Browsing all posts in August, 2009.
Handy or Handsome?
Does anyone remember the old “Red Green Show?”
A product of the Canadian Broadcasting System, it aired in America on PBS stations supported by viewers like you. It was one of a spate of comedies/satires meant to answer the Canadian government’s concern that television was becoming too Americanized. The brilliant Canadian powers that were decreed that [...]
The Glory that was Rome
And so we come to the cradle of western civilization, the source for virtually every language spoken in the western half of the world, the place where we developed our thirst for blood sports, and the reason that we were plunged into a thousand years of “dark ages.”
Rome.
Rome, however, had very few ideas of their [...]
Cursive Discourse
A mother is a delicate soul, who always wears a perfect coif, keeps her cool at all times, bakes cookies every afternoon, and never, ever lets an imperfect word slip from her lips.
Which is why her children have perfect vocabularies that absolutely do not include anything that you wouldn’t want the neighbors to hear.
NOT.
Even if [...]
Not An Auspicious Beginning
Stretch’s first vocabulary word of the school year: “Auspicious”: 1) promising success; favorable. 2) fortunate, prosperous.
I’m thinking not so much.
The Goth got himself up this morning and left for the bus a full twenty minutes early. Ten minutes after the bus was supposed to arrive, he calls me on his cell to get me to [...]
The Pre-School Post
I should be writing a fabulous post with tips for the first day of school, but I’m swamped. Because tomorrow is the first day of school.
So I’m putting up a hysterical video from Dana O’Briain about pseudoscience and woo. Enjoy.
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Whips and Tomb Paintings
Before we move on to the glory that was Rome, we must take a moment to bewail failed chances and missed opportunities at Rome’s parent civilization.
Hundreds of years before Rome, another people ruled the Italic peninsula. They rivaled Greece for control of the Mediterranean. Known throughout the classical world for their engineering skills, they took [...]
The Mother’s Guide to Men’s Restroom Etiquette
Dear Abby, Thursday August 13. Moms write in worried about sending their 7 year old sons into men’s bathrooms alone. Tone of each letter talks about how anything can and does happen to these poor children. Suggestions range from two way radios, to going into said bathroom to make sure it’s empty, to standing outside [...]
What’s Wrong with this Study, page 2
So, yesterday I posted a challenge about the recent article that is being touted as a vindication of couch potatoes everywhere.
If you haven’t read it, you’re cheating.
Here’s my beef:
There’s nothing wrong with the study or its design. It does a fine job of what it intended to do, which was to document compensatory changes in [...]
Another Round of “What’s Wrong with this Study?”
This study was all over the news last week, and the coverage is so misleading that I just CANNOT leave it alone.
“Changes in Weight, Waist Circumference and Compensatory Responses with Different Doses of Exercise among Sedentary, Overweight Postmenopausal Women” examined four groups of women who were placed on exercise regimens of 0 minutes (control group), [...]
What Ophelia Was REALLY Saying
The ancient Greeks were big on the idea of regulating the size of the family, for the good of the state. Plato designed not one but two societies which carefully regulated not only who should produce progeny with whom, but during what years, with how much excitement, and which progeny should be allowed to survive.
Exposure [...]
