English Quiz

This is an amusing one, especially if you're British! It tests to see what proportion of various American dialects are prevalent in your speech.

American English Test

Here's how mine came out:

Your Linguistic Profile:

55% General American English

20% Yankee

15% Upper Midwestern

10% Dixie

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Guess I'm a bit of a mutt, in that my mom is from PA, my father from VA, I was born in DC, but moved to Long Island, NY, when I was 2, then back to VA when I was about 8, then went to school in MD and university in NJ, followed by 14 years in CA, and 7 years now overseas--5 in the UK--before marrying a man from TX and OK! Phew! Just not sure where the "Upper Midwestern" came from....? Maybe the few years my father spent as a child in MI??

More geography madness!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while.... Things have been hectic around here! Life has really changed now that Mike has a job. We be adults now.

We did manage a lovely break over the Easter long weekend in North Wales. Mike and I visited several castles--Harlech, Caernarfon, and Conwy, and also my hometown of Llanberis! They have a fascinating Welsh Slate Museum there. I know that sounds odd if you haven't been there, but the town is surrounded by slate quarries. My ancestors left there the middle of the 19th century and moved to ... Slatington, Pennsylvania, to start a slate quarry there. So for me, it was a bit of family history. Mike thought it was very cool. We visited a graveyard and found lots of my family names -- Hughes, Williams, Parry -- and... GRIFFITH! Lots and lots of Griffiths.... ! We found several John Griffith's (Mike is really John Michael). We found tombstones with his brothers' names on it too. And tombstones which indicated that Griffiths had married Williamses and Hugheses.... So I guess we are just in a long tradition!

We also visited Portmeirion, the village and gardens which inspired our dishes (they're actually made in Stoke-on-Trent) and where the 60s cult TV show "The Prisoner" was filmed. We also, thanks to a great deal on LateRooms.com stayed in Ruthin Castle, where I stayed with my family when I was 10!

One last little tidbit.... My friend Peter led me to this site, where you can take a geography quiz and 'represent' your country (and state, if from the US) in a global competition. It's fun, for the geekier among us! Just go here to play.

Where is the shredder?

When I was growing up in DC, there were, as you've no doubt heard, various scandals. Some involved documents that either were shredded by the guilty or . . . weren't -- to their mortification. Shredders were a bit of a new phenomenon then. I don't think many of us had seen one. But this atmosphere produced a saying among my peers, "Where's the shredder?" which could be provoked by all sorts of situations (not least of which was getting essays back and SAT results...).

Now shredders are all grown up. You can watch some of their work on this website. (Hat tip: TigerHawk.) Just tell it what you want to see shredded. Personally, I liked watching the couch disappear, although that brought to mind some weird sci-fi flick.

Purpose-Driven Hostage

I doubt that Rick Warren will expand his range to include this title, but it could serve as the title for the story of the woman held hostage by Atlanta murderer Brian Nichols. She won his trust by, among other things, reading to him passages out of the Purpose-Driven Life.

Read it in the Guardian, or the more complete transcript on CNN.

UPDATE:
A remarkable editorial in the Wall Street Journal by the marvelous Peggy Noonan on the same topic: "Flannery O'Connor Country."

Why I don't have a webcam....

Oh - My - Gosh.

Just go there.

And for even more fun, here is the original Numa Numa Dance site. Click on 'Watch this movie' in the upper right. The big advantage here is that you can turn subtitles and translation on or off. But for first time viewing it's funnier without. On the original page, just below the video link, is his story. He's been on CNN and VH-1. The guy was apparently wanting to try out his webcam and send something to his friends, but didn't want it to be 'too boring' of a test. You know, "Testing 1, 2, 3...." This is some 'sound check'! According to the, uh, creator of this little clip, 'the song is entitled "Dragostea Din Tea" by the Romanian pop [er, I would call it technopop] band "O-Zone".'

My Dad

I suppose lots of little girls grow up thinking their dad is a hero.

I grew up watching promotional films of my dad's test flying for North American (which is now part of Boeing, I believe). Over and over again as a child I watched him take off in an F-100 with a solid fuel booster rocket strapped to the fuselage, and over and over I watched him punch out the one time the rocket didn't drop off but dangled below the landing gear. I thought every kid's dad bailed out of aircraft at work. I suppose a lot of people WISHED they had ejection seats at work . . . .

You can watch him take off from the "World's Shortest Runway" in a short video clip here and read an article about it in Air & Space Magazine.

There's also a video produced by Air & Space, called, like the article, "Runways of Fire," but it's hard to find now. I've got a copy, but it's in NTSC format--not much good to my British friends unless they have a multi-region video player.

While we're at it, I guess I should mention my dad's book Aces Wild on the race for Mach 1 (also known as breaking the sound barrier). Surprise, surprise--it wasn't necessarily Chuck Yeager who did it first. Oooo, I shouldn't spoil the plotline!

Next, I should do a tribute to my mom....

Fore!

...i.e. time for some links...

Fascinating article on 'spirituality' and 'relevance' by Eugene Peterson here. (Hat tip: my friend Peter.)

The Times (of London) did an article on different expressions of church in the Church of England, particularly Oxford diocese, which mentions a congregation within our church, St. Aldate's, called 'hOME'. Article title: "Blessed are the Frisbee Throwers"-- one of hOME's cellgroups plays Ultimate Frisbee in the University Parks as a way of entering the culture. Wonder if they have their eyes on the cheesemakers?? (hat tip: Matt Rees, who leads hOME.)

And, in a show of solidarity, some articles and photos about women protesting for and demonstrating their rights in various Islamic countries-- in Kuwait, Pakistan, and, of course, Iraq and Iraq and Iraq and Iraq (click on Photo 2 of the slide show of Picture of the Week).