This is a handy guide to sharing with Google Docs.
http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=86152
Remember to share your document with dpogreba@gmail.com
I will post a more detailed guide later.
To add the AP Language class calendar, click on this link and then click on the + Google Calendar icon at the bottom right.
Is a discarded punctation mark dreamed up by an ad executive the symbol of our times?
Meet the interrobang:
On Monday I discovered the interrobang, and I have been thinking about it all week. And no, not because I am a grammar nerd, but because I think ? may just sum up something about our clever yet confused culture.
The interrobang is a combination of a question mark and an exclamation point. Many of us use this punctuation when we type ?!, but a real interrobang is a merger of these two symbols: ?
Punctuation expresses an attitude, an idea, and slant. Often we relegate punctuation to the background, deeming it a mere convention or formality. But with each colon, we make a point: one idea explains a previous one. Cause and effect. Sometimes we signal connections between ideas; punctuation can refine relationships between points. Although words can make an impact, punctuation, clauses, and syntax do a lot of work, too.
Slate Magazine reports about what they call the “most isolated man in the world,” a single member of a tribe in Brazil:
The most isolated man on the planet will spend tonight inside a leafy palm-thatch hut in the Brazilian Amazon. As always, insects will darn the air. Spider monkeys will patrol the treetops. Wild pigs will root in the undergrowth. And the man will remain a quietly anonymous fixture of the landscape, camouflaged to the point of near invisibility.That description relies on a few unknowable assumptions, obviously, but they’re relatively safe. The man’s isolation has been so well-established—and is so mind-bendingly extreme—that portraying him silently enduring another moment of utter solitude is a practical guarantee of reportorial accuracy.He’s an Indian, and Brazilian officials have concluded that he’s the last survivor of an uncontacted tribe. They first became aware of his existence nearly 15 years ago and for a decade launched numerous expeditions to track him, to ensure his safety, and to try to establish peaceful contact with him. In 2007, with ranching and logging closing in quickly on all sides, government officials declared a 31-square-mile area around him off-limits to trespassing and development.
