Rick Duncan, of the Red State Lawblog, has found a great story in AZ Central. At first I thought he had to be making it up.

Bus drivers will now be known as “Transporters of Learners.” Receptionists have also been replaced, by “Directors of First Impressions.” Three assistant superintendents also gained new titles: the Asst. Superintendent of Personnel is now “Executive Director of Human Capital”; the Asst. Superintendent of Elementary Schools is now “Executive Director for Elementary Schools and Excelling Teaching and Learning”; and the Asst. Superintendent of Support Services will now be known as “Chief of Facilities and Management for Learners.”

I’m not even sure what to say. Wow.

First, some housekeeping: I will be on vacation next week, and so will be posting little if anything of interest (I apologize to those of who you will be disappointed when I return). But don’t take MZ off of your RSS feeds, because I’ll be sure to return rested and ready to pontificate, or maybe bloviate. Whichever. And also, Taste of Liberty might be around…

Now, the real meat of this post: During that time, when my postings on MZ will be relatively static, I will be conducting a little experiment, which came to me earlier today.

Let’s see if I can get “define: instalanche” to return a definition via Google. Right now, no definitions are found. I also can find nowhere online which explains how to become an official source of definitions, but I have my theories, and so here goes.

Technical terms defined in this glossary below are culled from various dictionaries, glossaries, and other sites that define words around the web. “Definitions“, “lists of terms“, and a “word list” are all ways that you could describe the following set of definitions in this glossary. ;-)

In fact, let’s limit this to a glossary of terms starting with the letter I, and for additional fun, a set of definitions for words starting with the letter M:

IATEFL: International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language.

Idiom: an expression in the usage of a language that has a meaning that cannot be derived from the conjoined meanings of its elements (e.g., raining cats and dogs)

Immersion Method: This simulates the way in which children acquire their mother tongue. The learner is surrounded by the foreign language, with no deliberate or organized teaching programme. The learner absorbs the target language naturally without conscious effort.

Inductive Learning: Learning to apply the rules of a language by experiencing the language in use, rather than by having the rules explained or by consciously deducing the rules.

Inflection: The change in form of a word, which indicates a grammatical change:eg. behave - behaved - behaviour - misbehave.

Inferencing: This is the means by which the learner forms hypotheses, through attending to input, or using the situational context to interpret the input.

Input: This constitutes the language to which the learner is exposed. It can be spoken or written. It serves as the data which the learner must use to determine the rules of the target language.

Instalanche: An immediate spike in web site traffic, lasting up to 48 hours, as a result of a link from Glenn Reynolds’ blog, Instapundit.com.

Interaction analysis: This is a research procedure used to investigate classroom communication. It involves the use of a system of categories to record and analyse the different ways in which teachers and students use language.

Interactional tasks: Tasks which promote communication and interaction. The idea behind this approach is that he primary purpose of speech is the maintenance of social relationships.

Interactionist learning theory: This theory emphasizes the joint contributions of the linguistic environment and the learner’s internal mechanisms in language development. Learning results from an interaction between the learner’s mental abilities and the liguistic input.

Interference: According to behviorist learning theory, the patterns of the learner’s mother tongue (L1) get in the way of learning the patterns of the L2. This is referred to as ‘interference’.

Interlanguage: The learner’s knowledge of the L2 which is independent of both the L1 and the actual L2. This term can refer to: i) the series of interlocking systems which characterize acquisition; ii) the system that is observed at a single stage of development (an ‘interlanguage’); and iii) particular L1/L2 combinations.

Intermediate: At this level a student will have a working vocabulary of between 1500 and 2000 words and should be able to cope easily in most everyday situations. There should be an ability to express needs, thoughts and feelings in a reasonably clear way.

Intensive Reading: Reading for specific understanding of information, usually of shorter texts.

Intonation: The ways in which the voice pitch rises and falls in speech.

Income-tax time: When you test your powers of deduction.

Independent: How we want our children to be as long as they do everything we say.

Industrious: Getting to work half an hour before the boss does.

Ineffable: A guaranteed Grade-A exam result.

Inflation: When the buck doesn’t stop anywhere.

Monovision: This is a contact lens fitting technique that is an alternative to bifocal glasses, bifocal contacts or reading glasses. It may be used with either soft or GP contacts. One eye is fit with a contact lens for distance vision, and the other eye is fit for near vision. Although it is an effective technique, it does have disadvantages. For example, many people who use monovision report compromised depth perception.

Multifocal: A type of spectacle or contact lens design that includes more than one focal area. Bifocals and trifocals are both multifocal lens designs.

Myopia: Nearsightedness.

Myopic Zeal: A really, really great blog. One of the best emerging blogs in the blogosphere.

Attribution: Mostly excerpted from Finchpark, a random Geocities site, and Contactlenses.org. With a little help from Jawa. And joining OTB’s Linkfest.

If any of you, my wonderful readers or fellow bloggers, would like to help in this cause, feel free to trackback to this post and increase it’s profile a bit. And maybe, just maybe, when I get back from my vacation I will be able to define: instalanche.

Michelle and Captain Ed are giving voice to this story.

Three invited pro-military speakers were shocked last Friday when they arrived for a West Seattle High student assembly to confront a theater stage strewn with figures costumed as Iraqi men, women and children splashed with blood.

It was a warm-up for the “Iraq Awareness Assembly” so no students except the actual actors saw the skit before the military guests complained to principal Susan Derse and she put a stop to it. And here comes the crucial part: no teachers or advisers were on hand or evidently even aware of the content although that part is one of several things still under investigation. …

Yeah, right.

Pirate-King suggests a new ending for Red Dawn:

Remember the ending of Red Dawn? The good guys fighting the Soviets are killed, but eventually the US military takes back control?

I have an alternate ending. We give them Washington state instead. They won’t even need any troops to pacify them, they’ll gladly surrender and turn in any resistance themselves. At least in the Seattle area.

In the Bullpen agrees with me, there is no way these teachers didn’t know what was going on.

Secure Liberty adds:

Fortunately the school put a stop to it. War is indeed bloody, but as I said in the comments, if you believe that our military hasn’t gone above and beyond to protect Iraqi civilians, you’re simply not credible. The notion that the war in Iraq has been a negative for the Iraqi people generally has no basis in fact.

Tutus? Too few twos?

It turns out that when regular gas prices top $2 a gallon, it can be a pain for station owners, too — sometimes there aren’t enough twos to go around for their signs.

As average prices for regular unleaded topped the $2 mark in Nashville yesterday, there’s been a growing demand for the number 2 from some convenience-store and gas-station owners, said Bobby Joslin of Joslin and Son Sign Co.

And, talk about a rabbit trail, on a whim I threw define: tutu into Google and, lo and behold, one of the definitions is from a site called the Joy of Kidding. Which makes me wonder, how do you become an official definer of words according to Google. I’ll have to research this, and begin defining words.

The Associated Press has this headline: House Enters Schiavo Right-To-Die Case, and the story proceeds to discuss the intervention of the HoR in the Schiavo case.

But… “Right to Die“? How about “Right to Live“?

Anyway, here’s the story:

Congress was immersed Thursday in the controversy over removing the feeding tube from a brain-damaged Florida woman whose husband has been given permission by a state court to let her die.

Within hours of the Republican-controlled House’s passage of a bill to block the removal of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., announced the Senate would take up a seperate bill to address the situation before leaving for its Easter recess on Friday.

“The question is, should we allow her to be starved to death?” Frist said Thursday in a Senate speech. “It has to do with the culture of life. And I believe this body is going to have to speak on this particular matter before we leave.”

Here is an interesting interview with Henry Copeland from Blogads.

I’m about to start looking more seriously into this now that my traffic has crossed the 1,000 visitors per day mark. If you’re interested in advertising on Myopic Zeal, check back here soon!

Baseball Crank thinks Jeff Gannon ought to check this out. Here is Elisabeth Bumiller, of the NYT, asking a question of the president:

Elisabeth.

Q Paul Wolfowitz, who was the — a chief architect of one of the most unpopular wars in our history —

THE PRESIDENT: (Laughter.) That’s an interesting start. (Laughter.)

Q — is your choice to be the President of the World Bank. What kind of signal does that send to the rest of the world?

The bias of the questioner was so obvious the press corps laughed… where’s Gannon when you need him?

If you appreciate good nature photography, as I do, check out JLB’s Cascade Exposures.

Nice stuff.

After yesterday’s linkage from the puppy eating blogger and Michelle Malkin, the scale on my chart makes my 1,000 visitor days seem quite disappointing. Everyone always gets excited about an Instalanche, but no one has ever warned me about the experience the morning after.

Remember, blog responsibly, and my personal recommendation is to work as hard as you can to avoid an instalanche, unless you are prepared to deal with the lasting consequences it will have on your life.

Sure wish there was a pill for this, or something.

You decide.

It seems Terri is out of legal options. There is a fascinating question from RightWingSparkle, who posted this over at Wizbang:

I have a question. If they remove the feeding tube, can the parents feed her through her mouth? Like with liquids? I understand that she can swallow.

SmarterCop parses a quote by Michael Schiavo on Nightline:

“To sit here and be called a murderer and an adulterer by people that don’t know me, and a governor stepping into my personal, private life, who doesn’t know me either … what kind of government is this?'’

a·dul·ter·y n. : Voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and a partner other than the lawful spouse.

Hopefully the new bill preventing this killing can be passed in time.

The Captain reminds us of what I alluded to yesterday, that maybe, just maybe, Terri has never had a fair examination.

ThreeBadFingers has an interesting transcript of a discussion with Justice Scalia.

Kent Hughes:
Mr. Justice Scalia, what do you think has caused the emergence of the Living Constitution doctrine? What were the forces in society, were there pressures that were not responded to by the legislature? What caused the emergence of this new doctrine?

Justice Scalia:
I don’t know. Perhaps the question should be: how did we get away without having it develop much sooner. I mean it’s enormously seductive to a judge. The Living Constitution judge is a happy fellow. He comes home at night and his wife says, “Dear, did you have a good day on the bench?” “Oh, yes. We had a constitutional case today. And you know what? The Constitution meant exactly what I thought it ought to mean!” Well of course it does, because that’s your only criterion. That’s a very seductive philosophy. So it’s no surprise that it should take the society by storm. And it is the same thing for the man or woman in the street: to know that everything you care passionately about, whether it’s abortion or suicide, or whatever you care passionately about, it’s there in the Constitution. What a happy feeling. That’s what causes it. And that’s what makes it hard to call the society back from it. It’s tough medicine.

OTB has some other observations about the interview.

Artnet.com:

As for the claim that he failed to give the museum a chance to present its point of view, D’Arcy says he has a fax in which the museum declines to participate in the story.

NPR, where D’Arcy has been a freelance contributor for 20 years, gave D’Arcy a two-paragraph “termination” memo accusing him of overlooking “basic standards of journalism” in the report. D’Arcy says adamantly that “MoMA was not able to find any inaccuracies in the report, and the correction aired and posted by NPR does not address any inaccuracies.”

High-profile reporters and experts in Nazi-era art resitution have rallied to D’Arcy’s cause. In a letter to the NPR board, Morley Safer suggests that the broadcaster “has caved in to intimidation by a large, wealthy and powerful cultural institution.”

Also at Slate and ArtsJournal. Edward at Obsidian Wings says:

Now the aspect of the “scandal” currently getting the most attention is the fact that NPR relieved D’Arcy of his duties for allegedly overlooking “basic standards of journalism” in his report. I listened to that story, and it seems pretty damn balanced to me. What the art world is whispering about is what MoMA did to get D’Arcy fired. According to artnet.com, D’Arcy’s lawyer is exploring the options open to him.

And I thought that sometimes my kids had trouble with patience. Check out this story:

Law enforcement officers are searching tonight for a man who escaped from jail just hours before his release time.

Michelle Malkin wants a correction from Mr. Kristof and the NYT.

Yesterday he wrote an editorial citing as fact the speculative idea that abortions “have increased significantly during President Bush’s presidency.”

Michelle:

I encourage readers to ask Kristof (nicholas@nytimes.com), editorial page editor Gail Collins (editorial@nytimes.com), and Times ombudsman Daniel Okrent (public@nytimes.com) for a correction.