Instant Immersion Japanese

So Q has been learning Spanish and is starting to develop some oppositionality around it. I can appreciate that.

We aim to learn a variety of languages and to this end I have ordered our first software for learning Japanese. This should be great for a change of pace because we need to learn the Kana, which requires lots of artistic practice.

Instant Immersion Japanese

Features:

* Everything you need to learn Japanese fast
* 4 CD-ROM language-learning suite
* Interactive dialogues with native speakers and cultural videos
* Entertaining games, easy-to-follow lessons, quizzes that test your progress, and more
* Kanji reference source with Japanese-language online chat and surfing support

We adore all things Japanese and have been learning alot about the Japanese Tea Ceremony and have attended several ceremonies in Boston at the Kaji Aso Tea House.

We also got a book on the Tea Ceremony and have been reading up on it.



We hope to slowly collect tea items (have some lacquerware and some
tea caddies) and conduct some remote tea study.
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Study: Euthanizing Right-wing Pundits would Solve Global Warming

You have to take your humor where/when you can get it :-)

The following is a riff from the whole Bill Bennett racist comments earlier this week. Thing is, while the following "news" is not real, it has at hits kernel truth with regards to the absurdity of flat-landers who chose to see global warming as a political/platform issue and not a reality that lies outside of their own pathetic little lives (referring to the neo-con anti-climate change parrot-monkeys).

The following is found at Eyewitness Muse - Made-up Musings.

Enjoy :-)

Study: Euthanizing Right-wing Pundits would Solve Global Warming

10/6/2005

Author says that would be reprehensible, but still a tough call.

EWM - (October 6, 2005) The scientific community was stunned today when famed French geophysicist Jacques Revanche published a study that concludes euthanizing right-wing talk show hosts would solve the global warming problem.

The report sparked a firestorm of controversy across the nation’s airwaves, even as Revanche sought to downplay its findings. “It’s true that if you wanted to stop global warming, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could euthanize every right-wing talk show host in this country, and the global temperature would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your temperature would go down.”

To gather data for the study, Revanche sneaked into talk show studios variously disguised as a plumber, hair stylist and, in the case of Bill O’Reilly, a falafel delivery boy. He then captured air samples in the vicinity of the hosts and subjected them to rigorous testing.

The results varied widely. For example, Rush Limbaugh’s breath was found to be the pollution equivalent of an 18-ton garbage truck while Michael Savage’s sample scored just below a battery-powered --bleeep-- (ed.s).

The project was not without its setbacks, the data had to be reworked when it was discovered that Fox anchor John Gibson has no cellular activity and was reclassified as “undead.”

Upon learning of the study, conservative talking heads went into apoplexy. Sean Hannity became so enraged when co-host Alan Colmes suggested that right-wing punditry was responsible for Hurricane Katrina, he lifted him by the throat and gave him a category five wedgie.

But not everyone dismissed the idea. Senator Hillary Clinton suggested that the conservative broadcasters volunteer to be “put down.” In a speech on the Senate floor, Clinton asked, “how much do they love their country? This is an opportunity for a vast right wing conspiracy to save America and the planet. We should reach out to them with our thoughts, prayers and a loaded revolver.”

Meanwhile, the Christian evangelical community, which was conspicuously silent after Republican lackey turned talk show host Bill Bennett made similar remarks regarding aborting all black babies, went into full howl in defense of the right-wing pundits. CBN President Pat Robertson went the farthest saying he would get the CIA to “take Revanche out.”

Editor’s Note: Please excuse the Muse for reporting fantasy. As a Fairly Unbalanced Journalist, it’s his calling.

Will the past be the prologue to the Administration’s Avian Flu response? Read “Operation Blessed Placebo.”

Return to latest entry

Copyright © Eyewitness Muse, All Rights Reserved (and none taken..)
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Our homeschooling universe

We have converted much of a dining room cabinet to our homeschooling materials area and I thought I would share it here.

All of Q's books are set here and supplies live in the cabinets. We like it in the dining room because of the table and all of the light!



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SparkNotes at Barnes and Noble

Ok fellow homeschooling educators, I wanted to share this resource which is just awesome.

Barnes and Noble has available something called SparkNotes which are study aids and thought-starters. These are also affordable (especially after you use your 20% off educator’s discount as a homschooling educator).

You can go here to see the main SparkNotes page.

They have study aids that cover many ways of studying and many topics.

Daily Spark
History Notes
Literature Guides
No Fear Shakespeare
SparkCharts
SparkCollege
Study Cards
Test Prep

We have started using several of these, including:

Writing (SparkNotes Daily Spark) $7.95 180 different activities, one for each day of the “school year”



Odyssey (SparkNotes) $4.95



Nervous System (SparkCharts) $4.95



and one on how to write book reports for which I can not find any links, sorry!

Check out the links!
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So many good people working to kill the bill

Regarding the HONDA bill, I am slowly adding links to my blog list to the right (->). These sites have ALOT of information put together by lots of hard working people who are dedicated to getting the word out on this issue.

While public school kids have the NCLB Military Recruiting (Active Opt-out schenanigans) we have to deal with this HONDA bill thrusting the DODefense into our business.

This new link is great for learning more about this. Publis is doing an awesome job getting this info out there.

To steal a bit from her/his site, for an introduction here, see this:

"Section 10. Recruitment and Enlistment of Home-schooled students in the Armed Forces
Comments on Section 10 concerning enlistment in the military by homeschoolers are at The Military Homeschooler.

Main points are:
-- creation of homeschoolers as the only educational group outside of the Tier system, specified in public law concerning military enlistment

-- identification of qualified recruits are already spelled out without pinpointing homeschoolers

-- contradictory requirements concerning third-party verifiers of "homeschooling status"

-- homeschool grad must score at the 50th %ile, which is the current standard for holders of a GED certificate

-- proposed legislation states that homeschool curriculum will be patterned after "traditional secondary school," but the current law, which wouldn't be amended, requires 12-years of traditional graded schooling

-- the third-party verification letter of a graduate's "home-school status" is not an optional choice, but would be required."
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Thoughts on HR 3753 and S1691 Home School Non-Discrimination Act of 2005 (HONDA)

Happy Monday all!

Hope good weekends were had by all.

I just wanted to say that I don’t like what I am hearing about the Home School Non-Discrimination Act or HONDA bill (as its supporters like to call it).

Go here to learn some more. Also, if you want to find the text of this bill, go to this site and enter HR 3753.

At first blush, people (homeschooling parents) may like the sound of some special attention to our needs. Most of us come from a shared reality of government regulated everything, including public school. Thing is, we didn’t have to get into the nitty gritty of implementing those regulations as students and we were used to the certain loss of rights to privacy and choice in conduct etc etc.

It’s a different matter all together when we are talking about ASKING the government to impose regulations, the very regulations that we are trying to side-step (or, better implement in our own systems i.e., curriculum choice/development).

This bill is NOT in our best interests exactly because it is ASKING TO REGULATE HOMESCHOOLING.

Repeat after me, it is ASKING TO REGULATE HOMESCHOOLING. (Be honest, does that sound like a good thing to you?)

Now why would any sane person intentionally ask the IRS to breathe down it’s back and to define what homeschooling is FOR them?!

Why would any sane person be asking the Dept of Defense to look into our homeschools like nests for the harvest?!

No ONE homeschooling parent should be or likely is ASKING TO REGULATE HOMESCHOOLING.

No, its not actual people, it’s the Large Un-named Non-secular Law Firm Lobbyist Organization (LUNSLFLO), in its efforts to be a good soldier in the Grover Norquist School of Government (sic).

[Grover Norquist is the man who said "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."]

LUNSLFLO seeks to deliver the homeschool movement, on behalf (sic) of it’s poorly represented families, on a platter to the likes of the Bush Administration.

To the Norquists of the republican world, homeschooling is perfection in their eyes… its perfect OUTSOURCING.

We homescooling parents don’t see it that way. We do it for MANY reasons but I doubt its because we want to do Bush’s Dept of Ed a favor by taking on the full financial and logistical burden, easing theirs.

I certainly don’t. I am fully supportive (including the hefty taxes I pay) of public schools, this is part of our social contract.

This bill, Home School Non-Discrimination Act, is simply a way to further streamline the whole dismantling of public education, with NO benefit to us homeschoolers, and its ..

repeat after me…

..ASKING TO REGULATE HOMESCHOOLING.

This should not be a hard one, yall. There should be a good amount of clarity around this: Homeschoolers were not born yesterday nor was the notion of homeschooling.

HOMESCHOOLING IS NOT A PARTISAN ISSUE, we are not waging war with the Dept. of Education, we have opted out. We are not soldiers for some lunatic fringe element of the republican party, marching to close all public schools (most of us are not but LUNSLFLO would like to make it seem like they are fighting on OUR behalf, not mine, thanks. They claim to represent us but they represent something like 90,000 families out of 5 million.. its hard to believe that a law firm effectively represents 90K people and I don’t think it does even that).

If your family holds conservative values, don’t kid yourself that what I have written here is about not being conservative.. Do you enjoy what the current administration has done in your name so far?

HOMESCHOOLING IS NOT A PARTISAN ISSUE its ALL about our KIDS, not their ideology.

Make sure it stays that way.
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This is your brain on homeschool.

Today we are working some more on ultrastructural and functional aspects of the cerebrum.

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