherence to universal standards in software, which means you can use, for instance, any web browser that adheres to these standards to view web pages. Thus web pages can be created with just these standards in mind, and not two different standards, as is done now, between Microsoft, and everything else.
In case you didn't know, my Dad runs a one-man farming and wildlife preservation operation. He calls the place where he lives Wandafar. He's planted about 2500 trees in a huge field on the property to lend a hand to the banks of a creek running through. His focus in his agricultural production is to provide all the food he needs for himself, using as little unnaturally-provided resources as possible. That is to say, he wants to be completely self-sufficient. I admire his work and to visit him and see what he's doing is truly an impressive experience, one that you won't have almost anywhere else these days.
I'm slowly migrating my system over to Ubuntu Linux 6.06 presently. Linux is a major alternative to Windows, and is completely free and open. It is not owned by a particular company, and anyone can use and modify it, but some companies like Red Hat have built their own proprietary version of Linux that you can buy in most electronics stores these days. Even then, though, the Linux core remains open. Ubuntu is a version or "distribution"(aka distro) of Linux that is said to be the most userfriendly these days. It is a free and open source distribution, as are the many programs it is packaged with. I seem to like it well enough, once I got past the initial learning curve and difficulties with certain aspects of it.
Linux for years was designed primarily with the most tech savvy in mind, since the masses were assumed to be locked into Windows. So most Linux distributions are unfit for general use. Only in the past couple years with the rise of the free and open source Mozilla Foundation's Firefox as an alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer(boooo!) has there been a push to make Linux suitable for anyone to use. In my opinion Ubuntu is still not ready for anyone to use, but with some improvement it could be.
Why is it important for programs to be free and open source? Because it allows for a community to be created around a piece of software in which anyone can improve it and fit it to the community's needs. It also promotes an adherence to universal standards in software, which means you can use, for instance, any web browser that adheres to these standards to view web pages. Thus web pages can be created with just these standards in mind, and not two different standards, as is done now, between Microsoft, and everything else.
Friday, June 09, 2006
US Shoes
Everyday I wear a very old pair of Giorgio Brutini boat shoes(docksides, loafers, etc.). They've held up very well(maybe 10 years?), so I recommend this brand if you're looking for some nice shoes. The downside to this company's shoes is that they are made in China(or at least mine are). In fact, most shoes and clothes that people buy were made across seas. I think every piece of clothing I'm wearing at this moment was made overseas, and almost every article of clothing that I own.
So, I read this interesting piece on a person's quest to find US-made shoes. Actually, the shoes featured there aren't made in the US either anymore.
But the important point is that US companies are exploiting workers in many 3rd-world countries around the world in order to give us clothes at cheap prices and keep their profits maximized. These thoughts were prompted somewhat from a Bible study I had yesterday on Micah Chapter 2, which talks about the exploitation of the poor, and which I think applies to most people reading this post, including me.
Now they're generally not directly exploiting the workers, as they don't own any of the factories(like that absolves them). What they do is find business people in places like South Korea who own these factories in countries like China, Vietnam, the Phillipines, and Thailand, where all our clothes are made. These factory owners are the ones who work their employees for a standard 60 hours per week and mostly pay them minimum wage, which is so low in these 3rd world countries that working 60 hours at these wages doesn't even raise the workers above the poverty line of the country where the factories are located. They often live in barracks on the factory grounds and are not allowed to leave without permission, essentially making them slaves.
An exception is Cambodia, which I heard on an episode of This American Life is a leader among 3rd world nations in labor practices, but has a hard time competing with surrounding countries because they can't make the lowest bids for contracts since they pay decent wages.
So, I thought it would be nice to find shoe companies that do actually commit to making their shoes in the US. I found a cool website called US Stuff that has a shoes section that lists companies that have manufacturing operations in the US. Sometimes you can find companies with excellent prices, like Okabashi, which makes sandals. A popular company that makes casual/athletic shoes mostly in the US is New Balance.
I'm considering buying a pair of sandals from Chaco. And maybe if my Giorgio Brutinis ever fall apart I'll buy a new pair of boat shoes from B.A. Mason Shoes :-)
So, I read this interesting piece on a person's quest to find US-made shoes. Actually, the shoes featured there aren't made in the US either anymore.
But the important point is that US companies are exploiting workers in many 3rd-world countries around the world in order to give us clothes at cheap prices and keep their profits maximized. These thoughts were prompted somewhat from a Bible study I had yesterday on Micah Chapter 2, which talks about the exploitation of the poor, and which I think applies to most people reading this post, including me.
Now they're generally not directly exploiting the workers, as they don't own any of the factories(like that absolves them). What they do is find business people in places like South Korea who own these factories in countries like China, Vietnam, the Phillipines, and Thailand, where all our clothes are made. These factory owners are the ones who work their employees for a standard 60 hours per week and mostly pay them minimum wage, which is so low in these 3rd world countries that working 60 hours at these wages doesn't even raise the workers above the poverty line of the country where the factories are located. They often live in barracks on the factory grounds and are not allowed to leave without permission, essentially making them slaves.
An exception is Cambodia, which I heard on an episode of This American Life is a leader among 3rd world nations in labor practices, but has a hard time competing with surrounding countries because they can't make the lowest bids for contracts since they pay decent wages.
So, I thought it would be nice to find shoe companies that do actually commit to making their shoes in the US. I found a cool website called US Stuff that has a shoes section that lists companies that have manufacturing operations in the US. Sometimes you can find companies with excellent prices, like Okabashi, which makes sandals. A popular company that makes casual/athletic shoes mostly in the US is New Balance.
I'm considering buying a pair of sandals from Chaco. And maybe if my Giorgio Brutinis ever fall apart I'll buy a new pair of boat shoes from B.A. Mason Shoes :-)
Thursday, June 01, 2006
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