It’s been nearly two weeks since I watched Lord of War, so this’ll be a brief review, but better late than never, eh?
First off, what struck me during this second watching of Lord of War was how similar, in many ways, it was to Charlie Wilson’s War. They both dealt with serious subjects, and they [...]
Posts filed in Education
A tag for educational moments. Kindergartens, Elementary Schools, Junior High Schools, Senior High Schools, Universities, Colleges, Free Schools, private schools, public schools, teachers, teaching, students, pupils, school houses, curriculums, exams, tests, papers, paperclips.
You name it, and if it’s even in the most obscure way related to education, and mentioned in this blog, the post it’s in’ll be tagged with this.
Lord of War
Rock Star
Rock Star is the movie about the young Chris (Mark Wahlberg), who idolates the Heavy Metal band Steel Dragon and sings in a Steel Dragon tribute band (from whence the immortal comment “We’re not a cover band, we’re a tribute band!” arises). The first half or so of the movie portrays Chris’ day to day [...]
Inspiration strikes from the weirdest skies…
So, we’re doing syntax in the English linguistics course I’m taking, and in today’s lecture, we went through the various ways of determining whether or not a string of words is a phrase or not — a mildly put important part of the whole syntax bit. One of the examples the lecturer used was the [...]
A Message from the Lost Son: Why I Love Heraclius
“The Persians were applying inexorable pressure on what remained of the empire. Heraclius was faced with a stark choice: he could either wait for the Persian grip to tighten, fighting a series of rearguard actions which offered little chance for ultimate success, or he could throw caution to the wind and take battle to the [...]
A-braggin’ we shall go
I got the results of my last exam this weekend, and in connection to that I guess I ought to say a little more about why, exactly, it is that I’ve been absent for so long the last couple of weeks.
You see, the last month of the Fall term, I spent relatively much time on [...]
Curses! Or constructing next term’s schedule
I checked my course registration page at NTNU (ooh!) about an hour ago, and much to my delight I discovered that I’ve been registered for not two but three courses this spring, and that these three combined fill my required term quota of 30 study points.
English Linguistics gives me 7,5 points if I pass it; [...]
New… thingy, let’s call it a “quasi-daily”, or whatever.
For the past two or three years, I’ve been considering to make a thread at one of the forums I hang at, a thread called “What I learned today”. In case some of you think that’s a cool acronym or something, let me assure you it’s not. I’d simply be a thread where people could [...]
Help! A “challenge”
So. I had an exam in English Language Proficiency just over two weeks ago, where one of the tasks were “language correction: identify, correct and briefly explain the grammar ortography mistakes in the following text”. It was supposed to be 13 mistakes here, but I only found eleven. Can you help me locate the last [...]
I’m concerned for my university
I had my fifth and final exam for the term today, and unfortunately, I thought it was just like the four previous ones.
You see, based on the curriculi and the lectures in the courses I’ve been taking this fall, I’ve been expecting to be satisfied with a straight Cs. Global English had a lot of [...]
“Global English” is rubbish
“Given the stress that is laid on spelling by prescriptivists, and the existence of so many dictionaries which provide standard spellings for English words, it is perhaps surprising that there should be any variation in spelling within standard varieties. But there is. Some of this variation is variation between varieties. More often, though, there us [...]
How to interpret a peculiar request
“‘Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed …’
(from Shakespeare’s will)
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover’s words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his [...]
Oh, the shame! The shame!
During my medieval history exam on Monday, I managed to confuse the Battle of Poitiers with the ditto of Agincourt.
I feel like I’m going to melt; at least that would allow me to forget that a professor of history will read my mistake and shake his head in disappointment and disbelief at my folly…
The day I realized how much of a nerd I really am…
… was last weekend, when I and one of my flatmates (who’s a linguistics student) spent a quarter of an hour having fun with the IPA map in general, and the voiced bilabial trill in particular.
But hey, the voiced bilabial trill really is one of the funniest phonems in the world. Alright, the “schwa” and [...]
An Exercise in Humility
About two weeks ago I made some rather rash statements about the nature of Roman intellectualism, which I just a few days later realized were founded almost entirely on my prejudices against the poor Romans. Thus, I felt that a post would be required to make up for things. This post, to be specific.
In addtion [...]
2007-11-15 — Quote of the Day
“Attacking his opponent Disraeli in Parliament, Gladstone remarked that ‘the honourable gentleman will either end on the gallows or die of some loathsome disease.’ To which Gladstone rejoined: ‘That depends on whether I embrace the honourable gentleman’s principles or his mistresses.’”
— An example of a witty repartee,
A Glossary of Literary Terms.
2007-11-11 — Quote of the Day
“Another of Burckhardt’s characterizations of the civilization of the Reneissance, the discovery of the world around man, was not one of the humanists’ primary aims. Yet, in their quest for the writings of antiquity, they also discovered the large corpus of the scientific work of the ancients and this they also proceeded to publish. the [...]
2007-11-09 — Quote of the Day
“The papacy pushed its universal claims and international organization to their highest point and defeated the rival universal claims of the Holy Roman Empire, only to be defeated, in its turn, by the regionally based monarchies.
“Here was the turning point of internationalism in the Middel Ages. The distinguished philosopher-historian Arnold Toynbee saw it as the [...]
2007-11-08 — Quote of the Day
“Some sixty years later the dispute between king and Church flared up again. This time it took the form of a quarrel between Henry II (1154-1189) [of England] and Thomas Becket [...] Just as in the case of the emperor Henry IV [of the Holy Roman Empire] and Pope Gregory VII, personalities played their part [...]
2007-11-07 — Quote of the Day
“The pagan barbarians had buried their most precious possessions with their dead. These possessions would vary, from the weapons of ordinary men and the simple bronze or copper jewelry which even poor women owned to the to the treasures of great warriors and kings, such as those superbly rich objects of Sutton Hoo, in Suffolk, [...]
Norske språklyder
Jeg kan hverken fatte eller begripe at Gudene har sett med slik velvilje på meg, og latt noen skape dette fantastiske programmet, utelukkende for min convenience. Jeg føler meg som universets navle. Eller, navler er egentlig ikke så jævla tøffe. La oss gå for øyesten.
Ja, øyesten høres bedre ut. (Ikke dermed sagt at det er [...]
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