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Sunday Morning Suprise

Sunday 5 August 2007

This morning I changed our Geico insurance from North to South Carolina. Previously, I’d been fairly pleased with Geico. We were paying just over $300 for six months’ coverage — more than reasonable, I thought. A great deal, in fact.

Moving to SC, however, would bring about higher rates. How much higher?

Geico’s quote was $690 — an increase of 122%!

“Time for insurance shopping,” I thought. First call — Nationwide. $440, or an increase of 41%. Still a significant increase, but certainly more reasonable.

Any suggestions for insurance companies that might offer better rates?

Open Comments

Friday 3 August 2007

One of the dangers of having a controversial website that is also open to viewer comments is the threat of visitors’ words being attributed to the site owner.

As an aside, Dennis Prager rehearses the now-common (but still pretty good) observations about the difference in reaction in insulting Islam and insulting other religions. He points out the absurdity of the Federal Koran-in-the-toilet suit versus the crucifix-in-urine modern art piece. Putting a Koran in a toilet and putting a crucifix in urine are essentially the same thing, but the reaction is entirely different.

In this video, Ibrahim Hooper, of CAIR, makes just such a claim against Robert Spencer and his site Jihad Watch. “[Hooper] quoted a genocidal comment that was made on this website yesterday, and made it appear as if I had written it,” Spencer writes.

His response: “In reality, someone kindly alerted me to the existence of the comment shortly after it was posted, and I removed it and banned the poster.”

So it was on the site for a short period of time, but then disappeared. How then would Hooper have known it was there? Someone emailed him? Someone at CAIR monitors Jihad Watch continuously?

Spencer continues,

The comment itself seemed to me and to others who posted on the same thread to have been written by a provocateur — someone who wanted to discredit Jihad Watch and me by planting a comment here. Such people come through here fairly often. And now, after Hooper’s use of this comment despite its being deleted, I suspect even more strongly that it was written by a provocateur. (Jihad Watch)

Could it be that someone who is critical of the site posted such a comment to make the site look bad? It seems entirely possible.

The Confederate Flag

Thursday 2 August 2007

While wandering around Gatlinburg some weeks ago, I noticed several “Dixie-sympathetic” shirts. Confederate flags, Confederate war heroes — the works.

A few of the shirts I saw:

  • I don’t wear this shirt to piss you off, but if it does, that makes my day.
    (Why would that make your day? Are you just trying to be provocative? If so, to what end?)
  • It’s a Southern thang. Yanks’ll never understand.
    (What is the “it”? The Confederate flag? Racial pride? Pride in one’s heritage? A drawl?)
  • It’s not a Redneck thang, it’s the RIGHT thang.
    (Does that mean that slavery was the right thing “RIGHT thang”?)
  • Heritage, not hate.
    (Yes, but that heritage included a war for the right to keep people enslaved.)
  • Dixie defenders (with a portrait of Lee)
    (I just picture Dixie cups on this one…)

My personal favorite:

History Lesson

I only saw it in shop windows, never on someone. Which is a shame, because I would have loved to walk up to someone wearing it and request the history lesson.

August, and Everything After…

Wednesday 1 August 2007

And so August arrives, and instead of thinking, “I start teaching next month” it’s a question of a few days. August 20 — kids return and I, for the first time since finishing college, will be doing the work I spent all that time preparing for while in college: teach English.

I have nine years of teaching behind me. Seven are teaching EFL: English as a Foreign Language. One I spent working with autistic children. One I spent trying to teach science and social studies to at-risk youth, and spent most of my time teaching social skills. Now, for the first time since student teaching, I’ll be teaching “The Most Dangerous Game” and gerunds and dangling modifiers and indirect modifiers and interpretative skills and how to avoid run-on sentences.

I’ve got some planning done, bought a new domain name to have a class blog and to have a place to stick Moodle, and I’m starting to feel relaxed about it. Excited, even…