| The Select and Start News Report: 04.23.07
Welcome to The Select and Start News Report. Usually this is supposed to be mostly about games, but with all the crap that's been going on over the past week it almost feels like a political news report. Big News SOMETHING YOU THOUGHT YOU'D NEVER SEE: DR.PHIL AND RUSH LIMBAUGH IN GAMING NEWS [credit: Kotaku, Evil Avatar] So we all know that Voldemort (I stole that name from Will Helm) is off blaming games for the Virgina Tech Massacre and is basically outright lying about everything (so much so that MSNBC is bashing him for it), but of all people to have something similar to say, it's DR.PHIL?! Here's what Dr.Phil had to say on Larry King Live: ...the problem is we are programming these people as a society. You cannot tell me - common sense tells you that if these kids are playing video games, where they're on a mass killing spree in a video game, it's glamorized on the big screen, it's become part of the fiber of our society.
Finding Peace in the Middle East, and Within
On this show in 2004, we interviewed the well-known Israeli writer and peace activist Amos Oz about his memoir "A Tale of Love and Darkness." Oz vividly recalled the night in November 1947, when the United Nations voted to partition British-ruled Palestine into two states - one Jewish and one Arab. (Soundbite of NPR archived interview recording) Mr. AMOS OZ (Writer, "A Tale of Love and Darkness"): I remember the huge outburst of emotions. It was a burst of excitement, fear, hope, almost a messianic fervor. But then, five or six hours later, the fighting began between Israel Jews and Palestinian Arabs, the same fighting that has not ceased until this very day. LYDEN: Palestinian philosopher Sari Nusseibeh was born shortly after the State of Israel.
The threat of copycat crimes in the wake of the Virginia Tech ...
April 21, 2007 - Cho Seung-Hui clearly admired Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. In the disjointed manifesto Cho sent to NBC News, the deeply-troubled 23-year-old linked himself to “martyrs like Eric and Dylan," the two disturbed high school students who killed a dozen students, a teacher and then themselves at the Littleton, Colo., high school on April 20, 1999. Cho appears to have spawned his own copycats, as the FBI this week logged about three dozen threats of bombings, shootings and other violent threats on schools and other public buildings. Most proved harmless or bogus. But police arrested a man in Parker, Colo., on Friday after an explosion outside a high school not far from Columbine, and schools in California and Kansas went to lockdown mode following local threats.
'Magical Teacher' Helps Kids Thrive
SPRINGDALE--The children in Justin Minkel's second-grade classroom greet the black and red chessboards with a chorus of "yays."They gather eagerly on the carpet as he gives a quick lesson. Then they dive into play, advancing pieces fearlessly. Soon the desks are littered with captured knights, bishops and pawns."I can't do this," says a child who entered Minkel's classroom the day before. Perhaps all the children felt that way at the beginning of the year. By the end of 30 minutes, she's learned how to advance the pieces. When pupils gather for another group lesson, she pipes up with an idea for a move."You learn fast," Minkel observes, exhibiting the subtle affirmation that is a hallmark of his classroom. The award-winning teacher combines high level academics with personalized attention to help his pupils succeed.Minkel, 29, holds two prestigious titles.
From Haiku to the Blues
I'm doing a long essay, “From Haiku to the Blues," because I began to talk about the connection between the two. People say, “Ah, the haiku, you capture this great image, like the sun is setting or the sun is coming up," but the thing about the haiku is always the other side of that brightness. There's darkness there. When the sun sets you have also what happens in the night, what happens on the other side of the haiku. I think Rilke says, “After beauty comes terror." And the same thing happens with the blues. I want to let people see the connection between that form and the people who invented it. I think that form has a lot to do with staying alive. When the Japanese were incarcerated in concentration camps, in order to survive they wrote the haiku. The whole idea of beauty and horror at the same time occurs in the haiku…the haiku is a discipline about living.
English classes help immigrants adjust to new home
The hushed classroom in Tooele's Adult Education Learning Center is an unlikely melting pot. But on Mondays and Thursdays of each week during the school year, adults from Korea, Spain, Mexico and Armenia gather with one common goal: learning conversational English. "English difficult," said Haxhi Farka, who along with his wife, Flutura, started taking the classes shortly after arriving in America from Armenia less than two years ago. The couple followed their son, who immigrated to the United States a decade ago after the family converted to the LDS church. Haxhi Farka was an engineer and manager of an electric company in his homeland. Now he works at the Deseret Industries Distribution Center. He takes his dictionary and English-language tapes with him on the bus as he rides to and from work every day.
The Number-One Ninja is Back in the PS2 Sequel “Naruto: Ultimate ...
"One of the features of the game that's pretty interesting is that you can learn moves from other characters." Last summer’s hit anime fighting game, Naruto: Ultimate Ninja, boasted Smash Bros.-inspired combat, outstanding cel-shaded effects, and months of replay value, courtesy of the game’s addictive multiplayer battles. You’ll get the chance to be addicted once more in this year’s sequel, Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 2. Developed by CyberConnect 2, the studio responsible for the hit .hack series, Ultimate Ninja 2 continues the series with more of what you crave: 32 Playable Characters (including several favorites from the first) A New RPG Mode Chunin Exams New Mini-Games During a recent conference call, Andrew Davis (Localization Specialist) told us about the secret techniques in the game.
Rez Abbasi: Microtones, Fearlessness and the Fifteen-Step Process
India-born and California-raised, guitarist/composer Rez Abbasia resident of New York City for over a decade nowhas been perfecting his own unique East-meets-West musical hybrid of Indian and jazz musics for some time. With the releases of Snake Charmer (Earth Sounds, 2005) and Bazaar (Zoho Music, 2006), he's perfected his formula, in part because his core group of drummer Danny Weiss, organist Gary Versace and vocalist Kiran Ahluwaliasupported on the former by master soprano sax player Dave Liebman and on the latter by several guest playersseems to be the perfect band to carry out the technical and emotional demands of Abbasi's compositions. It's not debatable that Abbasi's music is jazz; no listener could hear its fierce improv-growing-out-of-themes and open-ended flexibility and place it in any other categoryAbbasi's core band is, after all, a guitar-organ-drums trio.
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