Barrack on New Orleans

The biggest disgrace this country has known in the last 30 some-odd years. Racial inequality manifested as a bulldozer and lack thereof. The failure of government to take care of its people. Call it what you will. Barrack on New Orleans.

Athletic Director?

That's right, you're looking at the new athletic director of my school. Oh, plus the AP Physics teacher, and the engineering teacher. A full course load plus a job that will surely give me cardiac arrest. What was I thinking? I only wish they had told me a little earlier than FOUR DAYS before the start of school. Anyone know a good track coach, we could use someone to take my place.

Ode to a friend

There are many of us out here, people with good hearts that we just don't know what to do with. Good but painful, so painful the burning becomes unbearable sometimes. We try to quell it using the same means everyone seems to use. Watch a movie, buy a shirt, eat some sushi - but it's always there. And for some of us, the burning doesn't subside, not ever, until it evolves into something uncontrollable, a wild fire filled with goodness aching to be put somewhere when there just isn't anywhere to put it. Want to put it. Desperately want to give. Fix things. Tear things apart and reconstruct. Build anew. Slow down the fire a little bit, just a little.

By the time it gets out, it's too late. The place where it came from, that heart all flowing over with this incredible need to care, becomes tarnished by an outside that can't possibly understand. It's a place that has a different dialect, different face, different system of everything that we can't possibly understand. And maybe that's all it is, a lack of understanding. That would be optimistic. Because, bottom line, it's those good hearts that suffer. First for carrying them, second for the punishment that will inevitably come, and third for the misunderstanding, the tarnishing of the truth.

The truth for him and for all of us, is that this need to help burns deep, so deep that it can't be stopped, not by a law, not by a police officer, not by the riot squad, and certainly not by some phony label that no one truly buys in the first place. The choice doesn't exist.

It still hurts. My best wishes, Daniel McGowan. And if you don't believe me, read his letters.

On Chinese Men

Two miners who escaped from a collapsed pit in Beijing ate coal and drank urine to survive, Chinese media has reported.

"I told my brother 'your wife is going to have to marry someone else'", Meng Xianyou told the newspaper.

His brother replied: "I laughed too. I said my wife could find a rich man in Shenyang. But then I thought, I have two children and my wife is ugly, so it would be hard for her to remarry."

...wow

George Bush doesn't care about black people

As inarticulate as rhyme sayer Kanye West comes off in this video, it's still hilarious and somewhat poignant. It's taken from a live spot he did for the Red Cross in the days after Hurricane Katrina. He is standing next to Mike Myers when he blurts out, "George Bush doesn't care about black people." Then, boom, cut to Chris Tucker. Maybe I'm a little late on this one.

I just want to bang on the drums

Back to work tomorrow. Two months of vacation were almost enough to depressurize. People say teachers get too much vacation. They're wrong. We get almost enough.

Cara said I was a post-modern surrealist poet

Renegade feather duster
Charming prince of a cloned refrigerator
Can't remove the tourniquet turquoise Arquette
Beat my brow, how now brown cow
milk, milk, limonada
swept away in a fray of favorite manatees
to me
eat

Beijing pictures

my Beijing photos on flickr

"We have broken the speed of light"

Two German scientists claim to have broken the speed of light, with a tunneling photon, a pair of prisms and a gap of about three feet. This would be just about the biggest discovery/disaster the physics community since Einstein first developed his theory of special relativity which says that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Nothing. Not even super charged light. This would shatter that along with all the equations that claim that a particle traveling faster than the speed of light would have to have infinite energy, which these microwave photons do not have.

But don't fret. As the above article points out, many scientists believe that the contradiction can be explained away by special effects of quantum tunneling. Herbert G. Winful claims that its all due to the Hartman Effect. Sleep well Einstein.

Why it's scary that China is taking over the world

"China Bans Buddhist 'reincarnation' Without Government Permission"
In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation."more

From KalingaTimes:
"In a significant assertion, the statement said: 'If there is any self-
claimed Living Buddha without government and religious affairs
department approval, this said reincarnation would be illegal and
invalid.' " more

Opening

Blogs are for losers. And now I'm here. Not because I want people to read it. Don't read it. I don't care. I just think this looks better than writing my thoughts down in MS Word. Colors, pictures, links - its so pretty. Hope you enjoy.