You know what?  I had a fun lesson today even though it was about grammar. 

I was hoping to have an extended amount of time to present an overview of Russian grammar to my CIS bound students.  Due to the circumstances time was cut short.  However, I still was able to review yesterdays stuff as well as introduce a bunch of material which kind of fit together.

Bunch is probably a good word.  I definitely dumped a lot of material--far more than the 7-9 new vocab words per lesson model.  However, I defend this by saying that my intention was not to teach vocabulary, but to present ideas.  Now I probably did present 6-9 new ideas.

We talked about Russian pronunciation, mostly about the "o" vowel change when it isn't stressed, and voiced and voiceless consanant shifts.  Then I gave an introduction to noun declension and verb conjugation.  We practiced pronunciation by reading a Pushkin poem. 

So lots of different vocabulary, but perhaps 3 main points: pronunciation, nouns and verbs.  This I believe is managable.

4:44:36 PM    

Just skimmed through the Horse and His Boy by CS Lewis.

What a fun book.  Still my favorite of the Chronicles of Narnia even after all this time.

10:27:26 AM    

New article on downloading music for free http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42239-2002Aug20.html

Pretty interesting I think.  I feel that the inflexibility of the music industry to adapt and exploit this format harkens a new era for America. 

Frankly, I'm surprised and I don't understand why money and lots of it can't or isn't being made off of this new phenomenon.  CD-R sales are up.  I hope the music industry has invested in that.

Mostly I just hear whining which doesn't seem to be the American business model.  Or at least not the successful, idealized way.  There has to be a middle ground, but it seems that out-of-touch industry mogols would rather run things through courts than to use what is on hand.  When given a lemon make lemonade?  Do we remember this?

The monopoly is upset and is going to throw its weight around to get what it wants, but Pandora's box has already been opened.  It's time to shut up and innovate or negotiate.

I'm not saying that it is right to rip CDs, I'm just saying that the phenomenon is too big to destroy. 

8:36:58 AM