Category - Esperanto

Yesterday morning, I was reading articles at the Alligator's web site when a headline caught my eye. Student... club... language... hm... sounds like me. Oh wait, it is! I immediately went downstairs to pick up a hard copy.

A month ago, my friend Mark and I were teaching Esperanto phrases at a "language cafe" on campus. Rebecca Deely, a journalism student, was there looking for a story. She was very interested by Esperanto and interviewed both of us. She suggested that she could submit the story to the Alligator, and that's all I heard about it for a month. I kept thinking about what quotations of mine she would use — we talked quite a bit — and the only one I could remember was "It's not a word game." I couldn't really remember the context, but it stood out in my mind, so I thought it could end up as the all-important article-ending quotation.

Ooh dang. Who called that?

I thought the article was good and positive, and it apparently did get a few people interested enough to join our Facebook group. It was also apparently Rebecca's first publication. Everyone wins! (By the way, the entire article can be found here for however long.)

Throughout the day, I was watching people read the Alligator to see if they would read our story. The placement could hardly have been better. It was an important issue, being the day after Student Government elections, so probably more people were reading it than usual. The front page story jumped to page 10, where it took up the whole page, and we were at the top of page 11. That's almost like being on page 2.

I got two copies for myself. I cut the article out of one and posted it on the door of my dorm room. More promotion for our upcoming event. And in fact, on my way home from class, I actually did see someone reading the story. I wanted to start talking to her, but that would have probably freaked her the heck out. "Hi, I'm the person you're reading about in the newspaper!"

Another Ask Jordon!

Cody - Natashas BFF: Why, on your Faq, do you have somebody set up us the bomb?, its someone set up us the bomb! =) Zero wing Rules

Sorry, but it's definitely "Somebody set up us the bomb." I know what I doing.

Check out this Multicolr Search Lab. Select some colors, and you'll get some photos from Flickr that contain those colors. It's pretty mesmerizing.

When you've got a word on the tip of your tongue, use Tip of My Tongue to get it out. You can enter some letters of the word, synonyms, and more.

And here are, according to someone, the Top 10 Amazing Prison Escapes.

I've been busy with my new webmaster job. I started it on Monday, and it's been pretty nice. It's pretty easy so far, and I like it. If I ever get stuck on something, I can talk to my friend Mark, who works there as well. He's already been showing me the ropes quite a bit.

I've also been busy promoting my Esperanto club's first event, which I mentioned in my last post. That's taking a lot of my time. We had an executive meeting last night where we went over the presentation and some ways to promote it. My ultimate goal is for us to be featured in the main student newspaper before our event. That way we could get the word out to tens of thousands of people.

I hardly get any Ask Jordon questions anymore.

diana: why i am lefty?

This one comes from an IP address in Pakistan. But anyway, I have a whole book about this subject since I did a psychology paper on it in high school. It's The Left-Hander Syndrome by Stanley Coren, and it's quite revealing about why people are left-handed. I forget now, but I think he said it had in part to do with early brain trauma like a stressful birth. That's the book where he advances his controversial finding that left-handers die nine years earlier on average than their right-handed counterparts.

All political links today. Less than a month till the election, though.

A while back I blogged about Change Congress, the new initiative started by Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig (founder of Creative Commons). Change Congress aims to have politicians, candidates, and other citizens state their support (or lack of support) for four key issues that they believe would help improve fairness and end corruption. They've sent a letter to every Senator and Representative as well as every Congressional challenger too. You can see their progress on their iPledge campaign page. Change Congress is looking to improve their low response rate by having citizens pester their members of Congress. Click "Pester Now" next to the name of your member of Congress to find contact information, a phone script, and a form letter.

News coverage about things that don't matter: Presidential Physiques of the Modern Age.

I've saved the best for last. John McCain Gets BarackRoll'd.

My last few posts have been pretty weighty. Let's get back into the normal swing of normal things.

Ah, college. It is pretty nice. Except for, you know, the classes and stuff. But it's good to have good friends. Adam, my roommate from last year, invited me over to his dorm for dinner tonight. But the place isn't really a dorm in the traditional sense. It's an apartment-style dorm, and it's pretty comparable to student apartments you'd find off campus (that is to say, sweeeet). He lives there with Cameron, who was one of our suitemates last year. They also invited Evan, who was also one of our suitemates, so it was like a little reunion. Fajitas and TV with old pals. Ain't nothing like it.

It was good to catch up with Adam. Turns out he still reads this blog. I think he didn't read it over the summer, but tonight he brought up the themes of some of my recent posts. I believe that would make him a World of Stuff fan. You don't have to have read all 993 posts to be a fan (although it doesn't hurt).

What else? Oh yeah. I start my new job tomorrow, the one I was interviewed for a few weeks ago. I'm the new webmaster for the Dean of Students Office. Actually, my friend Mark, who works there and told me about the job, showed me the ropes last week, so I got a bit of a head start by making some small updates. But tomorrow, it is official. I won't have as much free time, but I'll be gaining knowledge and experience (and I'll have a cool job). Plus, I probably won't have to work at strange times. I know some people who have to work at night while going to school. I don't know how they manage.

Also, my new Esperanto club is getting off the ground. We're going to have a presentation entitled "Esperanto: The Solution to the World Language Problem." It'll be an introduction to Esperanto explaining why people use it and such. If you happen to be in the area of Gainesville, Florida, it'll be on Thursday, October 16, at 8:00 P.M., in room 110 of Rinker Hall at the University of Florida. If you have a Facebook account, RSVP on our event page. Everyone is welcome.

Surprise? Surveillance of Skype Messages Found in China. Yet another reason not to trust Skype or any other non-free software.

Also in the news: Military Hit with 2nd Suit Over Religious Freedom. They can't seem to wrap their heads around the idea that they shouldn't be pushing religion on people.

Finally, a blog: Cake Wrecks, for "when professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong."

I had a physics test today. I've spent the past few days studying like a madman. Now I am a mad man. I don't think I did very well on the test, you see. I was really nervous, and there was a lot of pressure. 10 questions in 50 minutes. I think I only had time to do about 6. Some I didn't know how to do, so I had to guess.

My last physics class was cool because after each test, they would post the answer key online so you would could compare it to your scratch work and see how you did right away. For today's test, we had to sign and hand in our scratch work, and they'll be grading the exams and posting the answers tomorrow. I guess they're trying to prevent cheating.

I feel that I deserve whatever grade I'll get. I spent as much of the previous 48 hours studying, but it wasn't enough.

But I do have some good news. My Esperanto club was approved today. We had registered for the 2007-2008 year at the very end of that year — so close, in fact, that we didn't get all the way through the approval process. Now we are official for the 2008-2009 year. I just need to straighten out a snafu with the name. (Last year we were "The Esperanto Club at the University of Florida," but for this year, we had to drop the "at the University of Florida" from our name due to new guidelines for student organizations. However, they registered us under the old name, which might get us in trouble. I will have to talk to someone about that.) Pretty soon, we are going to have our first event, I guess. I'll be sure to tell you all about it.

Well, that's it for my 989th post, cats and kittens. I've got to do homework and also eat and stuff. And then sleep. Enjoy these links.

I don't know how many times I've had to comb through the edit history of a Wikipedia article to see who added a certain bit of vandalism. WikiBlame makes it easy to see who added what to an article.

I never realized it, but my own state of Florida has some weird holidays. Grandmother's Day is right around the corner!

If you're like a lot of people, you make yourself lots and lots of coffee. Here are 11 Good Reasons Why Coffee Grounds are Worth Keeping.

"What is your favorite branch of engineering and why?"

With that, I had three minutes to outline a three-minute speech. I took the prompt as I left the classroom and went into the hallway to work. I had enough time. Computer engineering would have to be my fave, of course, since I'm a computer science major. As I was practicing making impromptu speeches, I had realized that you can make anything about computers.

Computers have had a profound effect on engineering and science, and also, programming has allowed me to think more logically and analytically.

I spoke clearly, but I really wasn't sure of what I was saying. I think my hands were shaking also. I did manage to restrain myself from saying "um." I had to cut it short and bail after almost running out of time.

It took me a while to calm down after that. Right after my tech writing and speaking class, I was due to be at the Talk to Me Language Cafe, an event where speakers of several languages would teach people to say some basic phrases. (I'm starting an Esperanto club, and our faculty advisor got Esperanto to take the the place of Spanish in the program.)

It really was like a cafe. There were a few tables set up, and coffee and cookies were served. Passersby could meet with a speaker of Turkish, Italian, Czech, Chinese, Japanese, sign language, and (of course) Esperanto to learn some basic phrases. Most people I talked to hadn't heard of Esperanto but were interested in the idea. (The people who had heard of it either had a friend who was interested or had lived in Europe.) When I mentioned how popular Esperanto was around the world, people were surprised that they hadn't heard of it before. It was a great chance to plug our group.

I was there for about two and a half hours, but it didn't seem that long. Then, Mark took over for an hour while I had class, and after that, I returned for the last few minutes. We ended up giving out 24 copies of a "What Is Esperanto?" flyer and 21 copies of a flyer with basic vocabulary and grammar. Most people received one of each; a few left before I could give them any. I'd say we talked to 25-30 people.

Mark and I each got interviewed by journalism students who needed material for an assignment. One of the ones who talked to Mark later arranged an interview with me. She said she was going to cover the language cafe in general but discovered Esperanto and decided to make it the focus of her story. We talked for about 20 minutes, and I enjoyed it. She also said she'd try to get the story published. That almost certainly means she'd shoot for the widely-read Alligator (which I have decided not to write an editorial column for due to a lack of ideas).

What's next for the Esperanto Club? We're going to have a talk introducing Esperanto to anyone who's interested. But we won't be able to book a room until we're officially approved for this year... whenever that will be.

Here are some free (as in freedom) fonts listed by license and where to download them.

More and more people are using Wi-Fi in their homes nowadays. Some people like to share their connection with their neighbors, and that's where sharemywifi.com comes in. It's a geographical listing of Wi-Fi access points that their owners want to share access to.

Finally, we have 3 Controversial Maps.

I'm home for Labor Day weekend. In fact, I'm about to go to my friend Nick's house for a barbecue. Will the weather cooperate? Let's hope. It looks like Hurricane Gustav, which is heading for the Gulf Coast, is bringing some clouds our way. And then there's Hanna out there too. Oh yes, it is a good time of year for hurricanes. I believe September 12 is the statistical peak of the Atlantic hurricane season (that is, the day of the year that has seen the most hurricanes since recordkeeping began).

In the spring, I got an Esperanto club started at school. I filed the application at the end of the spring semester, and they were supposed to get back to me when it was approved. They didn't. I asked our faculty advisor, Holly, if she knew what was up. She contacted them, and apparently we were approved. We just need to re-register for the '08-'09 year as all student organizations do.

Holly was by far the best choice for faculty advisor. She's a language teacher (Czech, specifically), and she was very impressed by our initiative in starting an Esperanto club. She was also willing to work to promote our club, and that she has done. She told me she had landed a gig for us at a language fair coming up in a week or two. They're going to have a flyer with some basic phrases in each of the languages that are represented. Apparently, Holly got her to drop Spanish from the flyer in favor of Esperanto.

The phrases in English:

1. Hi, how are you?
2. My name is ____.
3. I speak English.
4. What are you doing tonight?
5. Goodbye.
6. Go Gators!

In Esperanto, with phonetic transcriptions added just for you:

1. Saluton, kiel vi fartas? (sah-LOO-tohn, KEE-el vee FAR-tahs?)
2. Mi nomiĝas ____. (mee noh-MEE-jahs ____.)
3. Mi parolas la anglan. (mee pah-RO-lahs lah AHN-glahn)
4. Kion vi faros ĉi-nokte? (KEE-ohn vee FAR-ohs chee-NOHK-tay?)
5. Ĝis! (jeese!)
6. Ek, Gatoroj! (eck, gah-TOR-oy!)

I'm not sure if I could justifiably shorten "aligatoroj" to "gatoroj," but I wouldn't say it's justifiable in English either. Nicknames are off-limits from logic.

Here's why you should never use an online translator.

From The Consumerist, it's false advertising. This water slide thing looks way bigger on the box than it actually is. See the sad children for comparison.

At 1:00 A.M. on Sunday, September 10, 1995, WTVJ-TV, Miami's NBC affiliate broadcasting on channel 4, and WCIX-TV, the CBS affiliate broadcasting on channel 6, traded channels. At the same time, WCIX changed its call sign to WFOR. Here are videos of the changeover as seen on channel 4 and channel 6.

Prediction: The title of this post will make people mad. Relax, amigos, it's all in good fun.

"Seen any good movies lately, Jordon?" you ask.

In fact, yes. And thanks for spelling my name right.

I finally saw Across the Universe last week. It's that musical that's set in the '60s and based on Beatles songs (which feature prominently throughout). I liked it. It's a timeless story of boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, plus sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and also war. The visuals are appealing, and the music is, of course, great. It was pleasant to hear some of the Beatles' songs in new and exciting contexts. Who knew "I Want to Hold Your Hand" could be such a sad song? I do now. It was nice to see that their earlier songs weren't entirely ignored, unlike other recent re-imaginings of the Beatles' catalogue I could name. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr liked the movie too, so that has to count for something. I would see it again.

I also saw The Corporation, a 2003 documentary that takes a look at the modern corporation and the effects it has on our lives. The problem with corporations is that they're required by law to make as much money as possible, and they do so without regard to anyone's interests but their own, "social responsibility" PR notwithstanding. A corporation is considered a legal person, but you can't put it in jail when it decides that breaking the law is more cost-effective than following it. The film makes the case that if a corporation were a real person, it would be a psychopath. A number of high-profile interviewees (including Milton Friedman, Noam Chomsky, and Michael Moore) make the case for and against the corporation. I recommend this movie to everyone. If you have a BitTorrent client, you can get it here.

And on Saturday night, I went to see Pixar's latest film, WALL-E. My friend Nacole invited me, and some other people were there too. It was the first time I had seen her since graduation a year ago, so it was a nice get-together. I also enjoyed the movie. If you couldn't tell by now, I guess I like most movies. But WALL-E is pretty great. If Nacole (whom I sat next to) is to be believed, just about everything in the movie is cute. But there's more to it than robots in love. I've heard it called a sci-fi film, and it really is. Don't get me wrong: I don't read much sci-fi (honest), but central to the plot is how the human condition could be impacted by technology, not to mention the huge corporations that provide it. This bleak angle sets WALL-E apart from Pixar's earlier films and makes it enjoyable in a different way (in spite of the plugs for Apple, which Pixar thinks it can get away with now that Apple is popular).

A commenter on my last post linked to the web site of Esperanto Lobby. I checked out the site a bit and learned Malgorzata Handzlik, a member of the European Parliament, is a fluent speaker of Esperanto who wants the language to be used more widely in the EU. At first I misread her name as Malzorgata, which would make her a neglected official.

My jokes, they are inaccessible.

Here are (according to someone) the 21 Best Mugshots Evar. #1 is my favorite.

Love to travel? Wikitravel is the travel guide that's also a wiki.

I like science, but I never liked designing experiments for my science classes. I could never come up with any really original ideas, so I did lame things like watch mold grow on bread or run electric current through salt water. So I envy this kid who, for a science project, found a microbe that eats plastic. Oh, the implications.

"Read any good books lately, Jordan?" you ask.

In fact, yes. And it's Jordon, not Jordan.

Last weekend, I read Gerald Tucker's Esperanto translation of George Orwell's Animal Farm (Lanterno, Munich, 1970). Supernaturally astute readers will remember that I bought this book several years ago but never read it, nor had I ever read the original in English. I still haven't read the original, but now I have read it in Esperanto.

I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to understand it and I'd just get frustrated, but I actually managed to understand enough to know what was going on. I got a lot of the allusions to the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union and all that. A few words tripped me up, but I was usually able to guess what they meant. Plus, I kind of knew what was going to happen anyway since everyone read the book in, like, fifth grade.

Maybe if I had gotten a translation of a book that's unavailable in English, I would have read it sooner. I guess it kind of took the incentive out of reading it since I knew I could just find it in English. But it's a short book, and I bulldozed through it in a weekend. Nineteen Eighty-Four next? Or, shall I say, Mil Naŭcent Okdek Kvar?

We all need a buck or two or three. My sister is selling our Nintendo 64, which is the only game console either of us has ever had. I'm not much of a gamer, so it's no big deal. I'll always have the memories. We would wash cars to buy a game. They went for $50 apiece back in the day. That's over $60 in today's money. We only had four games; washing cars is tough work. So, what's the asking price for the N64 with two controllers four games? $60. People are already responding to the ad, but they all want a lower price. I say no. $60 or best offer means just that.

YouTomb is a project of MIT Free Culture that lists some of the videos that YouTube has removed due to alleged copyright violations. Incidentally, I hope to get involved in the University of Florida's chapter of Students for Free Culture next year.

Jamie Livingston took one Polaroid snapshot almost every day from March 31, 1979, until his death on October 25, 1997. His friends digitized them, and now his photos of the day are available online. It gets kind of sad, actually. I think the last photo shows him dead.

On a lighter note, here's why you should never order a cake over the phone.

Scheeze, April already? Back in January, I had the idea to start an Esperanto club on campus, and I got some of my friends interested. I haven't mentioned it much since then. What happened, you ask? Well, I certainly wasn't just sitting around, that's for sure. We've been trying to find a faculty advisor, which is required for starting a club. I've been e-mailing professors in the foreign language departments, but the few who have replied did so in the negative. People might find the job interesting but are frequently too busy. It was discouraging.

Andy came up with the great idea to ask the linguistics professors. Ah, linguistics. Odds are, they've all heard of Esperanto, so maybe they'd be interested in the idea. I e-mailed them and struck gold. Within days, e-mails came sort of pouring in. Not one, but two linguistics professors expressed interest in being our advisor. A third said he'd told the others in the department and that he'd get back to me with a good candidate. A fourth said that if we couldn't find anyone in the linguistics department, she would help us look for someone. And a lecturer from the Romance languages and literatures department sent me a reply, six weeks late, saying she would also be interested in being our advisor.

Not all responses were positive. One guy said Esperanto was a useless waste of time. But I didn't let that get me down. Instead, I worked out times to meet with the faculty members who thought that Esperanto was a useful non-waste of time. Andy and I met with the first professor on Monday morning. He's an African guy whose main interest is the extinction of languages, and he seemed to recognize Esperanto's potential for saving the many tongues around the world whose speakers are dying out. I'm supposed to meet with the other professor on Friday. It should be interesting.

Unfortunately, we probably won't have time to officially start our club this year; we'll have to wait till the fall, which means we might have to get off to a small start. Well, I was figuring we'd get off to a small start anyway, but the club approval process supposedly takes four to six weeks, and there are only... four weeks left in the semester? Well, maybe there's some time. It's worth a shot, anyway, if we can name a faculty advisor by next week. I'll have to ask the people who deal with approving clubs and see if there's time to squeeze in the approval. Then we can hit the ground running next year.

That's not the only thing I've got going on this week, though. Get Carded, the organ donation awareness group I'm a member of, is having its second annual Lifeapalooza event tomorrow night. A pretty well-known local band called Umoja Orchestra will play a free show, along with a couple of opening acts. There will also be organ recipients talking about why organ donation is so important. It's going to be at a cafe on campus called the Orange and Brew (because our school colors are orange and... blue... ha ha?). Anyway, we're also going to give everyone a free t-shirt and have them form a human ribbon outside (because every cause has to have a ribbon, you know). It should be a great way to end the year.

To help get the word out, I've been passing out flyers (actually cards) on campus. If you walk around college campuses a lot, people probably hand you a lot of glossy cards, about the size of a large index card, that tell you about upcoming concerts or parties or what have you. I'm passing out those. I spent about two hours Monday and Tuesday doing it, and I have a few more to give out tomorrow. Hopefully I've gotten some people interested. Although a lot of people avoid me as I stand in the middle of a foot thoroughfare, most people take the cards I put in front of them, and a few even come up and ask for one. It all adds up. I think the turnout at Lifeapalooza tomorrow will be great.

The call to End Software Patents is pretty common among the nerdy set. Find out what it's all about.

Want to celebrate your next birthday with class while trying to hide your age? Get Roman Candles for your birthday cake, so you can party like it's MCMXCIX.

Someday, I'm going to get a job. I want to work for a company that's friendly to Linux and related software projects. Here's how a number of major companies stand.

To my surprise, the Esperanto article I was supposed to be interviewed for was published today. The reporter interviewed my friend Andy at my suggestion and never got back to me. I'm glad for him, anyway. Plus, our hopefully-soon-to-be-launched Esperanto club got a mention. From the article:

Here's the full article: Esperanto fans in S. Florida cling to idealistic language.

Okay, this is something I really can't figure out for the life of me. Why do a few of my blog posts attract so much comment spam? This old post, "Where's my trailer?", gets upwards of hundreds of spam attempts a day. (No comment spam actually gets through thanks to the two anti-spam measures I've had in place for about a year.) "Really bad Rita" is another eternal favorite for spammers, as are "Where's my trailer again?", "Tornado waste of time", "Here's to 16 more", "From the song files of Jordon Kalilich", and a few others. I find it interesting that they were all posted in 2005. Other than that, I can't find a common link. I haven't done a word analysis of those posts, but it's not like I'm talking about mortgages, ringtones, gambling, World of Warcraft gold, or prescription drugs. (Am I asking for it here?) What's the deal? I challenge my other blogging readers to find (if possible) their most frequently spammed entries. What do they have in common that's so attractive to spammers?

As I was writing this, I heard a voice call out in the hallway. That's funny, I thought in italics, that sounds like Shannon, our RA from last semester who has since graduated. Then I heard another voice: "Shannon!"

It was Shannon indeed. She was her same old bleach-blonde self with her same old Midwestern accent, though she was looking tanner than ever. She's been applying to moderately prestigious law schools throughout the country, but, frustratingly, she's been waitlisted by most of them. Since moving back home to Chicago, she's been thinking about retaking the LSAT, and she's gotten a job (at a tanning salon). She said she's here in town with her friends till Saturday, and that she'll be around to hang out with her (not so) old floormates.

And now, the links.

Read about the Curious Histories of Generic Domain Names.

Dot-com days are here again? Check out some Web 2.0 Workplaces.

In this quiz, you're presented with six paintings. You have to guess whether each was painted by an artist or an ape. My roommate got four right.