Would you be granted citizenship and allowed to vote?

Here's another test . . . this one comes from my dear wife. The marvel of forwarded mail allows us to receive all sorts of crap and, as such, I have no idea where she originally got this particular item.

Anyway, I digress as usual. You may have heard in the news or by word of mouth (sounds like an urban legend to me) that the test for U.S. citizenship is rather demanding and, as thus, many natural born American citizens would not pass. Seeing as I have been a high school teacher in my past while I lived in the States I say that this is not too far from the truth. So, care to find out if you could actually pass a ten question sample of this test?

I scored 8 out of 10 and was told that I passed, thankfully. So that's proof that paying some attention to high school Government classes as well as taking a few while in University AND reading the newspapers regularly can pay off!

My wife, who is not a natural born U.S. citizen (or a U.S. citizen of any category for that matter) scored 5 out of 10. I thought that was respectable for someone who's not a citizen.

So, here's the political test
Go ahead and take it and let me know how you fare!

The joy of language

I'm one of those odd people who likes language . . . the way a language evolves, the differences in a main language between the subtle dialects, the similarities between languages from the same "family" and so on.
Keeping in line with this interest is the following test. My dad, back home in America, sent me this link and it's kept me amused ever since. Apparently, the web page is a test, of sorts, that asks about how you pronounce words, what you call things and generally how you use English. The goal of the test is to give you a broad example of how "Yankee" or "Southern" your English sounds. It is for this reason that my non-American "viewers" might not find much use in this test. Granted, it could still be fun for all but a non-American English speaker might find it difficult to answer some of the questions regarding pronunciation.
Now, to give you an idea of the scoring system:

I scored around a 60% or so . . . my comment basically stated I was on the Mason-Dixon line. I feel that this is reasonably correct seeing as I've lost some of my accent being in Australia. Also, I was born in the northern most of the Southern states (yes it was and IS a southern state . . . the capital of the Confederacy was located in my homestate afterall).

My dad scored 89% . . . his comment stated something along the lines of whether or not he still used confederate money. While that's harsh I can see some truth in the test picking out his Southern vernacular. Afterall, he was born in North Carolina and the family roots are strong in both the Carolina states.

My wife, the Australian, took the test after I "encouraged" her. She saw absolutely no purpose in doing so and, as usual, thought I was an idiot. She scored around the 30% mark and was told she was very "Yankee" to which she took offense. You have to give the test some slack seeing as there is no "British" or "British Colonial" accent score.

Anyway, here's the link:

English On-line Dictionary (of sorts)

Ol' Pat must be hittin' the sauce again

Well, he's in the news again for saying ridiculous crap all the while managing to include God and Christianity into the mix.

Who am I talking about? Our friend Pat Robertson, of course!

You remember Pat . . . he called for an assasination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and, in '98 cursed Orlando with natural and terrorist doom because the city flew rainbow coloured flags in honour of sexual diversity.

Ol' Pat sure does love to sling the image of a hell-fire and brimstone God all over the place, usually to bash people who are too left-wing, non-conservative, or otherwise more open-minded than him.

So what has the old-folks home escapee done this time? He's cursed a small town in Pennsylvania to natural disastear doom. Why? Because the town democratically voted out all members of the school board. Why did the town vote them out? Because the school board was pushing to introduce intelligent design into the curriculum.

What does all this mean? Well, it seems that Pat thinks God hates democracy . . . especially when it means a loss to the Republican party and the Religious Right. So, does that make God a sore loser too?

It just seems a bit odd that a man who goes on his Christian show and talks about love, forgiveness, redemption and other nice things will (in nearly the same breath from the oxygen tank) go and cast death, destruction and doom on just about anyone.

. . . and people wonder why Christianity is getting a very bad name . . .

To find out more, just search for news articles covering:
-Pat Robertson
AND
-Dover, Pennsylvania
AND
-intelligent design

Casual abuse of an innocent service?

Recently, some friends of my wife and I came to visit us. In order to do so they flew from their home city to our quaint little city. Yes, yes, I know, boring details . . . anyway . . .

One of our friends, we'll call her Wynona (all names changed to protect the innocent), has a tendency for eccentricity (to say the least). It seemed that when she showed up at the airport she was carrying several commemorative and/or collector lapel pins. So far nothing too unusual, right? Well, Wynona, fearing the almight wrath of airport security, was concerned her pins might cause a disturbance. With some quick, and odd ball, thinking she went to a gift shop and purchased a few envelopes. I'm sure you can guess what she did from there . . . yes, she proceeded to post the pins back to herself. To add some irony to the mix, once she boarded the aircraft the attendants handed out collector pins to the passengers . . . hmm . . .

So, I ask you all: is this an abuse of the Postal Service? Does a small touch of irony always strike when most needed? What would you have done in this same situation?