Mass movement, to review or to code, and other stuff

[Jen Reese]

Kelly:
> On a completely unrelated and off-topic note, to all you Brits, do 
you
> learn to spell by sound rather than letter?  My sister works in a
> popular destination for British tourists (well, tourists of all
> nationality, really, but half of the UK seems to migrate there at
> certain times of the year).  And she's noticed that when she asks
> young kids to spell their names, they don't use letters, but 
sounds. 
> For example, my name would be k at -e-@l- at l-j@  rather than
> keI-i:-el-el-waI.  Is this a widespread technique for learning to
> spell over there?

Jen: I think that's true in much of America too, learning to spell 
phonetically first. My son who just finished Kinder was encouraged 
to journal every day, writing words and sentences with 'creative 
spelling' where they attempt to spell words based on how they sound 
rather than worrying about spelling them correctly. Is that what 
you're talking about, Kelly? Re: names though, they definitely 
learned how to spell their first and last names by letter rather 
than by sound. 

Kelly: 
> And on another slightly off-topic note, abovementioned sister was
> visiting me this weekend, and we got into a HP discussion, at which
> point I noticed just how far beyond the normal range of HP 
obsession I
> have journeyed.  She's a big fan and has read the books multiple
> times.  But she didn't realize there was a huge internal 
inconsistancy
> about the number of students at Hogwarts...  never realized that 
if we
> assumed a large Weasley age gap and if we filled that gap with a
> missing son, then Ron is a seventh son and that just might imply 
he's
> a seer... passed right over Mark Evans without a second glance... 
had
> no clue who Florence was.  Hmmm...     


Jen: It's weird when you realize you've crossed over to a different 
level than the average fan walking around. My time came when my sis-
in-law asked to borrow POA becuase she'd "watched COS" and was ready 
for the next installment. What?!? That *hardly* counts as being 
ready for POA. ;)

By comparison, when watching "Return of the Sith" yesterday, I was 
able to enjoy it completely for entertainment value and had no 
interest in dissecting the many plot inconsistencies that must be 
there. I'm sure websites across the Internet are analyzing every 
single detail at the moment. But no, just give me the story of how 
Anakin turned evil and I'm happy.