So these two yoots . . .

"What exactly is a yoot?"

This is a picture, taken this past weekend, of the tree where Hotpants and I played when we were nine or ten.



And this is a picture of the items we used in our games -- these sticks were our imagined weapons, which we used to fight great evil. And they were still there, twenty-five years later.




Apparently the past is never really gone.

Thanks for the pics, Josh. And the games.

It's here! Gathering Storm, baby!

Started reading it this morning.

I miss Robert Jordan.

Remember, Remember

Thursday is the Fifth of November. Start looking for those arguments.

I'm done.

Topic: Inventions are all around us. Think of an invention that has been especially helpful or harmful to people. Write a paper that explains the invention and why it is helpful or harmful.

I chose that nukes were a really important invention. Nuke's are very harmful to the world and to living things. That's why I chose nuke's as my topic. If nukes were never around the world would be better than it now is. Whenever somebody see's a nuke they think that the world is going to end. Movie's and video games show people what the world would be like after a war with nukes. There would be nothing left except a few people who managed to hide deep in the earth. Nuke's also have already killed many people. When we bombed China a lot of people died from it. Even more died after the bomb hit, from radiation exposure. A nuke could also be helpful though. If a country is going to nuke another, we could try to hit another nuke while its in midair before it even gets close to the ground by using another nuke. Also if someday a huge comet is heading towards earth we could launch a nuke at it and possibly make it move into another direction, or just destroy it if its small enough.

If somehow we were able to have an agreement with every country to never use a nuke unless earth was going to be hearmed by something, and every country agreed that they would send a nuke out.

Nice source.

A student had the word "niggardly" on her vocabulary list -- meaning scanty or few; provided in small, stingy amounts -- and for the "Sentence I saw it in" column, she wrote, "Well I was trying to type . . . a racial slur name on my phone and for some reason it changed it to niggardly."

I love my students.

WHAT did that say?!?

I was reading a vocabulary list from a student who has trouble with English (second language). Her word was "versatile," her sentence was "Maybe a pencil is versatile." Which is fine -- the "maybe" is because she lacks confidence in her English.

But she misspelled "pencil." She spelled it "penicl." And I thought the "l" was part of the "i" in "is."

Which made for a very funny sentence.

I'm not sure: is the penis versatile?

What's the opposite of epic fail?

To all students who read this, who did a senior project of any kind for graduation (And I include myself, since I had to take a special thesis level class to get my Bachelor's, and, as my wife will never let me forget, I took a class that focused on movies, which meant I got to watch three movies a week and thus earned a degree):

Your projects officially suck. All of us are pathetic.

Check this guy out.

William Kamkwamba