Of Wasps and Cockroaches

Recently I stumbled on Carl Zimmerman´s blog and have been reading it daily to see what he posts, its really quite cool.

My favorite story so far (and the one which brought me to The Loom originally), is The Wisdom of Parasites, which is about a wasp that hunts cockroaches - and basicly turns them into Zombies. Its really quite fascinating. The wasp stings the cockroach in a very specific part of its brain and then leads it back to its nest... where it is put into what amounts to suspended animation - it doesn´t die but its body functions are greatly slowed down. Its crazyness.

Here they are!

Right, so seeing as probably most of you folks have not seen the cartoons which have caused FAR more controversy than they ever deserved, and have sparked international protests, riotings, kidnappings, etc... Here they are.



These are the original images printed in Jyllands Posten. Now, call me crazy but while I see how at least a couple of these pictures are offensive... I really don´t see how anyone can possibly justify the crazyness thats going on over them. I just really don´t get it. But maybe somebody does. If so, please, clue me in ??

For more info directly from Jyllands-Posten go here: http://www.jp.dk/udland/tema:fid=11328/


And this is the picture printed on the front-page of El Pais February 5 or something. I have the issue =)

Oh right, almost forgot, this was actually orignally printed by Le Monde (French), and the lines say "I must not draw Mohammed" =)


But personally, I´m a fan of this one. Yay for Filibuster Cartoons!!

For more info check out Mohammed Image Archive

MySpace nomore!

Well, I am officially changing my blog over from myspace.com to blogger for one simple reason: it turns out that myspace is little more than farce of a site setup so that they can collect demographic info and such like. So yeah. As a result, I am no longer posting on myspace, nor having Any of my biographical info for them to see. Bastards.

ANYHOW, I´m still having a blast over here in Spain. Barcelona was awesome, and if you like you can checkout pics (at http://emilyrose.smugmug.com, as always). I could still go back and hang out there for hours on end, its just such an amazing city, especially with all the Gaudi and other modernist architecture... Park Güell, La Sagrada Familia, Casa Batállo, La Piedra, La Palacua Musica, etc. They´re all amazing works of art.

Classes are going overall pretty well, like my teachers (2 out of the 4 I´ve had before;), so that always helps.

Meh, thats about it. I´ll post more when/if something interesting happens=)

Crazyness

Well, its a crazy feeling right now - I have less than 2 weeks before I come home for christmas. I can`t in all honestly quite believe it. But its true. I`m still having a blast here in Spain, and am absolutely amazed at how much I`ve already learned.

Lately I`ve been hanging out with a couple of guys from Morocco (sp?), who are all very cool - Omar, Sidi & Alli. They all speak 3 languages - Arabic, French and Spanish. Crazyness. But its a blast to hang out with them, since they`ve lived here in Salamanca for 6 years now and so know it better than I ever will... Going to bars with thems great, since they know just about everybody=) But, whats probably best of all is that since they don`t speak english, I *have* to speak spanish... which is super good for me (though occasionly it makes for difficulties...). Still, generally its a blast.

Whats most crazy at the moment though is that I now only have 1 or 2 more days of class left before my exams (today and friday for Art History, Communications and Culture, and today, friday and monday for grammar!!). We`ve gone over SOO much stuff, as my grammar teacher says, we`ve apparently covered basicly every part of the spanish language... crazyness.

But... yeah, I can`t wait to get home and see everyone again.

Snoopy

Well, I guess I should have known that such a good few days couldnt possibly last forever... Just found out that snoopy died last night. Which really really sucks. Was the last thing I expected when Dad called... I mean... I know she is, was.. old but, still. Just... yeah. Wish I could see her one last time... thats all. She was a good dog... I´ll miss her.

Tapas

Well, friday night was quite fun. Went out for tapas (apetizers), with my entire grammar class. Was quite fun... we went to two different places, both of which are very close to where I live... the first one (El Lechón), I have been to before, but the other one (Mares del Van Dyck), I had not... and it is both very good and cheap (just 1.50€ for a tapa and small beer or sidra (cider). I personally opted for sidra, as I love it... and its very good there. Also, its tapas are apparently typical of Galacia which means that they´re almost all seafood related (mussels, clams, calamari, shrimp, etc)... quite yummy.

After tapas, we ended up going to a Salsa bar. Which was tons of fun. I ended up dancing with some guy from Argentina who was very good, which made it quite a lot of fun as I just kind of had to "follow" as it were... got tired after awhile.

Also I finally found a book to read. Imagéns en Accion (Moving Pictures), by Terry Pratchet. Its pretty good, and I am happy to say that I understand it well enough to understand at least some of the humour=)

class, class and more class

Well, this week was back to normal (almost) here in spain... Except of course that monday was Halloween and Tuesday was well, I´m not honestly sure what the holiday was, the day of the dead, or something. Which meant that we didn´t have school... which was nice. But, whats not been so nice is that today, and yesterday I have/had 8 hours of class. Ugh. 4 hours in the morning, and 4 hours in the afternoon. And after class? Tae Kwon Do=) Makes for long days...

On the bright side, apparently, as long as the music is in spanish, you can listen to music in at least one of my classes. Which is super cool. So, now I´m on the hunt for good rock music in spanish. Should be interesting... Whats cool though, is that one of the little shops that sells music will let you listen to different CDs before you buy them, so that you can decide if you actually like them or not. Tis quite nice (so, yeah, I broke down and bought one CD, Jarabe de Palo "Depende." Now I just have to get it on my iPod ).

Anyhow.. thats about all thats new/exciting around here. Mostly just lots of class atm. But yeah. We have/are starting Subjuntive conjugations... which are actually, thankfully, pretty easy.