Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Character is How We Deal With the Things We Don't Get Over.
From this article about the widowed father of two young boys and how they coped. It touched me deeply.
Two employees from a department store who were spending a day with friends at the beach find themselves falsely accused of some minor, pettifogging violations of the law, and one of their smooth-talking pals talks them out of the police station with a rousing speech:
Starting about the 7:45 mark- "Let a man say you were spitting on the sidewalk when you weren't and the next thing you know he'll be tearing up the Constitution. I don't care how small the right is you're trying to take away from me, I'll fight for it..."
And then he starts reciting the Constitution. "That always means trouble," says the police chief, right before he lets him go.
It's a funny little movie- 1941, starring Jean Arthur, Charles Coburn, and others. It's a pro-union, anti big business man film with a somewhat predictable twist and some smiles and screwball silliness along the way.
Starting about the 7:45 mark- "Let a man say you were spitting on the sidewalk when you weren't and the next thing you know he'll be tearing up the Constitution. I don't care how small the right is you're trying to take away from me, I'll fight for it..."
And then he starts reciting the Constitution. "That always means trouble," says the police chief, right before he lets him go.
It's a funny little movie- 1941, starring Jean Arthur, Charles Coburn, and others. It's a pro-union, anti big business man film with a somewhat predictable twist and some smiles and screwball silliness along the way.
Gives new meaning to Birthday Bash
The Boy has been planning, replanning, arranging and rearranging a series of events for his birthday. He has things planned for every hour all. day. long. He just told me that he realized he has a two hour gap in the itinerary.
"So I thought," he said with a grin, "We'd spend those two hours just casually blowing things up."
The Tea Chemist is looking up recipes for homemade fireworks.
"So I thought," he said with a grin, "We'd spend those two hours just casually blowing things up."
The Tea Chemist is looking up recipes for homemade fireworks.
To Mow or Not to Mow
(repost)
And the green grass grew all around....
So goes the old folk song, anyway. Except for Colorado and New Mexico we've had the green grass, too. And the green weeds flourishing like the bay tree of scripture. Wherever we live, the weeds grow, and I generally like it that way because I like wildflowers, and wild flowers do not do well where they get mowed down every couple of weeks. But wherever we've lived we've been the odd folks out for my preferences for the wile and unkempt (albeit floral).
I guess we were both behind and ahead of the times.
He promoted the green and velvety lawn, and the public promoted his book, and a new lawn-cutter was developed, and over the years we got where we are today- where you are a bad neighbor if your lawn is not a velvety expanse of weed free grass, neatly clipped and trimmed.
We spend some forty billion dollars a year on grass- the legal sort. That includes seed, equipment, and poisons- lots of poisons. While we think of the velvety expanse of grass as a pleasant place for children to play- and I admit cool green grass does feel nice beneath bare feet, most suburban lawns hide lurking dangers- chemicals that run off into our water.
Yet not to have such a lawn is viewed as un-neighborly, anti-social, slovenly, even.
A lawn is a symbol, a way to communicate something in our culture.
Several different writers have addressed the lawn culture adn offered solutions. The real problem with the grassy lawn, besides the trouble it takes, is that it's another monoculture. And variety is the spice of life:
Not all places and spaces will yield the same results, of course. I don't think we could have grown any fruits and veggies in our Colorado yard- it was dry, brown, and sandy. We did get some pretty wildflowers, however.
That list of plants sounds charming to me.
Here all this time I thought we were just, um, relaxed, and it turns out we were part of a bono-fide political, cultural, environmental movement- the anti-lawn movement, the freedom lawn brigade.
It has a much nicer ring to it than lazy.=)
And the green grass grew all around....
So goes the old folk song, anyway. Except for Colorado and New Mexico we've had the green grass, too. And the green weeds flourishing like the bay tree of scripture. Wherever we live, the weeds grow, and I generally like it that way because I like wildflowers, and wild flowers do not do well where they get mowed down every couple of weeks. But wherever we've lived we've been the odd folks out for my preferences for the wile and unkempt (albeit floral).
I guess we were both behind and ahead of the times.
In 1841, Andrew Jackson Downing published the first landscape-gardening book aimed at an American audience. At the time, Downing was twenty-five years old and living in Newburgh, New York. He owned a nursery, which he had inherited from his father, and for several years had been publishing loftily titled articles, such as “Remarks on the Duration of the Improved Varieties of New York Fruit Trees,” in horticultural magazines. Downing was dismayed by what he saw as the general slovenliness of rural America, where pigs and poultry were allowed to roam free, “bare and bald” houses were thrown up, and trees were planted haphazardly, if at all. (The first practice, he complained, contributed to the generally “brutal aspect of the streets.”) His “Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening” urged readers to improve themselves by improving their front yards. “In the landscape garden we appeal to that sense of the Beautiful and the Perfect, which is one of the highest attributes of our nature,” it declared.
He promoted the green and velvety lawn, and the public promoted his book, and a new lawn-cutter was developed, and over the years we got where we are today- where you are a bad neighbor if your lawn is not a velvety expanse of weed free grass, neatly clipped and trimmed.
We spend some forty billion dollars a year on grass- the legal sort. That includes seed, equipment, and poisons- lots of poisons. While we think of the velvety expanse of grass as a pleasant place for children to play- and I admit cool green grass does feel nice beneath bare feet, most suburban lawns hide lurking dangers- chemicals that run off into our water.
Yet not to have such a lawn is viewed as un-neighborly, anti-social, slovenly, even.
The lawn has become so much a part of the suburban landscape that it is difficult to see it as something that had to be invented.
A lawn is a symbol, a way to communicate something in our culture.
A lawn may be pleasing to look at, or provide the children with a place to play, or offer the dog room to relieve himself, but it has no productive value. The only work it does is cultural. In Downing’s day, the servant-mowed lawn stood, eloquently, for the power structure that made it possible: who but the very rich could afford such a pointless luxury? As mechanical mowers enabled middle-class suburbanites to cut their own grass, this meaning was lost and a different one took hold. A lawn came to signal its owner’s commitment to a communitarian project: the upkeep of the greensward that linked one yard to the next.
“A fine carpet of green grass stamps the inhabitants as good neighbors, as desirable citizens,” Abraham Levitt wrote. (By covenant, the original Levittowners agreed to mow their lawns once a week between April 15th and November 15th.) “The appearance of a lawn bespeaks the personal values of the resident,” a group called the Lawn Institute declared. “Some feel that a person who keeps the lawn perfectly clipped is a person who can be trusted.”
Several different writers have addressed the lawn culture adn offered solutions. The real problem with the grassy lawn, besides the trouble it takes, is that it's another monoculture. And variety is the spice of life:
Over the years, many alternatives to the lawn have been proposed. Pollan, in his book “Second Nature” (1991), suggests replacing parts—or all—of the lawn with garden. In “Noah’s Garden” (1993), Sara Stein, by contrast, advocates “ungardening”—essentially allowing the grass to revert to thicket. Sally and Andy Wasowski, in their “Requiem for a Lawnmower” (2004), recommend filling the yard with native trees and wildflowers. For those who don’t want to give up the look or the playing space provided by a lawn, the Wasowskis suggest using Buffalo grass, one of the very few turf species native to North America. Smaller American Lawns Today, or SALT, is a concept developed by William Niering, who for many years was a professor of botany at Connecticut College. Niering planted trees around his property, then left most of the rest of his yard unmowed, to become a meadow. “The meadow can take as much of your remaining lawn as you want,” he observes in an essay posted on SALT’s Web site. “There are some people who prefer no lawn, which is ideal!” For the past few decades, David Benner, a horticulturist from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, has been touting moss as an alternative to grass: he himself has a one-acre “moss garden.” Recently, there have been several calls to make the lawnspace productive. In “Food Not Lawns” (2006), Heather C. Flores argues that the average yard could yield several hundred pounds of fruits and vegetables per year. (If you live in an urban area and don’t have a lawn, she suggests digging up your driveway.) “Edible Estates” (2008) is the chronicle of a project by Fritz Haeg, an architect and artist, who rips up conventional front yards in order to replace them with visually striking “edible plantings.” Haeg calls his approach “full-frontal gardening.”
Not all places and spaces will yield the same results, of course. I don't think we could have grown any fruits and veggies in our Colorado yard- it was dry, brown, and sandy. We did get some pretty wildflowers, however.
The Northeast is one of the relatively few regions in the country that are actually well suited to lawns. There, the simplest alternative to the modern, industrialized lawn may be a lawn that functions more or less as it did in the eighteen-forties, before herbicides or even sprinklers had been invented. In “Redesigning the American Lawn” (1993), F. Herbert Bormann, Diana Balmori, and Gordon T. Geballe dub such a lawn the Freedom Lawn. The Freedom Lawn consists of grass mixed with whatever else happens to seed itself, which, the authors note, might include:
dandelion, violets, bluets, spurrey, chickweed, chrysanthemum, brown-eyed Susan, partridge berry, Canada mayflower, various clovers, plantains, evening primrose, rushes, and wood rush, as well as grasses not usually associated with the well-manicured lawn, such as broomsedge, sweet vernal grass, timothy, quack grass, oat grass, crabgrass, and foxtail grass.
The Freedom Lawn is still mowed—preferably with a push-mower—but it is watered infrequently, if at all, and receives no chemical “inputs.” If a brown spot develops, it is likely soon to be filled by what some might call weeds, but which Bormann, Balmori, and Geballe would rather refer to as “low growing broad-leaved plants.”
That list of plants sounds charming to me.
Here all this time I thought we were just, um, relaxed, and it turns out we were part of a bono-fide political, cultural, environmental movement- the anti-lawn movement, the freedom lawn brigade.
It has a much nicer ring to it than lazy.=)
Monday, June 29, 2009
The Things Kids Say
Flower-Flies and Nightening Bugs, that's what Blynken and Nod called lightening bugs on Friday night when they caught them and put them in a jar.
I love 'nightening bugs.'
I love 'nightening bugs.'
Dementia's On First
An online friend of Granny Tea's tells this story (I've changed the names) about life at her house (her spouse has dementia). She'd told him a day or so ago about some things they might do. Then she repeated them yesterday because he doesn't usually remember what she's told him, but he said, "You already told me that." She responded, "I wasn't sure you'd remembered."
John – “How am I supposed to know what I will remember or not remember?”
Gail – “Well, how am I supposed to know what you will remember or not remember?
John – “I don’t know, because I don’t remember.”
Gail – “If you don’t know what you’ll remember, I certainly can’t know what you’ll remember.”
John – “It’s confusing.”
Gail- “I give up.”
Granny Tea and I were discussing Blynken's reluctance to go home and I pointed out that at our busy household, where 9 of us are currently living and Shasta and the Equuschick are likely to be here for some chunk of every day, he always has somebody to play with and do things with him and for him. At his second floor apartment, his mother is the only one to cook, clean, do laundry (which is downstairs), take care of his younger brother- and not even the most devoted, single mindedly doting of mothers could duplicate the sheer amount of attention he gets here.
"Yes," said Granny Tea. "I sympathize with single parents. It's a hard job. And I should know, I am one now. Only mine is over six feet tall, and somehow, I think it's much harder."
"Well, for one thing," I agreed, "He's not nearly as cute as Blynken and Nod."
John – “How am I supposed to know what I will remember or not remember?”
Gail – “Well, how am I supposed to know what you will remember or not remember?
John – “I don’t know, because I don’t remember.”
Gail – “If you don’t know what you’ll remember, I certainly can’t know what you’ll remember.”
John – “It’s confusing.”
Gail- “I give up.”
Granny Tea and I were discussing Blynken's reluctance to go home and I pointed out that at our busy household, where 9 of us are currently living and Shasta and the Equuschick are likely to be here for some chunk of every day, he always has somebody to play with and do things with him and for him. At his second floor apartment, his mother is the only one to cook, clean, do laundry (which is downstairs), take care of his younger brother- and not even the most devoted, single mindedly doting of mothers could duplicate the sheer amount of attention he gets here.
"Yes," said Granny Tea. "I sympathize with single parents. It's a hard job. And I should know, I am one now. Only mine is over six feet tall, and somehow, I think it's much harder."
"Well, for one thing," I agreed, "He's not nearly as cute as Blynken and Nod."
Me, me, me, me
I thought about posting a sort of shallow, easy, but kind of fun questionnaire. You know the sort of thing:
1. What are you wearing?
Black cotton skirt, lime green shirt, black and lime green thong sandals, lacey black head-covering. Glasses. Band-aids. Excess weight....
2. Name five things you can see right now.
a. my purse, yet another one which is losing its strap because I fill purses too much
b. unfolded laundry. LOTS of unfolded laundry
c. The book Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
d. the sales fliers for the local grocery stores
e. The Zeus dog, which surprises me greatly, as I thought his person came in here an hour ago to tell me good-bye.
3. What's for dinner?
Ham roast, cheesey potatoes, hopefully a salad. Then we go next door for cake and ice-cream for my Dad's birthday. I was horribly neglectful and did not call him for father's day. He was in another state visiting one of my two brother's (the other doesn't speak to him), and I was in another state visiting friends, keeping Blynken and Nod, and first it was just too busy and then I couldn't think of anything to say, so I didn't.
Anyway, Pip's cooking, it's her night.We're having company, out of town guests from Arkansas are arriving today. (company has car trouble and are stranded six hours south of us waiting for a mechanic). I have no idea how long they are staying. Well, that's not entirely true. I know how long ONE of them is staying, approximately a week to ten days IIRC. There are three, and I don't know if the other two are staying the same amount of time or not.
Incidentally, one of these days I am actually going to keep track of how many people we feed in a week, and then I will quit feeling so guilty that I cannot keep my grocery budget down as low as other people with large families seem to be able to do.
4. Last book completed?
Cold Comfort Farm- I thought I had read this. I am sure that I have always checked off on any booklists where it appears that I have read this. But I have been thinking all this time of some other, completely different book. I don't know exactly what book, but the book I remembered as Cold Comfort Farm is a vaguely sappy, some social commentary, not very funny to me novel set in the American South, and that book is an imposter. I don't know what the real title is. Because it turns out I never had read Cold Comfort Farm until this week and it's set in what appears to be the 20's in England and it's hilarious. And I just learned there was a movie, too, starring Stephen Fry. (Updated to add: don't bother. I watched some on youtube and found it explicit where the book is tactfully discreet)
5. How do you feel about arts and crafts? I ask this because, while I am not a phony arts and crafts person, I did supply plenty of experience with paints, paper, clay, glue, play-dough and so forth to my kids when they were little (they can have them now, too, but they are grown up enough to buy their own and except for Jenny, they mostly don't want them). By 'phony' arts and crafts I mean things like, oh, ugly ash trays made of toothpicks and drinking straws- or anything made of drinking straws, really- and caterpillars made of egg cartons and that sort of thing. We did once make rolling turtles out of walnuts- you decorate a walnut half like a turtle (or something else if you like) and put a marble under it and let it roll around on a slanted surface. To me this wasn't a 'fake' craft because it was making a fun toy that could actually be played with for a long time.
So we did these kinds of things often when the kids were younger, and I didn't think it was any big deal. But I'm doing that home-school co-op thing (for my sins, and I am still not sure why), and we had parents interested fill out a survey asking them what they most wanted in a co-op, and the results were:
Algebra
high school lab sciences
PE
and Arts and crafts- these things were all billed as things parents often couldn't do by themselves or required a group. I get that about some P.E.- you can't play team sports if you have two kids. And it would be sad never to get to play a game of kickball or volleyball. But arts and crafts for the little kids? I don't understand. What is so hard about sitting the kids on a shower curtain and handing them the play-dough or water colors and paper? Or naked in the bathtub with shaving cream and food coloring and letting them fingerpaint? Or even handing them glue and glitter at Christmas? Why does that require a surrogate for it to happen at all? And I say this NOT in the spirit of criticism, honest. It's just that, when I expressed some befuddlement, or really, surprise, about why moms needed a co-op in order to do even the most basic arts and crafts stuff, the other moms all looked at me like I had three heads, and at least one had a wart on its nose and spinach in its teeth.
I know I don't fit in and I have no kindred spirits. But sometimes.... I just am taken aback at all the ways this is true.
6. Houseplants? Yes? No? If yes, how many and what kind? If no, why not?
Me: Yes. I have over 25 right now (there are somewhere between 3 and 6 spiderplants upstairs but I didn't go up to count). Sometimes more, sometimes less when they die of neglect. Mostly aloe vera, geraniums, and spider plants. Petunias in the sunroom, one scented geranium in the kitchen, and a couple philodendrons and a rubber plant. I am surprised it was 25. I really don't think it looks like that many, and I always want more. Oh, and I think an African violet is recovering from a shocking near death experience when I forgot all about it for nearly three months, and then set it outside where it was alternatively chilled and drowned by rains.
7. If you could ask me one question, what would it be? (email if you'd rather- heartkeepercommonroom. It's a gmail account.
Me: I ask myself this question almost every night: What's WRONG with you? Why do you stay up so late? You know you'll regret it the next day.
1. What are you wearing?
Black cotton skirt, lime green shirt, black and lime green thong sandals, lacey black head-covering. Glasses. Band-aids. Excess weight....
2. Name five things you can see right now.
a. my purse, yet another one which is losing its strap because I fill purses too much
b. unfolded laundry. LOTS of unfolded laundry
c. The book Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
d. the sales fliers for the local grocery stores
e. The Zeus dog, which surprises me greatly, as I thought his person came in here an hour ago to tell me good-bye.
3. What's for dinner?
Ham roast, cheesey potatoes, hopefully a salad. Then we go next door for cake and ice-cream for my Dad's birthday. I was horribly neglectful and did not call him for father's day. He was in another state visiting one of my two brother's (the other doesn't speak to him), and I was in another state visiting friends, keeping Blynken and Nod, and first it was just too busy and then I couldn't think of anything to say, so I didn't.
Anyway, Pip's cooking, it's her night.
Incidentally, one of these days I am actually going to keep track of how many people we feed in a week, and then I will quit feeling so guilty that I cannot keep my grocery budget down as low as other people with large families seem to be able to do.
4. Last book completed?
Cold Comfort Farm- I thought I had read this. I am sure that I have always checked off on any booklists where it appears that I have read this. But I have been thinking all this time of some other, completely different book. I don't know exactly what book, but the book I remembered as Cold Comfort Farm is a vaguely sappy, some social commentary, not very funny to me novel set in the American South, and that book is an imposter. I don't know what the real title is. Because it turns out I never had read Cold Comfort Farm until this week and it's set in what appears to be the 20's in England and it's hilarious. And I just learned there was a movie, too, starring Stephen Fry. (Updated to add: don't bother. I watched some on youtube and found it explicit where the book is tactfully discreet)
5. How do you feel about arts and crafts? I ask this because, while I am not a phony arts and crafts person, I did supply plenty of experience with paints, paper, clay, glue, play-dough and so forth to my kids when they were little (they can have them now, too, but they are grown up enough to buy their own and except for Jenny, they mostly don't want them). By 'phony' arts and crafts I mean things like, oh, ugly ash trays made of toothpicks and drinking straws- or anything made of drinking straws, really- and caterpillars made of egg cartons and that sort of thing. We did once make rolling turtles out of walnuts- you decorate a walnut half like a turtle (or something else if you like) and put a marble under it and let it roll around on a slanted surface. To me this wasn't a 'fake' craft because it was making a fun toy that could actually be played with for a long time.
So we did these kinds of things often when the kids were younger, and I didn't think it was any big deal. But I'm doing that home-school co-op thing (for my sins, and I am still not sure why), and we had parents interested fill out a survey asking them what they most wanted in a co-op, and the results were:
Algebra
high school lab sciences
PE
and Arts and crafts- these things were all billed as things parents often couldn't do by themselves or required a group. I get that about some P.E.- you can't play team sports if you have two kids. And it would be sad never to get to play a game of kickball or volleyball. But arts and crafts for the little kids? I don't understand. What is so hard about sitting the kids on a shower curtain and handing them the play-dough or water colors and paper? Or naked in the bathtub with shaving cream and food coloring and letting them fingerpaint? Or even handing them glue and glitter at Christmas? Why does that require a surrogate for it to happen at all? And I say this NOT in the spirit of criticism, honest. It's just that, when I expressed some befuddlement, or really, surprise, about why moms needed a co-op in order to do even the most basic arts and crafts stuff, the other moms all looked at me like I had three heads, and at least one had a wart on its nose and spinach in its teeth.
I know I don't fit in and I have no kindred spirits. But sometimes.... I just am taken aback at all the ways this is true.
6. Houseplants? Yes? No? If yes, how many and what kind? If no, why not?
Me: Yes. I have over 25 right now (there are somewhere between 3 and 6 spiderplants upstairs but I didn't go up to count). Sometimes more, sometimes less when they die of neglect. Mostly aloe vera, geraniums, and spider plants. Petunias in the sunroom, one scented geranium in the kitchen, and a couple philodendrons and a rubber plant. I am surprised it was 25. I really don't think it looks like that many, and I always want more. Oh, and I think an African violet is recovering from a shocking near death experience when I forgot all about it for nearly three months, and then set it outside where it was alternatively chilled and drowned by rains.
7. If you could ask me one question, what would it be? (email if you'd rather- heartkeepercommonroom. It's a gmail account.
Me: I ask myself this question almost every night: What's WRONG with you? Why do you stay up so late? You know you'll regret it the next day.
The Power of Narration
While there are several things we have done and do for language arts in our shrinking little homeschool (next fall I shall have only two students. The last time I had only two students was, my dears, 16 years ago. How strange it feels), the two constants have been good books and required narrations. I've blogged about narration before (a couple examples here and here), oh, and here as well, and now Tim's Mom at Bona Vita Rusticanda is sharing some great notes she took from a recent Charlotte Mason conference. Here's a sampling:
It's good stuff. And for those to whom this seems entirely too easy- remember, a true education happens in the mind, not on workbook pages. You can do the workbook pages, and there are times they serve some purpose- but they serve no purpose at all if something isn't also going on in the mind. Narration begins in the mind of the learner.
Narration is an all-purpose, extremely powerful activity. Transformation occurs that physically changes the brain. "The Power of Retelling: Developmental Steps for Building Comprehension," and "Read and Retell" by Hazel Brown and Brian Cambourne encapsulate all the principles of the wholistic/natural learning model.
Narration has linguistic spillovers: meaning, phraseology, vocabulary, punctuation, spelling. Children can retain phrases, styles, etc. that they pick up from narrating even after a year.
Narration enables learners to "own" their learning. "Learning that is not accompanied by transformation is shallow and transitory." (Cambourne) "Reader-Response" by Louise Rosenblatt. The learner "reproduces such Knowledge touched by his own personality; thus his reproduction becomes original." (CM vol 6)
Narration enables students to:
- write better sentences
- better solve math word problems
- increase vocabulary
- have a much higher level of comprehension
Narration improves concept of story, critical thinking, oral language development.
Critical thinking requires background knowledge and concepts to think critically about.
Narration reveals what a child remembers and what he thinks is important. It shows whether his organization matches the text - and more.
Narration in History: For generations and throughout centuries, history has been passed on through oral narration. People who are forced to increase their oral mind have better mental capacity than those who rely on printed text, note-taking, etc. Jewish Rabbis used oral tradition to relay God's truth to generations. See "The Singer of Tales" by Albert Lord for studies. Oral tradition is as literary as printed text. The art forms of literature/story-telling were already set and styled before any of the tales were ever written down. Songs, stories and poems can be kept in people's minds for centuries - intact - with no notes! The more you rely on notes, the less you use your mind.
Emotion drives learning because emotion is what transforms and engages. When the "amygdala" part of the brain is activated by fear or emotion, learning can enter long-term memory instead of short-term memory. Stories, not dry facts, engage our emotions.
It's good stuff. And for those to whom this seems entirely too easy- remember, a true education happens in the mind, not on workbook pages. You can do the workbook pages, and there are times they serve some purpose- but they serve no purpose at all if something isn't also going on in the mind. Narration begins in the mind of the learner.
Honduras VS Iran
From HotAir:
The thing is, the coup in Honduras was actually in response to President Manuel Zelaya's violation of the Constitution. He ordered the military to help him participate in this Constitutional violation, and the head of the military refused. So Zelaya fired him and continued his plans. At that point, he was removed from office. The military escorted him from office, with the full blessing of Honduras' Supreme Court- but President Obama didn't like that, and he has certainly been, to use his term, 'meddling:'
While I believe the President should have spoken more forcefully and more quickly to condemn the election fraud and government sponsored massacres in Iran, I have agreed with him that he should not intervene militarily. I understand that level of 'not meddling.' Like many others, however, I do not understand why he thought it was acceptable to 'meddle' in Honduras on behalf of a leader attempting to violate his country's Constitution. Or perhaps I just hate to recognize the very obvious difference:
Of course, it could just be more amateur, learn on the job stuff. I don't know. I just don't think it's very impressive.
It’s difficult to make sense out of the foreign policy coming out of the White House under Barack Obama. On the one hand, Obama insisted that he could not interfere with the internal politics of the “sovereign government of Iran,” refusing for days to even condemn Iran for its flagrantly violent repression of dissent. When Honduras’ military staged a coup, though, Obama apparently had no such reticence in involving the US on behalf of deposed President Manuel Zelaya — a close ally of Hugo Chavez:(much more at the link)
The thing is, the coup in Honduras was actually in response to President Manuel Zelaya's violation of the Constitution. He ordered the military to help him participate in this Constitutional violation, and the head of the military refused. So Zelaya fired him and continued his plans. At that point, he was removed from office. The military escorted him from office, with the full blessing of Honduras' Supreme Court- but President Obama didn't like that, and he has certainly been, to use his term, 'meddling:'
The efforts accelerated over the weekend, as Washington grew increasingly alarmed. “The players decided, in the end, not to listen to our message,” said one U.S. official involved in the diplomacy. On Sunday, the U.S. embassy here tried repeatedly to contact the Honduran military directly, but was rebuffed. Washington called the removal of President Zelaya a coup and said it wouldn’t recognize any other leader.
The U.S. stand was unpopular with Honduran deputies. One congressman, Toribio Aguilera, got prolonged applause from his colleagues when he urged the U.S. ambassador to reconsider. Mr. Aguilera said the U.S. didn’t understand the danger that Mr. Zelaya and his friendships with Mr. Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro posed.
While I believe the President should have spoken more forcefully and more quickly to condemn the election fraud and government sponsored massacres in Iran, I have agreed with him that he should not intervene militarily. I understand that level of 'not meddling.' Like many others, however, I do not understand why he thought it was acceptable to 'meddle' in Honduras on behalf of a leader attempting to violate his country's Constitution. Or perhaps I just hate to recognize the very obvious difference:
The first I heard about the coup in Honduras was in a story about how the US had helped avert it.
My first thought was Obama and meddling. Of course, subsequent events prove that either the above link* was Bagdad Bob in nature, or Obama's meddling was a signal failure.
Your update an Obama's commenting on this story is remarkable to me -- for the speed with which he commented. When the abortionist was murdered, he spoke within the hour. When the soldier was murdered by an islamofascist in the US, he took days. People getting slaughtered in Iran? Even more days.
A Chavez ally ousted from power? Mere hours for him to speak.
Is there a trend here?
Of course, it could just be more amateur, learn on the job stuff. I don't know. I just don't think it's very impressive.
What kind of Representative Democracy is this?
Can somebody defend this to me? Explain to me why this is a reasonable way to pass a law.
And yet... it passed. What has happened to our government, and what has happened to our citizens that we mostly find this sort of post boring or teeth gritting and cannot be bothered to tell the politicians, both Republican and Democrat, that this must stop. They MUST read the bills before they vote.
Texas Republican Reps. Joe Barton and Louie Gohmert have just asked the chair whether there exists a complete, updated copy of the Waxman-Markey carbon-cap bill.
"If a bill for which there is no copy were to actually pass this body," Barton asked, "could the bill without a copy be sent to the Senate for its consideration?"
Through a series of parliamentary inquiries, the Republicans learned that the 300-plus page managers' amendment, added to the bill last night in the House Rules Committee, has not even been been integrated with the official copy of the 1,090-page bill at the House Clerk's desk, let alone in any other location. The two documents are side-by-side at the desk as the clerk reads through the instructions in the 300 page document for altering the 1,090 page document.
But they cannot be simply combined, because the amendment contains 300 pages of items like this: "Page 15, beginning line 8, strike paragraph (11)..." How many members of Congress do you suppose have gone through it all to see how it changes the bill?
Global Warming is apparently so urgent that we can't even wait until members of Congress know what they're voting on.
And yet... it passed. What has happened to our government, and what has happened to our citizens that we mostly find this sort of post boring or teeth gritting and cannot be bothered to tell the politicians, both Republican and Democrat, that this must stop. They MUST read the bills before they vote.
Signing a Blank Contract- your government at work
Via Ace, this large chunk of important information I simply lifted directly from his blog, because this stuff is too important to miss. There's actually more there, and you should read it. Ace's comments are italicized, the post he's quoting from is in green. Consider the tactics used here, and if they're just peachy keen with you, please respond to three questions- two here, and one at the end of this post.:
1. Would they be just peachy keen if used by a party you didn't like to pass a bill you didn't approve of?
2. What is the point of a representative democracy? What is acceptable to you about voting on a bill without being informed about what is in it?
You think Ace sounds a little over the top? You have no idea just how bad it really is. Consider what this means:
A PLACEHOLDER? Tell me how this is NOT like being given a blank piece of paper and told it's a contract, you need to sign on the dotted line, and they'll fill in the details of the contract later.
Third question- Would every one of you who thinks this was just fine and wishes I would shut-up and cease complaining about this kind of governing do me a favor? Would you please send me a check? Keep it blank, all except the signature line. I promise it will go to a good cause, and I'll fill in the details later.
That's what the government is doing.
1. Would they be just peachy keen if used by a party you didn't like to pass a bill you didn't approve of?
2. What is the point of a representative democracy? What is acceptable to you about voting on a bill without being informed about what is in it?
To get support for his bill, Mr. Waxman was forced to water down the cap in early years to please rural Democrats, and then severely ratchet it up in later years to please liberal Democrats. The CBO's analysis looks solely at the year 2020, before most of the tough restrictions kick in. As the cap is tightened and companies are stripped of initial opportunities to "offset" their emissions, the price of permits will skyrocket beyond the CBO estimate of $28 per ton of carbon. The corporate costs of buying these expensive permits will be passed to consumers.The biggest doozy in the CBO analysis was its extraordinary decision to look only at the day-to-day costs of operating a trading program, rather than the wider consequences energy restriction would have on the economy.
In other words, the "costs" examined are merely the costs of salaries and phones and computers and Post-Its for the people administering this program -- the actual costs just to hire bureaucrats to sabotage the American economy.
Not the costs those bureaucrats in turn inflict on us all.
The CBO acknowledges this in a footnote: "The resource cost does not indicate the potential decrease in gross domestic product (GDP) that could result from the cap."
The hit to GDP is the real threat in this bill. The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result.
When the Heritage Foundation did its analysis of Waxman-Markey, it broadly compared the economy with and without the carbon tax. Under this more comprehensive scenario, it found Waxman-Markey would cost the economy $161 billion in 2020, which is $1,870 for a family of four. As the bill's restrictions kick in, that number rises to $6,800 for a family of four by 2035.
...
Even as Democrats have promised that this cap-and-trade legislation won't pinch wallets, behind the scenes they've acknowledged the energy price tsunami that is coming. During the brief few days in which the bill was debated in the House Energy Committee, Republicans offered three amendments: one to suspend the program if gas hit $5 a gallon; one to suspend the program if electricity prices rose 10% over 2009; and one to suspend the program if unemployment rates hit 15%. Democrats defeated all of them.
Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are destroying the country with a Shock and Awe bombardment. They rush enormous bills which change the basic foundations of the American economy through the Congress, with only a day (or less!) to read 1500 page abominations. No one has read any of these bills. No one.
The American public is not only not permitted to debate and consider, but they're blocked from even knowing a debate is going on at all. The rush of one huge bill after another is working the way it's intended to work: Massive, economy-destroying bills are being rammed through Congress without being read or debated because Obama and Pelosi and Reid don't want the bills to be read or debated. They just want these bills passed.
Whatever these bills might actually contain -- something we'll all be discovering later.
They don't want to give the opposition time to read these bills, because then they might actually be able to warn the American people about what's in them.
You think Ace sounds a little over the top? You have no idea just how bad it really is. Consider what this means:
Similarly, the bill contains a "placeholder" -- an empty area to be modified/determined later, after the vote.
That means there is no bill. You cannot add or modify a "bill" after its passed, except by... voting on a bill. You can't just edit it later.
A PLACEHOLDER? Tell me how this is NOT like being given a blank piece of paper and told it's a contract, you need to sign on the dotted line, and they'll fill in the details of the contract later.
At approx. 2:35pm Eastern, GOP Rep. Joe Barton announced that there is now a placeholder in the bill to be determined later.Barton notes that this is unprecedented. He can’t recall any final passage of a bill that has a placeholder in it.
Third question- Would every one of you who thinks this was just fine and wishes I would shut-up and cease complaining about this kind of governing do me a favor? Would you please send me a check? Keep it blank, all except the signature line. I promise it will go to a good cause, and I'll fill in the details later.
That's what the government is doing.
Training My Daughters...
People often ask how it is that my daughters have turned out to be so capable about the house, such lovely household managers, so able to run the household without me, even when they are quite young. I try to explain, but am seldom believed. Let me illustrate with an example taken from real life.
This Sunday Pip was sick, and then the Cherub contracted it- 'it' being a sore throat, wheezing, coughing, stuffy, misery. I stayed home from church with both of them, not because Pip isn't perfectly capable of taking care of herself (she is), but because it is no fun to have to take care of a sick Cherub when you are also sick.
Everybody was still asleep when I got up, so I went into the kitchen to make myself an omelette. I chopped a bit of red onion to saute first, and found when I opened the jar of coconut oil that the kitchen was so warm the oil was liquid. I learned this by spilling half a cup of the valuable stuff on the floor because, expecting a solid, I had the jar tipped at just the right angle to pour it on the floor as I unscrewed the lid.
I put the onions on low and cleaned the floor where I had spilled the oil. Meanwhile, I whisked the eggs and mayo for the omelette, reheated my coffee in the microwave, and cut up the swiss cheese for my eggs. This is important.
I opened the fridge to put the mayo away, and knocked out a container of sandwich spread of some sort. I cleaned the floor. Meanwhile, my red onions turned black.
I put my eggs on to gently set into a perfect omelette and started to clear off the windowsill while I waited. I knocked over a vase of slimey water which had formerly held a rosebud. I cleaned the floor.
I cleared off a stool my loved ones perpetually use as a useful spot for setting things on. I dropped an unfinished cup of tea. I cleaned the floor.
My eggs now being nicely done, I put my cheese on the top and folded my omelette over. Then I remembered I needed a plate and got it out and slid my perfect omelette onto the plate. I now I had a large glass of mint water, a cup of overly hot coffee, and a plate of steaming omelette to carry back to my room. I didn't want to bother to get out a tray, too much trouble. I thought I could set my plate on my cup and carry water and plate in one hand and steaming coffee in the other.
Um, do set down your drink, there's a dear. You don't want to snort things out of your nose and smear the computer screen, do you?
So. I picked my large and steaming cup of coffee in one hand and picked up my larger (a mason jar with a handle) jug of water topped with a plate laden with omelettey goodness up in the other hand (I realize this sounds stupid, but I have done it before and it worked then). I suppose my omelette was heavier at one end than the other, or, and this just occurred to me, I neglected to compensate for the fact that I am limping (a new flare-up of raw dishydrotic eczema on one foot, still broken toe on the other). Because I took one half step and the plate fell. UPside down, naturally. At first this wasn't too bad- it fell on the counter of the island. However, the OMELETTE fell in such a way that it was dangling over the side of the island, drooping like the clocks in Salvadore Dali's The Persistence of Memory, and it was slowly responding to the caress of gravity. Quicker than thought (Moral: do not DO things quicker than thought. THINK first.) I flipped my plate rightside up with one hand, set my steaming hot cup of coffee down on the island with my other hand, and using that left hand, grabbed my omelette to scoop it on my plate.
And even more quickly dropped it again, letting it fall to the floor. Because my omelette was hot. Hotter still was all the gooey, steaming, melted cheese which was now covering my fingers and cooking them. I told you the swiss cheese would be important. You thought it was going to be the coffee, didn't you? But no, it was the cheese which so hot it was quickly becoming grafted to my skin.
The next few seconds are a blur of agonizing white hot pain as I bit my lips so as not to disturb my sleeping sickos (which included our houseguest), hobbled rapidly and unevenly over to the kitchen sink, turned on the cold water to get that sticky, hot, melted cheese OFF MY COOKING FINGERS and, of course, the cold water promptly turned the melting cheese to an impermeable shield encasing my still burning fingers. I had to take a washcloth and rub that cheese off my tender, still steaming fingers, but it finally came off and I held my cooking fingers under the soothing balm of cold water. As the pain subsided somewhat, a sensation I had been ignoring finally managed to rudely intrude itself upon my conscience and I became rather harshly aware that somewhere between picking up a steaming hot cheese omelette by the melted cheese and hardening that cheese under a stream of cold water at the kitchen sink, I had stubbed my broken toe.
I took my fingers out of the cold water and realized they actually weren't done cooking yet. This did distract me from the pain in my foot, however. I hobbled back to the pantry and grabbed a bottle of vinegar and poured it on my fingers. It did help, but the fingers were still feeling painfully steamed, so back in the cold water they went. When the pain subsided I limped over to the aloe vera plant and cut a stem off, sliced it open and slathered it on my cheese broiled fingers. This made my toe hurt more, which I figured was a good sign. So I turned my attention to my lovely omelette, still all over the floor.
I am afraid I will disgust you all, but the truth is I was terribly hungry and I don't do well when I delay proteins in the morning, and I was in no shape to cook anything else, so I scooped it off the floor onto my plate, and, once more, wiped up the floor, (which is now 3/4 of the way clean). I got out a tray, put my breakfast on it and hobbled back to my room (which, adjoining the bathroom we share with the Cherub, is the best place to ensure I would hear her when she woke up). I set the tray down next to my bed and started to climb in when I looked down and realized that somewhere, somehow, I had spilled part of my omelette on me- and it was pretty nasty, and, I realized to my surprise, still warm, giving some indication of how hot that omelette had been. So I tossed that outfit into the dirty clothes, put on something fresh, and again settled in to have my breakfast in bed- now shaking a bit from low blood sugars.
I brushed my hand against the sheet and quickly got up again to run my fingers under cold water and slather on more aloe vera.
Finally, I settled down to eat my breakfast. It was cold, of course, but there were only two dog hairs on my plate and none I could find in my omelette.
I have only a tiny red mark inside my ring finger to show for my trauma, and the broken toe is still broken but doesn't seem any worse than it was.
And that is how and why my daughters are so very capable, you see. Unable to be a good example, I serve as a horrible warning, and it has frightened them into competency.
This Sunday Pip was sick, and then the Cherub contracted it- 'it' being a sore throat, wheezing, coughing, stuffy, misery. I stayed home from church with both of them, not because Pip isn't perfectly capable of taking care of herself (she is), but because it is no fun to have to take care of a sick Cherub when you are also sick.
Everybody was still asleep when I got up, so I went into the kitchen to make myself an omelette. I chopped a bit of red onion to saute first, and found when I opened the jar of coconut oil that the kitchen was so warm the oil was liquid. I learned this by spilling half a cup of the valuable stuff on the floor because, expecting a solid, I had the jar tipped at just the right angle to pour it on the floor as I unscrewed the lid.
I put the onions on low and cleaned the floor where I had spilled the oil. Meanwhile, I whisked the eggs and mayo for the omelette, reheated my coffee in the microwave, and cut up the swiss cheese for my eggs. This is important.
I opened the fridge to put the mayo away, and knocked out a container of sandwich spread of some sort. I cleaned the floor. Meanwhile, my red onions turned black.
I put my eggs on to gently set into a perfect omelette and started to clear off the windowsill while I waited. I knocked over a vase of slimey water which had formerly held a rosebud. I cleaned the floor.
I cleared off a stool my loved ones perpetually use as a useful spot for setting things on. I dropped an unfinished cup of tea. I cleaned the floor.
My eggs now being nicely done, I put my cheese on the top and folded my omelette over. Then I remembered I needed a plate and got it out and slid my perfect omelette onto the plate. I now I had a large glass of mint water, a cup of overly hot coffee, and a plate of steaming omelette to carry back to my room. I didn't want to bother to get out a tray, too much trouble. I thought I could set my plate on my cup and carry water and plate in one hand and steaming coffee in the other.
Um, do set down your drink, there's a dear. You don't want to snort things out of your nose and smear the computer screen, do you?
So. I picked my large and steaming cup of coffee in one hand and picked up my larger (a mason jar with a handle) jug of water topped with a plate laden with omelettey goodness up in the other hand (I realize this sounds stupid, but I have done it before and it worked then). I suppose my omelette was heavier at one end than the other, or, and this just occurred to me, I neglected to compensate for the fact that I am limping (a new flare-up of raw dishydrotic eczema on one foot, still broken toe on the other). Because I took one half step and the plate fell. UPside down, naturally. At first this wasn't too bad- it fell on the counter of the island. However, the OMELETTE fell in such a way that it was dangling over the side of the island, drooping like the clocks in Salvadore Dali's The Persistence of Memory, and it was slowly responding to the caress of gravity. Quicker than thought (Moral: do not DO things quicker than thought. THINK first.) I flipped my plate rightside up with one hand, set my steaming hot cup of coffee down on the island with my other hand, and using that left hand, grabbed my omelette to scoop it on my plate.
And even more quickly dropped it again, letting it fall to the floor. Because my omelette was hot. Hotter still was all the gooey, steaming, melted cheese which was now covering my fingers and cooking them. I told you the swiss cheese would be important. You thought it was going to be the coffee, didn't you? But no, it was the cheese which so hot it was quickly becoming grafted to my skin.
The next few seconds are a blur of agonizing white hot pain as I bit my lips so as not to disturb my sleeping sickos (which included our houseguest), hobbled rapidly and unevenly over to the kitchen sink, turned on the cold water to get that sticky, hot, melted cheese OFF MY COOKING FINGERS and, of course, the cold water promptly turned the melting cheese to an impermeable shield encasing my still burning fingers. I had to take a washcloth and rub that cheese off my tender, still steaming fingers, but it finally came off and I held my cooking fingers under the soothing balm of cold water. As the pain subsided somewhat, a sensation I had been ignoring finally managed to rudely intrude itself upon my conscience and I became rather harshly aware that somewhere between picking up a steaming hot cheese omelette by the melted cheese and hardening that cheese under a stream of cold water at the kitchen sink, I had stubbed my broken toe.
I took my fingers out of the cold water and realized they actually weren't done cooking yet. This did distract me from the pain in my foot, however. I hobbled back to the pantry and grabbed a bottle of vinegar and poured it on my fingers. It did help, but the fingers were still feeling painfully steamed, so back in the cold water they went. When the pain subsided I limped over to the aloe vera plant and cut a stem off, sliced it open and slathered it on my cheese broiled fingers. This made my toe hurt more, which I figured was a good sign. So I turned my attention to my lovely omelette, still all over the floor.
I am afraid I will disgust you all, but the truth is I was terribly hungry and I don't do well when I delay proteins in the morning, and I was in no shape to cook anything else, so I scooped it off the floor onto my plate, and, once more, wiped up the floor, (which is now 3/4 of the way clean). I got out a tray, put my breakfast on it and hobbled back to my room (which, adjoining the bathroom we share with the Cherub, is the best place to ensure I would hear her when she woke up). I set the tray down next to my bed and started to climb in when I looked down and realized that somewhere, somehow, I had spilled part of my omelette on me- and it was pretty nasty, and, I realized to my surprise, still warm, giving some indication of how hot that omelette had been. So I tossed that outfit into the dirty clothes, put on something fresh, and again settled in to have my breakfast in bed- now shaking a bit from low blood sugars.
I brushed my hand against the sheet and quickly got up again to run my fingers under cold water and slather on more aloe vera.
Finally, I settled down to eat my breakfast. It was cold, of course, but there were only two dog hairs on my plate and none I could find in my omelette.
I have only a tiny red mark inside my ring finger to show for my trauma, and the broken toe is still broken but doesn't seem any worse than it was.
And that is how and why my daughters are so very capable, you see. Unable to be a good example, I serve as a horrible warning, and it has frightened them into competency.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Sunday Hymn Post
GO TO DARK GETHSEMANE
Go to dark Gethsemane,
Ye that feel the tempter's power;
Your Redeemer's conflict see;
Watch with Him one bitter hour;
Turn not from His griefs away;
Learn of Jesus Christ to pray.
See Him at the judgment hall,
Beaten, bound, reviled, arraigned;
See Him meekly bearing all!
Love to man His soul sustained.
Shun not suffering, shame, or loss;
Learn of Christ to bear the cross.
Calvary's mournful mountain climb;
There adoring at His feet,
Mark that miracle of time,
God's own sacrifice complete;
"it is finished!" hear Him cry;
Learn of Jesus Christ to die.
Early hasten to the tomb
Where they laid His breathless clay:
All is solitude and gloom;
Who hath taken Him away?
Christ is risen! He meets our eyes.
Savior, teach us so to rise.
This is also the tune used to sing the lovely Gracious Spirit Dwell in Me:
Gracious Spirit, dwell with me!
I myself would gracious be;
And with words that help and heal
Would Thy life in mine reveal;
And with actions bold and meek
Would for Christ my Savior speak.
Truthful Spirit, dwell with me!
I myself would truthful be;
And with wisdom kind and clear
Let Thy life in mine appear;
And with actions brotherly
Speak my Lord’s sincerity.
Tender Spirit, dwell with me!
I myself would tender be;
Shut my heart up like a flower
In temptation’s darksome hour,
Open it when shines the sun,
And his love by fragrance own.
Mighty Spirit, dwell with me!
I myself would mighty be;
Mighty so as to prevail,
Where unaided man must fail;
Ever, by a mighty hope,
Pressing on and bearing up.
Holy Spirit, dwell with me!
I myself would holy be;
Separate from sin, I would
Choose and cherish all things good,
And whatever I can be
Give to Him Who gave me Thee!
Go to dark Gethsemane,
Ye that feel the tempter's power;
Your Redeemer's conflict see;
Watch with Him one bitter hour;
Turn not from His griefs away;
Learn of Jesus Christ to pray.
See Him at the judgment hall,
Beaten, bound, reviled, arraigned;
See Him meekly bearing all!
Love to man His soul sustained.
Shun not suffering, shame, or loss;
Learn of Christ to bear the cross.
Calvary's mournful mountain climb;
There adoring at His feet,
Mark that miracle of time,
God's own sacrifice complete;
"it is finished!" hear Him cry;
Learn of Jesus Christ to die.
Early hasten to the tomb
Where they laid His breathless clay:
All is solitude and gloom;
Who hath taken Him away?
Christ is risen! He meets our eyes.
Savior, teach us so to rise.
This is also the tune used to sing the lovely Gracious Spirit Dwell in Me:
Gracious Spirit, dwell with me!
I myself would gracious be;
And with words that help and heal
Would Thy life in mine reveal;
And with actions bold and meek
Would for Christ my Savior speak.
Truthful Spirit, dwell with me!
I myself would truthful be;
And with wisdom kind and clear
Let Thy life in mine appear;
And with actions brotherly
Speak my Lord’s sincerity.
Tender Spirit, dwell with me!
I myself would tender be;
Shut my heart up like a flower
In temptation’s darksome hour,
Open it when shines the sun,
And his love by fragrance own.
Mighty Spirit, dwell with me!
I myself would mighty be;
Mighty so as to prevail,
Where unaided man must fail;
Ever, by a mighty hope,
Pressing on and bearing up.
Holy Spirit, dwell with me!
I myself would holy be;
Separate from sin, I would
Choose and cherish all things good,
And whatever I can be
Give to Him Who gave me Thee!
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Lila Rose has further video footage of PP lying
This time a client they believe to be a minor says she saw images of aborted fetuses online and asks if they're real. Without ascertaining what images she saw, what website, or any specifics of what the girl saw (her only description is it was gross and bloody), the clinic worker lies to her and tells her "No, it's not real." She also suggests that there's no reason to even look at those pictures because they will just upset her.
NO reason to seek information? To have consent to a surgical procedure be informed, fully educated consent? Why are these images so disturbing if this is nothing more than tissue or faked images? Why are they so disturbing to this clinic worker that she must deceive her client instead of being honest with her?
You can see her lie for yourself here, and then they follow with some images of aborted children- there is a warning and enough time given to close the footage if you don't want to see it. Youtube, however, pulled the video. Like the PP worker, they view images of the results of our prochoice society too shocking to see. They allow videos of autopsies and open heart surgery, but simple photographs of the 'Product of Conception' once the abortionist has finished with it, these are too horrific to permit the public to see.
Why are they so afraid?
NO reason to seek information? To have consent to a surgical procedure be informed, fully educated consent? Why are these images so disturbing if this is nothing more than tissue or faked images? Why are they so disturbing to this clinic worker that she must deceive her client instead of being honest with her?
You can see her lie for yourself here, and then they follow with some images of aborted children- there is a warning and enough time given to close the footage if you don't want to see it. Youtube, however, pulled the video. Like the PP worker, they view images of the results of our prochoice society too shocking to see. They allow videos of autopsies and open heart surgery, but simple photographs of the 'Product of Conception' once the abortionist has finished with it, these are too horrific to permit the public to see.
Why are they so afraid?
Scrap-paper Wall Covering
This is really, really cute. Bright, cheerful, and frugal as all get out.
Our thrift shop has a craft section where all their craft stuff is 2.50 a bag, except on half price day when it is 1.25 a bag, natch. Last half price day I scored a stack of scrap-booking supplies, books, papers, embellishments, and all kinds of goodies, including enough paper to do a wall of my own if I could think of a wall in this house I wanted to do.=)
Our thrift shop has a craft section where all their craft stuff is 2.50 a bag, except on half price day when it is 1.25 a bag, natch. Last half price day I scored a stack of scrap-booking supplies, books, papers, embellishments, and all kinds of goodies, including enough paper to do a wall of my own if I could think of a wall in this house I wanted to do.=)
Americans, grow up already.
Let us speak plainly. Events in Iran were largely blown off the front pages, blown out of our tiny, teflon brains and outside the kin of our itsy bitsy attention spans:
The attention span of children? More like lobotomized fleas, fleas which have been sucking the blood of crack addicts.
And I would so very much like to blame the media, I really would. But I can't. The media is not responsible for choosing what we Americans collectively google, and here are the top 100 google trends as of three minutes ago:
1. road to perdition
2. michael jackson death photos
3. powerblock tv
4. melanie oudin
5. western states 100
6. michael jackson autopsy results
7. virgin mobile free fest tickets
8. sycophants
9. cap and trade vote results
10. because of winn dixie
11. lisle
12. michael motte
13. rhythm and booms
14. lincoln financial field
15. philip samuelsson
16. seattle rock and roll marathon
17. serpico star
18. dc carnival
19. rv movie
20. climate bill 2009
21. evan chandler
22. cheyenne woods wikipedia
23. maryss courchinoux
24. lisicki
25. eric knodel
26. mikko koskinen
27. ryan bourque
28. conrad murray
29. ben hanowski
30. michael jackson children pictures
31. ob street fair 2009
32. michael jackson funeral arrangements
33. sabine lisicki
34. skin grafting
35. armando montelongo
36. caribbean festival dc
37. sycophants definition
38. chris mccandless
39. manayunk arts festival
40. jerry d amigo
41. soulja boy inmates
42. taste of philadelphia
43. virgin festival 2009 tickets
44. spellbound movie
45. cole younger
46. veronica montelongo
47. straight talk
48. watch transformers 2 free online
49. kutztown folk festival
50. taste of chicago
51. ruth madoff
52. celebrate freedom
53. evan chandler michael jackson
54. landon ferraro
55. tssi ts 20w7
56. lisicki tennis
57. funkmaster flex car show
58. virgin freefest
59. marcus foligno
60. maria elisa chapur
61. penn s landing
62. one step ahead
63. magellan gps
64. kim kardashian ex husband
65. troy davis
66. antivirusbest
67. dc caribbean carnival 2009
68. tomas tatar
69. slime mold
70. cow belles
71. western states 100 mile endurance run
72. farrah fawcett funeral
73. casey cizikas
74. kidz bop 16
75. westfarms mall
76. quarter round molding
77. brett ponich
78. ultimate chaos
79. mac bennett
80. free downloadable games
81. wimbledon schedule
82. brian dumoulin
83. hobie pro angler
84. cherry blossom festival denver
85. hyde park blast
86. brayden mcnabb
87. cedarburg strawberry festival
88. jo koy
89. ryan button
90. ri air show 2009
91. nhl draft tracker
92. dr. tohme tohme
93. jay bouwmeester
94. jordan chandler lied
95. oudin tennis
96. word to the badd
97. flip this house
98. john mulaney
99. taste of tacoma
100. deltanet
Tehran, Iran, Mousavi- nowhere to be found. And who knew so many Americans didn't know the definition of sycophant?
Until now, the opposition may have been buoyed by the robust support across the globe for their drive to bring real democratic change to Iran. The protesters certainly haven’t been getting any support from the censored and browbeaten (or just plain beaten) media in their own country (Reporters Without Borders calls Iran the world’s biggest prison for journalists). How disappointed and demoralized they’ll feel when the world’s attention shifts to eulogizing a famously talented man who couldn’t stop grabbing his crotch.
The mullahs in Iran must be loving it. Our evening broadcasts were clear proof that the decadent Westerners have the attention span of children. We decry political tyrants, but we knowingly accept and immerse ourselves in silly cults of personality so long as the icons are celebrities.
The attention span of children? More like lobotomized fleas, fleas which have been sucking the blood of crack addicts.
And I would so very much like to blame the media, I really would. But I can't. The media is not responsible for choosing what we Americans collectively google, and here are the top 100 google trends as of three minutes ago:
1. road to perdition
2. michael jackson death photos
3. powerblock tv
4. melanie oudin
5. western states 100
6. michael jackson autopsy results
7. virgin mobile free fest tickets
8. sycophants
9. cap and trade vote results
10. because of winn dixie
11. lisle
12. michael motte
13. rhythm and booms
14. lincoln financial field
15. philip samuelsson
16. seattle rock and roll marathon
17. serpico star
18. dc carnival
19. rv movie
20. climate bill 2009
21. evan chandler
22. cheyenne woods wikipedia
23. maryss courchinoux
24. lisicki
25. eric knodel
26. mikko koskinen
27. ryan bourque
28. conrad murray
29. ben hanowski
30. michael jackson children pictures
31. ob street fair 2009
32. michael jackson funeral arrangements
33. sabine lisicki
34. skin grafting
35. armando montelongo
36. caribbean festival dc
37. sycophants definition
38. chris mccandless
39. manayunk arts festival
40. jerry d amigo
41. soulja boy inmates
42. taste of philadelphia
43. virgin festival 2009 tickets
44. spellbound movie
45. cole younger
46. veronica montelongo
47. straight talk
48. watch transformers 2 free online
49. kutztown folk festival
50. taste of chicago
51. ruth madoff
52. celebrate freedom
53. evan chandler michael jackson
54. landon ferraro
55. tssi ts 20w7
56. lisicki tennis
57. funkmaster flex car show
58. virgin freefest
59. marcus foligno
60. maria elisa chapur
61. penn s landing
62. one step ahead
63. magellan gps
64. kim kardashian ex husband
65. troy davis
66. antivirusbest
67. dc caribbean carnival 2009
68. tomas tatar
69. slime mold
70. cow belles
71. western states 100 mile endurance run
72. farrah fawcett funeral
73. casey cizikas
74. kidz bop 16
75. westfarms mall
76. quarter round molding
77. brett ponich
78. ultimate chaos
79. mac bennett
80. free downloadable games
81. wimbledon schedule
82. brian dumoulin
83. hobie pro angler
84. cherry blossom festival denver
85. hyde park blast
86. brayden mcnabb
87. cedarburg strawberry festival
88. jo koy
89. ryan button
90. ri air show 2009
91. nhl draft tracker
92. dr. tohme tohme
93. jay bouwmeester
94. jordan chandler lied
95. oudin tennis
96. word to the badd
97. flip this house
98. john mulaney
99. taste of tacoma
100. deltanet
Tehran, Iran, Mousavi- nowhere to be found. And who knew so many Americans didn't know the definition of sycophant?
Cap and Trade Passed the House
Tell these 8 treacherous Republicans just how despicable you think they are. Make a donation to their opposition for their next election run.
Tell these noble fifty Democrats how much you admire and appreciate them for their strong stance for the little guy. Cap and Trade would be a devastating tax on the poor.
Word is it will fail in the Senate. One prays so. Also via HotAir comes this link:
This is irresponsible government. Remember, Waxman insists he doesn't even know what's in his own bill and he shouldn't be expected to- and he added a 300 page amendment in committee that most (if not all) politicians had not even had a chance to read yet when it came to a vote.
And we desperately need the Read the Bills act. This should be a no-brainer. Not a single person with a shred of intellectual honesty or integrity can deny that it's irresponsible and simply wrong for legislators to pass bills they don't bother to read. IT's absolutely disgusting that we have come to a place where we have to make a law in order to get our alleged representatives to perform this bare minimum of due diligence.
Tell these noble fifty Democrats how much you admire and appreciate them for their strong stance for the little guy. Cap and Trade would be a devastating tax on the poor.
Word is it will fail in the Senate. One prays so. Also via HotAir comes this link:
An epitaph from Vodkapundit: “Never have so few stolen so much from so many to achieve so little.”
This is irresponsible government. Remember, Waxman insists he doesn't even know what's in his own bill and he shouldn't be expected to- and he added a 300 page amendment in committee that most (if not all) politicians had not even had a chance to read yet when it came to a vote.
And we desperately need the Read the Bills act. This should be a no-brainer. Not a single person with a shred of intellectual honesty or integrity can deny that it's irresponsible and simply wrong for legislators to pass bills they don't bother to read. IT's absolutely disgusting that we have come to a place where we have to make a law in order to get our alleged representatives to perform this bare minimum of due diligence.
Pew Warmers and Cultural Christians
Last weekend we watched a movie called Time Changer. I didn't expect to like it at all. I expected to find it poorly acted. I figured the story line would be hokey, production values embarrassing, the dialogue contrived, and it would all be completely implausible.
It was badly acted for the most part, the dialogue was stilted, it was implausible, and it also had some shoddy theology in it, and the production values were in places absolutely cringe worthy. But I liked it. Not well enough to recommend that everybody buy it, but if you are at somebody's house and they ask if you'd like to see it, you might well enjoy it. You won't be blown away by the script or the acting, but you might find it a pleasant and thoughtful way to spend a couple hours.
I looked it up ahead of time and found all the above criticisms, which were fair, plus one that it was preaching to the choir and doing it so badly that nobody 'outside' the faith would be converted. That wasn't a fair criticism. This movie wasn't made to persuade 'outsiders' of anything. My husband and I both felt this movie was ALL about 'preaching to the choir' and telling them to get off their comfortable pews and start living real, authentic lives.
It's kind of the message found here:
It is the same sort of warning as this:
It never interested me at all, John and Kate Plus Eight. The HG caught one episode while she was in Texas helping to care for another multiples family and she was not impressed with the exploitation of the children. But I digress.
God is still not our vending machine.
It was badly acted for the most part, the dialogue was stilted, it was implausible, and it also had some shoddy theology in it, and the production values were in places absolutely cringe worthy. But I liked it. Not well enough to recommend that everybody buy it, but if you are at somebody's house and they ask if you'd like to see it, you might well enjoy it. You won't be blown away by the script or the acting, but you might find it a pleasant and thoughtful way to spend a couple hours.
I looked it up ahead of time and found all the above criticisms, which were fair, plus one that it was preaching to the choir and doing it so badly that nobody 'outside' the faith would be converted. That wasn't a fair criticism. This movie wasn't made to persuade 'outsiders' of anything. My husband and I both felt this movie was ALL about 'preaching to the choir' and telling them to get off their comfortable pews and start living real, authentic lives.
It's kind of the message found here:
"One of the reasons that Southern Baptists now need to ask the hard questions about a regenerate church membership--a historic and foundational Baptist tenet--is that people have confused the Christian faith for substitutes. The Christian faith is not mere moralism; it is not faith in faith, some subjective amorphous feeling, nor is it some kind of a self-help theory. The Christian faith is the manifestation of God's truth revealed in His Son and made known to us today in His Word."
It is the same sort of warning as this:
When the first few episodes revealed the earning potential of this "everyday family," Jon & Kate Plus Eight became a brand name that was packaged and sold. And many Christians were happy to comply by opening up their wallets and their fellowship halls. When the network and the couple were not satisfied with the money generated through high ratings and book sales, the Gosselin home was filled with product placements and the children were filmed for long hours each week. All the while many (though not all) evangelicals watched with undiscerning eyes. Somewhere along the line we, like Jon and Kate, seemed to forget the warnings of 1 Timothy 6:9-10:
But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. (NRSV)
It was not until the recent allegations of sexual impropriety arose that a significant number of Christians began to question whether Jon and Kate were indeed the examples of faithful living that we had imagined. Somehow most of us missed the long trajectory that was, day by day, moving them farther from a life of Christian virtue. Sexual immorality—whether actual or merely suspected—caught our attention, but the materialism, narcissism, and exploitation of children that preceded it was largely overlooked.
As such, the breakdown of Jon and Kate's marriage is but a symptom of the larger weaknesses of ethics in the evangelical community. We are easily seduced by wealth and fame. We are easily contented by the shallow rhetoric of hot-button issues. In short, we are easily deceived by cultural values painted in Christian veneers (or clothed in Isaiah 40:31 T-shirts).
It never interested me at all, John and Kate Plus Eight. The HG caught one episode while she was in Texas helping to care for another multiples family and she was not impressed with the exploitation of the children. But I digress.
God is still not our vending machine.
Friday, June 26, 2009
A Case for Life
From Touchstone, an excerpt from a review of a new book:
The scientific belief that ties into the normative premise is the simple medical fact that embryos and fetuses are human beings. There is no longer, strictly speaking, any debate about “when life begins.” That question has been answered not by religious authority but by the disciplines of human biology and embryology. A human life begins at the moment of conception when a distinct and complete, though immature, human being forms from the joining of her parents’ gametes.
What follows from the conjoining of the scientific and normative beliefs is disarmingly simple: all human beings have a right to life; unborn human beings are human beings; thus unborn human beings have a right to life. When you add the basic political belief that the purpose of governments and laws is to protect fundamental human rights, you arrive at the basic pro-life position.
Hedges
Many years ago when my brother was still a fairly young newlywed, he worked as a janitor/groundskeeper on Pepperdine's campus. One of his married co-workers frequently went on day long hiking trips with his best friend because his wife didn't really enjoy that kind of thing. Thing was, his 'best friend' was another woman.
My brother was shocked when he learned that, and his co-worker was shocked that my bro was shocked. I guess it was quite an electrical moment for both of them. Har.
His co-worker mocked him for thinking there was something dangerous about it, and basically told him "Man, your wife must keep you on a short leash. You can't have girls for friends? That's wacked."
My brother tried to explain that yes, he had friends who were also female, but now he was married no woman would ever be his 'best friend' except his wife. The co-worker insisted he was just over-reacting and making an issue out of something perfectly healthy and normal.
And about six months later the co-worker's marriage shipwrecked on the rocks of adultery when the 'best friend' relationship became more physical than the wife could overlook.
When I was in high school, my best friend was a boy. I thought it was strictly platonic myself until the day he proposed to me. I couldn't figure out why he was willing to end such a perfectly happy friendship by changing it into something romantic. I just wanted us to go on being best friends forever. I convinced him we should just be friends, but then I married my husband and he had other ideas. I could not convince him that it was really okay for my best friend to be this guy I'd known since I was 13. By then my friend had married, too, and his wife was okay with us being best pals, I would point out, so why wasn't my husband?
Well, my pal's wife left him for another man, and my husband pointed out she was okay with our friendship because she wasn't that invested in the marriage to begin with. I really didn't see my husband's point of view, and I never, ever felt even the slightest smidgen of temptation- but I loved my husband and the friendship bothered him so I let the friendship drift apart. Over the years I have seen his wisdom again and again as we have watched other marriages fail when one or both partners failed to respect the hedges, the boundary lines, that a marriage should place between each partner and all other members of the opposite sex. You see:
My brother was shocked when he learned that, and his co-worker was shocked that my bro was shocked. I guess it was quite an electrical moment for both of them. Har.
His co-worker mocked him for thinking there was something dangerous about it, and basically told him "Man, your wife must keep you on a short leash. You can't have girls for friends? That's wacked."
My brother tried to explain that yes, he had friends who were also female, but now he was married no woman would ever be his 'best friend' except his wife. The co-worker insisted he was just over-reacting and making an issue out of something perfectly healthy and normal.
And about six months later the co-worker's marriage shipwrecked on the rocks of adultery when the 'best friend' relationship became more physical than the wife could overlook.
When I was in high school, my best friend was a boy. I thought it was strictly platonic myself until the day he proposed to me. I couldn't figure out why he was willing to end such a perfectly happy friendship by changing it into something romantic. I just wanted us to go on being best friends forever. I convinced him we should just be friends, but then I married my husband and he had other ideas. I could not convince him that it was really okay for my best friend to be this guy I'd known since I was 13. By then my friend had married, too, and his wife was okay with us being best pals, I would point out, so why wasn't my husband?
Well, my pal's wife left him for another man, and my husband pointed out she was okay with our friendship because she wasn't that invested in the marriage to begin with. I really didn't see my husband's point of view, and I never, ever felt even the slightest smidgen of temptation- but I loved my husband and the friendship bothered him so I let the friendship drift apart. Over the years I have seen his wisdom again and again as we have watched other marriages fail when one or both partners failed to respect the hedges, the boundary lines, that a marriage should place between each partner and all other members of the opposite sex. You see:
Few people wake up one day and say, “Hey, I think I’ll destroy my marriage, trash my integrity, and break my spouse’s heart today.” They drift into it. What baffles me is how otherwise intelligent people fail to take steps to protect themselves from it. With regard to “casual emails,” for example, my husband and I normally cc: each other when emailing a personal note to an acquaintance of the opposite sex. We maintain good boundaries with other people and we don’t invest our emotions in friends of the opposite sex.
Can men and women be friends? Certainly. My husband is my best friend – the ultimate “friend with benefits.” But it is unwise in the extreme to invest your emotions and build an intimacy with someone with whom you can’t complete that intimacy. Even if you are never physically unfaithful, is there any way to have an intimate friend of the opposite sex without depriving your spouse of the emotional investment to which they’re entitled?
Global Warming FAcing Robust Skepticism
In Australia. Excerpt:
Australian Senator Steve Fielding of the Family First Party, decided to investigate the whole thing first hand. .
The global warming pushers have brainwashed our school children and subjected us to draconian and invasive laws and regulations all calculated to save the planet from something we cannot change and which may not even be a threat. They have all the poisonous moral self-righteous priggishness of the puritans of myth (who were mostly a far more jolly people than we have given them credit for), and to question them in any way is to render oneself a social outcast in their eyes, fit for only the public stocks and a scarlet letter- and all this on the basis of no scientific due diligence, says Plimer, author of a book titled Heaven and Earth, Global Warming: The Missing Science . Only dogma.
Let me tell you how insidious this brain-washing is. Blynken, the five year old child we keep many weekend (he has decided to anoint me his 'godmother') has been going to HeadStart for two years. He doesn't know what lightening bugs or ladybugs are. He knows one or two folk tales but the versions he has learned are horribly mangled (the Wolf and the three pigs merely misunderstood one another and the wolf simply wanted somebody to play with). He can sing the ABCs but hasn't the least idea what sound they make. He has almost no experience with water, mud, or plants in their natural state. He recognizes pictures of exotic creatures that he has never seen outside of books, but not common domestic creatures like chickens, ducks, donkeys and cows (he does live in farm country). And on a recent car trip where we brought along a large jug of water and several cups for everybody, he carefully and urgently explained to all of us that we should not throw away our cups but should use them to make something because that was recycling and that was important to save the planet. He was so concerned that we had to wait until he fell asleep to throw away the cup.
His school has taught the children a falsehood. Turning a cup into an art project that will still be thrown away will not reduce the landfills one iota nor will it save a planet- not even if everybody does it. It doesn't reduce trash a bit. In fact, the majority of 'recycling' art projects add to trash as they require additional products that must be purchased new (crayons, paints, plastic googly eyes, pipe cleaners, construction paper, tape, glue...).
Had he learned to reuse it for something practical, like a pot for a plant, or cutting it up to use for packing when shipping something breakable, that would impress me. But hearing a poor five year old child share his successful indoctrination, when it wasn't even accurate or useful and it clearly worried him, was simply depressing.
Churches get a bad wrap with many on the left for 'instilling fear', for teaching children to be afraid. I'd like to know what they think they're accomplishing telling five year olds they are destroying their planet if they throw away a paper cup.
Australian Senator Steve Fielding of the Family First Party, decided to investigate the whole thing first hand. .
His story is particularly interesting. Andrew Bolt, who has been leading the charge against the global warming hysteria for years, notes that Fielding's investigation "could blow apart the great global warming scare."
Fielding went to the US to assess the American evidence for global warming at close quarters. As Melbourne's Age reported on June 4:
Senator Fielding said he was impressed by some of the data presented at the [US Heartland Institute's] climate change skeptics' conference: namely that, although carbon emissions had increased in the last 10 years, global temperature had not.
He said scientists at the conference had advanced other explanations, such as the relationship between solar activity and solar energy hitting the Earth to explain climate change.
Fielding has issued a challenge to the Obama White House to rebut the data. It will be a novel experience for them, as Fielding is an engineer and has an Australian's disregard for self-important government officials. Here is how The Age described his challenge:
Senator Fielding emailed graphs that claim the globe had not warmed for a decade to Joseph Aldy, US President Barack Obama's special assistant on energy and the environment, after a meeting on Thursday…. Senator Fielding said he found that Dr. Aldy and other Obama administration officials were not interested in discussing the legitimacy of climate science.
Telling an Australian you're not interested in the legitimacy of your position is a red rag to a bull. So here is what Fielding concluded:
Until recently I, like most Australians, simply accepted without question the notion that global warming was a result of increased carbon emissions. However, after speaking to a cross-section of noted scientists, including Ian Plimer, a professor at the University of Adelaide and author of Heaven and Earth, I quickly began to understand that the science on this issue was by no means conclusive….
As a federal senator, I would be derelict in my duty to the Australian people if I did not even consider whether or not the scientific assumptions underpinning this debate were in fact correct.
What Fielding's questioning represents is just the tip of the kangaroo's tail. He speaks for a growing number of Australians who will no longer take green propaganda on trust.
The global warming pushers have brainwashed our school children and subjected us to draconian and invasive laws and regulations all calculated to save the planet from something we cannot change and which may not even be a threat. They have all the poisonous moral self-righteous priggishness of the puritans of myth (who were mostly a far more jolly people than we have given them credit for), and to question them in any way is to render oneself a social outcast in their eyes, fit for only the public stocks and a scarlet letter- and all this on the basis of no scientific due diligence, says Plimer, author of a book titled Heaven and Earth, Global Warming: The Missing Science . Only dogma.
Let me tell you how insidious this brain-washing is. Blynken, the five year old child we keep many weekend (he has decided to anoint me his 'godmother') has been going to HeadStart for two years. He doesn't know what lightening bugs or ladybugs are. He knows one or two folk tales but the versions he has learned are horribly mangled (the Wolf and the three pigs merely misunderstood one another and the wolf simply wanted somebody to play with). He can sing the ABCs but hasn't the least idea what sound they make. He has almost no experience with water, mud, or plants in their natural state. He recognizes pictures of exotic creatures that he has never seen outside of books, but not common domestic creatures like chickens, ducks, donkeys and cows (he does live in farm country). And on a recent car trip where we brought along a large jug of water and several cups for everybody, he carefully and urgently explained to all of us that we should not throw away our cups but should use them to make something because that was recycling and that was important to save the planet. He was so concerned that we had to wait until he fell asleep to throw away the cup.
His school has taught the children a falsehood. Turning a cup into an art project that will still be thrown away will not reduce the landfills one iota nor will it save a planet- not even if everybody does it. It doesn't reduce trash a bit. In fact, the majority of 'recycling' art projects add to trash as they require additional products that must be purchased new (crayons, paints, plastic googly eyes, pipe cleaners, construction paper, tape, glue...).
Had he learned to reuse it for something practical, like a pot for a plant, or cutting it up to use for packing when shipping something breakable, that would impress me. But hearing a poor five year old child share his successful indoctrination, when it wasn't even accurate or useful and it clearly worried him, was simply depressing.
Churches get a bad wrap with many on the left for 'instilling fear', for teaching children to be afraid. I'd like to know what they think they're accomplishing telling five year olds they are destroying their planet if they throw away a paper cup.
The Secret of Dementia?
If you knew that everyday for the rest of your life, you'd be dressed in diapers and confined to a wheelchair with blurred eyesight in a small brick walled room what would you do? If you knew that at every meal for the rest of your life a woman who talked to you as if you were a baby would spoon three flavors of baby food into your mouth, what would you do? If, opening your eyes, you knew that all you would see would be a bright fluorescent glare and the blurred shapes of dozens of others, mostly women, lolling about in wheelchairs, what would you do? If you knew to a dead, solid certainty that you were never going to be released from your room until you were released, at long last, from your body, what would you do? If you were a sane man, just what would you, at long last, do?WEll, I don't quite think so- it certainly doesn't describe my father's situation, for instance- but it's a compelling read.
I don't know about you, but I would figure a way out and if that way out was only deeper in, that's where I'd go. I'd go deep into my palace of memories and I'd use all my energy to construct a world inside that was made of the most vivid moments of all the years I'd lived.
On the other hand, when my late and very dear uncle was in the hospital the last week of his life, drifting in and out of coherency, he had one moment his last day on earth where he kept asking my mother to open the cupboard at the foot of the bed and get him out another feather pillow. There was no cupboard at the foot of the bed, or even in the room. There was no feather pillow. He was gesturing at the air. My mother, an even-keeled, deeply practical, no nonsense, factual human being who never did play 'let's pretend,' was sure he must be trying to say something else, and kept trying to understand what he was getting at. He repeated himself to her three or four times, and then turned a clear-eyed, perfectly sentient gaze on me and dead panned, "She has no imagination. She never did."
And We All Sing With the Same Voice...
Pretty cool stuff:
Population geneticists expected to find dramatic differences as they got a look at the full genomes -- about 25,000 genes -- of people of widely varying ethnic and geographic backgrounds. Specifically, they expected to find that many ethnic groups would have derived alleles that their members shared but that were uncommon or nonexistent in other groups. Each regional, ethnic group or latitude was thought to have a genomic "signature" -- the record of its recent evolution through natural selection.
But as analyses of genomes from dozens of distinct populations have rolled in -- French, Bantu, Palestinian, Yakut, Japanese -- that's not what scientists have found. Dramatic genome variation among populations turns out to be extremely rare.
Instead, it is "random genetic drift" that appears to be more important in sculpting our genes. Drift describes the chance loss of genetic variation that occurred not only in the out-of-Africa migration, but through all of human history as famine, climate change or war caused populations to crash and then recover.
Blynken and Nod Hang Out
So this latest visit of Blynken and Nod, the one that was to last a week? They are still here. Blynken asked to stay 100 days. Nod told his mother over the phone not to cry, but he wanted to stay a little longer.
There's a singing and bonfire tonight, so of course, they couldn't possibly go home before then. Blynken suggests Monday if he's not going to be allowed to stay for 100 days.
It's interesting- because they live in a upper level apartment and because their mother's background and parenting philosophy is different from my own, they don't play outside much at home, and their toys are nearly all electronic (when the five year old was two, the first thing he asked when given a toy was always 'where are the batteries?'), and these small children have their own television set and DVD player in their room. Yet they haven't asked for a movie here yet. They play outside, they build with blocks, they play with the toy cars and horses, they listen to story books galore, they play with the people available to them (and in this, we have it infinitely better than their poor single mother, who has only herself to distract them all day). They request specific picture books and specific stories all the time- and songs- lots of songs.
One night while trying to get the little boys to go to sleep during a thunder storm, after several stories and nursery rhymes, five year old Blynken told me, "Could you sing to us? That would comfort us and help us calm down and then we would go to sleep." And they did.
I know that to some reading this, their mother sounds a bit flighty or irresponsible, and it is true she has made and continues to make some life choices I would never have made, and live a life I would not live, and I certainly would never have left my children anywhere for two weeks, either, nor is her parenting style mine. But she loves her boys and is happy they are able to play outside and spend time with us. She wouldn't leave them just anywhere- she chose us, and I maybe shouldn't say it, but we are not a bad choice for a surrogate family. And the boys are good children. We have never had an issue with them swearing or engaging in more than ordinary childhood naughtiness ("No, I won't pick up my mess!" but then they do), and not too much even of that. They are talkative and friendly, extremely social and very, very nice at apologizing (a skill I was never able to develop in my small children). They didn't get that way through dreadful parenting.
Also, while I wouldn't have done it, in her culture it's fairly common for children to spend large chunks of time- weeks, or even a summer, with extended relatives and without the parents. The boys call us their Godparents, and they call me Ti-Ti, which is short for Auntie. I think from her point of view, this is not at all out of the ordinary.
We are all a bit tired, especially the FYG, who has done yeoman's duty in the diaper department. She refuses to share the adorable, personality packed 2 year old with anybody at any time, so I have explained she must take the bad with the good and if she won't share the fun stuff, she can't parcel out the unpleasantness at the diaper club, either, but must be the Little Red Hen.
It's been fun, but I'd be lying if I said we weren't all looking forward to Monday, when the boys will be going home. And we'll all be looking forward to the next time by the next day.
There's a singing and bonfire tonight, so of course, they couldn't possibly go home before then. Blynken suggests Monday if he's not going to be allowed to stay for 100 days.
It's interesting- because they live in a upper level apartment and because their mother's background and parenting philosophy is different from my own, they don't play outside much at home, and their toys are nearly all electronic (when the five year old was two, the first thing he asked when given a toy was always 'where are the batteries?'), and these small children have their own television set and DVD player in their room. Yet they haven't asked for a movie here yet. They play outside, they build with blocks, they play with the toy cars and horses, they listen to story books galore, they play with the people available to them (and in this, we have it infinitely better than their poor single mother, who has only herself to distract them all day). They request specific picture books and specific stories all the time- and songs- lots of songs.
One night while trying to get the little boys to go to sleep during a thunder storm, after several stories and nursery rhymes, five year old Blynken told me, "Could you sing to us? That would comfort us and help us calm down and then we would go to sleep." And they did.
I know that to some reading this, their mother sounds a bit flighty or irresponsible, and it is true she has made and continues to make some life choices I would never have made, and live a life I would not live, and I certainly would never have left my children anywhere for two weeks, either, nor is her parenting style mine. But she loves her boys and is happy they are able to play outside and spend time with us. She wouldn't leave them just anywhere- she chose us, and I maybe shouldn't say it, but we are not a bad choice for a surrogate family. And the boys are good children. We have never had an issue with them swearing or engaging in more than ordinary childhood naughtiness ("No, I won't pick up my mess!" but then they do), and not too much even of that. They are talkative and friendly, extremely social and very, very nice at apologizing (a skill I was never able to develop in my small children). They didn't get that way through dreadful parenting.
Also, while I wouldn't have done it, in her culture it's fairly common for children to spend large chunks of time- weeks, or even a summer, with extended relatives and without the parents. The boys call us their Godparents, and they call me Ti-Ti, which is short for Auntie. I think from her point of view, this is not at all out of the ordinary.
We are all a bit tired, especially the FYG, who has done yeoman's duty in the diaper department. She refuses to share the adorable, personality packed 2 year old with anybody at any time, so I have explained she must take the bad with the good and if she won't share the fun stuff, she can't parcel out the unpleasantness at the diaper club, either, but must be the Little Red Hen.
It's been fun, but I'd be lying if I said we weren't all looking forward to Monday, when the boys will be going home. And we'll all be looking forward to the next time by the next day.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Um, yeah.
So. Michael Jackson is dead.
And that's all I have to say about that. Except that I wish that was all anybody else had to say about that.
Sincerely,
The DHM
And that's all I have to say about that. Except that I wish that was all anybody else had to say about that.
Sincerely,
The DHM
A Nation of Adolescents
From the Palm Tree Pundit: From Mark Steyn in April's issue of Imprimis:
The story of the Western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government "security," large numbers of people vote to dump freedom every time—the freedom to make your own decisions about health care, education, property rights, and a ton of other stuff. It's ridiculous for grown men and women to say: I want to be able to choose from hundreds of cereals at the supermarket, thousands of movies from Netflix, millions of songs to play on my iPod—but I want the government to choose for me when it comes to my health care. A nation that demands the government take care of all the grown-up stuff is a nation turning into the world's wrinkliest adolescent, free only to choose its record collection.Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College, is always a good read, and it's free! Click here to subscribe.
The School Officials Who Stripped a 13 y.o. Looking for Ibuprofin...
That case reached the Supreme Court and Popehat has the ruling- it was a violation of the Fourth Amendment:
I think Wilson, Romero, and Schwallier belong somewhere they will never, ever, EVER again have the opportunity to humiliate and abuse children through the exercise of their deplorable judgment.
... but because Redding’s assailants, Kerry Wilson, Helen Romero, and Peggy Schwallier, didn’t know under clearly established law at the time that their conduct was illegal, they have qualified immunity and will not face damages.
I maintain that regardless of what Wilson, Romero, and Schwallier knew of the law, common decency should have guided them to the right action, but that’s between them and their consciences now, rather than a matter for a court.
Ms. Redding gets nothing but vindication, which she richly deserves. The brighter side is that in the future, school officials who decide to strip search children looking for trivial contraband such as ibuprofen cannot say that they didn’t know their conduct was illegal. From now on, such child abusers will have to explain themselves, before a jury of parents and fellow citizens.
Of course, for everyone else the maxim that ignorance of the law is no excuse stands, but in this case Redding’s assailants get a pass.
I think Wilson, Romero, and Schwallier belong somewhere they will never, ever, EVER again have the opportunity to humiliate and abuse children through the exercise of their deplorable judgment.
ObamaCare Not Good Enough for Obama Family
So says..... President Obama:
It's only a matter of time, of course, before Devinsky private life will be placed under a media microscope and we will all learn whether or not his first name is really Orrin or if that is only his middle name, and what his grades were in school and his taxes will be audited and made public and we will learn if he brushes his teeth as he should or not.
Here's video footage and a transcript:
Why is it that the political elite always want to demonstrate their 'compassion' by foisting off on the lower classes programs they themselves wouldn't take as a gift? That isn't an example of compassion, it's political pandering and an insidious form of paternalism.
It is my staunch personal opinion that if we are going to have a health care plan imposed upon us by those who consider themselves our political betters, those political betters and their families must be required to use the exact same plan as the rest of us- no other options for them permitted. Neither should Congress be permitted to make union members exempt, as they are hoping to do, from any requirements imposed on the rest of us.
More must reads on the Health Care plan and info-mercial last night:
Cato
Patterico
Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it’s not provided by insurance.
Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn’t seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he’s proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get.
The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if “it’s my family member, if it’s my wife, if it’s my children, if it’s my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.["]
It's only a matter of time, of course, before Devinsky private life will be placed under a media microscope and we will all learn whether or not his first name is really Orrin or if that is only his middle name, and what his grades were in school and his taxes will be audited and made public and we will learn if he brushes his teeth as he should or not.
Here's video footage and a transcript:
"...you're absolutely right that if it's my family member, my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care. but here's the problem that we have in our current health care system. Is that there is a whole bunch of care that's being provided that every study, every bit of evidence that we have indicates may not be making us healthier."
Why is it that the political elite always want to demonstrate their 'compassion' by foisting off on the lower classes programs they themselves wouldn't take as a gift? That isn't an example of compassion, it's political pandering and an insidious form of paternalism.
It is my staunch personal opinion that if we are going to have a health care plan imposed upon us by those who consider themselves our political betters, those political betters and their families must be required to use the exact same plan as the rest of us- no other options for them permitted. Neither should Congress be permitted to make union members exempt, as they are hoping to do, from any requirements imposed on the rest of us.
More must reads on the Health Care plan and info-mercial last night:
Cato
Patterico
What is going on in New York?
The state legislature has basically had a split, sort of like when the Catholic church ran with two Popes for a while? The gov wants state troopers to force the two sides to get together and actually act like grown ups. And the Dems turn out the lights on Republicans and lock them out so the Repubs take their marbles and go elsewhere. This is bizzaro-world.
Mummy Surprise
CAT Skin reveals a museum exhibit billed as 'Lady Hor' for the last few decades needs to be revised. The mummy turns out to be a man. Archeologists assumed he was a she because the coffin image sported no beard.
Governor Sanford's Remarkable Wife
I don't usually like to blog about this stuff, but I am making an exception here because I am so impressed by Jenny Sanford's strength, dignity, and self-respect:
Please read it all and say a prayer for this woman and her children.
I am glad, glad, glad that she did NOT attend his press conference where he confessed his unmanly (and by unmanly I mean immature, undignified, purely carnal, utterly lacking in self-control) and disgraceful disregard for the covenant of marriage which he entered over twenty years ago.
Like Mark Hemingway (who first wrote this during the Spitzer shenanigans):
Brava, Mrs. Stanford. Brava.
The wife of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford said Wednesday in a statement that she continues to love her husband, but that she asked him to leave their home two weeks ago because "I felt it was important to look my sons in the eyes and maintain my dignity, self-respect and my basic sense of right and wrong."
Please read it all and say a prayer for this woman and her children.
I am glad, glad, glad that she did NOT attend his press conference where he confessed his unmanly (and by unmanly I mean immature, undignified, purely carnal, utterly lacking in self-control) and disgraceful disregard for the covenant of marriage which he entered over twenty years ago.
Like Mark Hemingway (who first wrote this during the Spitzer shenanigans):
Why do we expect to see women “standing by their man,” even in circumstances when the husband doesn’t deserve his wife’s support? I doubt I’m alone in thinking that the next scorned woman would do herself and everyone else a favor by staying home when her husband holds a press conference to confess his depravity to the world.
Brava, Mrs. Stanford. Brava.
Know Your Roots
And Obama's:
Which might be why he does stuff like this:
Or acts surprised at things like this:
The fact is that, as a man of the hard Left, Obama is more comfortable with a totalitarian Islamic regime than he would be with a free Iranian society. In this he is no different from his allies like the Congressional Black Caucus and Bill Ayers, who have shown themselves perfectly comfortable with Castro and Chà vez. Indeed, he is the product of a hard-Left tradition that apologized for Stalin and was more comfortable with the Soviets than the anti-Communists (and that, in Soros parlance, saw George Bush as a bigger terrorist than bin Laden).
Because of obvious divergences (inequality for women and non-Muslims, hatred of homosexuals) radical Islam and radical Leftism are commonly mistaken to be incompatible. In fact, they have much more in common than not, especially when it comes to suppression of freedom, intrusiveness in all aspects of life, notions of "social justice," and their economic programs. (On this, as in so many other things, Anthony Daniels should be required reading — see his incisive New English Review essay, "There Is No God but Politics", comparing Marx and Muslim Brotherhood theorist Sayyid Qutb.) The divergences between radical Islam and radical Leftism are much overrated — "equal rights" and "social justice" are always more rally-cry propaganda than real goals for totalitarians, and hatred of certain groups is always a feature of their societies.
Which might be why he does stuff like this:
Even as the mullahs are terrorizing the Iranian people, the Obama administration is negotiating with an Iranian-backed terrorist organization and abandoning the American proscription against exchanging terrorist prisoners for hostages kidnapped by terrorists. Worse still, Obama has already released a terrorist responsible for the brutal murders of five American soldiers in exchange for the remains of two deceased British hostages.(do read the rest)
Prepare to be infuriated.
Or acts surprised at things like this:
...Obama called out the Iranian regime for mistranslating his comments, trying to make it appear that he was encouraging anti-regime protests and violence. But there was something odd about how Obama seemed surprised, incredulous, and almost offended by it.
Mr. President, a regime that will shoot its own people to stop a protest isn't above putting words in your mouth.
How Stupid Are We?
I am afraid to answer that question, I really am.
This is the bill that Waxman admits he doesn't even know what's in it- he just leaves that up to the scientists. Whom we did not elect.
And furthermore, there is a smoking gun here that the government is trying to hide:
This is serious stuff. Please read it. Because Pelosi wants this monstrosity to come up for a vote today. Never mind that NOBODY has had time or opportunity to read it, because while it's been in committee it picked up a whopping additional 300 pages.
The Democrats must believe that Americans are incredibly stupid, and if we allow the cap-and-trade bill to be passed, then they're right.
On the other hand, if the public had a clue of what is in this bill, and just how much it is likely to cost them, they would know that it is a "disaster.", and rise up against it. But the Democrats plan to ram it through without hearings or even public availability of the relevant text. The same legislative process that brought us trillion-dollar stimulus spending and trillion-dollar deficit budgets is about to replicate itself yet again.
This is the bill that Waxman admits he doesn't even know what's in it- he just leaves that up to the scientists. Whom we did not elect.
And furthermore, there is a smoking gun here that the government is trying to hide:
The Competitive Enterprise Institute has obtained internal EPA e-mails that show the agency willfully and recklessly disregarded scientific data that undermined the bureaucracy’s global warming zealotry.
This information is especially relevant as Congress rushes to pass the cap-and-trade nightmare on Friday.
This is serious stuff. Please read it. Because Pelosi wants this monstrosity to come up for a vote today. Never mind that NOBODY has had time or opportunity to read it, because while it's been in committee it picked up a whopping additional 300 pages.
Save on Glasses
Updated to add that if you sign up for Ebates you automatically get five dollars credited to your account, AND they will honor any outstanding balance you have with the now defunct Cashbaq.
When I was a child we learned I needed glasses when I was in the third grade and after getting in trouble for 'not paying attention' at least a dozen times, somebody finally believed me when I said I was paying attention as hard as I could, and realized I simply could not see the board to read it. I will always remember how amazing it was to me that everybody but me had known one could see separate blades of grass while walking along, and how beautiful those blades of grass appeared to me when I finally got glasses and was able to see the world around me.
I wanted pink frames. Or blue. Or purple, or really, anything in the world but brown plastic. I was not allowed to choose, however, or at least, not allowed to choose anything outside the range of brown, brown, or brown.
When I grew up and got to be the Mom and the Equuschick needed glasses we went to the optical department together and I let her choose whatever color she wanted (I think she chose blue, but I am not sure), and I finally bought myself a pair of glasses with pink frames. Parenting is all about undoing the horrible things your parents did to you (while doing all sorts of horrible things to your offspring that your parents never even considered). Or something like that.
We came home with our new glasses and Shasta, whom I was then babysitting, looked at me and said, "Those kind of make you look old." He's always been one to say whatever comes to mind, our Shasta, and I'm sure he would have said it just the same if he had realized then that I would be his mama-in-law when he grew up.
I have needed to buy a new pair of prescription eye glasses for a while, now- my not very old pair broke and the place where I bought them claims they cannot be repaired. Fortunately, Crystal Paine just posted a couple of great deals on buying glasses online.
Before choosing glasses online, you might want to look at this page to choose the right shaped frames for your face (I am fortunate enough to have an oval shape, so it doesn't much matter what I choose. It's probably my one good feature). There's also advice there on choosing which color frames match your coloring. Plum looked good to me, and pink is also supposed to be good for my skin tones. Ha.
If your prescription isn't stronger than -2.00, you can get a pair from Coastal Contacts through Cashbaq for only $6.26- and maybe even less. That's because...
When you order these glasses through Cashbaq, you get 10% of your order credited back to you. AND if you haven't already signed up at Cashbaq (and I hadn't), there's a five dollar sign-up bonus! Crystal says that this means these glasses cost you around sixty-three pennies. If your prescription is between -2.00 and -4.00 they recommend a different lens, and that total comes to 35.72, minus the five dollar rebate and the ten percent cashback, which isn't quite the outstanding deal that those who see better get, but it's still way cheaper than you'll find in a brick and mortar store.
Click through to sign up (or sign in to your own account if you already have one), and you want the offer posted right at the top of the page as the "Deal of the Day".
If you sign up through my link, I get a few cashbag credits, too, and you can pass your referral link on to friends for the same thing.
You can buy other things through Cashbaq.com as well, and you get various cash-baq percentages on different things, or free shipping- it depends on what the companies are offering.
If you want more options available to you for glasses or you have a stronger perscription, check out Crystal's review of Zenni Optical, which is where I ended up going since my prescription is so much stronger. I haven't gotten them in the mail yet, but I'll be sure to let the bloggy world know how they work out when they arrive.
But in case you're wondering what color I chose- I chose these:
I did consider getting the lenses tinted pink, but I changed my mind at the last minute. I didn't want Shasta telling me I looked old. But I think when my hair turns all white and I get it dyed lavendar at the beauty parlour in town, I'll go for pink glasses then. That seems like a good fit for me.
Updated to add that if you sign up for Ebates you automatically get five dollars credited to your account, AND they will honor any outstanding balance you have with the now defunct Cashbaq.
When I was a child we learned I needed glasses when I was in the third grade and after getting in trouble for 'not paying attention' at least a dozen times, somebody finally believed me when I said I was paying attention as hard as I could, and realized I simply could not see the board to read it. I will always remember how amazing it was to me that everybody but me had known one could see separate blades of grass while walking along, and how beautiful those blades of grass appeared to me when I finally got glasses and was able to see the world around me.
I wanted pink frames. Or blue. Or purple, or really, anything in the world but brown plastic. I was not allowed to choose, however, or at least, not allowed to choose anything outside the range of brown, brown, or brown.
When I grew up and got to be the Mom and the Equuschick needed glasses we went to the optical department together and I let her choose whatever color she wanted (I think she chose blue, but I am not sure), and I finally bought myself a pair of glasses with pink frames. Parenting is all about undoing the horrible things your parents did to you (while doing all sorts of horrible things to your offspring that your parents never even considered). Or something like that.
We came home with our new glasses and Shasta, whom I was then babysitting, looked at me and said, "Those kind of make you look old." He's always been one to say whatever comes to mind, our Shasta, and I'm sure he would have said it just the same if he had realized then that I would be his mama-in-law when he grew up.
I have needed to buy a new pair of prescription eye glasses for a while, now- my not very old pair broke and the place where I bought them claims they cannot be repaired. Fortunately, Crystal Paine just posted a couple of great deals on buying glasses online.
Before choosing glasses online, you might want to look at this page to choose the right shaped frames for your face (I am fortunate enough to have an oval shape, so it doesn't much matter what I choose. It's probably my one good feature). There's also advice there on choosing which color frames match your coloring. Plum looked good to me, and pink is also supposed to be good for my skin tones. Ha.
If your prescription isn't stronger than -2.00, you can get a pair from Coastal Contacts through Cashbaq for only $6.26- and maybe even less. That's because...
When you order these glasses through Cashbaq, you get 10% of your order credited back to you. AND if you haven't already signed up at Cashbaq (and I hadn't), there's a five dollar sign-up bonus! Crystal says that this means these glasses cost you around sixty-three pennies. If your prescription is between -2.00 and -4.00 they recommend a different lens, and that total comes to 35.72, minus the five dollar rebate and the ten percent cashback, which isn't quite the outstanding deal that those who see better get, but it's still way cheaper than you'll find in a brick and mortar store.
Click through to sign up (or sign in to your own account if you already have one), and you want the offer posted right at the top of the page as the "Deal of the Day".
If you sign up through my link, I get a few cashbag credits, too, and you can pass your referral link on to friends for the same thing.
You can buy other things through Cashbaq.com as well, and you get various cash-baq percentages on different things, or free shipping- it depends on what the companies are offering.
If you want more options available to you for glasses or you have a stronger perscription, check out Crystal's review of Zenni Optical, which is where I ended up going since my prescription is so much stronger. I haven't gotten them in the mail yet, but I'll be sure to let the bloggy world know how they work out when they arrive.
But in case you're wondering what color I chose- I chose these:
I did consider getting the lenses tinted pink, but I changed my mind at the last minute. I didn't want Shasta telling me I looked old. But I think when my hair turns all white and I get it dyed lavendar at the beauty parlour in town, I'll go for pink glasses then. That seems like a good fit for me.
Updated to add that if you sign up for Ebates you automatically get five dollars credited to your account, AND they will honor any outstanding balance you have with the now defunct Cashbaq.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Prayer Request
One of the nicest bloggers around, Patrick at the Paragraph Farmer, is asking for prayers for his daughter, who was in a serious car accident with him on Tuesday and suffered head trauma. I wish I could tell his family all I am feeling for them right now, but I simply haven't the skill. Praying.
Oops- I should have looked at updates- she is home and still recovering, and things look pretty good.=)
Oops- I should have looked at updates- she is home and still recovering, and things look pretty good.=)
ABC's Infomercial On Obama's Health Care Plan
Cindy at Dominion Family:
She has some questions to get the discussion started now.
We have Tricare because of my husband's military service. The Cherub has Tricare and Medicare because of her disabilities. And let me tell you that we had NO option but to enroll her in Medicare if we wanted to keep Tricare. Because she was 'eligible' for it, if we did not enroll, then Tricare simply refused to pay for anything at all. So that costs us an extra hundred dollars a month that it shouldn't have. The military was billed as free health care for life, and that's simply not true. We already had a family premium each year to keep our health care. It's not high (around five hundred a year). I know others pay far more. But it sticks in my craw that we have to accept Medicare for the Cherub or Tricare can simply cease to provide us any insurance whatsoever.
I find our government provided health care inefficient, bumptious, time consuming, and not cost effective. And I watch what government health care and other government programs do 'for' Blynken's and Nod's mother and I am even less impressed. If they are this inefficient and bumbling now, I shudder to think how monolithically botched a single payer system would be.
My friend, Lynne, has prodded me to open up a live blog on Wednesday night while listening/watching ABC’s informercial for Obama’s health care plan. So if you want to growl and hiss and throw tomatoes stop by Wednesday night a few minutes before 10:00 pm EDT where hopefully someone smart, like Lynn, or involved in health care, like Dana, will be here to say intelligent things. These live blog events have been a lot of fun and I hope this one will be also. It should be a very negative time for all and that always makes good blog fodder.
She has some questions to get the discussion started now.
We have Tricare because of my husband's military service. The Cherub has Tricare and Medicare because of her disabilities. And let me tell you that we had NO option but to enroll her in Medicare if we wanted to keep Tricare. Because she was 'eligible' for it, if we did not enroll, then Tricare simply refused to pay for anything at all. So that costs us an extra hundred dollars a month that it shouldn't have. The military was billed as free health care for life, and that's simply not true. We already had a family premium each year to keep our health care. It's not high (around five hundred a year). I know others pay far more. But it sticks in my craw that we have to accept Medicare for the Cherub or Tricare can simply cease to provide us any insurance whatsoever.
I find our government provided health care inefficient, bumptious, time consuming, and not cost effective. And I watch what government health care and other government programs do 'for' Blynken's and Nod's mother and I am even less impressed. If they are this inefficient and bumbling now, I shudder to think how monolithically botched a single payer system would be.
Wandering Minds and AHA!! Moments
"An 'aha' moment is any sudden comprehension that allows you to see something in a different light," says psychologist John Kounios at Drexel University in Philadelphia. "It could be the solution to a problem; it could be getting a joke; or suddenly recognizing a face. It could be realizing that a friend of yours is not really a friend."These sudden insights, they found, are the culmination of an intense and complex series of brain states that require more neural resources than methodical reasoning. People who solve problems through insight generate different patterns of brain waves than those who solve problems analytically. "Your brain is really working quite hard before this moment of insight," says psychologist Mark Wheeler at the University of Pittsburgh. "There is a lot going on behind the scenes."
In fact, our brain may be most actively engaged when our mind is wandering and we've actually lost track of our thoughts, a new brain-scanning study suggests. "Solving a problem with insight is fundamentally different from solving a problem analytically," Dr. Kounios says. "There really are different brain mechanisms involved."
By most measures, we spend about a third of our time daydreaming, yet our brain is unusually active during these seemingly idle moments. Left to its own devices, our brain activates several areas associated with complex problem solving, which researchers had previously assumed were dormant during daydreams. Moreover, it appears to be the only time these areas work in unison.
"People assumed that when your mind wandered it was empty," says cognitive neuroscientist Kalina Christoff at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, who reported the findings last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. As measured by brain activity, however, "mind wandering is a much more active state than we ever imagined, much more active than during reasoning with a complex problem."
More at the link.
My first thought was something like, "well, sure, whenever you're doing something inefficiently it takes more energy," but upon reading the entire article (which is very interesting stuff), I think it's much more than that.
Kids need a good balance between input and large chunks of free time to process that input- and so do adults.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
