Looking at life

In the early forties French people who protected Jews and hid them from the SS were breaking the law!!!

Would you have been willing to break the law and hide a Jew from the SS?

Would you be willing to break a law you thought to be unjust or insane today?

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You hear walking down the street,
Birds which chirp and tweet,
And the wind in the trees,
Rustling the leaves,
And life is therefore sweet.

But dorks with hi-fi’s,
To different sounds give rise,
On their face a snout,
Which says they nature flout,
And so nature cries.

The vulgar sounds are such,
They are with nature out of touch,
Though observation finds,
Vacuous minds,
Lead hearts which don’t care much.

But when the major human stance,
Is one of ignorance,
Nature will define,
What it is the fine,
And nature knows as well intolerance.

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Banks today keep falling,
Falling, falling,
Into the dark abyss,
Once upon the heights,
Now being hit by blights,
There of anger is a hiss,
As banks no longer are enthralling.

Banks today keep falling,
Falling, falling,
Into the dark abyss,
And though bonus time,
Once was fine,
Now staff those times will miss,
As profits just keep falling.

Banks today keep falling,
Falling, falling,
Into the dark abyss,
Together they amalgamate,
Searching for a steady state,
In which they'll find some bliss.
But is the fall snowballing?

Banks today keep falling,
Falling, falling,
Into the dark abyss,
Their future now is dire,
How many will expire?
Who would dare a banker kiss,
With all the sneering, jeering and catcalling?

Banks today keep falling,
Falling, falling,
Into the dark abyss,
Terror stalks the city,
For now minus their divinity,
People bankers now dismiss,
As darkness all about is falling.

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If you pay a banker millions of pounds a year, is it reasonable to expect them to know the difference between a sensible investment and a stupid investment?
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Still I don't suppose bankers care as they'll still trouser their millions while the taxpayer and bank user picks up the bill. Like the Savings and Loan debacle of the mid eighties.
My money says that to pay the bill, we will probably soon have to pay for using ATM machines. Wonder what odds Paddy Power is offering.

The blogosphere so full of blogs,
Sane minds it surely clogs,
For which words should one read?
Which message should one heed?

As the mass through minds does daily swirl
It does round in circles twirl,
And such it is the load,
Often, it must brain cells overload.

It seems to never want to stop,
And each day to forward gallop,
But does it somewhere have an end?
Or can it forever itself extend?

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Men seem to love smashing things together. In Hollywood it's cars, trucks and planes while in Switzerland at CERN it's sub-atomic particles. In both cases the men have many good reasons as to why they are doing what they are doing, but at the end of the day it's the same thing - they're smashing things together.

Next time you see a little boy smashing his toy trucks together you can tell him that if he has emotional problems when he's older he can become a film maker, or else he can become a scientist and play with particle smashers, maybe even large ones.

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However, the question to ask is: Will the taxpayer get $10 billion worth of knowledge from this experiment or will it turn out to be another TBD or Tony Blair Dome?

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Dear Reader,

Years ago I decided to have a bash at learning Arabic but didn’t have much success and since then I’ve had several more tries but again without any success.

Recently I came across The Michel Thomas Method Arabic course and as I was so impressed with Michel Thomas’s other courses, I decided I would have yet another go.

However, although I was a little disappointed to find, after I’d opened the package, that this was a course on Egyptian Arabic, I decided to go ahead anyway and must say that if you’re thinking of having a go at Arabic, this is definitely the course to start with.

But, like all courses on foreign languages, I felt this one was missing an essential ingredient. Some courses put all the emphasis for success on the student’s willingness to work hard while others, like the Michel Thomas course, put the responsibility for success squarely on the teacher’s shoulders. But I think, like the Japanese, that success depends on both the teacher and the student doing their best.

If you are an English speaking person learning a foreign language it’s important to remember that unless you plan to go and live in a foreign country for the rest of your life, you will always speak a foreign language by translating to and from English. The more experienced you become the more easily you can do this, but you still will always think in English.

In consequence, if you are going to learn Arabic, I feel it is important to practice translating from English into Arabic and to this end I have devised a number of simple computer programs to help you practise this skill. Another reason for developing these small programs is that the Michel Thomas course is very ‘information rich’ and despite what the teacher has said, I really don’t feel that simply listening to the cd’s would enable a student to internalise all the information. Therefore these little programs are also intended to help a student get a mental fix on what they have learnt in each lesson.

The Michel Thomas Arabic course can be borrowed from a library, bought on ebay or amazon and also purchased from a shop. But to get the most from your learning effort I would suggest that you download the additional programs and text I have prepared from the link below. (It’s completely free.) Then listen to the first cd and follow along with the booklet supplied by the publisher. Then listen again using the text I have supplied for each lesson in doc, txt and rtf formats (so that whatever your wordprocesser, you should have no difficulty accessing the information. ) After this you click on the file of the lesson (Ar01.exe being lesson 1.) Use the space bar to proceed through the program which randomly displays the English sample sentences learnt in the course and say them in Arabic. (A latinisation of the Arabic is supplied alongside each English sentence in the text file to help you recall the Arabic words if you need to. But I would point out that this Latinisation is only an aid to memory and no word is used that you haven’t already heard on the course. The Latinisation only reminds you how to pronounce it.) I did this five times a day for five days before progressing onto the next lesson and would recommend that you do the same.

If you decide to give it a go, here’s wishing you success in your endeavours,

The QuickBrownFox.

Download: www.humyo.com/6337217-189816451

There are no Bill Posters.
In fact the council does insist,
He does a Bill Posters not exist,
But are they jesters?
For I Bill Posters sometimes see,
So is there to a lie degree?

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