Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Via JMG: UTAH: Language School Fires Teacher For Blog Post Explaining Homophones Because There And Their Is Totally Gay


From the you-can't-make-it-up-department in Provo, Utah:
Homophones, as any English grammarian can tell you, are words that sound the same but have different meanings and often different spellings — such as be and bee, through and threw, which and witch, their and there. This concept is taught early on to foreign students learning English because it can be confusing to someone whose native language does not have that feature. But when the social-media specialist for a private Provo-based English language learning center wrote a blog explaining homophones, he was let go for creating the perception that the school promoted a gay agenda. Tim Torkildson says after he wrote the blog on the website of his employer, Nomen Global Language Center, his boss and Nomen owner Clarke Woodger, called him into his office and told him he was fired. As Torkildson tells it, Woodger said he could not trust him and that the blog about homophones was the last straw. "Now our school is going to be associated with homosexuality," Woodger complained, according to Torkildson, who posted the exchange on his Facebook page.
The school has denied the teacher's claim of homophonia - but has also deleted his post from its website. Their clunky mission statement could use some work: "Nomen Global Language Centers substantially helps students from all cultures and walks of life to excel in each aspect of their English acquisition and to obtain their goals for the future. We achieve this goal by means of qualified and experienced faculty, dedicated staff, engaging and challenging curriculum, and professional and ethical student services." (Tipped by JMG reader Joseph)
 
Reposted from Joe Jervis

Flower of the Day: 07/30/14

"When you fall in love with someone, you project all of your dreams onto them and you start to daydream. The other person does the same thing, and you both go on trying to keep this dream alive while avoiding the truth. You avoid revealing yourself to the other, just as you avoid seeing the other’s revelation because it could be a threat to your dream. Thus, the truth becomes a threat, because you prefer to keep on living in your dreamworld."
Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma


Romantic Love | July 30, 2014

In Buddhist practice, we discover that mindful attention can reveal a deeper truth in whatever object we are paying attention to. The same is true in romantic love. When we use our attention to touch and open the deeper truth in a person, we not only catalyze the experience of love, we become love. The source of love is revealed to be within us; we no longer have to go looking for it somewhere outside. 
 
- Nicole Daedone, "Love Becomes Her" 
 

Via Daily Dharma


Blowin' in the Wind | July 29, 2014

How do we renounce? How do we work with this tendency to block and to freeze and to refuse to take another step toward the unknown? If our edge is like a huge stone wall with a door in it, how do we learn to open the door and step through it again and again, so that life becomes a process of growing up, becoming more and more fearless and flexible, more and more able to play like a raven in the wind? 
 
Pema Chödrön, "Like a Raven in the Wind"