Author: Heather Meadows

Learn Japanese through the Conditioned Response Method at the Japan Times. Via Simon.

Apparently Big Ben has inexplicably stopped several times in history, and recently did so again. While nobody really knows why the clock stops, weather and damage from the Luftwaffe attack during WWII are possible causes. The article doesn’t explicitly state the latter, but in regards to the former notes that

There has been speculation a recent spell of hot weather may have been to blame. Temperatures in London reached 90 Saturday, and forecasters called it England’s hottest day in May since 1953.

Yesterday I read that Seattle, Washington is under a heat advisory, and that the temperature there has gotten up to a positively sweltering 89 degrees Fahrenheit in the past week.

Poor dears. I can’t imagine how they’d react to living in Yatsushiro, Japan, or Augusta, Georgia.

Chris (Man in Japan) explains why he sometimes avoids the trough and heads into the handicapped, sit-down stalls. No worries, man–we’ve all done that ;>

Meanwhile, Ampontan over at Japundit highlights an island south of Japan that no one has ever heard of. It sounds like a really neat place to visit! Japundit keeps giving me more and more cool vacation ideas…

Battlecry (my favorite band ;>) has a song called “Outcast, Unclean” that was inspired by Thomas Covenant from Steven R. Donaldson’s Unbeliever books. The song’s a tribute; they didn’t set out to capitalize on Donaldson’s achievement. So they worried about what Donaldson would think, and actually wrote him to ask permission to release the song on their upcoming album.

Well, it took awhile, but Donaldson actually responded–and his answer is very cool:

I always feel flattered and gratified when people find inspiration for their own creativity in my work. I believe that even the most vicious of lawyers could not find fault with your “use” of my work. And I encourage you (belatedly, I know) to go ahead with your CD.

Awesome. “Outcast, Unclean” is probably my favorite Battlecry song. The CD wouldn’t be whole without it!

(Once I get my shit together and finish Battlecry’s website, I’ll link it. There, you’ll be able to view lyric sheets, CD liner art, and photos of the band. Later, you’ll get to buy the CD itself, or individual tracks as mp3. There will also be some bitchin’ music videos. Yes. Bitchin’. I am sure my lameness has embarrassed AJ beyond all mortal comprehension.)

Ruth Phillips has a lovely rumination today on the nature of art:

In art I believe the same form appears over and over again because art, surely, mirrors life. (I also believe the form’s presence is felt through it’s absence but that is a whole other subject!): The tension of home (The Base) – Moving away from home (The Journey) – Going back home (The Transformation). Add or detract to this shape the ingredients which go to mould the authorial voice:

Architecture, Climate, Ceremony, Time, Nature, Religion, Education, Diet, Animals…..

And ponder ‘The Voice’ as it is used in day to day life (giving sermons, whispering confession, singing in protest, communicating across valleys, gathering herds, sending to sleep, proclaiming love, healing, entertaining, distracting, celebrating…)

…and perhaps it is just possible that, across the seas, the forests and the deserts from each other, there might be two Romeo and Juliet stories, two folk tunes, two buildings, two painted skies that are, in their essence, ‘the same’. It is also possible that, because of their context and their authorial voice, they feel very different.

I loved the closing paragraph, too, but I won’t spoil it for you :)

Wow, I never realized how much life sucks for the Imperial family of Japan.

Japundit has an interesting piece today about Princess Sayako, who is giving up her status as royalty to marry a regular Joe, and the life she is leaving behind.

The Imperial Household Agency, part of the Japanese government, controls every aspect of the public life of the Imperial family, and a large part of their private life. The agency determines how their time is spent in official duties, where they go, what they wear, who they see, and, for the most part, what they say.

Nobody in the family can even have his/her own private telephone. Crazy stuff.

The article’s really eye-opening; I’d like to read more on the subject.

The “interview”, which was really just a written test, was for the position of copy editor at the Augusta Chronicle. I was shown to a private conference room and given an hour and a half in which to take the test, using no references.

I did not sign a nondisclosure agreement concerning this test, nor was I told that this procedure was a “trade secret” or anything of that sort, but if posting about it constitutes a violation of the company’s privacy, I will be more than happy to remove the following.

There were several parts to the test. The first few consisted of one-page, simple questions that focused on the writing/editing craft. Page 1: Grammar, word choice, and punctuation errors in short sentences. Find and correct them. Page 2: Commonly confused words. Read the sentences and choose the correct word (e.g., “The news editor was [adverse/averse] to the changes”). Page 3: Common misspellings. Find the misspelled words in a list and correct them. (An example misspelling: seperate)

Next came two pages I hadn’t even expected. One was a page full of people’s names. I had to identify who each person was. There were sports stars, pop singers, actors, writers, politicians…all kinds of people. This was bad. I am pretty horrible with names. (I did think it was great that “Winston Smith” was on there, though.) The other page had a series of questions about current events in fill-in-the-blank format. It was very, very sad how few of them I knew. I recognized most of the stories, but I didn’t know people’s names, nor did I know death toll numbers.

The last part was putting theory into practice, using real, unedited news stories. I had to look over the stories, correct errors, write down what questions I would have for the reporters in order to flesh out the articles, and create headlines. This was the most challenging (after all, questions I don’t know the answers to aren’t “challenging”), and also the most enjoyable. I think my headlines were okay, but I don’t know that they were gripping. My copy edits were good, and made the stories flow the way I’ve seen stories flow in other news articles, but I don’t know if I did them correctly, because I’ve never copy-edited for the news before and I have no training in it.

So I am not wholly confident about my performance. I think I did well in the writing and editing, but my showing in knowledge of people and events likely hurt my score considerably. There are half a dozen other applicants, and it will take time to pick “the best” (their words), so I will find out if they liked me sometime in the middle of next month. It all comes down to what they’re ultimately looking for, and how I performed against the others–if, for example, someone else got all the references right, but messed up a lot on grammar, would they pick me over that person?

Whatever the result, it’ll be interesting to hear what they have to say. Hopefully I’ll learn something.

In the window of about 12:45 am to 3 pm today (I’m buffering just in case), please wish me luck in my interview thingy. Some would say that I’m a shoo-in, but I really don’t know what to expect, so there’s a chance that I’ll misrepresent myself. I do know that I can do this job, and do it well. Hopefully that confidence will bleed into my performance today.

I’ll post more information–including, possibly, what this job is–after the interview. I tend to be secretive concerning my job hunting, both out of respect for the companies involved, and because I don’t want to jinx anything ;>

From Yahoo! News UK-Ireland:

Angered by the growing number of Internet scams, online “vigilantes” have started to take justice into their own hands by hacking into suspected fraud sites and defacing them.

These hackers have targeted fake websites set up to resemble the sites of banks or financial institutions in recent weeks, and have inserted new pages or messages. Some say “Warning – This was a Scam Site,” or “This Bank Was Fraudulent and Is Now Removed.”

The efforts by the self-proclaimed “hero hackers” come amid a surge in online schemes known as “phishing” in which victims are lured to fake websites to get passwords or other personal data.

I personally think this is awesome. Go for it, vigilante hackers!

The argument at the end of the article that vigilantism is bad is not very well supported. Most of the quoted persons liken it to vigilantes in the Old West, as if this explains everything.

But vigilantes in the Old West arose because the law couldn’t do anything. Vigilantism mostly ended once law and order asserted itself. In the meantime, vigilantes were all that stood between many people and disaster.

And so too are the vigilante hackers of today, who will keep shooting fraudulent websites dead and riding off into the sunset until the system evolves to solve the problems more peacefully.

Hi-yo Silver, away!

Via Drudge, here’s a New York Times piece on how American consumers are more and more turning to entertainment on demand. This, of course, spells doom for non-time-shifted media, such as theatrical films.

While I agree that people like the convenience of being able to watch what they want when they want, I don’t think the majority is in the position of being able to duplicate the theater experience at home. Right now, while that slice of society is a niche minority, the movie producers need to act.

1. Lower the standard ticket price.
   This will get more people coming to the movies on a whim. “Hey, while I’m out shopping, let me kill a couple hours. It’s only a couple bucks!”
2. Get rid of the anti-piracy ads in front of movies.
   You are preaching to the converted in most cases. It gets tiresome. People may start pirating just to avoid the stupid ads.
3. Plug people in.
   In the “old days”, a newsreel used to run before all the movies. Now we can get our news whenever and wherever we want. But in the movie theater, it’s polite to turn off your mobile devices. Why not replace much of what people miss out on before and after the movie? Start a Movie Theater Channel that offers newsbursts and other bite-sized chunks of information. A movie theater is like an oasis where you’re cut off from the rest of the world, and more and more I think people don’t want that. (Another idea is to offer wireless content to mobile devices before the movie starts–news, entertainment news, movie trailers, ringtones, etc.)
4. Sell merchandise: movie posters, action figures, soundtracks, etc.
   Give the movie theater more than just one function, and more people will find it reasonable to spend time there.
5. Rethink the standard movie theater setup.
   When I visited Kentucky last, Faye, Connor, Logan and I went to “Gattitown”, which is an expanded Mr. Gatti’s, similar to Dave & Buster’s. They had a room where they screened movies at all times, and a pizza/pasta/dessert buffet just outside. You got whatever food you wanted and sat down to watch movies. Theaters could do something similar–serve healthier food, whole meals, and allow people to eat while watching. Lighting might be tricky, but I think it’s doable. There could be a “dinner theater” and a “regular theater”, and the dinner theater could have long tables similar to those found in college lecture halls. Ticket price for the dinner theater would include the meal.
6. Create more comfortable areas outside the theaters.
   When you go into a movie house, you’re directed straight past the food and into the theater. Rarely are there chairs, and when there are they are usually uncomfortable benches. People are encouraged not to spend much time there. What about opening a coffeehouse style area where people who just saw a movie could sit down and discuss it? What about Wi-Fi access so people could blog about how great the movie was? Again, if movie theaters would diversify their offerings, more people would be willing to go more often. The idea of one stop shopping has taken hold in our culture, and movie theaters need to work on some sort of implementation.

Those are just a few ideas off the top of my head. I’m sure theaters could do even more to make themselves appealing.

It’s obvious, though, that they need to start working on it now.

Youths arrested for violating 116-year-old dueling law

I would have called this article “Fight Club”, especially given this quote:

“What’s wrong with hitting each other with consent,” one of the arrested youths was quoted as saying.

Vodafone problem leaves users without Internet, e-mail for hours

I can only imagine what that must have done to the social lives of teenagers…

Okay, so I have finally uploaded all the pictures I’ve been taking recently. I haven’t tagged or captioned them or anything, but I thought you’d like to see them regardless.

The first set, Augusta Canal Trail/Waterfall Trail, is what happened when I decided to check out the trail off to the right of the Pavillion, instead of heading to the left and over the bridge. I found a little waterfall!

My former coworker Audrey had told me there was a waterfall near the canal, but I’d forgotten about that, thought I’d never find it. So this was a nice surprise. The trail continued on into the woods, circling around for awhile before finally coming out at the other end of the parking lot. It’s a short, pretty hike.

The next new gallery is North Augusta Greeneway Expansion, which shows the all-new trail that extends off from the Greeneway, along the river, and back to those huge waterfront houses. Brooke and I discovered it on our most recent ride to the Greeneway; we decided to go down towards the golf course and check out the construction, but instead of just a dead end we found a brand new trail! It’s a beautiful ride that includes two bridges and lots of pretty forest. (And did I mention it runs along the river?!)

The third new gallery is Augusta Canal Trail/Construction. The canal is beautiful at this time of year, and I was really excited about getting some pictures of the lush greenery. I even managed some decent pictures of the quarry this time!

Two eventful things also occurred.

Towards the beginning of my ride, I stopped to take some photos and got very close to a cottonmouth without realizing it. When he moved, I glanced down, muttered an expletive, and took his picture. (For an idea of his size, note that his head is just off-camera in the top left hand corner of that shot.) He slithered off back into the waters of the canal, and I went on my way.

The second thing, which was not life-threatening and was in fact very cool, was that I discovered that the Augusta Canal construction has moved along quite a bit. The pumping station is seeing a lot of action, but I was more concerned with–and pleased about–the work on the other side of the canal.

You’ll recall last winter when I explored (and photographed) the muddy, barren landscape that lay beyond the bridge over the canal, wondering what it was going to turn into. Well, now I know that it is indeed the Canal Trail extended–the trail is there and open to the public. It’s a dirt path, and there are still construction machines all around, but it looks totally different now from the way it used to.

I found out that it comes out right across the canal from Sibley Mill–in other words, right across from where the New Bartram Trail comes out. A family who was walking along the trail ahead of me went up onto the bridge at Sibley and headed back on the other side, but I just turned around and went back the way I’d come.

The last new gallery consists of some shots I took before my internship work and during my lunchbreak today. There are pictures of (what else?) the Lamar building, as well as lots of Riverwalk shots. It was totally beautiful out, which accounted for my lovely mood thereafter.

Friday, 1 pm, you know where, with you know who, concerning you know what!