Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from February, 2010

Song of the day

"Fight Test," by The Flaming Lips: THE TEST BEGINS - NOW (spoken) I thought I was smart - I thought I was right I thought it better not to fight - I thought there was a Virtue in always being cool - so when it came time to Fight I thought I'll just step aside and that the time would Prove you wrong and that you would be the fool - I don't know where the sun beams end and the star Lights begins it's all a mystery Oh to fight is to defend if it's not Now then tell me when would be the time that you would stand up And be a man - for to lose I could accept but to surrender I just wept and regretted this moment - oh that I - I Was the fool I don't know where the sun beams end and the star Lights begins it's all a mystery And I don't know how a man decides what right for his Own life - it's all a mystery Cause I'm a man not a boy and there are things You can't avoid you have to face them when you're not prepared To face them - If I could

Sunday funny

Would you have to spin the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere? I think so, but I'm not certain I could prove it. Thoughts?

Gulp

Apparently there's a new fungus that causes stem rust in wheat, defeated long ago but back for another round: The enemy is Ug99, a fungus that causes stem rust, a calamitous disease of wheat. Its spores alight on a wheat leaf, then work their way into the flesh of the plant and hijack its metabolism, siphoning off nutrients that would otherwise fatten the grains. The pathogen makes its presence known to humans through crimson pustules on the plant’s stems and leaves. When those pustules burst, millions of spores flare out in search of fresh hosts. The ravaged plant then withers and dies, its grains shriveled into useless pebbles. Stem rust is the polio of agriculture, a plague that was brought under control nearly half a century ago as part of the celebrated Green Revolution. After years of trial and error, scientists managed to breed wheat that contained genes capable of repelling the assaults of Puccinia graminis, the formal name of the fungus. But now it’s clear: The triumph di

This is getting ridiculous

Once again, in Kuruman, on the same street as last time (maybe 100 yards away from the site of the last incident, with the same friend as last time even) I was harassed again by tsotsis. This time one guy tried to stop us both, then two followed us trying (in the most obvious way you can imagine) to get into our backpacks. I could feel them trying to do that, so I kind of waggled them off, then we stopped with our backs to a taxi, pushed them away, and yelled at them for awhile. They left, but not right away. They seemed kind of pissed, which is about par for the course here. The sense of aggrieved entitlement is very common here, like I owe them my stuff. The tsosti Ubuntu. It's infuriating--these drunken chumps are lucky I'm not some Afrikaner with a gigantic pistol on my hip. Neither of us had anything valuable on the outside of our packs, and they didn't get inside them anyway, but it was still a pain in the ass. I noticed this time that I was much calmer, and

Bleg

According to KLM, I'm still short on my fundraising for this marathon thingy. I'm about halfway to $100, so I just need a few more people to kick in some bucks. Go to the KLM website , click donate, and put my name in the Longtom Marathon field. Even $5 is 5% of the total!

Teaching

As I teach more and more I realize how I'm not really cut out for the job of teaching little kids (or Young Learners as they call them). Today the Grade 5 and 6 just had me at the end of my rope. Every time I turned my back they were shouting and hitting each other, and my system of punishment (where I write their name on the board as a warning, and give them check marks if they keep talking, each check meaning two minutes after school) just didn't seem to have an effect. By the end of class I had probably 3/4ths of the kids up on the board. The really bad ones (with 3 or more checks) I made sweep the classroom after school was out (which ended early because most of the teachers left). One of these bad kids skipped out of the class while I had my back turned, which made me so angry I about lost it. The remaining ones swept in a self-pitying and sullen manner, throwing around desks and chairs, whining about how they were hungry and tired they were. They didn't seem to

In lighter news

This afternoon I went on the longest run I've ever done in my life (as far as I can remember, anyway). An hour and a half, which by my calculations puts it at approximately ten miles nonstop (yeah, I'm a wuss, I know). It was also one of the easiest runs I've done--I put on some tunes (Daft Punk's Homework ) and the miles melted away. For awhile there it felt like I was floating; my mind drifted off, and I sort of forgot what I was doing. That's a violent change from my usual experience with running, which is better called a slog: painful, boring, and high-impact. On the way out for my run, I cross the bridge, but coming back into the village I usually take one of the side roads, which just crosses the riverbed. Because of the rain last night, it was still running, and fairly heavily at that. I didn't want to go around, so I took off my shoes and waded across. It was deeper than I thought, about knee-deep and fast in the middle (I'd revise my estimate

Nighttime tribulations

It was a dark and stormy night (heh), and with the rain hammering on my roof like the cast of Riverdance, I had some trouble falling asleep. I made it though, but was woken up by a light misting of droplets on my face. The wind had peeled back one of the sheets of tin a few inches and the rain--which had slackened off quite a bit--was coming right in. All the roof beams in my room are fairly rotten from water coming through the nail holes every time it rains, so it wasn't too surprising that the nail (which went all the way through the beam) was pulled out. Cursing every deity I could think of, I grabbed a chair and squirmed on to the roof, managing not to cut myself to ribbons. (I don't think I could do that again without the volcanic rage assist.) Luckily I had put a brick up there for this very reason, though on another sheet. I hoisted it over and dropped back to the ground. What a pain! I've got some serious repairs planned for this weekend. They involve a whol

Sunset progression

More from the archives today. This was from one of the weirdest sunsets I've ever seen. It started out fairly normally, but then the sun got underneath the top layer of clouds: And it just kept getting more spectacular. Then, though, it made a sharp turn from orange to purple: And kept on turning. Beautiful.

Book review: Cryptonomicon

This piece by Neal Stephenson was unadulterated fun. It was basically what I thought Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace was going to be: big, goofy, nerdy, and hilarious. (See here for my review of IJ.) It has two parallel stories about a related sets of people in WWII and present day. The WWII story is set around a marine (Bobby Shaftoe) who works with a pioneer of cryptography and computers (Lawrence Waterhouse) to hide the fact that the Allies have broken Japanese and German codes. The present day story is set around an entrepreneur (Randy Waterhouse, the grandson of Lawrence) who is building a data haven in a fictional pacific country near the Philippines. The plot is quite intricate, and is developed nice and slow. For someone with a weak mathematical mind (for a scientist, anyway), it was pleasingly numerate, but not so much that I was often lost. (I confess, though, that I’m still a little unclear on the Riemann zeta function .) Even for someone who is terribly frigh

Weight update

Here's a datum for those of you interested in weight gain/loss in Peace Corps: at 70.5 kg (155.4 lbs) I'm now lighter than I've been since I was a freshman in college. Back then, I went from a meager 135 to 165 lbs in about six months of hitting the weights pretty hard. I attribute the loss to not eating very much and running a lot. A couple weekends ago, for a variety of reasons, I went almost 2 days without a meal. The old "too-lazy-to-cook" bachelor syndrome, I'm afraid.

Primary school jazz

 They're building a Grade R (kindergarten) classroom at my school. This seems rather foolish, as the Grade Rs already have a place to meet--in the library, (which has a few high school accounting textbooks with a good quarter-inch of dust on them). Not only that, the new Department of Education regulations stipulate that the learner/educator ratio is supposed to be 32. Here, where the average class size is around 16 or so and all the senior phase grades (7, 8, 9) have their own classroom, that can't last. Grade 7 and 8 are going to have to be combined after I leave, which will leave an empty classroom. Not to mention that enrollment has been consistently falling for the last 10 years. Oh well. In other news, today I visited the primary school in the neighboring village for the first time and was blown away by the quality of the teaching, especially the Grade 2 teacher. The feeding scheme has broken down this week, so the kids hadn't even been fed, but she had the ful

South Africa in the news

This article from the New York Times is about the new bus system in Gauteng and the troubles they're running into there: South Africa has erased apartheid from its statute books, but the racist schemes of white minority rule remain engraved on the landscape in an extreme form of residential segregation. Millions of blacks still live in townships far from centers of commerce and employment. Those with jobs, like Mrs. Hanong, must endure commutes that devour their time and meager incomes, while legions of jobless people are isolated from opportunity. The new Bus Rapid Transit systems planned for South Africa’s major cities in recent years have promised to ease those hardships by providing fast, affordable, dignified travel on bus lanes cleared of other vehicles.

Furniture!

After a paltry five-month delay, the promised furniture from the Northern Cape department of education arrived this week. It's actually fairly nice! I had assumed that it was never going to show up, and was astounded when it actually came. We've now got a desk, chair, bed, and wardrobe. For my money the wardrobe makes the biggest difference. Being able to move out of my suitcase and get my clothes off the floor is a huge step toward feeling at home.

The advantages of tape media

For all the quality improvements of the CD, their inferior durability is very obvious here in South Africa. Though CDs are tougher than most people think, the procedure to fix them is rather involved. Here everyone seems to have a couple CDs floating around, and every single one I've ever seen is scratched to hell. Nothing says "South African taxi" to me like Setswana songs mixed with a cheap Casio keyboard skipping relentlessly. Yet the other day my host brother pulled out a tape of some old gospel music (saccharine, vanilla Americana stuff) that he said was 30 years old, and it still played. Better suited to this type of environment.

The last hurrah

 My camera is definitively hosed. Fussing with the lens cap to try and get it to turn on properly I pushed a bit too hard and heard a crack of breaking plastic deep in the guts of the thing. Now it won't focus at all. So in memoriam, I give you this sunset to ponder. From now on you're stuck with my cheesy cell phone camera unless I can save up some bucks for a new one. Godspeed, Samsung S860. May your future journeys be better-constructed than you were.

The river

 It's been running for the last two days. Since the last storm, it dried up and then came back during a clear blue sky. My host family tells me that the drainage is enormous, that the water is coming from Vryburg (about 200 km away in Northwest province). Whatever the reason, I love it. I walked in the drainage on my weekly visit to Laxey even though it probably doubled my trip time and had me scrambling in the brambles and thorn bushes. Something about water, especially muddy water, makes me happy.

Blog post of the week

My friend Noah has a powerful experience : The next sequence happened in about half a second. I saw a bright light out of the corner of my eye where my outlet and surge protector are and then I was on the ground. I shouted or at least my brain was shouting and I was paralyzed on the floor still in the sitting position both arms out in the air. Go read.

Host family profile: Tebogo

  This is my host brother, who lives right next door and helps my host mother (who's past 80) keep house. He's also one of the funniest people I've ever met. Always ready with a quip and a smile.

News: phones woes reax

So I was down for awhile, I apologize if you thought I was dead or something. The truth is that my internet phone went down hard about two weeks ago and I’ve been waiting for it to be fixed. Apparently the volume up and power button are all part of the same little plastic widget which has a critical connector running through a 1/8’’ of ethereal plastic, and when that breaks, both buttons are kaput. Anywho, it’s fixed now, though you might want to steer clear of the Nokia 3600 slide (though about half the volunteers in our group bought one, and mine is the only one that’s broken so far). So I recently attended a peace corps training in Mpumalanga. In typical fashion the training was scheduled for the second week of school, though we are all working in the schools in some way. They assure us this won’t happen again. The training itself was actually pretty fun. Though I felt bad for leaving the school, it was hard to muster up too much guilt. Seeing the whole group together again

Happy Valentine's Day!

To celebrate, here's a Jane Mayer article on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Eric Holder, and the proposed trial in New York City. Also, if you've got a suitable candidate, give 'em a big smooch for me, huh?

Give me some money or I kill this kitten

Speaking of thievery, there's a marathon for charity coming up. I plan to run in it--though not the full whack, only half the distance, 21.1 km. I'm supposed to raise money for a foundation called KLM, which is basically a scholarship program to send kids from poor rural villages in Mpumalanga to Uplands College, one of the best secondary schools in the country. To participate in the marathon, each Peace Corps volunteer is supposed to raise $100. Can you spare a couple bucks? Here's how to donate. Go to the KLM site, where you can check out the program and some of the recipients, and click "Donate" in the upper right (make sure you have flash enabled). Make sure you put my name in the Longtom Marathon field so I get credit for your money (pretty easy for me, eh? All I have to do is run 21 km and not die). That's it. Now help a disadvantaged South African child— or else .

Tsotsis (thieves)

A friend and myself were almost mugged in Kuruman today (well, my friend had it worse than me). We were walking along a side street in broad daylight, middle of the day with lots of people around. A guys walks out in front of us and stops like he's looking at something on the ground. I give him a nudge with my arm but he doesn't move and it becomes clear to me that he's being a distraction for something else. I walk around (as he's blocking a kind of choke point) and we cross the main street that connects to the side street. We realize we're being followed. Now, you should know this is the most crowded street in Kuruman. The most popular grocery store (Shoprite) is on one side, the bus rank and taxi rank are on the other, with the inevitable liquor store right in the middle. So not sure what to do, we start walking toward Shoprite, maybe 50 yards down the sidewalk from our current position. One of the tsotsis gets in front of us and stops. Without really co

The University of Pretoria

During my last trip to Pretoria I had the chance to take a tour around the campus of the University of Pretoria and attend a couple classes. These students represent the elite of South African society, and here’s why: out of the about 1.5 million students that enrolled in Grade 1 twelve years ago, about 550,000 actually sat for the matric test (the final high school test that determines whether a student receives a diploma), and of those, only 330,000 passed. Of the passing group, only about 110,000 scored high enough to qualify for university training, ~7% of the original group. I met a friend from the village there, the same daughter of my ex-principal that I have mentioned before, so I ended up hanging out mostly with a bunch of black girls for the afternoon. There was a pleasingly diverse mix of people at the university—though I’m sure that whites and Asians were vastly over-represented in terms of population. Like most similar places in the US, different racial groups tended t

Home Front

Snowfall records shattered in RJA's old stomping ground. Nothing visible but a seven foot mound of snow out his old bedroom window. This is the sunset one might have seen, if one we're here, say, rather than out in his village, and one could have seen out. Submitted by "Pops."

Quick further update

I borrowed a friend's internet for a minute to give you more of that pseudo-philosophical rambling that I know you all are dying to hear, but I can't really think of anything at the moment that I haven't already written on my computer back at my site. So, having a summer birthday for the first time is deeply weird. That's all I got.

More delay

I'm writing this in Kuruman at an internet cafe. My internet phone is still MIA--apparently the button that broke is one of the more sophisticated ones, requiring special parts from Joburg. So hopefully next week I should be back in business. I've only got 15 minutes here, so I'll keep it short. I've been teaching full-time in the classroom and every day having it beaten into my head how hard teaching little kids is. I've been thinking more and more in terms of COIN (counter-insurgency) strategies, but for whatever reason little kids are a handful. Especially when you don't speak their language and they don't speak yours. Hopefully my internet withdrawl doesn't hit too hard. Keep your fingers crossed and I'll be back next week. Until then, I'm trying to get my family to keep the place alive until I make it back. Toodles!