Alex's Journal

A friend pointed out to me a very interesting video that describes the ten dimensions in an easy to understand way using dots, lines and a method that shows you just how each dimension stacks on top of the other. As the same friend pointed out, it’s really quite strange that we only see things as 3.5 on a scale of 10.

You can find the video here: http://tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php. If the page doesn’t load or the video doesn’t work right away, reload the page because they’ve been getting a huge amount of traffic.

The past couple of days have been rather productive. I’ve managed to write two new songs in relatively short order which means the new album now has nine completed songs. There are still a couple more on the way, but I just haven’t quite gotten around to finishing them yet. I will do that soon though I hope.

Another piece of exciting news in my life is that I’ve started preparations for a grant application and proposal to teach English to German middle school and high school students in Germany beginning next year. If I get it, I should be able to work on a Masters degree at the same time. I’m really rather excited about it, although it is a real pain to get everything together for a grant. I will definitely get through it though because it is absolutely worth it.

The BBC is reporting that Germany is exiting the recession that has affected the entire world for the past couple of years. Germany, along with France, is one of the first countries to emerge from this economic downturn and yet the German government did next to nothing to try to pull the country out of the recession.

An article in the Wall Street Journal states the German stance on it:

“Germany has the most capacity in Europe to increase spending, but Berlin has argued against running up big deficits…”

“Last year, according to the IMF, the U.S. pumped an extra 1.1% of GDP into the economy. Germany did next to nothing.”

I think the American government needs to take a page out of Germany’s book. For being a socialist country, Germany seems to have less government intervention in the economy than we do.

Apparently the Federal Government now allows itself to legally steal your computer and make it its own property for the use of domestic or foreign interests. This is all sorts of messed up. I found the video at another blog called Tom’s Place.

This is an amazing song. It’s called Sandmann and it’s by a German band called Oomph!.

I’ve often thought that it is really too bad that the art of handwriting has been slowly disappearing in the past couple of decades. Those born into my generation (1980’s or later) generally have handwriting comparable to an elementary school child’s and there does not seem to be any hope that it will improve. With all of the modern technology of computers, cell phones and other electronics, there does not seem to be a need for good handwriting. Schools, therefore, have begun to drop handwriting as a fundamental ability that students should walk out of school with. I find that to be quite sad.

I ran into an article about the handwriting issue on Time Magazine’s website this evening and found it quite fascinating as it closely resembles the thoughts I have had on the subject. Here is an excerpt:

I can’t remember how to write a capital Z in cursive. The rest of my letters are shaky and stiff, my words slanted in all directions. It’s not for lack of trying. In grade school I was one of those insufferable girls who used pink pencils and dotted their i’s with little circles. I experimented with different scripts, and for a brief period I even took the time to make two-story a’s, with the fancy overhang used in most fonts (including this magazine’s). But everything I wrote, I wrote in print. I am a member of Gen Y, the generation that shunned cursive. And now there is a group coming after me, a boom of tech-savvy children who don’t remember life before the Internet and who text-message nearly as much as they talk. They have even less need for good penmanship. We are witnessing the death of handwriting.

People born after 1980 tend to have a distinctive style of handwriting: a little bit sloppy, a little bit childish and almost never in cursive. The knee-jerk explanation is that computers are responsible for our increasingly illegible scrawl, but Steve Graham, a special-education and literacy professor at Vanderbilt University, says that’s not the case. The simple fact is that kids haven’t learned to write neatly because no one has forced them to. “Writing is just not part of the national agenda anymore,” he says.

The full article can be found here.

I have two semesters left before I graduate from college. That means I will be finished in May 2010. Afterwards I want to teach English or American history somewhere in Germany, but I don’t know how I can go about getting that kind of position. I want to be in Germany for at least two or three years to solidify my German. It doesn’t matter who I teach. A Gymnasium (German high school equivalent) is good or a university or an institute would work as well.

Does anyone happen to know where I could look online? It’s a bit early for it, but I want to start now so I can start directly after I graduate.

I know it’s been a while since I’ve actually posted anything on here. That’s because I’ve had a friend out from overseas and have been quite busy. Now that she has left, I should have a lot more time to post entries.

So it looks like I will probably not be writing much on here for the next few weeks or so. A friend of mine is coming out from overseas and we’re going to be quite busy traveling around and doing things. Eventually I will make another post though.

Also, it’s really sad that the USA lost today’s Championship game in soccer. They had the Brazilians up 2:0, but then blew it towards the end of the game. Oh well, at least the US made it as far as the Championship.

I’ve posted my newest story to my new writings website. You can find it here:

Drilled