September 09, 2007

SNOTNOSE PUNK ATTIRE

AWTM's son got a little upset at kindergarten the other day:

However, the other day upon picking Sir Rowland up from school, his teacher stopped me to tell me Sir Rowland was a little upset over one of the little girls t-shirts. It read. Girls are Smart, and in parenthesis said (boys are not). This upset Sir Rowland to no end. He was very upset, and made his teacher tell the little girl, that he a boy, was indeed smart.

One of my major pet peeves is t-shirts with suggestive and/or snotnosed punk sayings. What kind of person buys this crap for his child, let alone for one as young as a kindergartner? I think it's shameful enough when I see preteens wearing baloney like the "I may not be on time, but I'm worth the wait" shirt I saw a while back, or the kid in my neighborhood with the "Respect Me!" shirt. I was thankful to see an article at Slate a while back called Lolita's Closet: Unbearably Trampy Back-to-School Clothes. At least I'm not the only one who thinks that the teen shopping section is ripped right from the South Park "Stupid Spoiled Whore" script.

I know every parent on the planet, at one time or another, has uttered the words "my child will not wear that," but I seriously mean it. My child will not wear shirts with disgusting and degrading slogans. Period. Because I'm the mom, that's why.

MORE TO GROK:

My husband made a good point after hearing this story. He wonders how it would've gone over if a boy in the class were wearing a shirt that says that boys are smart and girls are not. Or, heaven forbid, insert a race or ethnicity. What would the teacher make of a "Puerto Ricans are dumb" shirt? Always curious about double standards...

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August 26, 2007

RECOMMENDATIONS

I could use some movie and book recommendations. Here are some recent finds of mine, for what it's worth. Movies: Stranger than Fiction and Hot Fuzz. Books: Michael Crichton's Airframe and Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds. What do you have for me?

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July 27, 2007

LOOKS LIKE I'LL BE STAYING HOME FOR A WHILE

If you were wondering what kind of anti-war movies are store for us, wonder no longer. There are plenty to choose from! You could see such gems as

“In the Valley of Elah,” a drama inspired by the Davis murder, written and directed by Paul Haggis, whose “Crash” won the Academy Award for best picture in 2006. The film stars Tommy Lee Jones as a retired veteran who defies Army bureaucrats and local officials in a search for his son’s killers. In one of the movie’s defining images, the American flag is flown upside down in the heartland, the signal of extreme distress.

Other coming films also use the damaged Iraq veteran to raise questions about a continuing war. In “Grace Is Gone,” directed by James C. Strouse and due in October from the Weinstein Company, John Cusack and two daughters struggle with the loss of a wife and mother who is killed on duty. Kimberly Peirce’s “Stop-Loss,” set for release in March by Paramount, meanwhile, casts Ryan Phillippe as a veteran who defies an order that would send him back to Iraq.

Or how about

Brian De Palma’s “Redacted,” focusing on an Army squad that persecutes an Iraqi family, is to be released in December by Magnolia Pictures.

Oh boy, I just can't wait. You remember how much I loved Crash, right? This should be even better.

Excuse me, I just threw up in my mouth a little.

(via RWN)

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July 18, 2007

THEY WARMED OUR GLOBE!

Who knew that I was accidentally saving the planet? I wanted to have one baby and have instead had zero. Hooray for me! Via Steyn:

So how far are the ecochondriacs prepared to take things? In London last week, the Optimum Population Trust called for Britons to have "one child less" because the United Kingdom's "high birth rate is a major factor in the current level of climate change, which can only be combated if families voluntarily limit the number of children they have."

Thank heavens Steyn goes on to point out that the birthrate is not even at replacement rate in the UK, but whatever. Less babies means less global warming. Actually, it probably just means less environmentalists, because the only nimrods who will consider this are the hardcore greens.

I know, let's just all get in a big gay pile, à la South Park, and prevent the future from ever happening! Then there won't be global warming for sure! Derp!

And I love the word "ecochondriacs."

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July 16, 2007

NUTJOBS ON A BOAT? SIGN ME UP

My husband and I found out we're not "cruise people" when he got back from Iraq. We hated it, and we don't really plan to do it again. But there's something so darned alluring about those right-wing nutjob cruises, you know, the ones with D'Souza and Steyn and Davis freaking Hanson. Now that I might like to do someday.

So I had a good chuckle at Venomous Kate's fisking of a reporter who "infiltrated" the nutjob cruise. I felt this reporter's pain on our cruise, where our dinner partners were much more interested in discussing the evils of our tablemate's pharmaceutical job than the evils my husband had just fought in Iraq. Poor thing didn't fit in, but at least her shipmates were nice to her; ours just accused us of lying.

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July 05, 2007

ODIOUS MAN

I kept wanting to watch the movie United 93, and my husband kept coming up with excuses why he didn't feel like seeing it. He wanted to watch something funny, he didn't feel like a movie tonight, there wasn't enough time before bed. Finally I flat-out asked him why he obviously didn't want to see the movie. He replied that he just didn't want to see anything made by Oliver Stone. Ah-ha. Mix up, honey, Stone didn't make this one; he made the other one. Problem solved, and we watched the movie a few days ago.

I don't blame him. I read the book Case Closed a few weeks ago, and all I could think of the whole time was that I spent money in the theater to see JFK when I was 13, and I actually thought it was true. I was just an idiot kid, and it was all up there on the big screen, for pete's sake, so how was I to know that Stone based that load of crap on "evidence" that had been debunked years earlier? The man is just dishonest to the core. I can't believe I wasted any brain cells thinking there was a JFK conspiracy.

So I love it that, even though Stone can twist and turn a story into anything but the truth, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad still won't let him make a documentary about him. Because

"It is right that this person is considered part of the opposition in the U.S., but opposition in the U.S. is a part of the Great Satan," Mehdi Kalhor, media adviser to the president told the Fars news agency.

Even folks who hate the US are still considered enemies with respect to jihad. Nice. It's a shame that lesson will likely go right over everyone's heads.

Looks like Oliver Stone will have to find some other story to twist up into bullcrap.

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July 04, 2007

TODAY, AND EVERY DAY

Neal Boortz hates the 4th of July.

Trust me, you don't want me to work on the 4th of July. I'll just go into one of my insensitive rants about how Americans .. most Americans anyway .. no longer have any real love of freedom. Security is the word today, not independence. Oh, to be sure ... we want to be free to chose where we work (as long as we don't have to negotiate our own salary), where we live, where we worship and what's for dinner. Beyond that ... all too many of us want to government to step in and relieve us of the responsibilities and consequences of choice.

Reading assignment? Sure .. I have one for you. Go buy the book "1776" and read it. Read how American patriots in 1776 marched across frozen ground without shoes --- leaving a trail of blood --- just to fight for independence from Great Britain. Today? See how many people you can find today who would make that sacrifice for freedom.

Will get the book. And will think about what freedom really means today.
But 4th of July for patriots is like Valentine's Day for soulmates: superfluous.

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June 29, 2007

1,2,3 WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR?

In keeping with yesterday's theme, what do Rosie O'Donnell and jihadists have in common? They both dress their kids up like insurgents.

Quiz: Which one is Rosie's kid and which one is the Palestinian?

rosie_kid.jpg

Would you be able to tell if the skin tones were the same?

The Palestinians mean it when they dress their kids up like this. I have no idea what Rosie was thinking. Supposedly she's anti-war, but the fact she dressed her kid up with bullets suggests that maybe there is something she'd be willing to let her kids fight for. Obviously it's not the United States, though.

(found via One-Sided Exposition)

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June 28, 2007

THE BEATLES

What do Lileks, Annika, and I have in common? We don't really get The Beatles.

I discovered The White Album when I was 12, and then heard everything else. That's doing it quite backwards, to say the very least. And I was a fan back then, from age 12 to about 15, buying cassette tapes and hanging out in freaking head shops downtown looking for memorabilia. But somehow a weird resurgence of Beatlemania hit my high school in 1995 and the Fab Four completely jumped the shark when the annoyingly popular girls from my school were camping out on the sidewalk outside Best Buy all night to buy the Anthology album. And got interviewed for the newspaper for it. I kinda dusted my hands off and thought, "Well, OK, that was fun while it lasted." I stopped listening to the most popular band of all time because they got popular. Heh.

But now, even though I'm old enough to not pick my music based on what's cool, I still can't listen to The Beatles anymore. I just don't feel the music. When I was 13, songs like "Mean Mr. Mustard" were cool because they were weird for the sake of being weird. Now they just feel weird.

I still very much enjoy the song "I Will." That's about it. I've come to think Quentin is right: I'm an Elvis fan, and you can't be both.

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June 25, 2007

USEFUL IDIOT

Dear Cameron Diaz,

The next time you're in a country to "participate in a television show that celebrates Peru's culture," make sure you learn a little about the culture before you show up. Like learning that your Chairman Mao purse might tick the locals off, you know, since the Shining Path spent a decade killing Peruvians. And when you apologize with "The bag was a purchase I made as a tourist in China and I did not realize the potentially hurtful nature of the slogan printed on it," you reveal just what a dumbass you are. If you can't understand the hurtful nature of Mao Zedong, you really need to get a clue.

Sincerely,
Sarah

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WORKER BEES

When I have a knitting class scheduled, I have to call in to the store in the morning to find out if anyone has signed up. I am always amazed at how put-out the cashiers seem when I call. I am always cheerful and it only takes them a second to look it up. But I always get gruff, one-word grunts from these sullen people. Is there anyone in my class today? "Hang on. Nope. Click." Do they not know how rude they sound?

I work for Michaels. I make about $50 per month, which is so low it makes me laugh. I can spend that in supplies for the class. But I love teaching people to knit, and Michaels gives me that opportunity. So I do everything I can to make people happy in the store. I take people's email and phone numbers and go home to find information for them. I type up patterns for them. Currently I am helping an elderly lady change her lace pattern to a larger size. Not easy. And she already knows how to knit, so I get nothing out of it. I don't get paid to do it, and she'll never take a class from me. But I want her to have a good experience in the store. That's part of my job, right? They didn't hire me to be stingy and grumpy.

I taught my mother-in-law to knit when she visited, but she was having trouble with a stitch once she got back home. We were unable to figure out the problem over the phone, so she decided to drive up to her local Hobby Lobby to ask for a little help. She brought her needles and yarn and just wanted someone to watch her to see what she was doing wrong. They refused to help, saying it was against store policy to spend time helping customers on individual projects. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous? My mother-in-law put the yarn back on the shelf that she was intending to buy and left. They could've taken ten seconds to help her purl and then would've made $15 in sales. Instead they got nothing.

I don't understand most workers. Yeah, it may just be your crappy minimum wage job to answer the phone, but your grunts and gripes aren't even worth eight dollars. Take some stinkin' pride in what you do instead of doing the bare minimum, and think about something larger than yourself for five minutes. You represent a company, and they don't owe you a paycheck for mediocrity.

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THEY HATE US

At the risk of repeating myself for a third day and using again the phrase Aristotelian gods, here is a prime example of lefties looking down their noses at us country bumpkin Republicans and saying that they know so much better than we do what's good for us:

Even with the low poll numbers, liberals still feel stymied in conveying just how bad this administration is. It's been the ultimate frustration to consider the people who don't see Bush's malevolence: In 2004, rural America cited national security as their number one reason for voting for Bush. But people in the major cities, where there's actually a chance of being victimized by terrorism, people voted against Bush. Frustrating. In the cities, where most people are utterly at two with nature, people cited Bush's raping of the environment as a major reason to vote against him. In rural America, where people fish and hunt and generally do things outside, they voted for Bush. Sooooo frustrating. On Sutton Place and in Harvard-Westlake, where kids go to college after high school, they vote against Bush. In rural America, from where the majority of tragically killed kids in Iraq soldiers come, they vote for Bush.

And if that's not enough, let's throw a big heaping tablespoon of malice in with the condescention. Malice and condescention pie, yummy.

You could argue that even the world's worst fascist dictators at least meant well. They honestly thought were doing good things for their countries by suppressing blacks/eliminating Jews/eradicating free enterprise/repressing individual thought/killing off rivals/invading neighbors, etc. Only the Saudi royal family is driven by the same motives as Bush, but they were already entrenched. Bush set a new precedent. He came into office with the attitude of "I'm so tired of the public good. What about my good? What about my rich friends' good?"

This is how they see conservative values, folks. We're worse than fascist dictators. We really don't believe in things like supply-side economics; we just make policy like that up because we want to screw as many people as we can. We want to help rich white guys and blow up the levees around black guys. Bwahahaha.

The comments section would be funny if I didn't know it was true. They really think we don't care about the troops, hate Mexicans, look to our "pastors" for voting advice, seek to destroy the Constitution, and that AM radio is the same thing as Hitler's Beer Halls.

I really don't understand how human beings' brains can be hardwired so differently.

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June 22, 2007

BRIDGE ON THE RIVER WHY

Tonight we watched The Bridge on the River Kwai. Never have I seen such glowing reviews for a movie I disliked so much. None of the characters were even remotely honorable. Heck, none of the characters even existed; for a movie that was supposedly based on historical events, it sure played loose with the facts. 16,000 Allied POWs died building that stupid bridge, and the movie didn't show a single one. Oh, did I say POW camp? I meant Happy Camp, where Japanese and British got along swimmingly. What a load of crap. If I were one of those real-life POWs who surreptitiously tried to sabotage the construction and survived the war only to find a movie made ten years later in which I collaborated with the Japanese and built them a purty lil' bridge, I'd be pretty f-in' steamed. And to sit through a movie where the main message is that all soldiers are mad, war is pointless, and bad guys and good guys are all the same deep down? I'd be out of my mind.

You remember how Neil was looking into publishing a book based on his Armor Geddon blog? You know why he didn't publish it? Because no one was buying what he was selling. They wanted more "internal conflict." They wanted him to struggle with his role in the war and the world. They didn't want to hear that the only regret soldiers like Neil have is that they weren't able to kill more bad guys.

War does not make all men go mad and lose their sense of right and wrong. But apparently making a movie in which they do will get you a 95% approval rating.

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June 21, 2007

WE CAN DANCE IF WE WANT TO

Via Photon Courier, an article about the effect of protecting children too much:

Children are so cocooned by their parents that they rarely venture far from home and have little concept of space, volume and how the world actually works, David Willetts, the shadow education secretary, said yesterday.

The area in which children were allowed to range freely by their parents was a ninth of what it was a generation ago, he said.

CaliValleyGirl and I have discussed this at length and how we hope to address it when we have our future children. And boy do I think it's tricky today.

Remember when Lileks wrote about the new Winnie the Pooh character?

This year the new Pooh series will introduce a six-year old girl in Christopher’s stead. I’m sure she’s spunky and adventurous and kind and empowered, and I’m just as sure my daughter will find her boring, because kids can smell pedantic condescending twaddle nine mile off. (It’s one of the reasons many girls love Arthur – his little sister is sixty-five pounds of smart, devious, narcissistic, naughty sass.) Here’s the part that makes me truly sad:

The little girl wears a bike helmet.

Because you could fall down in the 100 Acre Woods and hurt yourself.

I swear, theyÂ’re going to put airbags on BarbieÂ’s Pegasus next, and require thick corks on the point of all unicorn horns.

That's how ubiquitous safety has become: cartoon characters need helmets.

On my last day of fifth grade, my mom let me ride my bike to school. Some of my friends who lived closer to the school got to ride their bikes often, but we lived in a neighborhood that was further away and so I was a bus-riding kid. (Oh, and every day my brother and I walked down the street to the bus stop and waited alone.) But finally my mom said I was old enough to earn the right to ride my bike to school. I just google mapped it, and it seems I rode roughly two miles. And I felt SO COOL. I was one of the big kids now. I was independent. I had Done Something Awesome. And without a helmet.

My mom and I talked about that not too long ago. She says looking back she can't believe all the parents let their kids ride bikes to school. And she's not sure she'd let me do it today. Even she has a hard time remembering when cartoon characters didn't need helmets.

I needed to ride that bike to school. Heck, I still remember it. As a crowning achievement, as a milestone, as a step on the way to Growing Up. The thing that scares me is wondering if I will be able to let my kids take those steps too.

"A study by the Children's Society found 43 per cent of [British] adults thought children should not be allowed out with their friends until they were 14 or over." And apparently there's a debate in England over whether kids should be allowed to climb trees.

I fell out of a tree once. I also broke my front tooth playing tag once. I broke a kid's finger playing flag football in school. And once I fell in a ravine and couldn't get out, which was perhaps one of the scariest moments of my childhood. And I didn't tell my parents about it because I didn't want to lose my freedom to go play near the ravine.

I don't have kids yet. I nearly had a heart attack when brand new Charlie puppy ran out into the street in front of a car, so I know that I am going to battle overprotection. But it's a battle I'm going to have to have with myself if I want my kids to at least grow up with the independence I had, much less what my parents had.

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June 18, 2007

HEH

Mark Steyn:

There are immigration laws on the books right now, aren't there? Why not try enforcing them? The same people who say that government is a mighty power for good that can extinguish every cigarette butt and detoxify every cheeseburger and even change the very climate of the planet back to some Edenic state so that the water that falleth from heaven will land as ice and snow, and polar bears on distant continents will frolic as they did in days of yore, the very same people say: Building a border fence? Enforcing deportation orders? Can't be done, old boy. Pie-in-the-sky.

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June 04, 2007

THAT'S AN EXPENSIVE FRIENDSHIP

My very first blog post was actually an email to Steven den Beste about a lecture I overheard at our on-post college. The professor was spending an awful lot of time bashing the US instead of teaching the subject matter. One of the things I overheard was:

he was lecturing about how, despite what any sources say to the contrary, the American government does not give any humanitarian aid to foreign nations. He said that all American aid comes with strings attached, unlike aid from other countries like Sweden, Switzerland, and Germany. He said that the US does not donate any money in the world for purely humanitarian causes. I couldn't help but be shocked by this statement, considering that he was lecturing to 16 American soldiers and family members. I thought it was rather gutsy of him to make such statements.

Four years later, this statement doesn't bother me as much as it did that day. I have come to understand that aid without strings is pretty stupid, and there's no reason to fault our country for wanting something in return for our help. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. By all means, string away! I think we could use more strings attached to the things we do (both at home and abroad).

However, I still think we give a heckuva lot of aid out that gets us very little in return. This is a perfect example.

AT-Bridge-005.jpg

That's a picture of construction being done on a bridge between Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

By summer 2007, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers team hopes to open a $43 million, more than 2,200-foot steel-span bridge that will link the two sides.

The bridge — which will span the Oxus River, famously crossed by Alexander the Great during his conquests — will provide a valuable trade route straight from Tajikistan to the ports of Pakistan, allowing overland movement of essential goods and hopefully, economic development in Afghanistan, Tajikistan and other Central Asian nations that avail themselves of the trade route.
...
Currently, the only way to cross the river is via a ferry that costs $15 per person, a stiff price for Afghans, whose average annual income is $800.

Project staff could not provide figures as to how much each side — Afghan or Tajik — would benefit economically from the bridge. But both sides of the bank already appear to be steeling themselves for a boom — new hotels have popped up on either side and residents and government officials from both nations say they’re optimistic.
...
Walls, who in addition to serving as project manager is also a resident engineer and the contracting officerÂ’s representative, said he also hopes the completed project will send a message to those who use it.

“The people of Afghanistan and the people of Tajikistan see we’re building something constructive,” he said. “It shows America as doing something to help the country.”

The United States gets absolutely nothing of economic value from Tajikistan. They don't have oil. Their main export is cotton, grown at the expense of their environment and the Aral Sea because of stupid Soviet planning. And Afghanistan means nothing to us save the terrorism aspect.

There's only one conclusion: We spent $43 million dollars to win the hearts and minds.

Seriously, I'd love for this professor to explain to me the selfish reasons behind fronting the money for this bridge. Halliburton didn't make any profit, and there's not a drop of oil crossing the bridge. We simply paid $43 million dollars so people in that region would like us and maybe think twice before joining al Qaeda. That's it.

The next time someone tells you that the US never does anything for humanitarian reasons, remember this bridge. Nothing in the world is a free lunch -- not even in Sweden, despite what this prof says -- but building a $43 million bridge just so people in the area will like you comes pretty damned close.

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June 03, 2007

INJUSTICE

Our best friend from college is Indian. He got a computer science degree and then got a work visa from his employer. And unfortunately, to my understanding of the system, his work visa is tied to the job he applied for, so he hasn't been able to be promoted once in the past five years. He's waiting patiently in line for his green card so he can advance in his job and become a bigger asset for his employer.

He's also one of the smartest and most informed people we know. He's the guy my husband calls when he wants to talk politics or foreign affairs. And if he has to get in the same line as Mexican fruit pickers, I will be royally disgusted with my country.

(this article also via Hud, who calls it the nail in Bush's coffin)

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June 01, 2007

ALPHA MALES

Found this article via today's Bleat:

As America comes to terms with our diminished omnipotence in the wake of 9/11, the Iraq War and President Bush's international unpopularity, we're growing weary of Teflon-coated John Wayne stereotypes of masculinity.

Says you, maybe. As for me, I stand by my original assessment of what is hot. And for me, it's definitely still alpha males.

John Wayne is not a stereotype; he's an archetype.
And a hot one at that.

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May 31, 2007

THE PROOF IS IN THE DONUTS

CaliValleyGirl said she often wants to run off and start her own country. Here's another reason to join her:

Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined a broad economic vision Tuesday, saying it's time to replace an "on your own" society with one based on shared responsibility and prosperity.

The Democratic senator said what the Bush administration touts as an ownership society really is an "on your own" society that has widened the gap between rich and poor.

"I prefer a 'we're all in it together' society," she said. "I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none."

That means pairing growth with fairness, she said, to ensure that the middle-class succeeds in the global economy, not just corporate CEOs.

"There is no greater force for economic growth than free markets. But markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed," she said. "Fairness doesn't just happen. It requires the right government policies.

Great googily moogily. That's an extremely scary worldview.

Of course "fairness doesn't just happen," because what people like Clinton want is fairness of result. And that requires that the government rig the system so that overachievers can't get rich and dumb people don't get poor. What's "fair" about the United States is that anyone who works hard can get rich, or at least move up the economic scale. Just ask the Combodian donut makers, who own upwards of 90% of donut shops in California. They came to this country, invested in a business where they could be successful, and work their tails off:

“It’s not easy work at all. As a family we are working seven days a week, the store is open 24 hours, and we have no family time. It’s tiring,” said a 26-year-old Chinese American who requested anonymity.

No one offered to make things more fair for these people. They came to the US and worked, instead of expecting the government to help them live. And they did it "on their own." I know several people from countries like Poland and Bulgaria who came to the US with the money in their pockets and worked like the dickens to earn every cent they have. If they can do it, anyone can. On their own.

They tried the "'we're all in it together' society" before; it was called the U.S.S.R. And it failed miserably because not everyone wants to work as hard as a Cambodian donut cutter. Is Hilary Clinton really silly-brained enough to think that this is the direction the US should take?

Hey, Cali, if we start this new country, I want the Cambodians to come with us.
Donuts rule.

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May 18, 2007

LOSING TOUCH

My husband and I have been discussing parenting constantly since we decided to start a family. Our philosophy is that our job as parents is to turn babies into adults. Our child will be a child for about 1/5th of his life, so the real goal is to mold him into a good adult. Thus we constantly discuss which ways we think we can best achieve this goal.

One thing that does worry me is handing the kid over to a school. I know enough Neal Boortz and John Stossel to be completely disillusioned with public schools. But we also don't want to homeschool, so we generally discuss ways we can supplement our future child's education.

This story about elementary school kids using calculators is just sad. I think technology is great, but it's also taken us far away from the fundamentals. I remember getting a pizza one night and the cash register girl accidentally typed in $200 instead of $20. She couldn't for the life of her figure out how much change to give us without the cash register doing it for her; she had to hunt around for a calculator to do the math. Of course, at my job in college I also saw one girl count on her fingers how many hours her 12-8 work shift was. Sigh.

It's not only a problem with math though. Spell Check has killed our ability to bother looking words up. I had another blogger ask me how I could stand Movable Type since it doesn't have spell check, but if I'm unsure about a word, it only takes ten seconds to open m-w.com and look it up. That's way better than Back In The Olden Days when I actually had to do my homework sitting with a dictionary and a thesaurus. When I was teaching college English, I was just happy if students' papers didn't look like they'd text messaged them to me! Yeah, LOL is not appropriate for a college paper, folks.

We have so much power at our fingertips these days -- to be able to find cosines, definitions, and historical figures with a touch of a button -- but as wonderful as this technology is, I can't help but think sometimes that we're losing our grasp on basic smarts.

Of course, this is coming from the girl who patted herself on the back repeatedly a few weeks ago because she used the Pythagorean Theorem instead of a tape measure to figure out how big her knitting project would be. Look at me, I'm a flippin' math genius.

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