from today's NY Times:

March 3, 2007
Beliefs
Books on Atheism Are Raising Hackles in Unlikely Places
By PETER STEINFELS
Hey, guys, can’t you give atheism a chance?
Yes, it is true that “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins has been on The New York Times best-seller list for 22 weeks and that “Letter to a Christian Nation” by Sam Harris can be found in virtually every airport bookstore, even in Texas.
So why is the new wave of books on atheism getting such a drubbing? The criticism is not primarily, it should be pointed out, from the pious, which would hardly be noteworthy, but from avowed atheists as well as scientists and philosophers writing in publications like The New Republic and The New York Review of Books, not known as cells in the vast God-fearing conspiracy.
The mother of these reviews was published last October in The London Review of Books, when Terry Eagleton, better known as a Marxist literary scholar than as a defender of faith, took on “The God Delusion.”
“Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds,” Mr. Eagleton wrote, “and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.” That was only the first sentence.
James Wood’s review of “Letter to a Christian Nation” in the Dec. 18, 2006, issue of The New Republic began, “I have not believed in God since I was fifteen.” Mr. Wood, a formidable writer who keeps picking the scab of religion in his criticism and fiction, confessed that his “inner atheist” appreciated the “hygienic function” of Mr. Harris’s and Mr. Dawkins’s ridiculing of religion and enjoyed “the ‘naughtiness’ of this disrespect, even if a little of it goes a long way.”
But, he continued, “there is a limit to how many times one can stub one’s toe on the thick idiocy of some mullah or pastor” or be told that “Leviticus and Deuteronomy are full of really nasty things.”
H. Allen Orr is an evolutionary biologist who once called Mr. Dawkins a “professional atheist.” But now, Mr. Orr wrote in the Jan. 11 issue of The New York Review of Books, “I’m forced, after reading his new book, to conclude that he’s actually more of an amateur.”
It seems that these critics hold several odd ideas, the first being that anyone attacking theology should actually know some.
“The most disappointing feature of ‘The God Delusion,’ ” Mr. Orr wrote, “is Dawkins’s failure to engage religious thought in any serious way. You will find no serious examination of Christian or Jewish theology” and “no attempt to follow philosophical debates about the nature of religious propositions.”
Mr. Eagleton surmised that if “card-carrying rationalists like Dawkins” were asked “to pass judgment on phenomenology or the geopolitics of South Africa, they would no doubt bone up on the question as assiduously as they could.” He continued, “When it comes to theology, however, any shoddy old travesty will pass muster.”
Naturally, critics so fussy as to imagine that serious thought about religion exists, making esoteric references to Aquinas and Wittgenstein, inevitably gripe about Mr. Harris’s and Mr. Dawkins’s equation of religion with fundamentalism and of all faith with unquestioning faith.
“Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar school thought that,” Mr. Eagleton wrote.
In The New Republic last October, Thomas Nagel, a philosopher who calls himself “as much an outsider to religion” as Mr. Dawkins, was much more patient. Extracting a theoretical kernel of argument from the thumb-your-nose-at-religion chaff, Mr. Nagel nonetheless had to point out that what was meant by God was not, as Mr. Dawkins’s argument seemed to assume, “a complex physical inhabitant of the natural world.” (Mr. Eagleton had less politely characterized the Dawkins understanding of God “as some kind of chap, however supersized.”)
Nor was belief in God, Mr. Wood explained two months later, analogous to belief in a Celestial Teapot, the comic example Mr. Dawkins borrowed from Bertrand Russell.
If this insistence on theology beyond the level of Pat Robertson and biblical literalism was not enough, several reviews went on to carp about double standards.
Mr. Orr, for example, noted the contrast between Mr. Dawkins’s skepticism toward traditional proofs for God’s existence and Mr. Dawkins’s confidence that his own “Ultimate Boeing 747” proof demonstrated scientifically that God’s existence was highly improbable.
Mr. Eagleton compared Mr. Dawkins’s volubility about religion’s vast wrongs with his silence “on the horrors that science and technology have wreaked on humanity” and the good that religion has produced.
“In a book of almost 400 pages, he can scarcely bring himself to concede that a single human benefit has flowed from religious faith, a view which is as a priori improbable as it is empirically false,” Mr. Eagleton wrote. “The countless millions who have devoted their lives selflessly to the service of others in the name of Christ or Buddha or Allah are wiped from human history — and this by a self-appointed crusader against bigotry.”
In Mr. Orr’s view, “No decent person can fail to be repulsed by the sins committed in the name of religion,” but atheism has to be held to the same standard: “Dawkins has a difficult time facing up to the dual fact that (1) the 20th century was an experiment in secularism; and (2) the result was secular evil, an evil that, if anything, was more spectacularly virulent than that which came before.”
Finally, these critics stubbornly rejected the idea that rational meant scientific. “The fear of religion leads too many scientifically minded atheists to cling to a defensive, world-flattening reductionism,” Mr. Nagel wrote.
“We have more than one form of understanding,” he continued. “The great achievements of physical science do not make it capable of encompassing everything, from mathematics to ethics to the experiences of a living animal. We have no reason to dismiss moral reasoning, introspection or conceptual analysis as ways of discovering the truth just because they are not physics.”
So what is the beleaguered atheist to do? One possibility: take pride in the fact that this astringent criticism comes from people and places that honor the honest skeptic’s commitment to full-throated questioning.

i've been reading francine rivers' books lately. finished redeeming love, the prince (about jonathan & david) and now on to unshaken, which is about ruth. i cannot put these books down!!!! so much fun to read and somehow, very overwhelming (i feel like crying every other page. what's wrong with me?!?!). i highly recommend them to you! i have 10 books to go, all waiting for me, courtesy of the new york public library :)

this is very exciting:

'Star Trek' release date set
LOS ANGELES, California (Hollywood Reporter) -- Captain's log: December 25, 2008.
Paramount Pictures has set a Christmas Day 2008 release date for the 11th "Star Trek" feature, to be filmed by "Mission: Impossible III" director J.J. Abrams. Shooting will begin in the fall, Paramount said Tuesday.
The screenplay, from "M:I 3" scribes Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, is said to follow James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock during their Starfleet Academy years and into their first space mission.
The previous film in the series, the 2002 box office bomb, "Star Trek: Nemesis," was directed by Stuart Baird, and starred Patrick Stewart.

this director (for titanic) is the most ridiculous man ever!

from today's cnn.com:

Archaeologists, scholars dispute Jesus documentary
Story Highlights• Documentary claims to have found bones of Jesus' family• Film suggests Jesus may have had son• Archaeologists, religious scholars skeptical• Oscar-winner James Cameron directed film
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Archaeologists and clergymen in the Holy Land derided claims in a new documentary produced by the Oscar-winning director James Cameron that contradict major Christian tenets.
"The Lost Tomb of Christ," which the Discovery Channel will run on March 4, argues that 10 ancient ossuaries -- small caskets used to store bones -- discovered in a suburb of Jerusalem in 1980 may have contained the bones of Jesus and his family, according to a press release issued by the Discovery Channel.
One of the caskets even bears the title, "Judah, son of Jesus," hinting that Jesus may have had a son. And the very fact that Jesus had an ossuary would contradict the Christian belief that he was resurrected and ascended to heaven. (Watch why it could be any Mary, Jesus and Joseph in those boxes)
Most Christians believe Jesus' body spent three days at the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem's Old City. The burial site identified in Cameron's documentary is in a southern Jerusalem neighborhood nowhere near the church.
In 1996, when the BBC aired a short documentary on the same subject, archaeologists challenged the claims. Amos Kloner, the first archaeologist to examine the site, said the idea fails to hold up by archaeological standards but makes for profitable television.
"They just want to get money for it," Kloner said.
The claims have raised the ire of Christian leaders in the Holy Land.
"The historical, religious and archaeological evidence show that the place where Christ was buried is the Church of the Resurrection," said Attallah Hana, a Greek Orthodox clergyman in Jerusalem. The documentary, he said, "contradicts the religious principles and the historic and spiritual principles that we hold tightly to."
Stephen Pfann, a biblical scholar at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem who was interviewed in the documentary, said the film's hypothesis holds little weight.
"I don't think that Christians are going to buy into this," Pfann said. "But skeptics, in general, would like to see something that pokes holes into the story that so many people hold dear."
"How possible is it?" Pfann said. "On a scale of one through 10 -- 10 being completely possible -- it's probably a one, maybe a one and a half."
Pfann is even unsure that the name "Jesus" on the caskets was read correctly. He thinks it's more likely the name "Hanun."
Kloner also said the filmmakers' assertions are false.
"It was an ordinary middle-class Jerusalem burial cave," Kloner said. "The names on the caskets are the most common names found among Jews at the time."
Archaeologists also balk at the filmmaker's claim that the James Ossuary -- the center of a famous antiquities fraud in Israel -- might have originated from the same cave. In 2005, Israel charged five suspects with forgery in connection with the infamous bone box.
"I don't think the James Ossuary came from the same cave," said Dan Bahat, an archaeologist at Bar-Ilan University. "If it were found there, the man who made the forgery would have taken something better. He would have taken Jesus."
Although the documentary makers claim to have found the tomb of Jesus, the British Broadcasting Corporation beat them to the punch by 11 years.
Osnat Goaz, a spokeswoman for the Israeli government agency responsible for archaeology, declined to comment before the documentary was aired.

Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/02/26/jesus.sburial.ap/index.html

a lot has happened this past weekend. this is the weekend update time with seapea:

1. eczema update

so i went to my acu and did cupping. omg. i thought i was gonna die. the actual process of cupping isn't painful at all but he literally bled me from my fingers, my toes, behind my knees (!!!!) and on my back and all this black blood came out (strangely enough, no blood came out from my right hand. he said only the leftside, which affects the heart, came out black - ew). laying there with face down, i really thought he was cutting me but later when i got up, i saw that it was tiny lil' holes and didn't even hurt when i push on 'em. i guess when you're vulnerable, things hurt more? anyway, purple, yellow & black things came outta my back in the cupping cup. how gross, i know, but all i can say is that i feel a lot better.so for the next 2 weeks i have to:

- put on camocare smoothing cream whenever it itches
- drink strong chamomile & chrysanthemum tea whenever possible to "flush out" for the skin
- avoid all white starch: white rice, white pasta, etc.
- avoid all fried food; all oily food, unless it's with olive oil
- needless to say, no diary (since i'm lactose intolerant anyway)
- no shellfish (i'm allergic to shrimp, but he said no shellfish, period)
- drink aloe juice throughout the day

wah! but it's already working - i'm not crazy itchy anymore! i'm slathering things on but now i know chamomile is good for your skin. otherwise, why would i drink this "flower"?!?!!

2. roommate update:

we've established some kinda "truth" - if you can call it that. the other night, i wanted to watch 'the departed' (which i had from netflix) and she had just gotten home, so i asked if she wanted to watch with. she mumbled yes. then we watched it together. last night, i was starting to watch the Oscars and she asked "can i watch it too?" (duh - what does she think i am - tv nazi?) so she joined me in watching that boring telecast.

so i guess overall a good weekend!

From NY Times:
February 21, 2007
Gathering Once a Month for a Voyage to Narnia
By LILY KOPPEL
On a recent Friday night, 30 fans of the writer C. S. Lewis sat in folding chairs under a vaulted ceiling surrounded by gilt-framed oil paintings of Episcopal priests. Like Lucy Pevensie, the youngest of the four children in Lewis’s book “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” who opens a wardrobe to discover the icy land of Narnia, the members of the New York C. S. Lewis Society immerse themselves in the writer’s fantastical realm.
Members of the group, which calls itself the oldest society in the world for the appreciation of Lewis’s works, gather on the second Friday of every month in the parish hall of the Church of the Ascension at 12 West 11th Street in Greenwich Village.
Among those at the latest meeting were Margaret Goodman, 70, an opera singer and actress who wore a small golden lion pin, and Christopher Mitchell, the director of the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College in Illinois, which has the world’s largest holding of papers and books by Lewis.
The society’s secretary, Clara Sarrocco, 60, traces her obsession to when she was 16, attending a Catholic high school in Queens, where she lives. “One of my teachers came in and mentioned a book written from one demon to another demon,” she said of Lewis’s “Screwtape Letters.” “Real diabolical-sounding.”
When she was in her 20s, Ms. Sarrocco clipped an advertisement for the society from a magazine. “I stuck it in my mirror,” she said. “Every time I looked in the mirror, I kept on saying, ‘I have to go there.’ I was a little intimidated.”
But her curiosity won out. Since the early 1970s, Ms. Sarrocco has been part of the society, which has about 500 subscribers to its twice-a-month bulletin from across the country and abroad, including Japan, Germany, Russia and England.
Lewis, who was born in Ireland in 1898, was a leading figure on the English faculty at Oxford University and was part of a literary group there known as the Inklings, which included J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of the “Lord of the Rings” books.
The Lewis society’s longest active members are a married couple, Alexandra and James Como. He is a Lewis scholar and the chairman of the Department of Performing and Fine Arts at York College in Jamaica, Queens, part of the City University of New York.
The Comos were at the first meeting of the society, held on Nov. 4, 1969, at the Staten Island home of Jack Boies, a professor of English literature at Wagner College on Staten Island, and his wife, Elaine. At the second meeting, as recorded in the minutes, “a very handsome watercolor map of Narnia and adjacent places, done by Professor Boies, was handed around and admired.”
“I remember the ride over,” Ms. Como said of the first meeting. “It was winter, going over the Verrazano Bridge, which the fog had completely covered up. We felt suspended.”
Mr. Como, referring to the somewhat Narnia-like atmosphere surrounding the first meeting, added, “Staten Island is very purgatorial.”
Ms. Como reached into her purse and pulled out a pocket pack of tissues decorated with the logo of the 2005 film “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” “I was in Lima, Peru, where I’m from,” she said, “and saw this and thought, ‘Oh my God, Narnia.’ ”
Her husband added: “Lewis said there is no such thing as coincidence. I call it the Holy Spirit.”
At the Church of the Ascension, among the gray-haired members in turtlenecks and cardigans, one could see the occasional teenager, a poet or someone from what Ms. Como called the “Lord of the Rings” crowd. In almost 40 years, the only times meetings have been canceled were because of a snowstorm or after 9/11.
In addition to his fantasy writings, Lewis’s work also included apologetics. And that element was present at the meeting. One man in an orange sweater wore a dark wooden crucifix dangling from a leather cord. Another man, Lewis Macala, 56, a medical researcher at Yale who was new to the group, introduced himself as “an atheist until I read Lewis.”
William McClaine, a portly man wearing red suspenders and thick glasses, opened the meeting. Peter Depaula, 54, a magician from Brooklyn, followed with a traditional excerpt from Lewis’s writings. Next was a lecture by a guest speaker, Edwin Woodruff Tait, 32, an assistant professor of Bible and religion at Huntington University in Indiana.
Dr. Woodruff Tait focused on a revolution described in “Prince Caspian,” another of the seven books in the Narnia series, in which the evil King Miraz cut down the land’s talking trees, and its enchanted creatures — centaurs, dryads, fauns, naiads, unicorns and talking animals — were killed or went into hiding.
In Narnia, creativity was promoted over technology, explained Dr. Woodruff Tait, and there was an implied distrust of modern life. “Lewis’s vision was not that we all are equal, but that we are all different in our natural attitudes and natural creativity,” he said. “Narnia is not about a hierarchy of power, but each kind of creature joyfully living out their natural attitudes.”
He pointed out that the only legislation in Narnia was to prevent people’s lives from being interfered with. “Moles dig because that’s what they love to do; dwarfs smith metal because that’s what they love to do,” he said. “In Lewis there is a love of the ordinary processes of life, a love of eating. The children are always having tea and biscuits.”
Dr. Woodruff Tait concluded with a reference to Aslan, the Jesus figure depicted as a lion in the Narnia books. “Long live the true king,” he said. Tea and cake were waiting.

okay, i was about to post a picture of eczema'ed back, but after looking at google images, i decided i cannot shock people that way. ha ha!

i haven't been sleeping well for the last couple of weeks, due to my back (skin, not bone or muscular). here's some background (not that you asked):

• i have mild eczema (skin allergies)
• i used to use topical steroids
• my back (skin) got addicted to the ointment
• i've used it for about 5 years
• my family doc AND my acupuncturist both said to get off the ointment, because my back (skin) has already become thinned and will even crack/break in the future with even a bit of sunlight (not to mention exposure to skin cancer, etc.)
• that was about 3 weeks ago
• 1st week was "okay"
• 2nd week was hell
• now it's 3rd week and i'm about to cry
• i'm going back to my acupuncturist this saturday to try cupping
• i've gone through about 4 brands of moisturizers for my back (but doesn't absorb - it's like applying lotion/cream to plastic/glass surface - just slides down)
• i go to bed all moisturized, wake up 1-2 hrs later, scratching

ARGH!!!
please pray for me!!!!

in the ancient times, i bet i would be cast off the society by now for always scratching...

what the...

Cheque mate! Korean bank sends singles on blind date
Tue Feb 20, 2007 8:25 AM ET

SEOUL (Reuters) - A top South Korean bank is sending a group of its single female employees on a blind date trip to North Korea, hoping that romance will make them happy at the office, an official said Tuesday.

Hana Bank is trying to fix up 20 of its employees between the ages of 29 and 33 with 20 single South Korean men selected by a top matchmaking agency in the country, an official said.

"This trip will offer them a chance to easily meet men," said Yang Jae-hyeok in charge of the bank's division offering life services for employees.

"As our bank tries to help our employees balance their work and personal lives, we are putting more effort into improving their personal life," Yang said.

Hana Bank will pay half the fare for its employees for the two-day trip this weekend to a mountain resort in North Korea run by an affiliate of the South's Hyundai Group, which more than a million South Koreans have already visited.

Hana, a main unit of the country's No. 4 banking group Hana Financial Group, two years ago set up what it calls a "full life service" for its employees that includes subsidizing employees who enroll with matchmaking services.

It plans to offer more subsidized blind date trips for its single employees, Yang said.

it was another exhaustive weekend in beantown with my nephew. so cute!! yet so taxing!!! i really don't think i can be a mother AND a wife. maybe either/OR. (okay, so sue me, cuz nobody asked me to BE either/OR!)

o..m..g...i just spent 10 hrs babysitting. sure, my bro & sis-in-law were in and out but they basically had to do their errands today so i babysat - feeding him b'fast, lunch, and dinner. also, playtimes (basically you're "on" 24/7). he only napped 2 hrs (apparently that's a record!). i just bathed him while he was screaming, getting him into PJs, omg, i'm so tired. my back hurts, i'm half drenched. omg...

i don't think i can be a mother. i'm already tired and want to go to bed!

this week went by fast. first, i was in toronto (unfortunately no pictures - no time!!! just work work work) then now i'm in boston for the long holiday weekend.

and does this post look any different than the others? it should BECAUSE....i'm using MICROSOFT VISTA and omg it is SO COOL!!!!! i want vista now...i love new technology - i want to have them right away (except for any apple stuff...i think steve jobs is like one of the anti-christ figures; the other one is al gore, with his strategy...).

THIS IS SO COOL!!! i highly recommend yall trying it!!!

i took this test and this is what i got... is this bad?!?!? this makes me sound like jerry falwell...

You scored as Fundamentalist. You are a fundamentalist. You take the Bible as the foundation of your faith and read it very literally, and it shapes your worldview. Non-fundamentalist Christians have watered-down the Gospel in your view, and academic study of the Bible stops us from 'taking God at his word.' Science is opposed to faith, as it contradicts basic biblical truths. Fundamentalist 64% Neo orthodox 61% Reformed Evangelical 61% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 57% Emergent/Postmodern 57% Classical Liberal 46% Roman Catholic 36% Charismatic/Pentecostal 32% Modern Liberal 25% What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

all my greencard-tracked physical exam's done. now i know that i don't have any syphilis, HIV, etc. etc. Got a negative on the TB test and got a Tetanus shot. YUCK.

is this TMI? ha ha!

going to toronto on monday for the first time in about 13 years. wow, how strange. i'm actually going for work, believe it or not. and i'm making sure to see my precious friend lindsay. i haven't seen her for around 13 years also. i'm wondering what that's gonna be like.

it's also bringing up old memories of my first few years in canada, as the korean-immigrant: the days of carrying dictionaries, blurs of middle school (except having a crush on one steven logan, and thinking how cool my homeroom teacher mr. schneider was). i also wonder what happened to one nicholas brown, who was the first boy ever to call me at home, got me in trouble (at age 16! life was unfair) and would totally ambush me at school by jumping outta from nowhere to smother me with hugs & kisses on the cheeks. i was so shocked - this kind of a behavior was not normal to me! AND he was younger than me by 2 years. what the heck. this went on for like a year. i wonder what happened to him.

today's passage to reflect on:

A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all

Psalm 34:19

restaurant week is now over. this was the busiest restaurant hoppin' time i've never had. started with a big ol' juicy steak @ smith & wollensky, tasteful and yummy @ telepan, fancy but kind of predictable meal @ arabelle, yummy but predictable @ le colonial and the grand finale of all, unbelievable meal @ megu. i highly recommend taking advantage of restaurant week 2x a year!

so...my office is cold because i have 2 big windows and they're old kinda, the kind you turn it to open and obviously they're not very well insulated during winter. i'm usually wearing a hat, fingerless gloves and have the portable heater on, but then i don't like to do the latter, as it dries out the space and as you all know i have to have the right amount of moisture in the air (i have to sleep with a humidifier on, but not the cold one but the hot one). anyway, lately, i've been taken to wearing a scottish wool BLANKET over my shoulder and basically covering my arms. whenever i get cold, my arms get cold and i don't know why people keep wearing vests. when i wear vests, i just get hot (in the torso) and cold (the arms). so this morning, i thought of a (one of my many) brilliant idea: a REVERSE vest, which in fact would be a ARM "vest."

i thought i was original, but alas, i am not: check out this islamic clothing on ebay. i don't think that'd be particularly warming but i guess there IS a 'reverse vest' per se.

any knitters out there who'd like to knit a REVERSE vest for me? that'd be: something like those mittens with strings so that you don't lose the other pair, so that i'd wear the arm vest through the shoulder and then "wear" through the arms. i think this could possibly be a fashion MUST item!

yes? no?

here's the fact: i love harry potter. i've read all the books and have all the dvds.

here's something HORRIBLE and STUPID (from BBC):

BBC to seek 'real' Harry Potter The BBC is to launch a reality series which will follow a group of children learning magic at a Harry Potter-style boarding school.
The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which will air later this year, will show the children learning card tricks, Latin spells and illusions.
Each week, they will perform for "magic mentors" who will judge their performances and decide who must leave.
BBC executive Anne Gilchrist thinks the show will "inspire and amaze".
Barney Harwood, who currently presents Totally Doctor Who, will front the series as the children progress.
The children watching at home will also get to learn magic tricks, in an accompanying morning series - which is yet to be named.
The magic mentors will give away their secrets and perform step-by-step guides, so children can learn and perform the tricks themselves.

i am absolutely confused.

my roomie's been going in and out of the apt quite frequently - AT NIGHT - IN HER JAMMIES whenever she's home. but usually with a coat, etc.

tonight, she came out of her dark room (see previous blog re: dark room roomie), went straight to the door in her pj's and out of the door.

WHAT"S GOING ON? Pastor J has mentioned that maybe she has an eating disorder. i wonder if she went to the back of the apt building to throw up? what's up with this? while i'm not really freaked as nothing really PERSONALLY affects me, but this is just plain WEIRD.

i really thought she used to go food shopping late at night, as we have a 24-hr grocery right down the street. but now i'm not so sure. it's not like we have a big apt complex (only 6 units!) and not like she got herself an in-building boyfriend.

i'm so confused.

so...maybe i don't understand because i'm not a parent. perhaps my married-with-kids friends can enlighten me a bit.

every now and then, i get a new piano student (which means, a new set of parents to deal with) and usually starts out okay. usually the kid is 5 years old (which is a recommended age for starting piano lessons) and usually, very quick (girls especially are a lot "with it" than boys at that age).

this is the story of a kid, Child A and Mother A.

i got them as a referral in late september. he was - as usual - pretty precocious and more interestingly, he was lightening fast in terms of learning the notes, name of the notes, applying it to playing, etc. which - as you all know - is all quite complex for their little brains.

anyway, it went STUNNINGLY well. by the first 4 lessons, he has grasped the entire note system, and would recognize the notes by SIGHT, play, understand rhythm and everything. i'm not saying he's a genius, but very apt and very involved and happy to have the piano lessons.

enter around 8th lesson - things were slightly going down the hill: he wouldn't respond to my questions, cajoling, nothing. then the Mother A would say "well, you're not doing it right," "are you sure you know what you're doing?"

to say the least, i was QUITE offended.

then, holidays happened and then yesterday was the 12th lesson. he was really not paying attention, really distracted, really not wanting to do it. i recognized that and about to say - at the end of the lesson - let's not continue. i personally don't have the energy to keep a child entertained when his own parents don't do it. Mother A comes to me and says "well, he doesn't know ANYTHING: no notes, cannot tell me what notes he's playing, nothing. how did this happen?" i said "Mother A, you know i've told you how shocked i was, how fast he learned and understood. i believe and KNOW that he knows these things. he just doesn't want to cooperate."

then she pulls this one: "Child A, would you like to continue piano or quit?" Child A says "i don't wanna do it"

Mother A says "okay, it's not working out. i don't know WHAT you did. bye"

i said "excuse me, but we've spent 20 minutes out of the 30 minute lesson. i would like to get paid for at least half of the time"

Mother A just stands there "really? you want to get paid?" i said "i'll wait for you" she takes 10 minutes to write a cheque for $20.

this is what i don't understand and need "enlightenment." the kid is obviously either bored or lost interest or doesn't want to think. isn't it up to the parent to encourage the kid to continue? to go over that small hurdle? if all parents just "gave up" for the "sake of their children's wants," wouldn't the world be filled with no achievers?

but it's not just Mother A & Child A i've seen do this. it's actually quite common this happens (not this particular scenario). Parents just GIVE UP FOR their kids. "Johnny is tired, it's really of no use," "Jane is obviously not interested," etc.

i just don't get it. but the thing about not wanting to pay me, that really got to me. i don't know how i kept my "cool" with little Child A. I said "bye Child A! have fun in School!"

and on an another i-don't-get-why-people-do-this category, check this out. it was actually in today's times. crazy.

HA!!!

From today's Australian:

Thanks but no thanks, Mr Kim
Peter Alford, Tokyo correspondent
18jan07
LAST May, while blithely ignoring international entreaties to stop his ballistic missile test preparations, dictator Kim Jong-il was making his own overtures to Japan's best-known conductor, Seiji Ozawa.While the Vienna State Opera's 71-year-old music director was recuperating from illness in Japan he was approached by an emissary carrying the Dear Leader's request to take the baton at North Korea's national orchestra, the Seoul daily JoongAng Ilbo said.
"I was truly impressed by your conducting," Mr Kim wrote, having watched a video of Ozawa's work.
"I really want to have you as the conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra," wrote Mr Kim.
Ozawa responded that he couldn't, because he was contracted in Vienna until 2009.
He might also have been discouraged by the spreading international furore as Mr Kim's technicians readied the first test launch of a ballistic missile.
The missile's intended target is the US, where Ozawa studied and worked for 40 years before leaving the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2002.
Mr Kim's minions frequently threaten to use their missiles to turn the conductor's homeland into a "sea of fire".
But the Dear Leader replied he had no objection to Ozawa working for the two companies.
Among the more than 1500 learned books he has produced is "Kim Jong-il on the art of opera; a talk to creative workers on the field of art literature, September 1974".
Unlike most of Mr Kim's oeuvre, the existence of this work cannot be questioned: you can get it on Amazon. He offers such insights as: "The opera singer has to sing while acting and act while singing ... similar to the method of depiction used by stage and film actors who speak while acting and act while speaking ..."
One Amazon reviewer lauded it as "the best work of its kind since Pol Pot's 'Maria Callas: the bel canto years'."
In August, however, Ozawa decided to decline the offer.

finally saw the film, an inconvenient truth. it was powerful. i don't know about it being a great movie, but it was very informative and needless to say, very worrysome. but i must say, his voice isn't too...i don't know what the word is because i fell asleep in the middle of it (and i never fall asleep on movies - NEVER!)!!!

haven't heard this song in awhile but it was played at this church i visited today. it moved me.

Artist: Matt Redman

Song: Nothing but the blood

Album: Facedown [" Facedown " CD]

Your blood speaks a better word

Than all the empty claims I've heard upon this earth

Speaks righteousness for me

And stands in my defense

Jesus it's Your blood

[Chorus]

What can wash away our sins?

What can make us whole again?

Nothing but the blood

Nothing but the blood of Jesus

What can wash us pure as snow?

Welcomed as the friends of God

Nothing but Your blood

Nothing but Your blood King Jesus

Your cross testifies in grace

Tells of the Father's heart to make a way for us

Now boldly we approach

Not by earthly confidence

It's only Your blood

[Chorus]

We thank You for the blood

We thank You for the blood

We praise You for the blood

We praise You for the blood

Nothing but Your blood

Nothing but Your blood King Jesus

this is too funny!!!

http://pcworld.about.com/magazine/2103p119id108732.htm

i don't think i could do it. i think i'd be literally lost without my:

• blackberry for email, gmail, yahoo, hotmail, outlook
• blackberry for cell phone
• blackberry for appointments/calendar
• blackberry for phone book
• blackberry for notes
• blackberry for zagat-on-the-go
• blackberry for mobile-google
• blackberry for gTalk-mobile
• home computer to email, gmail, yahoo, hotmail, outlook
• home computer to do second life
• home computer to do banking
• home computer to do shopping
• home computer to do on-line survey/greeting card
• home computer to Google World (google earth, google map, google, froogle, google image)
• home computer to look up dictionary.com
• home computer to look at travel websites, always dreaming, dreaming, dreaming
• home computer to blog
• home computer to d/l music (yikes)
• home computer to AIM, gTalk, MSN Messenger
• work computer to email, gmail, yahoo, hotmail, outlook
• work computer to use MS OFFICE
• work computer to use calculator
• work computer to Google World (google earth, google map, google, froogle, google image)
• work computer to gTalk, MSN Messenger

i think this is a wonderful idea!!!!

from today's TIMES:

January 13, 2007
Basic Instincts
The Bride Became Debt-Free
By M. P. DUNLEAVEY
IF you stopped to name some recent innovations that had enhanced your quality of life, a few things might come to mind — Netflix, leave-in hair conditioner and the proliferation of those big cheap boxes of clementines. But would any financial services top your list?
Sure, it is great to be able to pay bills online or get your tax refund deposited electronically into your bank account. But like so many financial inventions, these add a layer of privacy angst for every ounce of convenience.
If only the great minds in personal finance would spend a few minutes in the shower dreaming up some clever solutions to common money problems. A few humble thoughts while we wait:
REGISTER FOR SOLVENCY The tradition of registering for gifts started out as a way to help young couples acquire basic items they would need to set up their new home: china, linens, a decent cocktail shaker. These days many couples marry later, and so are well equipped on the domestic front. Let’s establish a new tradition of registering for something really useful: debt payments.
Rather than request a knife set that costs more than their combined educations, couples could sign up with the local Debt Registry and ask their nearest and dearest to help pay off those lingering credit card bills. It is not as glamorous as owning a vacuum cleaner designed by NASA, but once their debt was paid off, couples could buy whatever appliances they could afford.
BUY A TICKET FOR RETIREMENT Financial experts marvel that millions of Americans are willing to squander their cash on lottery tickets but are reluctant to employ that same vision and persistence when saving for retirement.
Why blow against the wind? With pensions waning and Social Security ailing, what is needed is Retirement Powerball — a national game that would operate like a typical lottery, with more practical results.
People would buy a ticket and pick their magic numbers, then wait to see who wins a fully funded retirement portfolio. Each week’s jackpot would be divided among hundreds of individual retirement plans. The amounts would be allotted based on factors like your age and how much you had already saved, so that each winner’s portfolio would cover the basics, if not a luxurious life on a tropical island.
TUTOR FOR MONEY How to stem the downward trend in personal savings, the rising tide of consumer debt and vast numbers of bankruptcy filings — especially during the postholiday sale season?
Give people tax breaks for volunteering to tutor those less savvy about basic money management — as well as a deduction for those willing to sign up for financial literacy classes.
If the tax code will not permit such a loophole, perhaps we could adopt another popular method: for every hour you spend untangling your budget, or helping others to do so, you would earn rewards points — redeemable at dozens of national retailers.
FINANCE PARENTS It’s sweet of the Internal Revenue Service to give you the chance to check a box on your tax return to contribute to a national campaign fund. But who wants to put any more money into the political system?
Let’s keep the basic idea, but use those voluntary contributions to create a National Fund for Parents (N.F.P.), which would provide grants to people who needed time off to take care of their children or their own aging parents. The N.F.P. would be a much-needed supplement to the Family and Medical Leave Act — which gives people oodles of time off, without a dime of support.
ROLL OVER YOUR INSURANCE Health insurance premiums are high for a reason; insurers want to hedge their bets, so we all pay the price. Still, unless you need regular medical care, it is hard not to feel sick when you think about how much money you spend each year for a service you do not use.
If only there were a way to roll over some portion of the cost of your premiums to the next year — the same way you can roll over sick days or cellphone minutes or build a cushion in a Health Savings Account with the cash you do not use.
Some people might view this as an incentive to avoid medical care, but ideally the rollover system would motivate people to stay healthy so they could save money.
I’m not saying any of these solutions would be simple to carry out. But I am confident that if we tapped the same intellectual energy that went into developing the torment of those self-checkout kiosks in stores, for example, and used it for more useful amenities, your financial life and mine would be much happier.

this is very funny. from today's NYT:

January 12, 2007
Grooming a Weatherman for His TV Debut, and Hoping He Doesn’t Bite the Host
By ANDY NEWMAN
Chuck the groundhog waddled out of his open carrier and onto the desk in the tiny reception office in the Staten Island Zoo. He walked onto the phone and stepped on a few buttons. A house line rang. “Thank you for calling the Staten Island Zoo,” the female voice said on the speaker. “You have reached the director’s office.”
Chuck left no message, or rather, he left a long, blank message, which is typical Chuck. It was just after 4 on Thursday last week, and Chuck was waiting to clock out and catch the bus.
Every weekend, Chuck, a strapping young hog born in April, goes home with his trainer, Douglas Schwartz, who works Sundays to Thursdays. This allows him to spend as much time with Mr. Schwartz as possible, and on the hourlong trip on public transit (Mr. Schwartz doesn’t drive), to get used to the prying eyes of strangers.
The hope is that when he makes his big debut next month he will not bite Regis in the face, or leave something unfortunate on Diane Sawyer’s desk, or, worst of all, see his shadow in the klieg lights and shrink back into his pet carrier for six weeks. “On Groundhog Day itself,” Mr. Schwartz said, “the limo just appears and whizzes us off to wherever. He has to always be on point.”
Chuck doesn’t get much chance to interact with the public during the week. He lives in a big cage in the zoo’s basement, which Mr. Schwartz says is fine with Chuck but which seems like a waste of the zoo’s sole marquee resident. “I’d like him to have his own exhibit, but it becomes a money thing,” said Mr. Schwartz, the zookeeper in charge of the zoo’s tropical rainforest. “ ‘Do you want reindeer, or does Chuck get an exhibit?’ ‘Well, we want reindeer.’ Reindeer are a very popular attraction with kids these days.”
The clock struck 5. Mr. Schwartz, Chuck and the other working stiffs filed out into the fading winter light. The S53 bus came lumbering, somewhat groundhog-like, down Broadway. Usually, Mr. Schwartz said, the driver makes an announcement along the lines of, “Ladies and gentlemen, Chuck has boarded the bus.” On this day, though, he just made small talk with Mr. Schwartz.
“Seems quiet,” the driver said.
“Yeah, he’s sleeping today,” Mr. Schwartz replied. Inside the carrier, Chuck lay on his back, paws on chest, buck teeth smiling blissfully.
A middle-aged woman sat beside Chuck and began shoveling Oreos into her mouth as she stole glances at the carrier with “Ground Hog” written in Magic Marker on the front. Chuck slept through. The woman got off, and an older woman replaced her. She peeked in.
“Oh, the cat’s sleeping,” she said.
“No, it’s a groundhog,” Mr. Schwartz said. The woman scowled and turned away.
“One time someone on the bus called the zoo and complained that he smelled terrible, and I had to stop doing it for a year,” Mr. Schwartz recalled. “Then we got a new director who said go ahead and do it, and the guy called again, and the director told him where he could stick his opinion.”
This Chuck is the sixth groundhog Mr. Schwartz has trained for the role since 1995 — his predecessor died last spring. Because he was born in captivity (in a zoo in New Jersey), he has been relatively easy to socialize — relatively being the key word.
“The patience involved is staggering,” Mr. Schwartz said. “He’s got a brain the size of a cashew, so you really don’t have much to work with.” And, he added: “They’re known for their aggression, so you’re starting from a hard place. His natural impulse is to kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out. You have to work to produce the sweet and cuddly.”
The bus driver called out, “Grasmere train station,” and Mr. Schwartz and Chuck hopped out and made for the SIRT — the Staten Island Rapid Transit, the island’s one-line aboveground subway system.
Chuck was a bigger hit on the train than on the bus. He was immediately surrounded by four baggy-pantsed teenagers. “Y’all just caught that?” a tall youth asked. A nurse practitioner from Staten Island University Hospital peered into the carrier and grimaced in the way people do when they see a not-quite-cute baby.
“What you got in there?” a man asked. Mr. Schwartz picked up the carrier and flipped it toward him. “Groundhog,” he said.
“Ho!” the man said, jumping back.
A waitress, Joyce Casey, took one look and was smitten. “I swear, do not let me get my hands on him,” she told Mr. Schwartz. “I will keep him.”
At the Prince’s Bay station, almost at the bottom of the island, Mr. Schwartz’s wife, Carol, was waiting.
“He slept the whole way on the train,” Mr. Schwartz said, sounding like a proud father.
“Really?” Carol Schwartz asked. “The whole way? Was he good?”
“He was very good.”
In the living room of the Schwartzes’ town house, Mr. Schwartz opened the carrier. Chuck poked his head out, carefully marked the door with the scent glands on his face, wandered downstairs and hid under a bed. Mr. Schwartz followed him and fished him out, accompanied by much squeaking and whirbling.
Chuck lay on his back in Mr. Schwartz’s lap in a big red chair. He grabbed Mr. Schwartz’s arm and soft-mouthed his hand. Mr. Schwartz stroked his coarse, brown-gray fur. “He could do this for hours,” Mr. Schwartz said.
Chuck’s weekend had begun.

Advanced Global Personality Test Results Extraversion 66% Stability 46% Orderliness 66% Accommodation 63% Interdependence 43% Intellectual 30% Mystical 30% Artistic 83% Religious 90% Hedonism 36% Materialism 56% Narcissism 63% Adventurousness 50% Work ethic 70% Self absorbed 56% Conflict seeking 50% Need to dominate 70% Romantic 50% Avoidant 50% Anti-authority 23% Wealth 30% Dependency 16% Change averse 56% Cautiousness 50% Individuality 63% Sexuality 50% Peter pan complex 76% Physical security 76% Physical Fitness 10% Histrionic 43% Paranoia 43% Vanity 50% Hypersensitivity 76% Female cliche 56%

Take Free Advanced Global Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Stability results were medium which suggests you are moderately relaxed, calm, secure, and optimistic.
Orderliness results were moderately high which suggests you are, at times, overly organized, reliable, neat, and hard working at the expense of flexibility, efficiency, spontaneity, and fun.
Extraversion results were moderately high which suggests you are, at times, overly talkative, outgoing, sociable and interacting at the expense of developing your own individual interests and internally based identity.

trait snapshot:
clean, self revealing, open, organized, outgoing, social, enjoys leadership and managing others, dominant, makes friends easily, does not like to be alone, assertive, hard working, finisher, optimistic, positive, likes to stand out, likes large parties, respects authority, practical, high self esteem, perfectionist, dislikes chaos, busy, not familiar with the dark side of life, controlling, high self control, traditional, tough, likes to fit in, conforming, brutally honest, takes precautions

Blessed "Tree"?

Psalm 1
1 Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.
4 Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

this morning's bible study is the beginning of the Psalm series. this study really moved me. i don't think i've been that alert before at 7:30 AM!

the study was on what we define happiness (blessedness) in our lives. contrary to what people usually believe, this does not mean monetary or emotional happiness but the happiness in the Lord, through His word. at a first glance, it's a very "easy" psalm to read: it's quite breezy, actually. but once you start reading into it and someone in the study brought up the imagery of trees and their deep roots...and certain trees which get burnt in forest fires but still will spring again in a few months' time, etc. - it really got stuck in my head. however we may get charred in real life, whether it's our own struggles of addictions of all sorts (money, glory, ego), the deep root in our love for our Father, and vice versa, it'll keep feeding us, renewing us and growing us (into old trees).

this was a very encouraging morning! made me very HAPPY.

i love helen mirren. she rocks. i just finished watching Elizabeth I. she's so awesome, it's kinda crazy.

last week was pretty crazy with the concert. in the midst of running around in cabs, between carnegie hall & my office, back and forth, the inevitable happened: in a cab, i picked up an umbrella, kinda cool looking too. i was showing it to my co-worker, while pocketting the 'brella, sayin' "i need one, so this is cool."

later that night, i got to a restaurant to meet a friend, and then realized that i left my silk scarf in the cab.

in the weird cab universe, life is fair.

went to the rangers game last night. that was so cool. i love skating! plus hockey is BORING when watching on telly - it's just really exciting when you're there. it didn't hurt that i was in the 2nd row, and sitting in front of Tim Robbins! (he was really into it...and his kids too but his kids...FOUL MOUTHED!! - and tim robbins didn't say ANYTHING!)

okay it's that time again...ROOMMATE UPDATE!

she moved in dec.15 - i've seen her in person 4 times so far. she sleeps when i'm leaving, when i'm home, she's not in yet. good deal, i know.

then i realized that i've never seen her eat (well, only having seen her 4 x, i know), even when i saw her 2x @ home, last 2 nights. so she apparently does eat cuz i've seen dishes washed & drying on the rack. so whatever - or so i thought! last night, after turning off my light, going to bed, then changing my mind, and decided to go to the bathroom one last time, i open the door and i suddenly see her walking towards the kitchen with a PILE of bowls, utensils, from her room!!!! but i swear, i saw her completely pitch black before i went to bed.

what does this mean? (because, her room IS always pitch black - and the door are skewed so that i can tell if there's even a computer light on)

that means she eats IN DARKNESS. what's up with that?

i told my co-worker and he saw a picture of her on facebook and said right there and then, "she's a goth girl."

YUCK

anyway, she's okay - for now. haven't bothered me, so i guess she can continue to eat in pitch darkness.

(how can one eat in such darkness? i don't get it?!?!)

HAHAHA from today's CNN.com

Typo takes tourist 13,000 km out
BERLIN, Germany (Reuters) -- A 21-year-old German tourist who wanted to visit his girlfriend in the Australian metropolis Sydney landed 13,000 kilometers (8,077 miles) away near Sidney, Montana, after mistyping his destination on a flight booking Web site.
Dressed for the Australian summer in T-shirt and shorts, Tobi Gutt left Germany on Saturday for a four-week holiday.
Instead of arriving "down under", Gutt found himself on a different continent and bound for the chilly state of Montana.
"I did wonder but I didn't want to say anything," Gutt told the Bild newspaper. "I thought to myself, you can fly to Australia via the United States."
Gutt's airline ticket routed him via the U.S. city of Portland, Oregon, to Billings, Montana. Only as he was about to board a commuter flight to Sidney -- an oil town of about 5,000 people -- did he realize his mistake.
The hapless tourist, who had only a thin jacket to keep out the winter cold, spent three days in Billings airport before he was able to buy a new ticket to Australia with 600 euros in cash that his parents and friends sent over from Germany.
"I didn't notice the mistake as my son is usually good with computers," his mother, Sabine, told Reuters.

Happy New Year!

Let's see, another time for those "resolutions"...

well, i'll try to be...more....EVERYTHING! nicer, considerate, saver, reader, prayer, etc.

i really don't think i need the New Year's Day to set a goal for myself, cuz i have hard enough time as it is!

anyway, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! may this 2007 be filled with joy, love, much learning!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

bye boston...hello new york!

this is really hilarious...because...it's ME!!!!! i'm JUST like this whenever i go home...whether it's to boston or to vancouver. i bring "good books" and other reads, i end up watching movies 24/7, eating non-stop and of course, my resolve to "start to exercise from home" is completely down the toilet! AHAHAHAH


NYTIMES
December 24, 2006
Stultification: How Sweet It Is
By MIKE ALBO
WHENEVER someone asks where I’ll be for the holidays, I always do the same thing: roll my eyes and say, exasperatedly: “I guess I’m going home for Christmas. Hope I don’t go insane!”
It’s been part of my conversational repertory since my early 20s, the time when you start having to prove to yourself that you are a self-governing adult, but before you realize that adulthood basically involves complex and enervating tasks like Internet dating, shopping for jeans, trying to remember your 15 various log-on codes and passwords, and deciphering your Verizon bill.
Now I am 37 years old and I can’t wait to go insane at Christmas in that comfortable padded cell known as “home.” Instead of being tedious, going home has become an indulgent retreat from my fried-out issue-driven city life. It is a place where I line my mind and body with the fatty lard of my suburban youth and experience not one moment of regret.
For a brief week, I get to be as ugly and out of it as Americans are always accused of being, and no one has to see it.
I have almost no choice. Every year I arrive at my parents’ house in Springfield, Va., armed with my healthy self-edifying projects — big leafy Penguin classics, Chomsky-explains-it-all books and a backlog of fortifying magazines. And every year I think I am going to actually read a paragraph of one of these things. But then I walk in the front door, say ‘hi’ to my mom and dad, stand at the kitchen counter and start eating cheese.
That’s not all that’s in the house. In case there is a terrorist attack at the Price Club, my mother has stocked up on boxed food, durable bags of meatballs, bins of croutons, an entire spectrum of cereal, jug wine and other pleasures that would never be reviewed in food and wine supplements.
After inhaling some combination of sustenance entirely made of carbohydrates and trans fats, I will go upstairs and change into an infantilizing outfit of fleece sweat pants and an old high school T-shirt that says “Go Spartans!” on it.
Then I go back downstairs and begin to watch television. In this consumer Green Zone, I can finally, really, watch TV. I am unfettered, and free of my ironic eye, op-ed anger and Web site snark, I can enjoy TV the way it was meant to be enjoyed — sitting there with my mouth open, too lazy to get up and go to the bathroom.
There are no Whole Foods here, no Bikram yoga, no concerns about my personal carbon emissions. I lose touch, for once, with my online pals, bloggy buddies, Netflix friends and MySpace chums. Finally I am logged off from the incessant broadband stream of information of my daily life. I don’t have to eat properly, act locally, think globally, sync up, detoxify or Move On.
I don’t have to check the label of my carefully selected non-animal-tested facial scrub to make sure that there are no secret traces of benzene. I don’t have to take only two minutes of my time to provide a free mammogram to another low-income woman by simply signing an online petition.
Instead, I simply sit there, eating Edy’s ice cream and watching a marathon of lesbian "Next" episodes on MTV. For once, I have zero concern for the homeless, global warming, my future and Darfur. It’s like my brain has been deprived of vital nonnutrients. I sit there on the couch in the living room drinking up the lack of intellectual stimuli like a steamy hammam of nothing important.
Under my bed is a suitcase that contains my old diaries. There are entries from when I was a 19-year-old member of Queer Nation and Act Up, and I would come to the dinner table filled with a defiant anger, quoting Annie Sprinkle, the self-described post-porn modernist sex activist, while saying grace.
If that 19-year-old saw me now, he would roll his eyes. He would think I had been padded and stupefied by the entertainment-industrial complex. He would say that the American consumer machine has swallowed me up in its accommodating mouth.
But I seem to remember that 19-year-old needed this week to relax his white-knuckle grip on reality, too. He would creep down the stairs at 3 a.m., grab a stack of windmill cookies, and channel-surf through the late-night infomercials beaming from the screen like a soothing strobe light.
Mike Albo is the author of two novels: “Hornito” and “The Underminer: The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life,” written with Virginia Heffernan.

this is pretty funny...

MERRY CHRISTMASSS!!!!!!!

i just counted the presents list from 2001 (of the presents i've GIVEN!). i've kept the records since 2001 christmas just so that i don't duplicate any gifts every christmas. average presents list? 14. i don't think that's bad...but then i'm single, so that means, when (and if) i get married, it'll AT LEAST double. not a pleasant thought. i like gift-giving. i often wish i were rich so i can give people what they need (i'm a firm believer in need-gift-giving, not want-gift-giving).

read this book in about 2 days - a quick read for dog lovers. i cried in my bed, at night, at the end. a must for a holiday read! (only if you like dogs!)

what a great job this is - what a great thing to do! how cool!!!!!!!!!

NY TIMES
December 17, 2006
To Sketch a Thief
By TOM MUELLER
Noah Charney hasn’t stolen a major artwork, as far as is known, but he gives it lots of thought. I met him one day last spring in Rome, in a cool, shadowy side chapel of the church of San Francesco a Ripa on the west bank of the Tiber. He stood with his hands clasped reverently before him, gazing at Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s statue of the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni. Bernini seems to have caught the pious mystic just as she passes to her great reward; she lies prostrate on a tousled bed of marble and jasper, her back arched, her eyes slitted, her lips parted and her right hand pressed to her breast in an ecstasy of divine transport that, as more than one critic has observed, resembles a far earthier kind of ecstasy. “I’ve spent hundreds of hours here with Ludovica,” Charney said, less to me than to the statue, about which he wrote his master’s thesis in art history in 2003. “We have a special relationship. I want her in my living room!”
Charney, a slender, courtly 27-year-old from New Haven with a back-swept mane of jet black hair, pointed out details in the statue and the ormolu molding around it that suggest an inner meaning few observers have perceived: a pomegranate and a flaming heart, which signify Ludovica’s passionate love of God, and her shoes, which prove that she isn’t on her deathbed, as most people have assumed, but is experiencing the fierce, heart-melting heat of divine rapture. “A lot of art history is detective work,” Charney told me. “Instead of just staring at a piece, you’re studying it and gathering information.”
Then, with the same probing eye, he noted what for him were even more essential qualities of the statue: how it might be stolen and by whom. The nearby window, the old-model motion sensors and the doubtless un-manned surveillance cameras would all facilitate theft. Yet the stature of the Blessed Ludovica herself, a cool ton or so of stone, would give any thief pause. “To get her out of here, you’d really have to be obsessed,” he said. Then again, he reckoned someone who was truly smitten with the work could find a way to pinch it. “And if Ludovica were ever stolen,” he said, “I’d be the first suspect.”
Charney is completing a doctorate at Cambridge University in a field he appears to have invented: the use of art history, combined with the more conventional tools of criminology, psychology and deductive logic, to help solve modern-day art thefts and to prevent future art crimes. The stolen-art trade is now an international industry valued as high as $6 billion per year, the third-largest black market behind drugs and arms trafficking. Yet the solution rate in art crime is reported to be a startlingly low 10 percent. Investigations are hampered by the cult of secrecy within the art world itself — museums sometimes don’t report thefts, fearing to reveal their vulnerability to future crimes and thereby hurt their chances of receiving new donations. “The art trade is the least transparent and least regulated commercial activity in the world,” says Julian Radcliffe, chairman of the Art Loss Register, a London-based company that maintains a leading database of stolen artworks.
Charney wants to cut through this murk by treating art theft as a scholarly discipline, drawing on a wide range of sources in an attempt to reach the first unbiased, statistically based conclusions about the nature of the crime. He has reviewed police files of art crimes in Europe and the United States from the 19th and early 20th centuries, looking for ways that past thefts might illuminate current trends, and he has questioned investigators from the F.B.I., Scotland Yard, the Spanish Policía and the Italian Carabinieri about their often distinctive attitudes and crime-solving methods and about the different cultural and bureaucratic barriers that each force encounters. Charney has explored the legal aspects of art ownership, sale and copyright by consulting with lawyers, federal prosecutors and art insurers, seeking to chart the complex currents in the flow of stolen art worldwide and to understand how laws in certain countries smooth the passage of stolen pieces into the legitimate market.
More than anything, Charney is interested in understanding the motivation and mentality of art criminals, an area that has traditionally received little attention from the police. He has scrutinized the biographies of famous collectors like the financier J. P. Morgan, as well as legendary art thieves like the Victorian-era burglar Adam Worth, looking for ways that the details of their emotionally charged, obsessive psyches might help investigators understand the criminal mind — and, specifically, the art-criminal mind. He has also studied Hermann Göring, commander of the Luftwaffe, whose conception of Aryan supremacy, according to Charney, led him to loot even second-rate works by northern European painters rather than genuine masterpieces by “degenerate” artists like the French Impressionists. Both collectors and collector-thieves sometimes form a bond with an artwork that is as intense as a love affair. According to Charney, several owners of Ghirlandaio’s “Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni,” the famous profile portrait of Lorenzo Tornabuoni’s young wife who died soon after she sat for the painting, have said that she reminded them of their own deceased wives. And Stéphane Breitwieser, the French waiter arrested in 2002 for stealing some $1.5 billion in art from museums and galleries in seven European countries, declared that he was fascinated by the eyes and the beauty of the woman in the first painting he stole, who reminded him of his grandmother.
In a more contemporary approach to the criminal mind, Charney wants to apply to art thefts the techniques of criminal profiling that forensic psychologists use to help solve serial rapes and murders. To supply the necessary raw materials for this analysis, he has begun to compile a database of art thefts that records salient details: the way the work was stolen, for instance, along with biographical information about everyone involved, including thieves, fences and the collectors who eventually bought the purloined artwork. This is an arduous, time-consuming task, which is complicated both by the limited number of cases in the public domain and by the police files themselves, which typically have no separate category for art theft and lump the crimes together with other burglaries. Eventually, however, Charney says he hopes this project, along with his other initiatives, will establish a clearer, more empirically rigorous understanding of art crime.
Major thefts often result in a number of contradictory theories about the identity and intentions of the culprit. Consider, for example, the robbery that took place in 1990 at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the largest art theft in American history, the solution to which is currently the holy grail of the art-crime world. At 1:24 a.m. on March 18, 1990, while Boston slept off its St. Patrick’s Day excesses, two men in police uniforms and fake black mustaches knocked on the side door of the museum and said they were investigating a disturbance. Once inside, without using weapons, they subdued the guards, duct-taped their hands, feet and mouths and stowed them in the cellar. For a leisurely 80 minutes, they had the run of the place. In the end they made off with $300 million in art, including a Manet, three Rembrandts and Vermeer’s “Concert,” one of only 35 or so extant paintings by the enigmatic Dutch genius. Surprisingly, however, they left behind works by Raphael and Fra Angelico, as well as Titian’s “Rape of Europa,” one of the greatest masterpieces in any American museum collection. Instead, the thieves took five comparatively insignificant Degas pastels, a Chinese beaker and the eagle-shaped finial of a Napoleonic battle flag. (They tried to get the flag itself by unscrewing the lid to the glass-fronted case that held it; when this failed, they didn’t smash the glass as most criminals would have done, but contented themselves with the unprotected finial.)
The wide range of explanations proposed for this crime, which remains unsolved despite a $5 million reward offered by the museum, suggests the equally wide range of criminals who steal art, as well as the uncertainties that plague law enforcers. Experts have variously blamed the Irish Republican Army, South American drug traffickers and gangsters like James (Whitey) Bulger, the widely feared head of organized crime in Boston when the Gardner theft occurred. Others maintain that it was the work of thieves who intended to use the art as a bargaining chip — to negotiate immunity for another crime, perhaps. Still others, noting that paintings like the Vermeer and the Rembrandt are too famous ever to be resold on the open market, argue that an obsessed collector commissioned the crime in order to procure artworks he could never have acquired legally — works he intends to keep for his own private delectation. In art-theft circles, such a figure, frequently evoked after the disappearance of a masterpiece, is known as a “Dr. No,” after the reclusive criminal genius of the James Bond film, who inhabited a cave on a Caribbean island bedecked with stolen art treasures.
Charney says he believes that the Gardner case has the earmarks of a Dr. No type of thief and that his study of prominent past collectors and their criminal doppelgängers can help narrow the suspect pool. Only a criminal collector, he says, would design a theft of such exaggerated selectivity and delicacy. He speculates that the person who arranged the Gardner theft was a wealthy connoisseur who had seen the works many times before ordering their theft and that a list of past museum patrons, as well as records of previous sales of works by the artists he stole, particularly the Degas pastels, could help to identify the culprit.
Behind other crimes, Charney sees a very different criminal personality. During the 2004 theft of Edvard Munch’s “Scream” from the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway, for example, robbers in black balaclavas ran into the museum in broad daylight, brandishing guns and terrorizing onlookers. They tore the delicate painting off the wall (and later wrenched it from its frame) and roared away two minutes later in a black Audi before the police could intervene. “The Scream” was returned in August; though the Norwegian police have yet to explain the circumstances of the recovery, Charney theorizes that such a violent, thuggish crime, which could easily have damaged or destroyed the painting, was not commissioned by an art lover. Instead he blames “Russian Mafia types,” members of one of the criminal networks that in recent years have been increasingly active in art theft.
A third crime, which Charney has recently discussed with Scotland Yard, was the December 2005 theft of Henry Moore’s “Reclining Figure,” an 11-foot-long, 2-ton bronze sculpture that was taken from the late artist’s home in Hertfordshire, England, by thieves using a flatbed Mercedes truck with a crane mounted on the back. Some observers, citing the work’s bulk, have again blamed a Dr. No, while others, including the British police, have assumed it was sold for scrap. But Charney, who says that the metal itself was worth as little as $3,000, thinks he has a better theory. Recalling numerous precedents in art history in which looted bronze artworks were melted down and used to create new art — Gian Lorenzo Bernini himself stripped bronze from the Pantheon to make the massive canopy over the high altar of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican — Charney suggests that the Moore sculpture was actually stolen and melted down to make forged antiquities, small items like statuettes or “Greek” coins that could easily be sold to noncriminal buyers at markets or on eBay. By using stolen bronze rather than buying it, the thieves would eliminate the paper trail of the raw materials, he says, and laments that the police failed to target foundries as well as scrap yards during their investigation.
Though Charney’s work has thus far been largely theoretical, he has plans to put it to active use. “I’ve been a student all my life, but I don’t want these things to remain locked away in the ivory tower,” he told me. He is establishing a nonprofit consultancy based in Rome that will employ the same international, interdisciplinary approach to art crime that he has used in his scholarship, with a staff trained in criminology, statistics, museum security and art history. In June, as something of a trial run of his art-theft enterprise, Charney organized a two-day conference at Cambridge University titled “Art Theft: History, Prevention, Detection, Solution,” attended by the same broad spectrum of art and art-theft authorities with whom he has conferred during his dissertation research. “It’s going to be fun,” he told me a few days before the conference. “Besides the presentations, we’ve laid on lots of social events — teas, formal dinners, punting on the Cam — to get people comfortable talking to each another.”
The Cambridge conference was probably the most eclectic group of people ever assembled to discuss art theft. In fact, at first it seemed almost too eclectic: the art-theft agents from the F.B.I., Scotland Yard and the Italian Carabinieri moved with the spring and swagger of aging Olympic wrestlers, and they stood out like giants among the slender, self-conscious, soft-spoken, tweed-clad academics, in whose company they evidently felt out of place. “The two days of this conference are the longest time I’ve ever spent at university,” Vernon Rapley, head of the art and antiques unit of Scotland Yard, told me. He said it with a laugh, but there was also an edge of working-class angst. Yet the initial tensions and incomprehensions soon melted away, and the value of Charney’s interdisciplinary bridge-building became apparent. The police, in their presentations — punchy PowerPoint slides — taught Charney and his fellow academics some important lessons about how art theft works in the real world. One of the biggest hindrances faced by law enforcers is an enduring public misconception of art theft as the harmless fleecing of a wealthy, well-insured elite. “All too often, the general public sees art theft and the looting of antiquities as victimless crimes,” Col. Giovanni Pastore of the Carabinieri said. As a result, police departments devote far fewer resources to art theft than to crimes like terrorism, drugs, organized crime and street violence, which the public sees as more menacing.
In reality, however, because fine art is safe to steal, easy to transport and extraordinarily valuable, it has become a useful tool in the hands of precisely those criminals whom the public fears most. Bob Wittman, the senior investigator of the F.B.I.’s art-crime team, included in his presentation a slide of Pierce Brosnan in a winning pose, and he asked how many people in the audience had seen “The Thomas Crown Affair” or another of several recent films that portray art thieves as debonair rogues who steal purely for the love of art. Hands went up around the room. His next slide showed the mug shots of several convicted art thieves, a rogue’s gallery of brutish-looking kidnappers, drug dealers, racketeers and murderers. “Here’s what art thieves really look like,” he said. Scotland Yard investigations have revealed that criminal organizations regularly use stolen art as collateral to buy drugs or arms. Gabriel Metsu’s “Woman Reading a Letter,” stolen in 1986 by Martin Cahill, an Irish gangster, from a manor house near Dublin, was recovered four years later in an Istanbul hotel room as it was being swapped for heroin, while Vermeer’s “Lady Writing a Letter With Her Maid,” taken in the same burglary, was left with an Amsterdam diamond merchant as collateral for a $1 million loan to buy drugs. Wittman told me that the sale of looted artifacts has also been linked to the financing of terrorism.
The scholars, for their part, appeared to persuade law enforcers of the benefits of collaboration. After watching Danielle Carrabino of the Courtauld Institute describe the seminal importance in art history of a late Caravaggio painting of the nativity stolen from a Baroque chapel in Palermo in 1969, Wittman remarked that such specialized information could be a real asset in his work. “Knowing how important these works are culturally could help people understand the true value of what is being lost,” Wittman said. “Maybe scholars could even help to predict what might be taken next, based on their knowledge of what types of art are popular right now.” Also, the data-analysis groundwork that most police departments now have no time for — collating documents, performing interviews, scrutinizing raw data in search of trends — is a scholar’s bread and butter and appears to offer an ideal opportunity for outsourcing. By the end of the conference, Vernon Rapley said that he would let Charney study his files and also make Charney and other interested academics special constables of Scotland Yard with a brief training course. Giovanni Pastore offered to take Charney to interview art thieves in Italian prisons, and Julian Radcliffe agreed to give him access to the Art Loss Register archives.
Since the conference, the seeds of cooperation Charney helped to sow are taking root. F.B.I. agents and art historians have convened in Philadelphia to talk about art and crime, and Robert Goldman, an attorney who prosecuted a number of important art crimes in the United States (and attended Charney’s conference), has begun advising the British Museum on art thefts. Charney himself is concentrating on his nascent art-theft consultancy. With the help of a professional fund-raiser, he has applied to the Getty Foundation and the Ford Foundation to finance the first three years of the project (he estimates it will cost $1.7 million), and he has persuaded Wittman and Pastore to serve as trustees, together with Dick Ellis, a leading private detective. Charney will probably never wear a gun or chase Dr. No down a dimly lighted alleyway, but his encounters with crooks, which until now have taken place on the comfortably lofty plane of scholarly theory, may soon happen in the grittier realm of the criminal underworld.

so this is one of the profiles i got matched on eharmony today. what can one say?

I DON'T THINK SO

The most important thing G__ is looking for in a person is:
You want me, but you don't need me-in other words you're not an emotional stalker; you're sexy and you kiss well. I take it you're also in good physical condition and not overweight. You have an excellent sense of humor and understand irony. You have your own life.

this was a fun quiz! har har harrrr

What American accent do you have? Your Result: Boston You definitely have a Boston accent, even if you think you don't. Of course, that doesn't mean you are from the Boston area, you may also be from New Hampshire or Maine.
North Central
The Northeast
The West
The Midland
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

today at work, the postwoman gave us a choice to pick a SANTA LETTER to respond to. basically, you have to get the item(s) on the letter. so i picked one. she saids she's 3 (i think someone else wrote it) and would like a dora tv & cassette. the postwoman said i can just give one, saying santa will probably bring the other one in the mail next year. so i'll get her this. i think it's pretty reasonable. :)

so, finally the long awaited video #1 & #2 of sarah mclachlan. she is sweet & nice. it was for the etown on npr. #2 is with leigh nash of sixpence none the richer and she was HORRIBLE. she is really tone-deaf.