More Than Just Cookies: Rethinking the Girl Scouts - TIME
Interesting article. While Brownies and Guides (the Canadian version of the Scout movement) were a huge part of my childhood, I only know one child out of all of my friends' children who is involved in it in any way. Most kids I know are so overwhelmed with activities already (usually at least 3-4 times a week), that I'd be surprised if Scouting ends up making it. It's too bad, as I certainly got a lot of valuable things from it, and learned a lot as well. One of the things that I very much enjoyed about Brownies/Guides was that you were always learning something new- it wasn't like dance lessons where you did the same thing over and over again- you were exposed to so many different activities and then could concentrate on the ones that interested you.
It seems that a lot of the old organizations are having difficulties- my girls were involved in Big Sisters for a long time, and while it was hugely successful for us I know that the Big Brother/Big Sister organizations themselves are usually having a lot of difficulty staying viable. I think that in the long run it's going to mean that our children miss out on a lot of things.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
More Than Just Cookies: Rethinking the Girl Scouts - TIME
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Give Thanks? Science Supersized Your Turkey Dinner
Give Thanks? Science Supersized Your Turkey Dinner | Wired Science from Wired.com:
Americans eat a pound of sugar every two-and-a-half days. The average amount of sugar consumed by an Englishman in the 1700s was about a pound a year
Fascinating article about the changes that have taken place in traditional Thanksgiving foods.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
YouTube - Harry Chapin sings TANGLED UP PUPPET Live
YouTube - Harry Chapin sings TANGLED UP PUPPET Live
I can't embed it, but it's worth watching, especially if you have kids going through puberty :-)
As a Canadian, I'm horrendously embarassed by this-Carleton University drops Shinerama, the big Cystic Fibrosis Fundraiser, because it's "too white"
Disease dropped
I'm just appalled. (cue get off my lawn speech) When I was in University we protested Reagan and the arms build up, the horrors that were going on in El Salvador and Chile, and demonstrated for Amnesty International whenever we got the chance.
Carleton University is theoretically one of Canada's premier journalism schools, which makes this story even more frightening. Political correctness goes so far and then it only reinforces the supposed evil that it's fighting against. A "white man's disease"? I spent some very frightening hours in a hospital room waiting to see if my then 3 year old daughter had cystic fibrosis.
I am so sick and tired of people thinking that a diagnosis or condition or illness is restricted to race, or age, or "level of functioning". As far as I can tell, the only thing that affects every single one of us is that (if we're lucky), we get old, and then we die. I'm tired of being told that it's so weird that I have 2 autistic girls because autism's a guy thing. I'm tired of being told that my son has "skinny white boy" prematurity issues still hanging on, tired of trying to support people whose kids have different conditions where it seems to turn into a "whose kid is worse" contest.
Canadians aren't all assholes, and this one student council's action is certainly not representative.
Monday, November 24, 2008
What song is this?
YouTube - What song is this?
This is one of the more clever things that I've seen in a while.
Lines at the ER, a television boom, emptying suburbs. A catastrophic economic downturn would feel nothing like the last one. - The Boston Globe
Sunday, November 23, 2008
20 Strange Sculptures (Part I)
20 Strange Sculptures (Part I) | Village of Joy
They're not kidding. They are strange.