Several years ago, a friend updated his Facebook status with a link to a news article about how some group of Muslims was offended by being portrayed badly in media or something similar. My friend's comment on the story was very close to: "When they start worrying about offending us by crashing planes into buildings, then we can start worrying about offending them." ...
Your possessions are a gas ...
How does a homeschooled kid ever get socialization? Homeschoolers are extremely tired of it, but it's a common question. I still don't understand why, exactly, but it's common. As I detailed in The magic socialization of public school, "public school socialization", especially for the younger kids, is really not all people think it is. But how does a homeschooler's social life compare? ...
You don't need medicine. You need natural cures! ...
"Dad, how come in most stories, it's a boy that does stuff?" said my daughter last year sometime. "Well, uh, because for a long time… Um, well, you see… hmmm…" I'm not sure what I eventually got out, but I vowed to try to find books where it was a girl who went out and did things. I know there are lots of them out there, but they're not easy to find. So I thought I'd list the ones I have personally vetted and read to my daughter. ...
Last night we watched Thor as a family. So today we ended up talking a bit about the Norse myths: about Jotunheim, Asgard, and Earth; Odin, Loki, and Thor, etc. She's six, so we didn't get too deep, mostly just answering questions and looking up pictures online. Later in the day I picked up a library book (D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths), but we've not yet looked at it. ...
Walk through any grocery store and you'll see thousands of products shouting their dubious health benefits at you in bold face type and lots of exclamation points. With the jars of peanuts labeled "gluten free", frozen chicken nuggets labeled "good source of protein", coconut oil with a "trans-fat free" sticker, and everything labeled "all natural", it's easy to become cynical… but, no more! I have a great product that's pretty darn awesome. Have you considered the health benefits of… ...
I've always been a strong supporter of copyrights. I haven't downloaded songs I didn't buy. I haven't torrented movies I didn't purchase. I haven't downloaded books I haven't payed for. I've been pretty hard-line. My view is we should try to reward the creators of the content we enjoy, and hopefully they will make more. ...
I thought I'd never be one of those spreadsheet schedule people, but I didn't want to have our day be completely unstructured either. I just hope this isn't too much structure: ...
We're fast approaching our new "school" "year". Sorry for all the quotes, but what we do isn't exactly school, and we don't go by years. But in any case, we're planning the next year of education. ...
