Do Life Right

I thought school was supposed to be about learning, not order. Yet, order and control is all it seems to be about anymore. The administrators have lost sight of the real goal by bringing attention to all their “nondisruptive” circumventions.
The Chicago Tribune’s article titled “Neuqua Valley High School student can wear anti-gay T-shirt […]

Photograph taken in Tucson, Arizona (west of I-10, near “A” Mountain), March 2008.
I’ve heard many parents say they limit their children’s television and movie viewing (both content and total “screen time“) because they are fearful their children will grow into zombie couch potatoes that essentially worship videos. It’s such an amazing sloth-like image, it […]

The vast majority of bloggers allow comments on their posts. There are many reasons why I have consciously chosen not to. Here are the main ones:

No spamming of my site! No spamming to me personally! No spamming to the other readers!
No unproductive and useless negative feedback from internet trolls. I’ve […]

Around and around, I hear “we don’t let Junior have more than x minutes of screen time per day.” (Or worse yet, per week!) Egads, what all is considered “screen time” anyway? I really want to know, but those touting the phrase “screen time” can never give me a definitive answer. […]

Nothing I produce is “open source”. I believe that everyone should get credit for their creations. That includes artists, writers, programmers, and musicians (just to name a few). If a work of art is appreciated by a great number of people, then the credit to the creator needs to be given in […]

Go to a gathering of healthy vegans, and the topic of vegan bashing and food sabotage often arise. In a healthy and happy room of people, it’s a shock to hear utterance of these not so healthy and happy topics, yet there is often someone there desperate for advice on how to deal with […]

Similar to our Top 10 Movies, today and the next few days are our Top 10 Books (divided into five categories: Young Adult Fiction, Young Adult/Children’s Non-Fiction, Adult Fiction, Adult Non-Fiction, and Children’s Fiction) for 2007 (all read by at least one person in my family). Most did not come out in 2007, we’ve just […]

Few of these came out in 2007, and many are underrated by critics and reviewers. That doesn’t stop us from forming our own opinions as to the best movies and television shows we’ve seen this year. If your family and friends don’t have these, consider them for presents this upcoming Holiday season. Again, these […]

My daughters and I are HUGE Webkinz fans. We play on the Webkinz site every single day and we have quite a few pets. These little stuffed animals, and their virtual counterparts, are the best stuffed animals we’ve ever seen.
All that said, as a person with programming experience, I’ve been very disappointed with the Webkinz […]

“If a writer is so cautious that he never writes anything that cannot be criticized, he will never be able to write anything that can be read.
If you want to help other people, you have got to make up your mind to write things that some men will condemn.”
From Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the […]