Nuestro Himno

Si yo escriba en español aquí, quizá no puedo ser americana de verdad. Si vaya a otro país y hable allí en inglés, es impossible que admire a su gente. Especialmente, es impossible que pudiera querer ser una de ellos. Y si cante su himno nacional en mi propio idioma, para entender mejor su sentido y sentir la unidad con otros imigrantes como sí misma, eso nadie podría soportar.

Or at least that's how ABC seems to take it. USA Today has a bit more balance, writing about 50/50 pro and con. (Thanks to Language Log for the links.) The very end of the ABC article, it shows the two conflicting views:

"I think its a despicable thing that someone is going into our society from another country and...changing our national anthem," [George Key, Francis Scott Key's descendant] said.

Those behind the new song say Key and others miss the point. The Spanish version is meant to show immigrant pride in a new country where they live and work.

And it's not like this is the first time any immigrant has ever "dared" to do such a "despicable thing" as translate the anthem. Language Log details Wikipedians' findings: German (1861–1864ish), Yiddish (1947), Samoan (2006), French, Tohono O'odham (a Uto-Aztecan language; 2004) (and also Latin, strangely enough).

The Samoan version they want as their official territorial anthem — and this is relatively recently, too: January 26th of this year. In a totally different take on what it means to translate the anthem, the Samoans say they honor us "by memorializing the anthem of the United States in our native language." At the Democratic National Convention in 2004, they included Native Americans from Arizona singing in Tohono O'oodham. I suppose none of these other groups are as large a minority as hispanics, though, and thus pose no great risk of changing American culture. (And obviously, the way it is now is the way it should always be. All change is bad change, right?)

Now, I'm not saying that I think immigrants shouldn't learn English. It's to their advantage to do so, so I'd recommend it to them. But Americans don't have to be monoglots! If immigrants are fluently bilingual (as I've observed many immigrants' children to be), then more power to them. They have two worlds open to them, that the rest of us have to peer into while all the subtleties get lost in translation.

On a purely artistic note, I prefer the Spanish version linked to from NPR over Jimi Hendrix's version.

Categories: Spanish, politics

Sweet and Sour Burn

Today's Thursday, which means dinner at Farmers' and hanging out at B&N. The sweet and sour sauce for my chicken was provided off to the side, in a spigot-container. The sauce shot out with a lot more horizontal force than expected and it hit my hand. As you can see, it was hot enough to burn me -- superficially, at least.

I asked them for some ice and the redness went away after a while. Stupid sauce bucket.

As a side note, I'd never noticed how many characters I'm allowed for multimedia messages. One thousand is quite a bit to type on a cellphone! Luckily my phone has predictive text, or I'd never blog on the go. (I wonder what Blogger does with HTML? <em>Never.</em>)

Blog post on last weekend -- the weekend of the del Sols and the ConlangCon -- coming soon, I promise!

Fire Organ

Finally, a cool physics demo! This is the fifth harmonic of the stove pipe, as demonstrated by lit natural gas. At the higher harmonics, it was a veritable shriek-machine.

Update, 5/25: Flickr photos — 3rd harmonic, 5th harmonic.

Categories: photos, fire

A Night in Morgan Hill

Forrest and I are spending the night at my cousins' tonight. Observe our very masculine accommodations.

Categories: photos

Brown Sugar & Bourbon Salmon

It was my turn to cook dinner (actually, it's been my turn many times over; I inherited a strong dislike of cooking from my mom). We had some frozen salmon, so I went browsing through AllRecipes' "Quicky & Easy" for something to make.

I wish I'd taken a picture of it: the salmon with brown sugar and bourbon glaze was very tasty. And half an hour from start to finish, assuming your salmon is thawed. Will almost certainly make this again at some point in the future.

Also, I learned tonight that, no matter how yummy molasses-and-granulated-sugar brown sugar is, you shouldn't eat too much. My stomach doesn't feel so good right now. ;)

Categories: cooking, recipe

Thirsty Much?

Jerry and Aaron bought all these sodas while I was out. Each box here holds 12 cans!

Purple Haz^H^H^H Flowers

Is this not a pretty flower? Ten points to whoever can identify it.

April Christmas Tree

Saw this on the street. Good to see my family isn't the only one to hang on to the Xmas tree. Hey Mom, is ours still up at home?

Buffalo Head Sketch

Buffalo Head Sketch

Forrest and I ate at F. McLintock's tonight. While waiting for our food, I sketched the buffalo head hanging on the wall.

This here is a photograph of the napkin on which I sketched said buffalo. Then I overlaid a brown color uniformly over everything with the GIMP. I'll try scanning it sometime, see if the quality's any better.

Buffalo Head

Update, 12:15 AM: I found this photo here of another buffalo head, so you have something for comparison.

Categories: drawing, animals

Get Nekkid Today

Naked in a CSS sort of way, anyhow. This one time, the lack of pretty stylesheets here and at my website are intentional. Hopefully, my pages are still navigable, if not aethestically astounding, even with all the styling removed.

Categories: CSS, standards