ladyelizabeth's Journal
[Most Recent Entries]
[Calendar View]
[Friends]
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
ladyelizabeth's LiveJournal:
[ << Previous 20 ]
| Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 | | 9:02 am |
| | Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 | | 9:40 am |
| | Thursday, December 20th, 2007 | | 11:11 am |
| | Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 | | 2:30 pm |
Waste time, feed children
In case you've missed it, you must check this out. It's a multiple choice vocab quiz that donates rice to children for every word you define correctly. | | Thursday, November 1st, 2007 | | 10:41 pm |
Plug for my sister's students
Hey Guys, my sister teaches 9th grade Theatre in Houston and her students are close to winning an award but need some help. Here's what she says about the project: Hello everyone! I hope you all are doing well. This year I have been working a lot with the technology teacher (Bobby Goetsch) on some video projects and all of my advanced theatre students got put into an advanced video class as well. We entered a nation-wide contest to win $15,000 for our school and WE MADE THE FINAL FIVE!!!!!!!!! It is really exciting and as you will see, my students are very talented. Please register and vote for them so that all their hard work can be rewarded. My students and I would GREATLY appreciate it!! THANKS!!Here's the link:You have to register to vote--to keep people from voting more than once but it's a pretty painless process. Thanks everyone! P.S. You can also see them on the news | | Monday, September 10th, 2007 | | 10:19 pm |
| | 11:47 am |
| | Sunday, September 9th, 2007 | | 12:08 pm |
| | Saturday, September 8th, 2007 | | 12:17 pm |
Spielerz update
After two months with our starter-software, we've just upgraded Spielerz.This means we now offer zip code/postal code search as well as service to gamers outside the United States. It's not perfect, but it's way better-- I hope the gamers among you will check it out. | | Thursday, September 6th, 2007 | | 10:09 am |
Katharine Wright
Last Easter ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jedibfa and I went to to the Air and Space Museum to see Space Ship One and the Wright Flyer. In many ways this trip was awful because well, it was a holiday weekend, and it was cold outside, and oh my god how did they get that many people in the building and where did they put the air??? But some good did come out of it. We saw what we went to see, and I discovered Katharine Wright.Maybe it's just because I didn't pay much attention to all things air and space before I met jedibfa, or maybe as a culture we are just really, really bad at recognizing contributions from women, but prior to this visit, I had know idea that the Wright Brothers even had a sister, much less that she was the only one of her siblings to graduate from college and that she may (or may not) have played a major role in her brother's achievement. Since that time, I've been researching her role and basically I've discovered that while lots of people say they know 'the truth" no one seems to agree on what the truth is. Some say she was just a cheerleader, some say she financed the operation, some say she did the math, others say she sewed the wings, most agree that she was responsible for all of the public relations work--especially overseas. In any case, it's an interesting mystery. If you are interested in the portrayal of women at the turn of the (last) century or how powered flight came to be, check out the link above. (Shockingly enough it's a Squidoo Lens). P.S. to the Dayton/Ohio people-- Do they teach kids about Katherine Wright around here? If so, is there any consistency to what's taught? | | Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 | | 1:27 pm |
| | Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 | | 5:40 pm |
| | Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 | | 10:08 am |
Unintended Concequences
laughin posted this article this morning about a PSA campaign in Virginia aimed at preventing the sexual abuse of children. My first reactions were similar to hers (I've not seen the ads, it's important to protect children, does this go to far) as I continued to reflect on the article, another thought occurred to me as well. If the result of this campaign is that seeing a man alone with a child becomes cause for suspicion, we all lose. Children lose close relationships with adult males. This means no first hand experiences of how honorable men treat people, no examples of men participating in family life. In addition children grow up understanding that men are dangerous. So girls should avoid them, and boys should grow up to be, well dangerous. Men lose a connectedness with their children and child rearing that has been growing in recent years--and has provided much joy and fulfillment to many. Women once again become the only adults "capable" of child-rearing--therefore all the responsibility for this awesome (in terms of size and scope) task once again falls solely to them. It seems unlikely to me that the goal of this campaign is to return us to the gender norms of yesteryear, but if we distance men from children without consideration of the individual child or man in question, I see no other likely outcome. Note: The organization sponsoring the ads seems to be absolutely above board, and I in no way mean to accuse them trying to create the situations above. I just think there must be a way to protect our children without resorting to fear. | | Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 | | 1:13 pm |
Trip to Yellow Springs
We've been hearing a lot about Yellow Springs from the people we've met so far in the Greater Dayton Metro Area and so decided to go check it out. Based on their descriptions (Hippie-ville being the most colorful) we expected a town much like Floyd. Turns out it's more like what would happen if Blacksburg and Floyd had a love child. Bigger than Floyd, but not as big as Blacksburg. Lots of cool shops that seem able to sustain themselves. No "Big Box" stores that I could see. Of course they are a college town with a College about to close, not Virginia Tech, so I guess that's probably a big part of it. In any case, we had a good time and are likely to visit again when stores are actually open ;) Also, these two guys played a song off their recent album on the street for us. They were pretty good and we bought their CD. You should check them out. They are called Triptyle and they were supposed to have a website but it's not up yet. Here's their myspace page. | | Thursday, August 2nd, 2007 | | 9:47 am |
| | Monday, July 30th, 2007 | | 12:29 pm |
The feminist blogosphere
In September of 2004 nixve posted this entry about smiling. Based on that discussion I started to read Mouse Words, and then Pandagon when Amanda moved over there. Over the next while my experience with the feminist blogosphere grew, as did my understanding of the importance of feminism. In fact, feminist blogs achieved what no study of gender and feminism ever did for me-- helped me see that real oppression was happening all around me, right under my nose. Since then I've been mostly reading and (very) occasionally posting about the importance of feminism and wondering how to deal with the dilemma that feminists have every right to be angry and yet that anger can turn off people who are new to the cause. I've been meaning to start a proper blog about it for ages, but it seems it's just not going to happen. Plus, there are lots of great voices out there who have most of these points covered already. So rather than add my voice to the mix in the traditional way, I've created a Squidoo lens for people just starting out as feminists, or for people who have genuine questions, but don't know where to go to get them answered. I just finished it today, but I hope you'll go check it out and let me know what you think--either here on on the lens. http://www.squidoo.com/discoveringfeminism/And thanks nixve for starting me down this path! | | Monday, July 9th, 2007 | | 10:45 pm |
Origins Report
(I wrote this originally for Spielerz which is why it's tone is a bit more formal than I usually use here--but I met cool people and learned about cool things at Origins this year and thought you all might find it interesting as well) We're back from Origins, had a bit of time to catch our breath, find shelf space for our new games, (ok we're actually not quite there yet on that one) but we have organized the business cards, flyers and notes on random scraps of paper about the people and things we saw and wanted to share with you. So here they are in no particular order: Strategic Retreat This company is what happens when a gamer marries a travel agent. Rather than argue about where to spend the family vacation, the founders of Strategic Retreat and their friends started packing their board games and heading off on a cruise. These “invitational” cruises were so popular that Carnival offered to sponsor an official gamer cruise-- so now we are all invited! Two cruises are scheduled for 2008-- one to the Caribbean (departing from Orlando) and one to Mexico (departing from Los Angeles). Visit www.strategic-retreat.com for more information and to register for the cruise!
Cheese Weasel Logistics The folks at Cheese Weasel are my small business heroes. If you've been to Origins or GenCon in the last couple of years, they are the people who wear big yellow exclamation marks on their head and sponsor the con quest game. The beauty of the quest game is 1) it's free 2) you could win lots of cool prizes, often signed by the designers and 3) convention attendees have the opportunity to be exposed to games and game companies that might otherwise get lost in the corner of the dealers room. Plus they have some great games that straddle the fence between board games and rpgs. Slugfest Games Speaking of Cheese Weasel and the quest game-- it was though them that we discovered this company last year. We fell in love with two of their card games then-- En Garde! and Kung-Fu Fighting; so we were very excited to see they had two new games this year—The Red Dragon Inn and Tiki Mountain. The first is a game about what happens at the inn after a successful quest (as you might imagine it involves drinking, fighting and gambling) and in the second, the players race to the top of the volcano to sacrifice themselves to their tiki god. Plus it has a spinner, so it must be good. Spewgilist.com
So you want actual game reviews?? For that, you'll need to check out Spewgilist.com. Their motto is “Annoying the world one person at at time. (Group Discounts Available)” but they also do great game reviews, interviews, and articles about topics of interest to gamers everywhere. Plus they are hilarious, so do yourself a favor and check them out. We met them though the Cheese Weasel quest game as well. Have I mentioned yet that you must do the quest game?? Anyway, we had a great time-- I came up to the Lab several times to try and say hi to everyone, but basically failed except for the 2 minutes when I caught jazzfish during the Fluxx tournament. Hope you all had a good time...... | | Monday, July 2nd, 2007 | | 8:06 pm |
Big News!!
So we've been dying to tell you all this for awhile now, but on the advice of our lawyer (for real) we've been keeping it on the super down low. But now that we can talk about it we wanted you all to be among the first to know (especially since many of you are directly responsible for my introduction to this crazy gaming thing.) jedibfa and I are launching a web-community to help gamers find local people to play with. The site is www.Spielerz.com and we are planning our first public push for members at Origins. I know many of you already have gaming groups, but I hope you'll sign up and help us kick the tires. ( rbandrews, you can be the czar of spelling and grammar) Also, there are t-shirts, etc. at our cafepress store ( www.cafepress.com/spielerz) since this is the only current revenue stream for the site, I hope you'll check them out. Looking forward to seeing many of you at Origins! Cross-posted to jedibfa | | Thursday, November 16th, 2006 | | 2:17 pm |
Vocab quiz
| Your Vocabulary Score: A- | 
Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary!
You must be quite an erudite person. |
| | Friday, September 8th, 2006 | | 9:55 am |
Everything I know about Cello Performance I learned from a Child
I was visiting some friends last week and their 10 year-old son Ben asked if he could play his Cello for me. Never one to turn down such an offer, I agreed What started as a recital, ended up as a full educational experience—for both of us. In 30 minutes Ben got in his practice time (from which he’d previously negotiated a holiday) and my understanding of cello performance grew by leaps and bounds. All very basic stuff to musicians I’m sure, but I didn’t know that when (children at least) learn a piece they pluck it before they bow it. I didn’t realize that you can play the same note with different fingerings, and the cellist (or in this case the cello teacher) decides which ones are most appropriate for the piece. What’s interesting to me about this isn’t that I now know what double stop means (although that’s cool) but that the process in which I learned it was mutually beneficial. In order to teach me what he knew, Ben played a variety of short pieces many times. He distinguished the sound in one piece with the sound in another, and played both pieces so I could hear the difference. He explained terminology to me easily and in language I (mostly) understood—perhaps because he’d just learned it himself. My point is not (necessarily) that we should hire children to teach our education programs. But rather that there is a big difference between an educational setting where one person is doing all the teaching and one person is doing all the learning, and one in which learning happens all around. There is certainly a place for the former. (Ben wouldn’t have been able to teach me what I learned if he hadn’t learned it somewhere else.) But wouldn’t it be something if we found more room for the latter as well. |
[ << Previous 20 ]
|
