Humor4u

"Fracking just the latest villain of the cult of catastrophe." Catchy disparaging phrases catch my eye, I am not about to address fracking, I am writing about the unrelenting, insidious attacks upon the character and intelligence of those who would advocate against willful, ill-advised industrial complex inspired, greed driven corporate activity, condoned by sycophant governance with no thought to our future, well being or prospects. Corporate shill headlines are usually intended to heap derision upon anyone who experiences the nagging sensation of impending catastrophe, or who would dare to challenge the wisdom of a dodgy decision. As a group they are painted loon-like. This attention grabber uses the derogative term "cult" to undermine the character of participants who feel the need to protest what is an obvious candidate for present and future disaster. This is not a theoretical proposition, the abysmal consequence of  hydraulic fracturing, a process that involve...

By @eannegrenoble |  eltpics  on Flickr In the middle of the market where I go for my weekly vegetable shopping there is a stall where I buy olives. The owners of the stall are a husband and wife team who know I am an English teacher. The other day the wife – let's call her Lily – pointed at lettuce and asked me: "What do you call it in English?" (the exchange took place in Hebrew) "Lettuce," I replied. "Letters?" asked Lily. We then worked on the pronunciation a little until she got it right. I thought it was time to move on to new items. I pointed at olives. "And what's this in English?" I asked. Lily looked puzzled. "Come on. You have a bottle over there with a label in English". "Olives!" exclaimed Lily – she clearly knew "Olive oil" in English. A week later it's time for my next trip to the market and a little vocabulary review. "Do you remember the words from last week?" I asked Lily who g...

One of the pleasures of teaching lexically is when you see your students starting to incorporate i nto their speech and writing  lexical chunks studied in class - albeit  not always appropriately . Here is a thank you letter I recently received from my students at the end of a course. Reproduced here verbatim Leo How many years have you been our teacher? Actually, we really don't know, what we know is that you are our best teacher and we love you admire you and want you to be our teacher forever. It is not easy to teach three old persons for so many years, but you don’t try to get rid of us you don't stick to rules or concept except collocations. You try every year to come up with new approach, a new method, and new ideas. You do a lot that every lesson will be uplifting and a little bit heavy. You have the talent to get through to your students about the importance of remembering the collocations. We all get on with each other very well and there's ne...

Our journey to Corporatocracy! The word "democracy" is kicked around like a discarded rag doll these days. So faded and worn, the concept has gradually twisted into an almost unrecognizable parody without shape or form. Basically, the term has become a "catch-all" phrase indicating--not the other forms of governance, while avoiding what itself has become. To understand what "democracy" has become we need to look at what "democracy" was supposed to be. Democracy; government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system. Arguably, in the pale anemic "democratic" style today, the wishes of the people are all but irrelevant, while the wishes of governmental sponsors and special interest groups reigns supreme. The one remaining artifact is the ability to vote which as a token gesture remains intact. Although the ac...

This time, we wrap up the series on cartoon animation techniques with a demo that shows a few of the techniques in the context of a larger application. Because it's nice to know how to write the code, but you might also be wondering why you might want to. For some real-world context, you could also check out games such as Candy Crush Saga (a horribly addictive game I've gotten sucked into that's less like casual gaming and more like casual crack). It uses a veritable plethora of cartoon animation techniques to keep the player engaged with the game and disengaged from their life. This and other cartoon animation techniques were discussed in the talk A Moving Experience at Google I/O 2013 Code: http://developer.android.com/shareables/devbytes/ToonGame.zip YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sG3bAPOhyw&list=PLWz5rJ2EKKc_XOgcRukSoKKjewFJZrKV0

Cartoon animation uses a technique called "squash & stretch" for achieving different effects of objects interacting with their environment. This episode shows how we can use similar techniques to get more organic and lively animations in user interfaces. This and other cartoon animation techniques were discussed in the talk A Moving Experience at Google I/O 2013. Code: http://developer.android.com/shareables/devbytes/SquashAndStretch.zip YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJL1oW6DlCc Or, in illustrated form:

We all need to take an interest in the most powerful nation of the world. Many of us see what happens when a juggernaut power decides to be creative with shaping the world and the worlds thinking. One imagines the "powers that be" who decide and institute the many world shaping activities are representing the better interests of their constituents and this will surely lead to a brighter and better future for them. Once in awhile populations may take stock and wonder who's better interests are being represented, especially when one reviews the score sheet and determines very few are enriched by wide sweeping policies and legislation... particularly in times of obvious collapse, stress and uncertainty, while a favored few seem to prosper and thrive. Coincidence is the stuff of happenstance and it is difficult to ascribe luck, either good or bad to the result yielded by the actions of our best and brightest--one has to believe the result was gauged and the plan executed with...