BOSS GT-10

I recently added a new gadget to my sonic toybox, the BOSS GT-10 multi-effects guitar processor. It's a sweet ride, a universe of atmospheric sounds, and for your edification I offer you a few sound files, a few little extracts of guitar-based noise files I conjured up of late. Yes, they are rough, but they sound sweet. At least I enjoy them. I dedicate this mp3 playlist to Barack Obama and his campaign.

Here it is click right here - DON'T BE SHY

Vote Barak Obama!

As the new school year approaches . . .

I prepare myself mentally for the mental landscapes before me. The teenagers I work with have great potential to create interesting cultural artifacts, now I need to ensure that each day is spent learning new things and reinforcing old things. The house building metaphor becomes relevant: start with grading the area clean (make connections with existing knowledge schemata), start a foundation (steady exposure to target stimuli), reinforce foundation (practice new content in meaningful contexts), and so forth. Here is a website that examines planning a curriculum that works toward the acquisition of new knowledge and skill sets.

curriculumindex - Planning a curriculum - resources, etc.

Dancing!

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

What are these humans doing? Dancing. Many humans on Earth exhibit periods of happiness, and one method of displaying happiness is dancing. Happiness and dancing transcend political boundaries and occur in practically every human society. Above, Matt Harding traveled through many nations on Earth, started dancing, and filmed the result. The video is perhaps a dramatic example that humans from all over planet Earth feel a common bond as part of a single species. Happiness is frequently contagious -- few people are able to watch the above video without smiling.

Summertime!

Snakes are back in my front yard and that means that summer is nigh. Carolina summers are a treat: sultry, sunny, muggy in the evening, perfect sitting on the porch weather and getting in touch with neighbors, friends and family. So enjoy the summer, close to home preferably.

Summer also means that school is finishing up, and my first year at Enloe High School was a thoroughly enjoyable one. The second high school I have served since beginning in this hallowed profession 15 years ago, William G. Enloe offered me a challenging and rewarding atmosphere of high end academics. Very nice change of scenery, it was, but my former high school Southern High School, still calls, for instance yesterday, when I went to a graduation party of a student, Brendan S., whom I taught at Spartanland last year. It was fun to drive back to East Durham and visit with some memorable kids, and I appreciated their warm welcome in the hot Carolina afternoon. One student I did teach at Southern, a certain Jeremy R., finally graduated - well, tomorrow is graduation - with zero absences in his entire 13 year stint in the Durham Public Schools, an awesome achievement. You can see his picture at the Durham Herald Sun newspaper from today, and a nice article written about him and several other DPS students whose attendance was also 100% durable. Better yet, I'll just share the picture on this blog of this fine group of students; Jeremy is the fellow in red standing at the left.

Yesterday was a day of student appreciations. A trio of terrific talents from my Advanced Placement German class invited me to a little dinner at restaurant in Raleigh. I gratefully accepted and had a wonderful evening with these übercool students. They offered me up as a further token of their appreciation a CD, Rockin' the Rhein with Grateful Dead, an appropriate disc, given our time together in German class and my admission that classic rock and roll is my first preference when I reach for the music dial. Great to be honored by students, nice to know that I make impacts on these kids.

What else? Too much. Politics could very well take up some space, but the sheer depressive quality of the events that I care most about, events that I have recently expounded upon here, only angers me and throws me into some despair. So I'll avoid rambling on about the Middle East, but there is one article that might be interesting, by a columnist I read at antiwar.com, Charley Reese: Middle East Pop Quiz. Pretty interesting. Anyone notice how the price of gas spiked after some dipshit in the Israeli government squawked about the inevitability of attaching Iran? Even after American intelligence assessments about Iran's WMD programs concluded that Iran currently has no weapons program underway that would any time soon threaten American interests. Beware the warmongers in Washington and Israel. Call your Congressman or Congresswoman now and tell them to back off threatening Iran.

Peace

Give to antiwar.com

I don't normally ask anything of my quaint base of regular readers, but in this case I feel a need. The website I have linked below, antiwar.com, has been my source of information and commentary for many years now, and it deserves your support. I am tired of mainstream media outlets giving warmongers and war profiteers a free pass as they run amok in Washington D.C. The criminals have been exposed as the cheats and liars that they are, but sadly America still gets spoonfed sugarcoated versions of world events: little if any context, no alternative viewpoints, few facts, mostly hot, irritating air. Antiwar.com twice a year asks readers to contribute to keep their small but significant operation a float. Surf on over and decide for yourself if the website piques your interest. You won't be disappointed.

If you're wondering who the folks are who run the website, you can read about them here.

Antiwar.com

Politics and the American Way

I can't help but notice at my favorite politics website, antiwar.com, a plethora of articles that examine American politicians' fondness for publicly supporting Israeli security needs above all else. As if American foreign policy in that hateful region rests entirely on the premise that what is good for the Israeli political establishment is good for American interests. Let's list a slew of these articles that turn on its head this rabid dogma that is in fact harming American interests.

First, an article from Salon magazine entitled "Finding Obama guilty of insufficient devotion to Israel." The article by Glenn Greenwald speaks about Barack Obama's interview with the Atlantic Monthly's Jeffrey Goldberg, in which Mr. Goldberg asks pointedly to get to the kishke of the matter: do you swear an oath the security of the nation of Israel without condition? Barack does a yeoman's job of taking the politically expedient route of stroking Israel's massive ego. If he was honest about the situation, he wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hades of getting elected. He ducked and dove, but managed to pull off a few zingers pertaining to Israel's long history of violating the human rights of the Palestinians. Good job Mr. Obama, don't let the rabid Israel-firsters get you down, because anyone who truly cared about Israel would actively support and work towards a just peace settlement with the Palestinians and rapidly implement the peace agreement. I'll end this section with a quote from George Washington, in which he addresses the danger of hardcore bias toward any one nation to the detriment of others:

In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave.

Read Washington's entire address for yourself. It is time we start heeding his words.

Justin Raimondo also speaks of this "inquisition" of an interview between Goldberg and Obama, and offers the most humane quote from any of the presidential candidates on Israel's practices in the West Bank, the future heartland of a Palestinian state:

"My job in being a friend to Israel is partly to hold up a mirror and tell the truth and say if Israel is building settlements without any regard to the effects that this has on the peace process, then we're going to be stuck in the same status quo that we've been stuck in for decades now, and that won't lift that existential dread that David Grossman described in your article."

Good Job, Obama. It's not enough, but I understand the limitations of the American political scene when speaking about Israel and the Palestinians. Justin Raimondo's article is called Obama v.s. The Lobby and it deserves your attention.

Ran HaCohen, in his regular Letter from Israel column at antiwar.com, speaks about Israel's 60th birthday. Quite the critic, he is. If only America had journalists as brave as the Israeli Ran HaCohen. It is quite astounding that Israelis themselves are more critical of their government than American politicians. Poll after poll in Israel indicate that about 60 percent and more support negotiations with Hamas in Gaza. Why can't the will of the people be expressed in a democracy? Anyways, read Ran's article; it's illuminating.

Nun - as I say in my German classes - enough is enough. Thanks for reading. And before anyone starts casting aspersions on me for calling attention to the articles linked from this humble blog, let me say this: my position on the Israel-Palestinian conflict is no different in its essence than that of American Presidents since Ronald Reagan, at least. I just get impatient about working towards implement the noble and righteous goal of two states with well defined, internationally recognized borders in the Holy Land, Israel and Palestine.