BUZZURRO

I am an English teacher who happens to be American. I have a degree from a University as well as a certificate authorizing me to teach the English language. I don’t mean to brag, but I am NOT uneducated. I speak ENGLISH correctly.

Last week in my Elementary English class I was teaching the present simple tense. The students had to put sentences in the negative forms. One answer was ‘I DON’T HAVE a car.’

One student who is more advanced then the others in the class asked me ‘Shouldn’t the answer be I HAVEN’T GOT a car instead of I DON’T HAVE a car ?’ I then explained that both answers are equally correct. Both express the same idea, but one uses the simple present tense and the other uses the present perfect, which is a more complicated compound tense which we will not be discussing in this Elementary English class.’

This week on some homework that I gave to the students (for an exercise in simple present tense) one answer was ‘I DON’T HAVE a cat’. The same student has a daughter who is also studying English in school.

Her teacher is from London. She showed the homework to her teacher, with the answer I DON’T HAVE a cat written in. That teacher said ‘That is wrong’ When she saw it.

What do mean that is wrong !? I KNOW how to speak English! It is right. It means ‘There is no cat in my possession’. There are more ways than one to skin a cat, as the cliche’ goes, and there is more then one way to express yourself in English.

The lesson was in learning the simple present and the answer to that homework question, since it said in the instructions ‘Use simple present’ is I DON’T HAVE a cat.

If a person prefers to use the present perfect tense, like all people who speak British English do, I don’t have a problem with it. I definitely don’t say ‘You’re wrong’ when a student uses it.
Why did she ? Why say that I ‘am wrong ?’ Is she putting down my English language skills? Yes.

I am so tired of these British citizens who think that they are the top authority on the English Language. They aren’t. Their authority faded with the British Empire…. deal with reality. It’s over. It’s 2005, not 1705. There are a lot of different types of English out there.

Read at this link:

Do the so-called ‘peaceniks’ who attended the anti-war rallies on September 24, know that ANSWER International, one of the events sponsors is also a supporter of Hamas who did this attrocity? Aren’t they also supposed to be against racism, or does racism against Jewish people just not qualify?

I am so glad that someone shares my views on the protesters in the rally against the war in Iraq who use the anti war in Iraq issue to spout their own ideologies. ‘What does Israel have to do with Iraq?’ to quote one, sadly only one protester out of many in San Diego.

You can read about it here in an article by Christopher Hitchens. Nobody says it better then him.

He also mentions how many of the ‘peace-loving’ protesters support such ‘peace-loving’ Communist regimes such as those in Korea, China and Cuba.

Just received by one of my friends:

This was received from an actual resident in the direct path of Katrina in McComb county and is known personally by the writer. John and Suzy were rescued off the roof of their two story home by motorboat.

Jack, What I have seen since Katrina:

The poor and the wealthy hurt by the storm.

Black, white, Hispanic, Oriental and Indian all hurt by the storm.

Christian people giving, giving, giving.

Churches going all out to minister in Jesus’ name.

Neighbors going door to door helping one another.

Thugs and hoodlums going door to door looking for someone vulnerable.

Ice and water being fought over as police tried to keep the peace.

People coming up from New Orleans taking over empty houses because shelters are full.

Out of town volunteers coming with food and staying for now a week still serving it.

The Churches all over this part of the country doing what Christians do in a crisis.

The Red Cross doing a great job in the shelters.

The Salvation Army doing a great job in the community.

Four Hundred crewman from everywhere bring back the power to our homes, churches and businesses.

Lines at service stations a block to a mile long and getting longer, heavy price gouging.

National Guardsman patrolling the streets of Mc Comb along with Kentucky policemen protecting us
from the hoodlums and thugs of Mc Comb, Pike County and New Orleans (the most dangerous city
in the world before Katrina.)

Drug dealers working outside shelters.

Doctors, nurses and other hospital personnel working tirelessly, even sleeping in the
hospital to do the job God called them to do.

Our governor finally got the courage to file a request in writing to the federal government to bring the US military into our state under a declaration of Marshal law. Took her four days to do this which was tragic understatement of our situation.

Lots of finger pointing as to who is to blame for not resolving the problems we have with the sweep of a pen or magic wand. This is going to take a decade to repair if we repair it at all.

The military, God love them all, have been saving lives and preventing chaos.

Our president has been here three times, directing resources which for whatever reason or reasons were stalled due to bureaucratic red tape or procedures. Like our president or not does not matter to me but he is getting people off their penguin butts and things are rapidly getting done since he first came here.

WHAT I HAVE NOT SEEN;

The ACLU setting up a feeding line.

People for the American Way helping in the shelters.

The NAACP doing any work whatsoever.

The American Atheist organization serving meals in the shelters.

Jesse Jackson directing traffic at the gas stations.

Nancy Grace of Court TV on CNN doing anything to help our situation.

I could go on but you get my message. Its the Christian people with love and compassion who do the work.

The gripers in Congress should come on down and get in line to pass the water and the ice.
Are you listening Hillary, Chuck, Teddy and all the sorry loafers we call Senators and Congressmen.
They don’t have a clue as to what this life is all about here on the Gulf Coast.

Teddy will never volunteer to help in any mess like this one, remember, Teddy doesn’t help anyone in deep water other that to assist in their drowning.

Jack, I feel better now. Sorry I bent your ear but this had to be said.

Your friend,

John

…thanks to the blog Freethoughts.

You can read about it on her blog, Freethoughts, or another article I found in the LA Times.

The perpetrators of the 1994 Jewish Center bombing that killed 85 people in Buenos Aires are not considered perpetrators any more.

They have not been questioned, determined innocent and released, NO, their arrest warrants have simply been cancelled. Cancelled by Interpol.

Those highly suspected bombers are all free, unwanted men.
How could Interpol cancel those arrest warrants? How would the people in London feel if the perpetrators of the 7/7 attacks in London, had they not all died, been set free ?

Are the lives of 85 people not worth anything, or is it the fact that most of the 85 victims were Jews and in the European quest to appease the Muslims in everything that happens in the world, their lives were just sacrificed ?

Today I received a surprise phone call from a friend who lives in the US. He was feeling a little under the weather but hoped that he would feel better enough to attend the anti-war rally in Washington DC this weekend.

‘You are seriously going to that so-called anti-war rally? With Cindy Sheehan?’ I said astonished. My friend is a left wing Democrat. I support that, well, support is strong word, tolerate it.that sounds better. I tolerate his left wing views.

He responded ‘Yes, of course. Cindy Sheehan lost her son. She is against the War in Iraq, just like me !’

I then said ‘That’s not all she is. Do you know that she recently wrote a letter asking that the US troops get out of ‘occupied New Orleans’ even though the governor finally invited them ?’

He responded ‘No, I had no idea.’

Then I said do you know that in the spring she wrote a letter stating that the war in Iraq was fought for Israel, and her son died for Israel, and not for the US’.

He responded ‘No.’

Then I said ‘Did you know that because of this letter David Duke and all of his American Nazi party friends support her ? They all speak in her favor, and she accepted it.’

He responded ‘No. I had no clue.’

Then I said to him ‘Did you know that Cindy Sheehan called Osama Bin Laden an ‘alleged’ terrorist, even though he admitted plotting the 9-11 attacks ? I don’t know what one has to do to become a ‘real’ terrorist in her mind then.

I also told him that the rally that he is talking about is to be sponsored by ANSWER (Act Now to Prevent War and Racism). They equate zionism with racism and want the colonist Israelis to get out of Palestine -all of it-and leave no Israel at all.

He reponded ‘Well, I didn’t know these things, and I certainly don’t support them. I’m pro-Israel and gay so I am against the Nazi party for sure. Maybe I won’t go to the rally after all.’

Then he asked me ‘How do you know these things ? You live so far away.’

My answer ? I read. And not just one source either.

He replied ‘Wow!!!’ like I just performed some amazing stunt. He then said ‘You are so smart !’

Smart has nothing to do with it. I click a few buttons on my PC. That’s all I do.

How many other people at the anti-war rally will be like him though? Not knowing what they are marching for. Doing things blindly. Not doing their research.

Just doing. That to me is more scary then Cindy Sheehan and Nazis and ANSWER put together.

We think (together with U.S. News) that he’s a moron:

Which politician emerged from the mess of Katrina as the biggest bonehead involved? No, it’s not Michael Brown, George W. Bush, or even the bumbling Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco.

The reading of this post is reserved to geeks who use Firefox. The others may skip it.

NewsMonster is supposed to be sort of a Firefox extension that should act as a RSS reader.
Do you want my advice ? NEVER EVER install it !

Good reasons for not installing it:
- the uninstall procedure DOESN’T WORK. How would you want to install a thing you cannot uninstall ?
- After the installation, a wide sidebar appears on the right, approximately 30% the size of the window, NOT sizeable, not shrinkable.
- some of the menu items added by NewsMonster seem not to work (especially the “NewsMonster Preferences” menu item, from which, by the way, you are supposed to uninstall the product…)
- unlike other Firefox extensions, NewsMonster is not listed among the other installed extensions (via the “Tools | Extensions” menu item)
- the OPML import function doesn’t work. I tried to import my RSS feeds in OPML format, and it imported only one of them.

I successfully uninstalled it by doing the following tasks:
- closed Firefox
- deleted the c:\newsmonster folder
- under “c:\program files\Mozilla Firefox\chrome”, I deleted “newsmonster.jar”
- under “c:\program files\Mozilla Firefox\components”, I deleted a group of files (*.jar, *.js) last modified at 10/23/2003, 3:13 AM
- under “c:\program files\Mozilla Firefox\ subdirectories, edited every recently changed *.rdf file, trying either to delete xml tags containing the “newsmonster” string, or turning them into comments, i.e. changing tags like

<RDF:li>…newsmonster…</RDF:li>

<!–RDF:li>…newsmonster…</RDF:li–>

I’d not generally advice to do what I did for erasing NewsMonster. Don’t do this at home. You might get burned.
Instead, I’d suggest to uninstall Firefox and reinstall it.

If you want a fairly good RSS reader, try FeedDemon. It is not perfect, it has a few defects , but it’s better than many other RSS readers.

And DON’T install NewsMonster, for Heaven’s sake !