We tried so hard to make things better for our kids that we made them worse. For my grandchildren, I d know better.
I’d really like for them to know about hand-me-down clothes and home-made ice cream and leftover meatloaf. I really would.My cherished grandson, I hope you learn humility by surviving failure and that you learn to be honest even when no one is looking.
I hope you learn to make your bed and mow the lawn and wash the car-and I hope nobody gives you a brand-new car when you are sixteen.It will be good if at least one time you can see a baby calf born, and you have a good friend to be with you if you ever have to put your old dog to sleep.
I hope you get a black eye fighting for something you believe in.
I hope you have to share a bedroom with your younger brother. And it is all right to draw a line down the middle of the room, but when he wants to crawl under the covers with you because he s scared, I hope you ll let him. And when you want to see a Disney movie and your kid brother wants to tag along, I hope you take him.
I hope you have to walk uphill with your friends and that you live in a town where you can do it safely.If you want a slingshot, I hope your father teaches you how to make one instead of buying one. I hope you learn to dig in the dirt and read books, and when you learn to use computers, you also learn how to add and subtract in your head.
I hope you get razzed by friends when you have your first crush on a girl, and that when you talk back to your mother you learn what Ivory soap tastes like.May you skin your knee climbing a mountain, burn your hand on the stove and stick your tongue on a frozen flagpole.
I hope you get sick when someone blows smoke in your face. I don t care if you try beer once, but I hope you won t like it. And if a friend offers you a joint or any drugs, I hope you are smart enough to realize that person is not your friend.
I sure hope you make time to sit on a porch with your grandpa or go fishing with your uncle.
I hope your mother punishes you when you throw a baseball through a neighbor s window, and that she hugs you and kisses you when you give her a plaster of pared mold of your hand.
These things I wish for you-tough times and disappointment, hard work and happiness.
Standard usage includes those words and expressions understood, used, and accepted by a majority of the speakers of a language in any situation regardless of the level of formality. As such, these words and expressions are well defined and listed in standard dictionaries. Colloquialisms, on the other hand, are familiar words and idioms that are understood by almost all speakers of a language and used in informal speech or writing, but not considered appropriate for more formal situations. Almost all idiomatic expressions are colloquial language. Slang, however, refers to words and expressions understood by a large number of speakers but not accepted as good, formal usage by the majority. Colloquial expressions and even slang may be found in standard dictionaries but will be soidentified.
Both colloquial usage and slang are more common in speech than in writing.Colloquial speech often passes into standard speech. Some slang also passes into standard speech, but other slang expressions enjoy momentary popularity followed by obscurity. In some cases, the majority never accepts certain slang phrases but nevertheless retains them in their collective memories. Every generation seems to require its own set of words to describe familiar objects and events.It has been pointed out by a number of linguists that three cultural conditions are necessary for the creation of a large body of slang expressions. First, the introduction and acceptance of new objects and situations in the society; second, a diverse population with a large number of subgroups; third, association among the subgroups and the majority population.Finally, it is worth noting that the terms “standard” “colloquial” and “slang” exist only as abstract labels for scholars who study language.
Only a tiny number of the speakers of any language will be aware that they are using colloquial or slang expressions. Most speakers of English will, during appropriate situations, select and use all three types of expressions.
For the last 82 years, Sweden’s Nobel Academy has decided who will receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, thereby determining who will be elevated from the great and the near great to the immortal.
But today the Academy is coming under heavy criticism both from the without and from within. Critics contend that the selection of the winners often has less to do with true writing ability than with the peculiar internal politics of the Academy and of Sweden itself. According to Ingmar Bjorksten, the cultural editor for one of the country’s two major newspapers, the prize continues to represent “what people call a very Swedish exercise: reflecting Swedish tastes.”
The Academy has defended itself against such charges of provincialism in its selection by asserting that its physical distance from the great literary capitals of the world actually serves to protect the Academy from outside influences. This may well be true, but critics respond that this very distance may also be responsible for the Academy’s inability to perceive accurately authentic trends in the literary world.
Regardless of concerns over the selection process, however, it seems that the prize will continue to survive both as an indicator of the literature that we most highly praise, and as an elusive goal that writers seek. If for no otherreason, the prize will continue to be desirable for the financial rewards that accompany it; not only is the cash prize itself considerable, but it also dramatically increases sales of an author’s books.
As if reading your blog from your favorite reclining / rocking contraption weren’t enough, some folks thought we should be able to update our blogs from just about anywhere. Wireless solutions are already widespread and well-known and mob-blogging (moblogs) has lost of its shiny perk. Been there, seen this, done that… Right?
Well, maybe not so. As one can guess, writing on a cellphone, a PDA, or any other small, portable device can turn into a nightmare if not a nightmbre if you pressed too much on the abc key of your Sony Eriksson. And carrying your 102-key-with-Windows-special-key-and-a-battery-of-special-functionnality keyboard isn’t quite an option. Some clever chaps scratched the back of their heads, watched a few episodes of Stargate and exclaimed Eurêka!
Behold the power of the VKB! VKB as in virtual laser keyboard. Several sites have already been chattering on about this latest new thing on the e-block. iwantoneofthose.com and ebay sell them and http://www.virtual-laser-keyboard.com/ goes into the detail of explaining how it works.
Tag: Platform migration schedule Category: Entertainment
We are tying up the last loose ends in the move to wordpress. If your blog is still living in the previous platform, expect it to be automatically migrated during the next couple of weeks. No intervention is needed by the blog owner. We will move all the data to the new infrastructure and convert it to wordpress format. Your blog template will be kept as it is now, with all the customizations you have done so far. We will send an individual email to each author as soon as his/her account is migrated.
Moving blogs between platforms entails a change in the server that actually serves the blog. This operation takes a few hours to propagate over the Internet. Right after your blog gets moved, new posts may suffer a delay of up to two hours to show up everywhere. The blog itself will never be unavailable. Only posts done immediately after the migration are affected.
Please don’t send requests to blog.com support to speed up your specific blog migration. The process is automatic, and the support team can’t change the order blogs get processed.
Some people are calling it the greatest medical breakthrough so far this century. Surgeons in Spain have successfully carried out the world’s first organ transplant using new stem cell technology.
But what are stem cells? Most cells in our bodies are designed to serve specific purposes – for example, a liver cell develops to work in the liver and cannot become a heart cell.
But stem cells are different. They are very young, and in the laboratory scientists can grow them into different types of cell.
Claudia Castillo needed a new windpipe after contracting tuberculosis. Scientists from the University of Bristol in the UK took a donor windpipe, or trachea, from someone who had recently died.
They used strong chemicals to remove the donor’s cells, leaving a tissue scaffold. This was repopulated with cells from Ms Castillo’s windpipe and nose, and stem cells from her bone marrow. After four days the cells had grown sufficiently for the trachea to be transplanted into Ms Castillo.
Currently, transplant patients have to take drugs for the rest of their lives to prevent their bodies rejecting the new organs. These drugs can have bad side-effects, and do not always prevent rejection.
But by using Ms Castillo’s own cells, doctors were able to trick her body into thinking the new trachea was her own organ. Five months on, Claudia Castillo is in perfect health.
This ground-breaking procedure could be used in other transplant operations in the future. Scientists also believe stem cells might be used to treat Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, stroke, arthritis, diabetes, burns and spinal cord damage.
However, stem cell research is extremely controversial. The most effective stem cells do not come from adults but from embryos created in laboratories and which are just a few days old. Many people have religious or ethical objections to growing embryos, even if they can be used to cure diseases.
2008 will be remembered by the British people as a year of economic crisis. Things have steadily worsened as the year has gone on with companies going into administration, job losses, falling house prices and the collapse of banking institutions.
Britain is just one of the many victims of a wider global financial crisis and sadly the predictions for 2009 do not show any sign of improvement for the British economy.
2008 also sadly saw the worst earthquake in China in over 30 years. The Great Sichuan Earthquake registered 8 on the Richter scale and killed around 70,000 people in May, not to mention the tens of thousands who were injured or went missing.
On a happier note, China also hosted its first Olympic games this summer in Beijing. It was a very successful games with an amazing opening ceremony and a staggering 43 new world records and 132 new Olympic records set.
China topped the medals table with 51 gold medals and Great Britain had its most successful Olympics in over a century with 19 gold medals and 47 medals in total.
2008 will also be remembered in history as the year Barack Obama was elected as the first black President of the United States. This was particularly poignant in a country where black people were once slaves and where segregation existed as little as half a century ago between black and white people.
In the British world of entertainment, Madonna and Paul McCartney’s high-profile divorces were finalised.
Reality TV remained as popular as ever where celebrities learning to ice skate, ballroom dance and survive in the jungle dominated headlines.
TV talent shows also ruled the airwaves with 8 million people voting for Alexandra Burke to win the X Factor, Britain’s most famous talent contest. Her first single ‘Hallelujah’ has become this year’s biggest-selling UK song.
History was made in Washington this week as Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States in front of a crowd of two million people.
President Obama made an impassioned and emotional speech to the multitude of people who had braved the elements to witness the inauguration of America’s first African-American President.
President Obama’s speech touched on many subjects of significance to the American people, including the fragile state of their economy and security matters such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But he began by addressing his personal feelings on his election and the weight of responsibility he felt in taking on such an important office.
“I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors,” said President Obama.
The President went on to talk about the fears that many Americans have that their country is becoming less successful and diminishing as a global power.
He spoke of a “sapping of confidence across our land – a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights”.
However, President Obama continued to say that America would respond to the challenges before it, and that the nation would pull together and overcome its problems by working together in a spirit of co-operation.
“On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord,” said the President.
After such a stirring speech, the world waits to see if America’s new president’s actions will match his lofty words and ideals.
All of the countries in the British Isles have a patron saint’s day but the biggest celebrations are always held on March 17th, Ireland’s St Patrick’s Day.
For people who live in Ireland and Northern Ireland it is a national holiday, but in the wider world it is seen as an opportunity to explore one of the most emblematic aspects of Irish culture – getting boozed up.
The preferred tipple for most people on St Patrick’s Day is a pint of Irish stout, a heavy, black beer, although others may plump for a glass of Irish whiskey.
Like the Chinese, the Irish have a long history of economic migration, and have settled in many countries around the world, particularly in the USA.
Because of their large populations of people of Irish descent, cities like New York and Boston have enormous St Patrick’s Day parades, where hundreds of thousands of marchers and millions of spectators parade through the city.
The colour green is predominant on St Patrick’s Day as that is the national colour of Ireland, which is sometimes called the Emerald Isle.
As any traveller knows, Ireland is a very green, rural country, thanks to the amount of rainfall, with some areas seeing rain for 225 days in a year.
This year even the President of the United States joined in the fun by adding green dye to the fountains in the White House gardens.
But the American city of Chicago goes even further; since 1961 the Chicago River has been dyed green on St Patrick’s Day.
The tradition began by accident after a plumber, who was using dye to detect leaks into the river, discovered his orange dye turned green when mixed with water.
City officials decided to add dye to the river to celebrate St Patrick’s Day, however during the first attempt they used too much dye and turned the river bright green for a week.
Less than a few weeks ago Susan Boyle was a virtual unknown. However since auditioning for Britain’s got Talent, a televised talent competition, she has experienced a stratospheric rise to fame.
A YouTube video of her audition has been watched by more than 26 million people, making it one of the most watched videos on the internet in recent times. It is undeniable that technology such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter has helped spread the word about Susan’s performance.
So just what is it about Susan that the people find so fascinating? Arguably, it is the fact she is such a class act. However, many have suggested that her biggest appeal lies in her unassuming persona.
Susan’s persona and appearance have been somewhat controversial and the initial reaction to her audition has made many people question whether they are guilty of judging a book by its cover. With her plain Jane, middle-aged looks and her no-nonsense approach to life, Susan is perhaps the most unlikely star to be discovered of late.
Commenting on her rise to fame, Max Clifford, a renowned PR guru said that the massive public interest in her is partly due to people having to challenge their own assumptions and prejudices.
Talking about her audition, Susan said “I expected people to be a wee bit cynical.” However, she must have been pleased as punch when she heard the deafening applause and saw the audience’s standing ovation.
So what’s next for Susan? For the moment, she is preparing for her next appearance on Britain’s got Talent and she is the odds-on-favourite to win.
Looking forward, with talk of record contracts and celebrity duets, it is very likely that we’ll soon be seeing a Susan Boyle album in the charts.