fun

Here is Sage's second show as Goose the Magnificent:

  My kids are awesome. There's no doubt about it. We've been celebrating Hanukah early today, eating latkes (potato pancakes), playing dreidel, and eating sweets.

Why are they so cool? First, we were gambling for real money in our dreidel game and both kids declared that all of the pennies they won would go to charity. So, they traded in all of their "silver" for copper any chance they got and tried and tried to get as many pennies as possible. What philanthropes.

Secondly, after eating four, yes FOUR dark chocolate M&Ms, and then starting on a Dum Dum (lollipop), Noah promptly declared that he had had too much candy already and threw most of his lollipop out.

What did they spend most of the day doing? Working together to clean up the playroom and then building a giant Lego city with houses, cars, police stations, stores, and more, that they had each built.

They play so sweetly together and are the best kids I've ever known.

Many of you who know me well know that I consider Just a Couple of Days among my very favorite books. I can read this over and over again and pick up new clever expressions, amazing language construction, new vocabulary that I wish was part of my repertoire, laugh my chops off again, and marvel at the skills and patience of an author, Tony Vigorito, that is capable of carefully selecting each and every word of his novel with complete intention and forethought.

My only complaint about Vigorito is that he has been recently silent (other than his blog on MySpace).

That is until yesterday. According to Amazon.com, Vigorito's latest book, Nine Kinds of Naked is in stock! Since I had pre-ordered it months ago, my copy shipped yesterday. I can't wait to get my hungry paws on this new bit of literary genius. You can read excerpts and reviews of both of his books at tonyvigorito.com.

Stay tuned for a detailed review coming soon.

Somehow, in all my years in school, I never stumbled upon this classic bit of logic.

...can students really be "surprised" when the teacher tells them it will happen?

On Friday, a high school teacher announces to his class that there will be a surprise quiz some time during the next week. "By surprise," he states, "I mean that, the night before the quiz, you will not be able to deduce that the quiz will be the next day." A clever student raises his hand and says, "Well, the exam definitely cannot be on Friday because on Thursday night, we would be 100% certain that the exam would be the next day. But then, the exam cannot be on Thursday either because, knowing that it cannot be on Friday, on Wednesday night we could deduce that the exam must be on Thursday. By similar reasoning, it is impossible to give the exam on Wednesday, Tuesday, or Monday. Therefore, your claim that you will give a surprise quiz next week is clearly false."

This is clearly a silly paradox. If you add the possibility that there might not be a quiz, the logic breaks down. Still, can students really be "surprised" when the teacher tells them it will happen?

To truly surprise students, the teacher must never let on that there might be a quiz. Having no inkling of the quiz is the only way to make it a real surprise. Students beware!

Last month, over 600 people posed naked on the Aletsch Glacier near Bettmeralp, Switzerland for photographer Spencer Tunick to raise awareness of global climate change. Watch the video: Spencer is known for his photography of large groups of naked people in public settings. Most recently, he had photo shoots in Amsterdam and Mexico City.

Two years ago, when I was teaching Flash to some Middle School students, I published their movies here. Enjoy. Or as one of my students wrote, "injoy".

It's a shame that the previous year's work is not included. There were some very talented flash designers!

Lee Johnson, a classical composer, composed a symphonic tribute to the Grateful Dead. The symphony, called "Dead Symphony no. 6", is an arrangement of nearly a dozen Grateful Dead tunes and is performed by the Russian National Orchestra on a new album available to buy or download.

In a strange twist of fate, it turns out that you actually can compare apples and oranges. This will alleviate the burden from those of us who enjoy using analogies in discussions and teaching.

This may be the best chase scene everI recently posted a chase scene from "District 13", a French movie, saying that it was one of the better chase scenes. But, it doesn't compare to this scene from the Thai film "Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior". This may be the best chase scene ever, and is a great movie, too.

It is certainly one of the better chase scenes ever made.I love a good foreign film, especially one that encorporates good martial arts, good values, good virtues, and a good story line. Below is a scene from a French film "Banlieue 13" or "District 13" from 2004.

The film is "set in the ghettos of Paris in 2010, an undercover cop and ex-thug try to infiltrate a gang in order to defuse a neutron bomb."

The clip below shows a chase scene from the first few minutes of the movie. It is certainly one of the better chase scenes ever made.