Who Can Win?
February 18th, 2008A compelling presentation from Lawrence Lessig on who can win against McCain, and who is the best candidate:
Key Points on Practicing Music
February 10th, 2008As I work on my research for my final project, I came across this gem from “The Science and Psychology of Music Performance: Creative Strategies for Teaching and Learning” by Parncutt & McPherson. If you are a practicing musician or a teacher trying to motivate your students to practice, these points are really worth taking to heart:
- Engage in metacognition—become mindful about practicing and related physical and mental processes. Be consciously aware of your own thought processes.
- Approach practice systematically. Do not go about practice haphazardly. Practice is more effective when it is structured and goal-oriented.
- Engage in mental practice (cognitive rehearsal) in combination with physical practice.
- Invest time in score study and analysis, particularly when beginning a new piece.
- Plan regular practice sessions with several relatively short sessions distributed across time.
- Acknowledge the relationship between time spent practicing and achievement and set out to invest the time necessary.
- Be aware of the importance of motivation. When teachers and parents allow students to make some choices about goals and repertoire, student motivation is likely to increase.
- Listen to high-quality models of musical performance. This is particularly important for beginning musicians. Parents and teachers should invest in a library of fine recordings and, if capable, play and/or sing often for their charges.
- Support and nurture young musicians. Parents and teachers should demonstrate keen interest and involvement in music study and practice.
I would love to hear if anyone has any further practice ideas akin to the above list, or comments on these issues.
Zadin
February 10th, 2008Zadin is a cute little Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco, and dining at here has been my favorite gluten-free dining experience to date. Almost everything on the menu is either gluten-free or can be modified, and they state so clearly on the menu. GF Redbridge beer is on the list too, so obviously these guys have gone way out of their way to accommodate celiacs.
We started with the greens salad and the salt/pepper calamari. The greens salad had these roasted walnuts which were sweet and crunchy - very tasty. The calamari was awesome, with a lemon-y dipping sauce.
Next we ordered some pho. The pho wasn’t bad - quite tasty in fact. Only complaint was the beef slices were not all that plentiful.
We finished off with the shaken beef - this was an outsanding dish with very tender beef slices paired with fried yams. Crazy good stuff.
When we got there around 7 PM on a Saturday evening, I was surprised to find it nearly empty. But the place filled up in no time and the clientelle seemed to be enjoying themselves muchly.
Why I’m Happy about SuperFatTuesday
February 6th, 2008As an Obama supporter, I was originally kind of disappointed at yesterday’s results. At first, all the major news outlets called SuperTuesday a huge win for Hillary. But after the final counts are in, it turns out…. not so much:
- The Clintons just pumped $5 million of their own dollars into their campaign.
- The Obama campaign has reeled in $5,886,067 since the polls closed yesterday as of this writing. In one day.
- Some Clinton campaign staffers are going without pay due to the cash crunch.
- Depending on who is counting the cryptic, loathed delegates, Obama won more. (Can we just use a popular vote someday?)
- My hunch is that the remaining political map is going to favor Obama.
Get out and vote this Tuesday!
February 3rd, 2008Found this at Rebecca MacKinnon’s site:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebgLiU_0Ys4
Very inspiring, and I agree with Rebecca, Jimmy Carter, and many others that said that Obama will have a healing and inspiring effect that no other candidate could possibly come close to.
The Obama vote is now neck and neck with Clinton. Go vote. Then go celebrate Mardi Gras. But don’t forget to vote first.
