des liens

The Maximum Leader and his ministers engage in a sudden and unprovoked barrage of posting. Start here and work your way upward.

Gord's got a great post on teaching English.

Daehee's written one bitch of an allegory.

Joel's got two good ones on Michael Breen's presentation at a recent KOTESOL conference.

I'm too lazy to grab a dictionary and read this from Wooj, but his piece on Ohno/Hamm is thought-provoking, and you don't have to read to understand this. Mmmmmm. Juicy.

Jeff gives a shout-out to Julie, but also offers the following observation:

...Big Ho's transcendent writings are about as subtle as being rogered up the backside by a [rhinoceros]...

I think Jeff's still pissed that I insulted his lizard's manhood.

I'm late with the announcement, but the Infidel is back to blogging... and it's a team effort this time, as Joseph brings his wife along for the ride.

The Nomad's recent post on Pyongyang features a photo that reminds me of nothing so much as my 1989 trip to Berlin, a week after the Wall came down. That photo's not so different from what East Berlin looked like.

I'm belated in announcing this as well, but the Polymath may be shipping out to Iraq. Wish him a safe journey.

Justin posts some awesome pics of the Brazilian dance/martial art capoeira.

Without using the actual term, Richard at Peking Duck critiques the Flypaper Strategy in Iraq. I never understood the rationale: how do you build a nation while at the same time encouraging terrorists to come in and tear it down?

I'm gonna have to drop Anna from the blogroll soon if she keeps on not posting. When you've got the attention span of a fly, you crave constant entertainment. Anna don't put out, BigHo be takin' he bidness L-swear.

Goddamn yuppie Ryan noshes on cosmic cereal.

Debonair Suaveroot mulls over bloggers and slaps a ton of cool stuff into a post titled Upshift, which includes a lovely piece called "How to Wash Your Own Brain."

I've been thoroughly enjoying Beautiful Atrocities ever since I blogrolled it. Here's a post that'll show you why. Choice quote:

...llamas, stupidest animals on the face of God's earth. EXAMPLE: there are no alpha llamas, so llamas spend most of their time blinking, wondering what to do next. Too stupid even for sex. Most new llamas [are the] result of poor toilet-seat hygiene...

Dr. Vallicella tries to tempt me out of my cave in his post titled "Is Religion the Problem?" He goads:

Religions involve both doctrine and practice, and to attempt to reduce a religion to either is wrongheaded.

I responded to this contention here. It's not exactly a disagreement; I tend to think of doctrine as a form of practice, i.e., it's part of the doing of religion. My basic orientation is empirical: no people, no religion-- neither doctrine nor practice. (By the way, I'm not alone in thinking this, lest anyone believe I actually came up with an original thought.)

I'm in full agreement with Dr. Vallicella here, however. There's a right way and a wrong way to spell a person's goddamn name. The artist in question does have a point, however: people could have stopped her and corrected her while she was making the mural. That no one bothered to check on her progress is significant, especially since the mural cost some $40,000. Unfortunately, the artist loses all my sympathy when she says, "The people that are into humanities, and are into Blake's concept of enlightenment, they are not looking at the words.... In their mind the words register correctly." If this means that an artist has the right to be careless with someone's money and forgo the requirements of basic literacy, I know a few hundred thousand devotees of Chinese brush art who'd vehemently disagree.

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