Animals on the Tube

No, I'm not talking about Mr.Bean bringing his Teddy on the Underground. It's rather a phenomenon similar to the one that lets our brain see faces on Mars - if you highlight certain lines of London's Tube map, you get stylized pictures of animals such as an elephant or even a wallaby (some sort of kangaroo, I'm told). Check them out here!

A Classroom I'd Like To Teach In

One of the rare occasions that my two blogging worlds actually touch: Photographer-designer David Occhino has created a "Back to the Future" themed elementary school classroom. Neat. (But it'd probably hard for me to concentrate on my job, what with all the stuff around me just waiting to be stared at in admiration...)

http://davidocchino.com/portfolio/interiordesign/Universal_Studios_classroom.jpg

English for GERRmans

Seems like I just can't resist playing around with those acronyms ;)
Today's link takes you to an online test by the University of Düsseldorf which is designed to evaluate your English proficiency based on the official European frame of reference, in German "gemeinsamer Europäischer ReferenzRahmen", aka GERR. "My" 9th-graders might remember that this turned up in the fictitious CV in our textbook...
OK now, here goes:

http://www.psycho.uni-duesseldorf.de/abteilungen/ddp/Englischtest

Thanks again to Dr. Jörn Krieger for pointing me in the right direction ;)

OWAD's this?

"One Word A Day" - I don't know if it'll keep the doctor away (depends on the word, I guess), but it seems like a fun way to expand one's vocabulary to me: Basically, what you do is subscribe to a mailing list which gives you exactly one English word to learn every day (hence the name). Paul E. Smith tries to choose words a little out-of-the-ordinary (for example, "flawless" as a much more colorful adjective than just "perfect"), serving more than just to impress your teacher ;)

The (German) press release can be accessed here.

Thanks to Jörn Krieger of "Der Medienbote" for the press release & link!

Simpsonize Yourself

Here's how to make your own Bart Simpson Chalkboard:
http://www.addletters.com/bart-simpson-generator.htm

To create your own Simpson, go here:
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/flash/play/3677/
or here:
http://www.simpsonizeme.com/

Have fun!!

Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime

...where we're working in a mine
for our robot overlords
-- did I say 'overlords'?
I meant, 'protectors'!

Jonathan Coulton and Tom Ellsworth present a hilarious piece of science-fictionish Christmas cheer with a twist, and the potential to become a cult classic (if it isn't already). Watch & enjoy... and a Merry Christmas to y'all, too!

P.S.: Soylent Green is p...[message redacted]!

Nixer!

to nix = to cancel, to refuse - another of those great Germanisms, just like the ever-popular "blitzkrieg", "weltschmerz", "angst" and such (look 'em up in your ALD, I'm not kidding!)
This piece of vocabulary is often used in business relations - hence, obviously, this license plate on a Mercedes I encountered a while back in London - Highgate.

An E-Mail from Al Gore

What I took for SPAM at first turned out to be for real. If only I knew how he got his hands on my "official" (school) e-mail address and even knows my first name. Kinda creepy.
Still, this sounds interesting:

Current, the media company I co-founded six years ago with my partner Joel Hyatt, just last week launched a new web site that integrates television and the Web in an unprecedented way. It provides, as never before, a platform for citizens to make the media their own.

One of the features I'm most excited about on Current.com is called Viewpoints. Viewpoints is a virtual town hall where you can share your opinions, in video, about the issues that matter in the 2008 election: from global warming to government eavesdropping, and many more.

This digital town hall is already bustling, and you can find viewpoints from me and from a lot of people, including the candidates running for President. Come and listen to their positions and, more importantly, tell them and the rest of the world what you think!

Since Viewpoints is the only place on the Web where you can easily share your view in video, my hope is that you'll take this opportunity to go toe-to-toe with the pundits on TV and help contribute to a new platform for public discourse. All it takes is a webcam and 60 seconds.

And, since we'll be taking the most popular and most compelling viewpoints and airing them on Current TV -- now available in 52 million homes around the world -- you may very well get your voice heard on our global TV network.

I look forward to seeing and hearing you on Current.com, as we deepen the discussion on these important topics:

http://current.com/viewpoints

Thank you,

Al Gore

This is not a vacuum cleaner

Can't you see it says Radio Shack, not Hoover?

I wanted to spare you the "...but it still sucks" punchline, but I really can't resist the temptation, because of the double meaning working in two languages, albeit in a different way. Non-German speakers: "saugen", the literal translation of "to suck", can be used as a slang word for downloading data ("leeching"), which is, of course, what this precursor of the modem ("acoustic coupler") could be used for. Darn slow though it was...

What Not To Do

A little reminder:
Never, never ever, use "...is when..." in vocabulary definitions.
Seriously.
I mean it.