Hopefully by now you have read about the 14 state senators from the state of Wisconsin that have fled the state in a desperate attempt to protect the worker's rights of state employees. The unions in Wisconsin have given the Governor everything he wants and needs to balance his budget in concessions for how much the state has to pay for pensions and health insurance. However, Governor Walker and the GOP do not care about balancing budgets or creating jobs, they just want to bust unions and make collectively bargaining illegal (thus making the unions entirely powerless).
It is frightening hearing about how education and teachers across America are being targeted. How can the Governor of Wisconsin pass hundreds of millions of dollars in tax cuts for Wisconsin's billionaires and millionaires the second he is elected to office and then immediately attack teachers and state employees as being too greedy? Being a teacher now myself, I do not understand how you can justify cutting teachers' salaries while simultaneously handing out hundreds of millions in tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the state.
If you are an America you can sign one of the numerous petitions going around supporting the Wisconsin 14. If by any chance you are rich (and not a Republican), the state's Democratic party is attempting to raise money to recall state senators so the Democrats can retake the majority in the state house.
The Daily Show always has the best analysis of the situation...
Park Jae-Sang (박재상) is a Korean hip-hop artist that goes by the name PSY (싸이). He is not exactly a mainstream artist, but he has become quite popular for his sense of humor and willingness to make fun of other KPOP artists in his videos. He received his education in the United States and attended both Boston University and Berklee College of Music. This guy probably can speak English quite well.
His latest hit is "Right Now" and I have to compliment this guy on his amazing body. 2PM better log some more hours in the gym because they cannot compare with this guys's abs.
It appears that it has become unavoidable to manage a blog or website and not have it be linked with social networking sites. So I thought it would be wise to finally get myself caught up. You can like my facebook page or friend my facebook profile now. I also created a twitter account and we will see how much use that gets.
If you have a facebook page or twitter account and want me to find or friend you, leave a comment and let's link up.
I'm taking my two weeks renewal vacation time and am heading somewhere warmer than South Korea in February. I won't have reliable internet (and don't want it). I won't post anything for the next two weeks and won't respond to anyone's e-mails or comments. As always, thanks for reading and I'll be back on in March.
If you have ever taught the elementary level in a public school in South Korea, then you are probably familiar with the textbook characters Jinho, Nami, Mrs. Smith, Peter, Joon, and Ann. Millions of South Korean children over the last decade have been learning English from this text book series and it is finally being changed this year to an updated version designed for three hours of English instruction a week instead of two hours a week.
The expressions, vocab, and 98% of all the grammar is acceptable. The problem with these books was the production value and quality of the videos. There were also some awkward cultural moments and just bizarre choices made for settings and situations. The accompanying CD-ROM for the books looked like it was best designed to run on Windows 98, and here it is still being used in 2011. It is not even worth mentioning the role plays, chants, or suggested games and activities, which were all mostly unusable. The main dialogues were pretty good and had nice animation (see here and here), but all the live action scenes were worthless.
South Korea prides itself on how much of a priority they have on investment in education. The teachers here are excellent, classrooms have no shortages of supplies, lots of useful technology available, new English classrooms and language learning facilities, etc. The problem was that everything revolved around these horrible textbooks. These books really should have been scrapped for something better the second after they were printed.
Seo In Young (서인영) is the break out solo artist from the girl group Jewelry. She also goes by the English name Elly and does just about everything from TV, movies, modeling, dancing and singing. Do a google image search of her and you may agree she is one of the sexiest women in Korea.
Her latest song is Into the Rhythm (리듬속으로) The visuals in her new video make her look a little bit like Cruella Deville.
One of the first KPOP videos I ever watched online was hers two years ago. I still like it and I think this video is pretty fun.
Came across this on facebook and found it pretty humorous. I'm assuming this is a Japanese couple, but I imagine there are some universal constants here.
Saw this on Brian's blog. I'm not surprised young Koreans don't know who Conan O'Brian is. I feel like action or romance stars are more easily transferable across language barriers than comedic stars.
On the January 27th, 2011 episode of Conan's new show on TBS he went to the Hollywood Blvd. Wax Museum to see how his statue is doing. He bumped into some Korean girls and had a funny exchange.
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