MGTutoring.com. A Rational Perspective on Education.

May 29, 2009

Fossil/Archaeological Dig Opportunity

Filed under: Announcements — Administrator @ 12:39 pm

Diana said on TAFFIE-ANNOUNCE:

This is a great Learning opportunity…we have gone the past few years and learn allot and get to dig for fossils and artifacts. You even get to bag, analyze and caterogize what you find. Wear a hat and sunscreen it gets hot out there! contact info in below, all I know is what is posted here. Just wanted to share!

Come dig with us!     Rancho de las Cabras     Floresville, Texas

It’s FREE!!!!

Join archaeologists from the UTSA Center for Archaeological Research and the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park at this 18th century Spanish Mission Ranch just outside San Antonio

When:

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May 27, 2009

Texas Highway Emergency Numbers

Filed under: Announcements — Administrator @ 1:58 pm

A member of TAFFIE-ANNOUNCE posted some good information (subject title: “Texas Highway Emergency Numbers”) on May 26th (10:14 PM CDT). She said:

If you are traveling on Texas highways this summer, be aware that Texas has a free courtesy patrol on major freeways in major cities. They will change a flat tire, give you gas, help start your car, or call you a tow truck. It is paid for by our taxes. Good phone numbers to have in your car. These hours seem to change, so if you have a problem, try a call anyway.

HOUSTON
6 am to 10 PM – Mon- Fri
TX Dot Courtesy Patrol
Mon, Tues, Wed, Sat, Sun – 10 PM to 6 am
713 225-5627

AUSTIN
6 am to 10 PM Mon.-Fri.
512 832-7310.

DALLAS
4:30 am to 10 PM – Mon-Fri
9:30 am to 6 PM Sat-Sun
214 320-4444
214 512-2726 – Beeper

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May 20, 2009

The Next Dance Show Starts…Tomorrow!!

Filed under: Announcements,Art — Administrator @ 2:53 pm

The first episode of this season’s “So You Think You Can Dance?” is tomorrow night, at 7 PM Central Time!

May 18, 2009

Summer Math Workshops: Houston, TX Area

Filed under: Announcements,Mathematics,MGTutoring — Administrator @ 3:17 pm

Does your child need review in particular areas of mathematics?

Would you like to give your child a better understanding of mathematical concepts and how they relate to real-life situations?

Are you wondering if your children really grasp what they’ve learned in their math courses this year?

If so, my Summer Math Workshops are just what you and your children need. (For information on my credentials and background, for testimonials, or for my teaching philosophy, see my Website.)

These workshops will cover specific areas of mathematics, giving students the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of particular concepts and to lay the foundation for future academic success. A workshop will consist of four classes meeting on four separate days over a two-week period. Each workshop will be offered in three summer sessions: one in June, one in July, and one in August. Students may sign up for individual workshops or attend the entire day.

But what is the value of my methods and classes?  Mrs. Helene Galloway says: “My son, Ryan, has participated in Mr. Gold’s algebra class this past year and has thoroughly enjoyed learning not just the mechanics of problem solving, but also why concepts are applied and how they relate to everyday life.  He has been learning a great deal from Mr. Gold in private geometry classes, too — the mechanics, the ‘why,’ the ‘how,’ the applications.”

In order to better serve the needs of the community, four different workshops at two levels, (1) upper elementary/lower junior high, and (2) upper junior high/high school, will be offered each session.  A minimum number of 8 students is needed for a workshop to “make”.  If the minimum number is not met, arrangements can be made for holding the desired workshop — cost would be on a sliding pay schedule depending on the number of students.

I.  Workshops to be offered include:

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May 15, 2009

This Weekend: Country-Western Dance Competition

Filed under: Announcements,Art — Administrator @ 9:38 pm

The Texas Classic is being held this weekend. It is a country-western dance competition held in Houston, TX, and currently owned by a lady who lives in Tomball, TX, and who owns a dance studio in Tomball.

YouTube has some videos of country-western dancing including some of some competitors (amateurs dancing with their pro teacher) from prior Texas Classic competitions:

two step (pro: Carmen, who is a Houstonian)

west coast (Carmen again)

nightclub two step (Carmen again)

Here are some other pro-ams routines from other competitions:

two step (pro: Rex Jones…damn he’s sharp and precise)

cha cha (pro: Ronnie DeBenedetta…damn good, too)

two step (Rex dancing with his pro wife Rachel)

compilation (local teenager Matt Wisnowski dancing with local teenager Jacy Estep and pro Rachel Jones)

I recommend you watch the 1st place in Showcase at the 2008 SwingDiego competition. Really nice…  And, wow, watch the 1st place in the Classic Division, too!

And check out Benji and Lacey Schwimmer (brother and sister) dancing the west coast swing. (Go one minute into video.) And they do another good one which was on iHollywood Dance. Ah, and be sure to watch Benji and his cousin from 2005!!! Fast and furious!!

Enjoy!!  If you want to see some good dancing in person, and you are in Houston this weekend, check out the competition!!

Update (6:15 PM): Two minor format changes and added the words “routines” and “pro”.

May 14, 2009

Happy Birthday, Dante!!

Filed under: Announcements — Administrator @ 1:23 pm

Dante Alighieri was born on (or around) this date (sometime in May or June) in (very likely) 1265, in Florence, Italy. Answers.com says of Dante:

An exiled and wandering figure during his writing lifetime, Dante is now considered Italy’s greatest poet — so much a literary giant that he is generally known by his first name alone. The Divine Comedy, by far his most famous work, is the story of a journey through Hell, Purgatory and finally Paradise. (The journey through Hell is often referred to independently as “Dante’s Inferno.”) In the poem the first two stages are guided by the Roman poet Virgil, and the final visit to Paradise is led by a woman named Beatrice — a girl Dante met briefly when he was nine and whom he idolized the rest of his life. The Divine Comedy is the source of many famous classical images, inspiring works by William Blake and others, and is famous for its inscription on the gates of Hell: “All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”

Who2 Biography. Copyright © 1998-2008 by Who2, LLC. All rights reserved. See the Dante Alighieri biography from Who2.

And they say:

Dante’s principal conventional philosophical work is the Convivio, or Banquet (1304-8), intended as a series of fourteen treatises of which only four are complete. De Monarchia (c. 1313) contains Dante’s political theory. But it is his masterpiece, the Divina Commedia, begun possibly as early as 1307, and finished just before his death, that is universally acknowledged as the literary embodiment of the moral, religious, and philosophical ideals of the late 13th and early 14th centuries.

The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Copyright © 1994, 1996, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Go to Answers.com to read more!!

May 11, 2009

Happy Mother’s Day!!

Filed under: Announcements — Administrator @ 1:21 am

Mothers and Fathers deserve a day — and more — of recognition and celebration for all their hard work and love…

May 7, 2009

Happy Birthday To…

Filed under: Americana,Announcements,Art — Administrator @ 3:38 pm

Gary Cooper (1901)!!!

He’s one of my favorite actors. The Internet Movie Database has a list of his movies, which include “High Noon,”  “Distant Drums,”  “The Fountainhead,”  “The Westerner,”  “The Plainsman,”  “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,”  “Unconquered,”  “Cloak and Dagger,”  “The Pride of the Yankees,”  “Meet John Doe,”  “Sergeant York.”

The IMDb says of Cooper (which page also has some good quotes from and “trivia” about Cooper):

“Dad was a true Westerner, and I take after him”, Gary Cooper told people who wanted to know more about his life before Hollywood. Dad was Charles Henry Cooper, who left his native England at 19, became a lawyer and later a Montana State Supreme Court justice. In 1906, when Gary was 5, his dad bought the Seven-Bar-Nine, a 600-acre ranch that had originally been a land grant to the builders of the railroad through that part of Montana. In 1910, Gary’s mother, who had been ill, was advised to take a long sea voyage by her doctor. She went to England and stayed there until the United States entered World War I. Gary and his older brother Arthur stayed with their mother and went to school in England for seven years. Too young to go to war, Gary spent the war years working on his father’s ranch. “Getting up at 5 o’clock in the morning in the dead of winter to feed 450 head of cattle and shoveling manure at 40 below ain’t romantic”, said the man who would take the Western to the top of its genre in High Noon (1952). So well liked was Cooper that he aroused little envy when, in 1939, the U.S. Treasury Department said that he was the nation’s top wage earner. That year he earned $482,819. This tall, silent hero was the American ideal for many people of his generation. Ernest Hemingway who lived his novels before he wrote them, was happy to have Gary Cooper play his protagonists in A Farewell to Arms (1932) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943).

Copyright © 1990-2009 IMDb.com, Inc.

Happy Birthday To…

Filed under: Announcements,Art — Administrator @ 2:57 pm

Johannes Brahms (1833) and Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky (1840)!!!!!

At Classical Archives (looks like a great site!! check it out!!!), they say of Brahms:

The stature of Johannes Brahms among classical composers is well illustrated by his inclusion among the “Three Bs” triumvirate of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. Of all the major composers of the late Romantic era, Brahms was the one most attached to the Classical ideal as manifested in the music of Haydn, Mozart, and especially Beethoven; indeed, Hans von Bülow once characterized Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 (1855-1876) as “Beethoven’s Tenth.” As a youth, Brahms was championed by Robert Schumann as music’s greatest hope for the future; as a mature composer, Brahms became for conservative musical journalists the most potent symbol of musical tradition, a stalwart against the “degeneration” represented by the music of Wagner and his school. Brahms’ symphonies, choral and vocal works, chamber music, and piano pieces are imbued with strong emotional feeling, yet take shape according to a thoroughly considered structural plan.

© AMG, All Music Guide

© 1994-2009 Classical Archives LLC — Music For The Rest Of Us ®

and of Tchaikovsky:

Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky was the author of some of the most popular themes in all of classical music. He founded no school, struck out no new paths or compositional methods, and sought few innovations in his works. Yet the power and communicative sweep of his best music elevates it to classic status, even if it lacks the formal boldness and harmonic sophistication heard in the compositions of his contemporaries, Wagner and Bruckner. It was Tchaikovsky’s unique melodic charm that could, whether in his Piano Concerto No. 1 or in his ballet The Nutcracker or in his tragic last symphony, make the music sound familiar on first hearing..

© AMG, All Music Guide

© 1994-2009 Classical Archives LLC — Music For The Rest Of Us ®

The Classical Composers Database looks like it, too, might be interesting and valuable.

April 30, 2009

Happy Birthday, Mr. Gauss!!

Filed under: Announcements,History,Mathematics — Administrator @ 12:54 pm

The Prince of Mathematicians.

Bookrags.com says in a short bio of Gauss:

Karl Friedrich Gauss was born in Brunswick on April 30, 1777. At an early age his intellectual abilities attracted the attention of the Duke of Brunswick, who secured his education first at the Collegium Carolinum (1792-1795) in his native city and then at the University of Göttingen (1795-1798). In 1801 Gauss published Disquisitiones arithmeticae, a work of such originality that it is often regarded as marking the beginning of the modern theory of numbers. The discovery by Giuseppe Piazzi of the asteroid Ceres in 1801 stimulated Gauss’s interest in astronomy, and upon the death of his patron, the Duke of Brunswick, Gauss was appointed director of the observatory in Göttingen, where he remained for the rest of his life. In 1831 he collaborated with Wilhelm Weber in the establishment of a geomagnetic survey in Göttingen.

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