I just had the craziest day with my grandmother. My grandmother was born in a small farm town in northern Italy in 1915 (age 89). Her world was so totally different than the world of most of my friends grandparents here in the USA. She stopped school at 3rd grade due to the war and lived on a farm. They didn't have electricity in her town until after 1947. Just think about that and how it was here in Buffalo in 1947, almost 50 years after the Pan American exposition lit up Deleware park.



She told me this story where someone from her town went to Venice and saw electric lights for the first time. They were really excited about the whole thing and went to a store where you could purchase light bulbs. They also bought some rope and brought all of it home. When he got home, he tacked the bulbs up with the rope and told his friends and family that they would be in for a big surprise when it got dark out. Needless to say nothing happend. I can't even imagine that world.



We also discussed feminism, religion, where Indians came from, cloning, gene therapy, and politics. It was great. She was so excited to learn new stuff. She told me that she wished should could have stayed in school and that she knows she could have been something. I think some of it conversation opened up totally new ideas in her head.

In the end we also talked about learning and why people are in school. I explained the difference between infering facts from understanding concepts and learning facts through memorization. I said there were so many different levels of learning and that I had mostly left the phase where you are in school to simply learn facts. I explained it like this and plan on using this comparison for the Art class I am teaching. Any kind of learning is like cooking. At the most basic level you learn what the ingredients are named and how to prepare them. Say chop carrots, dice onions, etc. At the next level you learn measurements and reading recipes and at that point you become confident following the instructions of others and producing well cooked meals. At some point you learn from the recipes you were taught, that certain flavor go well together and that certain spices can mixed to produce new flavors that compliment the standards. Say strawberry kiwi( I owe this to (e:hodown) 's explanation of drug mixing) Then you can begin to move in the territory where you make your own kind of food and write them down in recipes which can be passed on to others. Nonna added in that it helps to have necessity in there, as it contribute to the overall speediness of learning. Say you need to eat and it's a war, and there are only things which you find in a forest. You will soon learn what is edible and what isn't. Faster than you would say you had an abundance of fresh vegtables from the grocery store.

We also talked about religion a lot. I come from an Italian Catholic family. She told me that they did not read the bible. Instead they read some other book that told them what the bible was about. That sound like major propaganda to me. In the book, they apparently said that "women were treated very badly before jesus came about." I had to question it. Which women and where?

This lead to a whole conversation about witches. Nonna asked me if I thought they were real and she remember people saying that they had "gotten rid" of the witches before her time. This lead to talks about natural healers for which she had a bunch of stories about old lady healers in her area, one of which healed her little nephews leg with a marijuana, egg white and gause poltice. She swore by it and that he was otherwise unable to walk as a child. They had taken him to doctors in the bigger cities who could do nothing a
nd then this woman was ab
le
to cure him. Was this women a witch? I told her I did not think so but that people would classify knowlegdeable or powerful women as witches in order to discredit them.

Then we got out the globe and talked about Native Americans walking to North America before Columbus and that they even had cities and governments.



We talked about early british bio-terrorism with small-pox blankets and this eventually ended up at DNA a couple hours later. All only a couple weeks after how does electricity work and was is nuclear power? Imagine if someone asked you that question? Where would you start? I started with describing what Ii understood about atoms. Then we asked my phone for more details, which totally amazed her. I had to explain the internet too before that. The phone also gave us the maximum expected lifespan of horses, 13 is considered "retirement age."

Nonna, also told me that most of the Italians in America when she came were Sicilian and that in Brooklyn, a huge sector of the population spoke sicilian and not Italian.

Has anyone tried out the mozilla search plugin? Is anyone using firefox, , which is the only browser I am fully supporting at this point, as it is ofered on all three platforms (windows, linux, and mac) and promotes CSS and XHTML standarization, is cost free and opensource? Here is an example of me searching for "paul visco". Putting words in quotes, means they are next to each other. Without quotes, it just means the words appear in any order.



If you are using firefox and want to use the mozilla search plugin just click on the ( mozilla plugin ) link on the search box and it will self install. Thereafter, you will be able to search the site using the mozilla search bar. This should also work with netscape and other mozilla based browsers, maybe even Safari's search box. Can a mac user test that out for me and send me the results via email or IM.

I fell asleep at around 6:00PM yesterday and I never woke up till 9:30 this morning. The sad thing is I still look tired.



I am so confused why, I wish I could blame it on chronic fatigue syndrome but I know it's really chronic staying up late programming syndrome.

Introducing all new e-mapping mapquest connection.

I live at (MAP TO: 567%20LAFAYETTE%20AVENUE) and work at (MAP TO: 2001%20MAIN%20STREET). I developed the new map feature to map it possible for epeeps to simply type Buffalo street addresses into their journal and have them turned into mapquest map link for that address. You simply click on the mapquest icon in your stylebox and type in the full street address without the city, zip,state or country between the map tags. For example, for Canisius College you would simply type "2001 Main Street" without the quotes.

Today, (e:lilho) and (e:terry) headed down to the (MAP TO: 208%20NORTH%20STREET) coop house . (e:lilho) is thinking about living there now but has to go through the housing application process. I wish her luck.

This is such a good example of how fast information travels on the internet and how inaccurate it can be to depend on such information. Does anyone have this video? I would like to post a link to it and how easy it is to make propaganda.

An American computer expert duped international media on Saturday into believing Islamist kidnappers had executed a hostage in Iraq by staging his own mock beheading on the internet.

Benjamin Vanderford, 22, said he posted the 55-second clip on an online file-sharing network in May to draw attention to his campaign for a seat on San Francisco's Board of Supervisors.



When his political aspirations waned, he decided to distribute the footage on Kazaa, an online file-swapping network.

It circulated in cyberspace before crossing over to a website operated by the Islamic Global Media Centre, which has previously carried legitimate claims of beheadings. It was picked up and used by an international news agency, the Associated Press, and appeared on Arab television.

"It was part of a stunt, but no one noticed it up until now," Mr Vanderford said yesterday, after being interviewed by FBI agents.

Special Agent LaRae Quy, of the bureau's San Francisco office, said: "We will pursue any and all legal avenues for prosecution. At this point the matter is still under investigation."
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The video showed Mr Vanderford appealing to the US to leave Iraq. The web format was that used by an al-Qaeda ally, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and was introduced by a headline that said it showed Zarqawi killing an American. "If we don't [leave Iraq], everyone is gonna be killed in this way ...

"I have been offered for exchange for prisoners here in Iraq," the terrified-looking man said as he rocked back and forth in his chair with his hands tied behind his back.

The video showed a hand with a large knife apparently slicing the neck of a limp body.

But the blood was dye, the setting was a friend's garage, the Koran reading was a tape and the knife was held by a friend.

Me and (e:chris) are walking home from downtown after a rousing night wit (e:mike) and (e:beast)

(e:chris) says it's really far but I think it's better than driving and parking. The whole time we talked abou the meriits of the new sidekick 2. I want one but I can't afford it. I think I'll just beat him up and steal his.

Here is a (MAP TO: 431%20ELMWOOD%20AVENUE) of where we are at. It is right near solid grounds [business]solid grounds[/business]. If you haven't eaten there you should check it out. All of their food is really good. I especally like the slab of bacon.

Went down to squeaky wheel tonight for a video presentation called Friiends & Influences



Here was the bill for the evening.
[list] Pope Art - by Kerri Hopkins - 2:30
Awake - by Philip Lambert - 3:00
Half of This Video Does Not Exist - by Zilla Greene Something
Burt Damn - 15:00 by Steve Mieczikowsk
i Brief Intermission - Go But a beer
Kerri Tales: Vol 1 - 6:00 - Kerri Hopkins
Colors of Terror - 2:30 - Meg Knowles & Brian Milbrand
Worshipping Satan - 6:00 - by Kubiak Grading
Tips For Teachers - 10:00 by Tony Conrad
Captured 3:00 by Steve Mieczikowski HIV PSA - :30 by Kerri Hopkins [/list]

That Tony Conrad one is crazy. I keep seeing it and it makes me laugh everytime.

[inlink]diana,43[/inlink]

I think they are men that get together to try and overcome their homosexual desires through prayer.

(e:metalpeter), you mention [inlink]metalpeter,58[/inlink] that there are sites where you can post pictures from your phone.

Elmwoodstrip.com is one of them, you can post up to 15 pictures at a time from a phone message. (e:chris) and I have many pictures posted right from our cell phones on the go. For example all 4 of my entries form yesterday involves photos taken on my phone. I posted the entries directly from my phone while at the event.

I wrote the code to accept emails from any picture phone and them put the images into your image library as well as post them right to the journal entries. The instructions can be found here. [inlink]info,7[/inlink]

Here are some more pics from Thursday in the square that i sent from my phone. This one is of (e:beast) studying at the concert with her earplugs on. That is hardcore.



And this one is of some guy that looked remarkable like he could be (e:liz) 's brother.

I really don't think I can interpret these exactly but I had the craziest dreams this morning in my half awake phase.

First of, I was a a dinner party and really drunk in my dream. (e:lilho) had cooked the meal which consisted of yellow, red, and blackberries with whip cream - tasty. I took ttoo many ephedrine pills in my dream and someone gave me water to wash it down with. It turned out to be caffeinated water and I started having heart palpitations. As if that wasn't enough, a lion got loose on elmwood at the time and was on our roof overhang. (e:matthew) wanted to capture it on film but of course it rboke through the window and chased us all around. Somehow I ended up upstairs at another party but weird gothic people.

At the event, we accidently but literally sold our souls to satan. Satan came in about 15 forms, each on top of a pedastal like the mozart pedestal at hoyt lake. One was a salamander, one was a giant fat (600lbs+) white woman with bady died maroon hair and some sort of seductive sequin moo-moo (oxymoron perhaps), one was a skinny black man that looked sort of like a living wood cut, one was the traditional hoofed version, a snake, etc. Then they would pass this thing around and we had to kiss it. I wasn't going to do it in my athiestic stolz but ended up doing it just to prove it meant nothing after I saw all my friends do it anyways.

After the party, we waited in line and then got on a plane to go home. I began to fall asleep on the plane. When I woke up we were going downhill fast. I realized the plane was gonna crash and that I had to brace myself. Then we saw an spanish armada ship with a runway somehow and everyone was happy accept that the runway was too short so we crashed anyway. I was seriously injured but not dead and lying on the floor. No one else seemed very alert either. I could see this baby and kept calling t o it to come here because it was next to something that was smoking. When I finally dragged myself close enough, I realized the baby was dead and that the plane was burning and I didn't knwo how to get out. Then I woke up in real life and was really freaked out.