Somusing

It's been a few years since I heard this song, but a few of us were singing it at work the other day and now I can't get enough of Boney M.'s legendary Rasputin . Here's one version from 1978: A shorter version of the same show in color and better quality, but without the fun Moscow photo/film montage: How can the people sit still, looking bored, at the dinner party or whatever that event was? Impossible. Live at Top of the Pops, Christmas 1978: Wacky Count Rasputin version on Italian TV in 1978: And a 30-year reunion live version in Russia, 2008: Not as much to commend that, except the lip-syncing guy doing nice backflips on stage. And everyone having fun with it. There are more, but I'll stop here. It's one of disco's finest tracks. Back in the non-disco world, Rasputin had a daughter, and it's too bad she died before this song became famous: Rasputin 's daughter, Maria Rasputin (Matryona Rasputina) (1898–1977), emigrate...

I skimmed much of this book , but I found it very informative and useful. It helped me solidify some plans for our kids' education. As an example of the interesting stuff in here: a study showed that college students who work about 20 hours a week get better grades than those who work full-time and better than those who don't work at all. Now that's the kind of thing I like to learn for future reference, you know? There's a lot of good info for parents about prioritizing saving, too, i.e., savings and retirement should come before your kids' education. It's likely that I will be consulting this book again in the future.

This is now required reading for our kids (along with College Without High School ). The first part is about deciding what to major in and the second part is about making the most of your college education once you get there. I wish I had read something like this when I was in high school.

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare. A traveling group from Cedar City's Shakespeare Festival performed this at our local high school, and it was fantastic. After we saw it, I came home and read it. Shakespeare is so much fun when you can see it performed, and then it's more fun to read, too. Antigone . This is embarrassing, but I can't remember if I read the play by Sophocles or the one by Jean Anouilh. We have them both, and I read them both in college. On second thought, it must have been the one by Sophocles, because my copy by Anouilh is in French, and I don't think I've read any significant amount of French since college. (A few pages of the first Harry Potter doesn't count.) Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I think I made it through about a third of this book before giving up. I have little patience for books that I don't enjoy these days, and this one was self-centered, self-indulgent, and annoying. The Year of Pleasures by Elizabe...

It's been a few years since I read this , so I don't have a detailed review, but I enjoyed it. Shannon Hale is funny and insightful and I haven't been disappointed by her yet.

It’s hard not to be at least a little paranoid when I come across all the following articles in a single day not of concerted search on the subject, but simply following a few links I came across on Twitter: The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say) by James Bamford, longtime NSA watcher — I guess Utah is supposed to thank Orrin Hatch for bringing in some new jobs! Jobs and money über alles. Democratic Senators Issue Strong Warning About Use of the Patriot Act — Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall say they are “skeptical about the actual value of the ‘intelligence collection operation’” where even the rules surrounding it are secret. RIAA chief: ISPs to start policing copyright by July 1 — Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and other Internet providers plan to monitor customers’ Internet traffic and issue warnings if in their opinion any copyright is violated, absent any legal requirement or framework. How Not to Attract Tourist...

This actually has nothing to do with the sex lives of cannibals, unless you count the chapter about dogs. It's an arresting title, though, isn't it? It's also very funny and entertaining, all about the author's adventures living on a pretty desolate island in Kiribati. Always irreverent, sometimes downright vulgar, it was a fun way to learn about Kiribati (which, by the way, is pronounced "Kiribas"--I don't know why). There's some history and background and lots of hilarious stories about learning to live in a place that's really different from America. I liked it.