Category: general news

for those of who who were wondering, somehow the email routines got broken, so you can now actually register and comment and do nifty things like that – which i would of course love for all of you to do.

register here…

for those who are interested here is a link to a report released by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization today which states that approximately 6,000,000 children a year (approximately the entire pre-school population of Japan) die each year as a result of conditions brought about by malnutrition. the study states that the shortage of vitamins A and zinc alone result in approximately 1,500,000 deaths annually – approximately equal to the number of abortions performed in the united states each year.

definitely worth the read.

join us at poetry.wisch.org for a rousing round of haiku’s and cinquains.

for those of you who don’t remember, a haiku is a three line poem of 5-7-5 syllables, and a cinquain is a five line poem of twenty-two syllables in the form of 2-4-6-8-2.

my current favorites:

poetry is hard
when seventeen syllables
is all you can use.

Road trip,
Songfest ’05
ten acts of song and dance.
oh my will it ever be done?
i hope.

(composed tonight near the end of the first act)…

listening to the opening menu music tonight for the civilization 4, i noticed that there were a few phrases that i thought sounded vaguely familiar. any time i hear music that’s in another language i try to see if i can at least pick up what language it is, and this definitely sounded like swahili. at first the only phrase i could pick up was “baba yetu” (our father), but soon i caught “mbinguni” (heaven) and “amina” (amen), and “jina lake” (your name).

i assumed that it was probably some old tribal song that i’d never heard, but that someone dug up for the opening credits for the game. then again, all of those words do, in fact, appear in some language i’m familiar with… “our father in heaven, holy is your name…” grabbing my trusty habari njema kwa watu wote, i opened up to matthew 6:

baba yetu uliye mbinguni
jina lako litukuzwe.
Ufalme wako ufike,
Utakalo lifankyike
duniani kama mbinguni
Utepe leo chakula chetu tunachohitaji.
utusamehe makosa yetu
kama nasi tunavyowasamehe waliotukosea
usitutie katika majaribuni,
lakini utuokoe na yule Mwovu.

our father in heaven,
your name – may it be exalted.
your kingdom come
your work be done
on the earth, like in heaven.
give us today our food that we need.
and forgive us our mistakes
in the same way we forgive those who wrong us.
and do not carry us into trials,
but deliver us from the evil one.

some of you probably wonder what i do. this week it’s largely been writing and arguing over every sentence of this document. Incidentally, it also describes a good deal of what i’m doing during the rest of my life too…

the NSF proposal continues to take up my time. joy.

oh, and i have a test next week. joy.

good news from yesterday:

1. apple lost my ipod in transit. that sounds bad, but my week of waiting and reporting it missing resulted in a brand-new in the box 20gb color ipod. oh, and this morning, i checked the tracking number on the old one and noticed that it’s been sent back to apple. they found it yesterday in houston. darn.

2. boston fans will know the meaning of 14-2.

3. NYY fans will know the meaning of 4-2.

at any rate, hopefully will get more time to post soon.

sorry for the recent lack of updates… with the insanity generated by the hurricane and working on projects, things got a little crazy. hopefully stuff will be more forthcoming in the next few days.

so last night my d70 began exhibiting what has been called the “blinking green light of death” syndrome. what it basically amounts to is that i’ll have to send my camera into nikon for repair.

sad.

so there may not be as many pictures, but hopefully i’ll get it repaired soon!

so we’ve got a blog over at the AFC site now. check out some good contributions from some up and coming authors and a podcast of oasis lessons.

http://aggiesforchrist.org/blog

thai omlette + oil + hand = ouch