Random Quote
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
---- Albert Einstein
Sleep is a symptom of caffeine deprivation.
---- Author Unknown
This may be the most interesting blog theme I've ever seen. http://eflgeek.com/index.php Definitely in my top 5 at least.
---- Steve Dembo
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
---- Terry Pratchett
Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
---- Abigail Adams (1744 - 1818)
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent.
---- Robert Copeland
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
---- Arnold Lobel
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
---- Isaac Asimov
"It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm.'"
---- Sam Levenson
it's probably not a good idea to underestimate my ability to make an ass out of myself—just when I seem to have it under control, I'll turn around and surprise you.
---- Tenser said the Tensor
Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
---- Fred Allen
Drink coffee! Do stupid things faster!
---- unknown
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
---- George Orwell
Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.
---- Edward R. Murrow
Technology will not replace teachers...teachers who use technology will
probably replace teachers who do not.
---- Ray Clifford
Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs.
---- Jack Lynch
Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own.”
---- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749 -1832)
The voodoo priest and all his powders were as nothing compared to espresso, cappuccino, and mocha, which are stronger than all the religions of the world combined, and perhaps stronger than the human soul itself.
---- Mark Helprin, Memoir from Antproof Case, 1995
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
---- Robert Frost
Don't knock the weather. If it didn't change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn't start a conversation.
---- Kin Hubbard
Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.
---- Terry Pratchett
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
---- M. Cartmill
If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
---- Doug Larson
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
---- Thomas A. Edison
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.
---- Gail Godwin
Sick Baby
My daughter has been really sick for the past few days. Hopefully she gets better by the end of the weekend. Will write more then.
Homework
Rethabile Masilo over at On English linked to an interesting article about Homework While this article focuses on school age children the implications for post secondary study are also clear.
Read the rest of this post
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Wednesday Feb 11, 2004 at 11:35 AM
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To Bombinate
bombinate BOM-buh-nayt, intransitive verb:
To buzz; to hum; to drone.
My other web site has a word a day and I noticed that today was bombinate and I just had to know what this means. I like this word - it sounds so ominous. My computer is bombinating and I’m not sure what I should do!
Animals & classifications
Over at Language Hat there was a linke to an interesting site about classifications related to animals. There is a giant table with well over a hundred different animals listed and the proper words that fit into the following categories: Plurals, Collective Nouns, Sounds, Gender and Offspring. To say the least it is rather interesting.
Some of the more interesting ones, to me at least, include: a wake of buzzards - presumably this is related to death and not oceans. A deceit of lapwings - what exactly is a lapwing also known as the peewing? and a dazzle of zebras - I would have assumed herd. The most appropriate name is an intrusion of cockroaches - damn the little bastards to hell.
Going to another page on the same site brings one to a list of animals with the adjectival equivalents. For example, wolf - lupine, dog - canine, etc. quite obviously some of the more obscure words are not particularly useful: hirudinal - leech, but I do see how this site may be useful when preparing some sort of lesson regarding classifications and/or adjectives.
Most interesting to me is this blurb near the bottom
Did you know a line (or queue, generally of schoolchildren), usually paired, is called a crocodile?
As in, “The crocodile made its way down the sidewalk, the crowds parting to let it pass.”
Mostly because I find groups of children just as frightening as crocodiles.





