volcanoes - don't ignore them

The Engineer and I were watching the President's address and the GOP response. When Governor Jindal complained "and $140 million for something called "volcano monitoring." Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C." The Engineer and I had to protest-eth! Living in a state with five volcanoes, both active and *sleeping* we think monitoring such beasties is a wise thing to do. Remember Mt. St Helens?

This is a picture of Mt. Adams in today's paper. Our closest volcano.

does that mean I can eat 1200 calories worth of chocolate?

So it doesn't matter what we eat when we try and diet, only the amount of calories.
The all 1,2oo calorie chocolate ice cream diet... yummmmm.

I'm all for balance. And lucky that I loves the veggies. And with the medication change things are going better. Also with a soy allergy it limits the stuff I can fall off the wagon with.

the yoga fatwa

>Ours is a magpie culture, borrowing whatever shiny items we choose to ornament our lives.<
by Renee Loth here in the Boston Globe.
Interesting piece.

your honor, halp!

Who speaks for the sea lion in the court? And why is the court involved? Well, one endangered animal insists on eating another endangered animal.

Sea lions manage, every year, to swim up the Columbia River. A very big and powerful river. They swim, upriver, 145 miles to Bonneville Dam. There they feast on salmon who are channeled into the swim ladders.

All sorts of problems come from this. The endangered salmon are being gobbled up, the Native subsistence fishermen are being cut out. The Humane Society thinks trapping the sea lions is cruel. The sea lions are pissed off at being routed from the buffet table. If they aren't settled in a new home they get the Big Shot. The salmon are tired of being digested. They have hundreds more miles to swim so they can spawn and die. All in all, nobody is happy and that is probably what makes for a good court decision.

This is a scale model

of Herod's Temple.
Built by a retired farmer in England. Article here and there are clickities to the right.
Both temples, the historic and the model, are humbling.

Carla says 'don't blame Casey'

Carla and Mr. Hoo

Here on Amuse-Biatch.

UPDATE: Casey strikes back. Sheeesh, what got into her amuse bouche?

oh noes!

>The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may soon act to impose the first regulations specific to nanotechnology<

I can't help it. When I found this story all I could think of was the all encompassing, Earth consuming Grey Goo.

And the article continues:
>Nanotechnology holds immense promise in many areas, such as curing a host of diseases and reducing dependence on foreign oil by making solar cells commercially viable. But at the same time, environmentalists and some scientists worry that because of their tiny size, some nanomaterials may wreak havoc in the environment or inside human bodies.<

I knew it. Gray Goo.

First Dog

News reported that the new First Dog will be a Portuguese Water Dog.
Rosie and Heidi understand about the hypo-allergenic nature of the proposed First Dog, expected to join the family in April, but still would like to see a Labrador in the White House. They'll get over it.

UPDATE: What the heck! This morning, on the news, a statement from the First Lady's staff - a decision has not been made on what breed of dog. This is a correction of the first statement to People magazine. There were hundreds of stories linked on google yesterday about the decision.
And now...?

Conclusion: I need to get more of a life....

The Supreme Court

>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that a Utah city can refuse to put a religious group's monument in a public park near a similar Ten Commandments display.

The justices unanimously sided with the city of Pleasant Grove, which had said a ruling for the religious group would mean public parks across the country would have to allow privately donated monuments that express different views from those already on display.

The Summun religious group, founded in Salt Lake City in 1975, sought in 2003 to erect a monument to the tenets of its faith, called the "Seven Aphorisms," in a park where there are other monuments, including a Ten Commandments display.<

Never heard of these folks so, of course, I had to go look them up.

Well, now...When I read the news report I thought they might be along of the lines of The Flying Spaghetti Monster. But they just might be in the L. Ron Hubbard model, 0r in this case the Corky Ra model. He needs a Hollywood convert to get into Hubbard's class.

Intriguingly they offer a full service church. They can mummify you for the afterlife.

I love the web

When I lived in northern British Columbia there were only two ways to get to our townsite, by seaplane or by freighter.

The freighter ride took 24 hours and we always arrived in the middle of the night. When the engines reversed at dockside it would shake the windows of our house. The freighter's name was the Northland Prince and it traveled from Vancouver to Alaska, calling at our town on the way up and back. When people left the town for good the tradition was to toss your open umbrella over the side and everyone left dockside would cheer (it rained over 300 inches a year in that area).

The trip is almost all thru the inland passage between islands and the mainland. There was one stretch open to the Pacific ocean and the ship would start these long rolls from side to side. Adults took to their beds for a nap. The kids would roam the halls and enjoy being knocked around. We'd hit the diningroom during lunch and see that the edges were up on the tables and we'd laugh as dishes slid back and forth and try and catch the passing food with our forks.

Eventually the Northland Prince was sold and last I heard was plying its trade in the Atlantic Ocean. I looked it up this morning and found these pictures. The ship had been renamed the St. Helena. The drydock picture was after the ship had been through a storm by the Falkland Islands. These pictures are all on a forum and posted by someone who worked on the ship. He has a lot of tales to tell and sounds like he has the same enthusiasm for the ship as the horde of little kids who roamed her passageways playing sea dog.

Here we come to save the day!

>Former Washington Gov. Gary Locke, the nation's first Chinese-American governor, will likely be named secretary of commerce, a senior administration official said Monday.<

After the party

India better get its game on.

>About 65 million Indians — roughly a quarter of the urban population — live in slums, according to government surveys. Health care is often nonexistent, child labor is rampant and inescapable poverty forms the backdrop of everyday life.<

Sometimes Washington state feels like...

California is a black hole and is going to suck us down someday.

>Puget Sound Energy has agreed to sell nearly all the electricity generated by its Eastern Washington wind farms for the next two years to Southern California Edison.<

If you don't hear from me that's where I'll be.

you can lead the boy to peaceful waters but will he drink?

Microsoft explores educational link to video games.

>"We want to figure out what's compelling about the games," said John Nordlinger, head of gaming research for Microsoft. "If we can find out how to make the games fun and not make them so violent, that would be ideal."<

I'm not so sure you can take the violence out and still retain the interest. Just from my observation of the boys in my life, both of the academically brilliant tribe members and the Lost Boys.

book nerd post

So I finished the first books of all three authors suggested and placed another order. Now I've got the happy project of reading all their books. This is my personal stimulate the economy plan.

google discovers Atlantis!

Joy, you need to see this!
From your very own computer you can discover Atlantis!
The article shows where, on google Earth, you can find it.
So I went looking.
Sure felt strange to find it!
Hope someone goes, takes a look up close and makes a Discovery TV program about it.

UPDATE: google says not so. Dang!

How to turn a black lab to a brown lab

There are brown patches in Rosie's fur. From the hydrogen peroxide. Meet the world's most miserable labrador.

Usually she spends her days napping on the sofa. She moves from one end of the sofa to the other end. Hard life. Now she is downstairs in the familyroom, on a makeshift bed of towels and bathmats. Dog abuse, pure and simple.

I can explain the purple, gold spangled boa... another time.

skunks as economy stimulation

So far the skunking of the dogs has cost us $275.67.

I think President Obama is missing a bet here. Send every household a skunk. We will buy ANYTHING to make the smell go away.

First we hit the internets - found Mythbusters report on what they tried on their show. The Engineer headed to the store at 6am and bought it all, plus bucket, rubber gloves, sponges (all were going to be tossed). Didn't work.

Headed to PetsMart the minute it opened. Skunk Away, Skunk BeGone, pet carpet shampoo.

Still skunky.

We went to Costco and bought our own carpet shampoo machine.

Cleaned the entire carpet. Dogs are downstairs in the familyroom, marinating in the last treatment. I have been washing towels and bathmats and doggy nests all day.

The jury is still out.

There is NOT ENOUGH CHOCOLATE in the world to deal with this.

halp! skunk!

You want to know how to become WIDELY AWAKE at 5:30am. Get two labradors skunked and have them run into the house.
The Engineer is up at the store buying hydrogen peroxide, a big box of baking soda and Dawn diswashing liquid. Called into work and said we had a bit of an emergency. I have FreeBreezed everything in sight. Gawd, it is awful. Who thought skunks were a good idea as an animal?!?!
Where do I complain?

I am a victim of church and state separation

I turned my female student over to the tutor who works at the psychiatric hospital, which was our plan all along. But I also turned over my working space - the conference room. We had to move our district tutor out of the hospital because it is now being administered by the local Catholic hospital. We can't have a public school employee working in that building. So if I am assigned another student, that I have to teach in the building, I will be in the kitchen. Kind of cozy. I do have a new adult student for GED tutoring, this one through the district.

Tonight The Engineer has fixing my computer on his agenda.

computer update

My computer has turned into a paperweight. Gorilla Boy says it must
be completely wiped out. :-( If it can't be rescued, I swear, I'm going
back to MAC.
He is taking off to go back to school soon with the four dormies (who are
sweet, polite and adorable - but don't tell them I said that) and so
we wait for The Engineer to get home. He who has spent the weekend
camping in a snow cave. I can't EVEN imagine!
So I am using Daughter's when I can. I have to remind her just who gave
birth to her and then I swipe it.

felony egging

So Eldest now has his own car, in his name, on his insurance. And insurance wants to know if he has had any *incidents* connected to his driving.

Well, there was the Felony Egging Incident.

One day I was working at home and I get a call from a city detective. Is your son currently driving a silver Volvo? (PANIC!!!) Yes, that's the car he uses. WHY?! We want to bring him in for questioning....

(First thought he's safe.) Then - questioning? MY son? MY SON?!

Felony damage to a vehicle caused by egging. Felony. Felony Egging?

Your Volvo was spotted in the area and the car in question was damaged by a person driving a silver Volvo pelting it with eggs.

I'm still trying to get my mind around Felony Egging.

Then I'm thinking - who goes for a ride on the wild side driving a silver Volvo?

So no. You've got the wrong kid, the wrong Volvo. MY SON WOULD NOT DO THAT. All the while I know she has heard it a hundred times before and was always proved right.

We agree to meet during his lunch period at the police station. I call The Engineer. Try to explain the concept of felony egging. And our son being a wanted man. And the three of us meet up at the police station. Eldest is as confused as we are.

We meet the detective. She tells us that someone followed him from a street in town to our house (!!!!!!) because the fellow was sure that my son had egged his girlfriend's car. A silver Volvo had been involved in egging on nights previous. (Dear lord, what if he had confronted Eldest? Tried to beat the snot out of him?!!). Eldest said he was on that street, on the night in question, dropping off a friend after a show at a local venue. (I'm with the band, actually I AM the band.) He gave a kid a ride home, they talked for a while in the car, the kid got out, Eldest came home. No egging had happened. He was very direct and very serious. She asked him some more questions (grades, school sponsored job at a science lab, his music) and I think she got the feel for him.

And the detective believed him. We was sprung!

So that was our only *incident* with driving. And somewhere, out there is a silver Volvo with a carton of eggs riding shotgun. Watch out.

are you happy to see me?

My female student, age 13, walked in today sans eyebrows. She had shaved them off. And drawn on penciled eyebrows. Kind of. Badly. Oh. Dear. She was mad at her mother so off went the eyebrows. She also showed me scars from cutting herself. :-( Today was our last day as we are transferring her to the psychiatric tutor. I will miss her. As a farewell project we made valentines our last half hour.

Gorilla Boy picture

Just in time for Valentine's Day, Gorilla Boy's picture of playing cards.
*If* they get the lights on his jeep working, Gorilla Boy and Dormies are showing up here tomorrow. Eldest son will be dropping by, driving up from Oregon, where he was visiting grandparents. Should be a full house. :-)

Rachel Maddow, Darwin and the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Daughter and I loves Rachel Maddow. Her quirky sense of the absurd matches our own. Tonight she celebrated the anniversary of Darwin's birthday by dishing up The Flying Spaghetti Monster.
If you are going to lump science in with creationist theory then you better include them all.
A video is supposed to be posted to this site when it becomes available.

After the piece Daughter told me something I didn't know before. Her high school biology teacher, a former working scientist, announced to the class they were skipping the chapter on evolution. Why? Because he was sick and tired of all the parents complaining to him about teaching evolution and not adding in creationism. He said read it if you want. And, of course, daughter did. One of the things that stunned me is that our community is stuffed with scientists, mathematicians and engineers. I even knew the number once as we, the school board and bond committee members, hired a consultant to survey our community. So the fact that a vocal minority beat this former working scientist, turned teacher, down is discouraging.

Interview with Leah, from Top Chef

Where we find out what happened with *the boyfriend*.

>>Do you regret what happened at all? I definitely regret cheating on [my boyfriend] on national television. He’s not my boyfriend anymore because of what happened on the show and other things. Do I regret kissing Hosea? Um, yes — but no at the same time. I don’t know. It’s weird. Whatever it is, I did [it]. So, there’s nothing I can do to change it.<<

halt, put down that book!

Book banning. Again. Seems it is illegal to sell children's books produced before 1985.

>>Not until 1985 did it become unlawful to use lead pigments in the inks, dyes, and paints used in children’s books. Before then—and perhaps particularly in the great age of children’s-book illustration that lasted through the early twentieth century—the use of such pigments was not uncommon, and testing can still detect lead residues in books today. This doesn’t mean that the books pose any hazard to children. While lead poisoning from other sources, such as paint in old houses, remains a serious public health problem in some communities, no one seems to have been able to produce a single instance in which an American child has been made ill by the lead in old book illustrations—not surprisingly, since unlike poorly maintained wall paint, book pigments do not tend to flake off in large lead-laden chips for toddlers to put into their mouths.<<

Yikes! I have a first edition of the Dr. Suess book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. We have my mother's copy of The Night before Christmas, that she received when it first came out. We used to read it to the kids every Christmas Eve. My mother has read all the grandchildren the books she saved from my brother and my own childhood years.

And libraries! Do they have to toss entire collections? >>A further question is what to do about public libraries, which daily expose children under 12 to pre-1985 editions of Anne of Green Gables, Beatrix Potter, Baden-Powell’s scouting guides, and other deadly hazards.<<

If you are caught with kiddy contraband you could be in big trouble. >>Penalties under the law are strict and can include $100,000 fines and prison time, regardless of whether any child is harmed.<< Will they drag Marion the Librarian off in handcuffs?

Things that little people routinely put in their mouths has to be safe but you have to wonder if they are getting a bit carried away here.

G.M. Ford

Another blogger recommended book. :-) And it is soooo good, just like the Jack Kerley books. And like Jack Kerley, there are more books from this author to be read and I am a happy bookworm. I could almost wish for more dark, winter reading hours...

so you want romance?

Go to the Binder Park Zoo.
Go watch the animals frolic like birds and bees.
>From frolicking frogs to the love-lives of leopards, this will give you an intimate look at animal mating rituals. The R-rated show lets you go where no zoo guests have gone before.<

The mind boggles.

A banned book

And I did it.

I tutor a second grader who is part of an early reading intervention. We work on decodables, sight words and read from a selection of grade level kids' books. The other day I chose a leveled book from the rack and picked up my student. We went through our routine and we started team reading the leveled book. The protagonist in our book was having trouble at school, mostly funny mistakes, and we laughed over it. But then the protagonist mentioned that one student was in the Outerspace Group (it was something like that) and immediately I flashed on the old joke (the reading groups of Eagles, Hawks and Buzzards). So we read along and again the protagonist mentioned a kid who was in the Mariners group. What the heck? So along we come, the protagonist is having trouble and then someone in his class can do something better than him in and she's in the *dumb* group, like him.

My throat literally closed up.

I looked at my student and I said, "I'm really offended by this sentence and I refuse to read this book anymore." Then we talked about everyone has something that doesn't come easy to them and that doesn't make them dumb and I talked about being tutored in math when I was a kid.
My student was kind of stunned and then he was kind of thrilled.

While he was choosing his sticker for the day I paged through the rest of the book and found the next worrying sentences. "(Protagonist) will never make it to third grade. He can't even read."
I sent my student back to class at the end of our session and took the book to the coordinator and told her I thought the book should be pulled from our selection and showed her the sections. She agreed.

I do think there is a place for this book. Being the mother of a dyslexic child, there are few books out there to let learning disabled kids know they are not alone and give them coping skills. But you need to know exactly what you are reading to a child, have the time to discuss it and make sure the child understands the context of the book. Learning Disabled kids suffer dozens of causally thrown arrows every day in school and this is when schools are keenly aware of learning disabilities. Kids are still kids and it hurts to have a learning disability. And later that hurt turns to anger and many times they end up as one of my Lost Boys.

We don't have that time in our program, to deal with the causally thrown out hurts, we come in, grab the materials we have available, make sure we cover sight words, decodable books, literature, stickers and visit the treasure box every 12 books all in 30 minutes. Therefore I asked the book be banned.

It was bound to happen one of these days

Two satellites had a mid-space collision.

"Two big communications satellites collided in the first-ever crash of two intact spacecraft in orbit, shooting out a pair of massive debris clouds and posing a slight risk to the international space station.
As of Wednesday, there were 9,831 pieces of manmade debris — not counting anything from Tuesday's collision — orbiting Earth."

But, not to worry! Mad Scientists and Entrepreneurial Spirits have come up with Tethers Unlimited to mitigate problems from future satellites. Somehow I was thinking about having a satellite on a string, a really long string attached to a big and complicated balloon.

>Police in northern Sweden broke open the door of a hostel on Friday night after they mistook the sound of an opera singer practicing her scales for the heartrending screams of a woman under attack. <
Story here.

The Amazing Fluttering Bug??

So Bob did it. And Dan did it. And David did it.
Became Super Heroes.
So I did it.
The Amazing Fluttering Bug.
Sheesh!
It seemed like a good idea at the time. We had a rough day with a student. Yesterday he tried to feel up the sub. Today he tried to play obscene word games with me. It took three of us to get him to KNOCK IT OFF.
So I thought super hero powers might help me tomorrow. I don't think he will be impressed. I think I'll put in my monthly request for a stun gun.

Top Chef vs. The Bush White House

So who has committed the more egregious culinary crime? Top Chef with its non-stop, constant sponsorship of every aspect of the show? Or The Bush White House for its 2004 inaugural menu to honor brand names represented by top GOP and Bush campaign donors?

From an article written in 2005, the corporate sponsorship compelled the chef to produce dishes such as -" brined Pilgrim's Pride turkeys in Coca-Cola, stuffed with sweet-and-savory stuffing made from Dunkin Donuts old-fashioned cake doughnuts. Cedar Plank "Pacific Seafoods" Sockeye Salmon in "Dole Pineapple" Sauce. And for dessert: more doughnuts. For the final course Krispy Kreme "Snow Balls" with Nestlé "Nesquik" Hot Fudge Sauce and Asher's Chocolate Covered Mini-Pretzels."

Really, Top Chef has a long way to go.
(I am waiting for toilet paper or feminine hygiene products to show up in the Top Chef apartment bathrooms.)

more eye in the sky

You can clicky it and make it bigger by going here.
I loves this kind of stuff :-)

end of the rainbow

>>Picture taken by Jason Erdkamp of Lake Forest, took this photo while traveling north on the 241 Tollroad in northeast Orange County<<
Full article here.

power

The Engineer is an electrical power engineer. So even though he works at a nuclear plant his interest is in the generation of power. The company loaned him to a hydro-electric dam once.
He is going to be very excited to read this story in today's paper which tells us > The Hoquiam City Council passed a resolution endorsing a proposal to place tidal turbines at the mouth of the Columbia River, Willapa Harbor and Grays Harbor.> With all our miles of Pacific Coastline and the huge Pudget Sound system, hopefully this will be one of many.

now you know

why the smell of french fries cooking is so hard to resist. Or 'chips' as they were called in my Canadian youth.
>People drawn to the smell of a chip shop are being attracted by complex aromas including butterscotch, onion and ironing boards, scientists believe.<

current book, finished The Hundreth Man

This book, White House Chef, combines two favorite TV programs here, Top Chef and West Wing. The chef served both the Clinton and Bush administrations. And it has recipes! Daughter read it, I grabbed it, next it goes to Daughter's friend, then to Eldest and onto good friend who grew up in DC.

I finished The Hundredth Man by Jack Kerley. The end of the book is grab on with both hands and hold on! I liked the author's writing - some sentences you had to go back and savor. He could combine the two aspects and it didn't feel off. I liked the protagonist and that is a must. I won't read books where the protagonist irks me.

I have the other two recommended authors in my stack and will order some more by Jack Kerley. I love gloomy, freezy foggy Sundays with a fire and a book.

Eldest has a job!!

Following David's lead I won't mention the name of the restaurant but this is the area where it is located off of Lake Washington, in Seattle.
400 people applied for this job so we are extra thrilled, in this economy, that he got a job! Hopefully Seattle doesn't suffer too much and the restaurant trade hangs in there. He is being trained in all positions and he is thrilled as he wants to learn it all.
Whew! One down, two to go.

excavating

Our family room is downstairs. Thank goodness. When the kids were little they could leave huge forts set up, train tracks, block mega-cities. When they were in school we had scout meetings, academic teams meetings, the kids build tons of team and school projects and paint, glitter and glue didn't matter when it got everywhere. Teenage years we had the academic teams and the band with a full drum set, huge amps and more guitars than we had guitar players.

We still have all the detritus of those years and I'm slowly getting it all sorted, donated, put away, held hostage and finding petrified unknown objects. Today was a big push day so we can
handle Gorilla Boy's dorm mates who are showing up next weekend. Even The Engineer went through some of his stuff and felt the joy of purging and organizing.

I paraphrased Peter Walsh to him - if you are going to keep something, treat it as precious and respected. If you haven't, then it doesn't mean that much to you.

hollywood vs. real life

It is a given, in this household, anytime Hollywood gets a hold of a story involving a nuclear reactor, there is a chance The Engineer's head might explode. There was one awful movie titled Atomic Twister that was so stunningly inaccurate that even I was in danger of head explosion.

Tonight we are watching West Wing's take on an accident at a nuclear plant. The Engineer is abusing the pause button as he argues and corrects every point. I'm checking my email. I've always wondered - is everything Hollywood gets a hold of so glaringly inaccurate? I wonder if people in other industries and professions find it so. Maybe there are doctors and lawyers and others who abuse the pause button at their house and yell at the TV too.

Really, it's all about the hair

Reading through the blogs on Bravo's site today and found this one from Stefan.
Stefan reads like Stefan talks and it is funny - in reference to Hosea "My hair looks so much better then yours" - and it is interesting - you must read about the horse (skip that part if at all wonky of stomach, but it is still damn interesting!).

why not?

budget cuts and who hired this idiot?

From our paper -
>>Dorn said he is working with lawmakers to change some laws that would save money as well as helping local schools. He also says he wants his staff and superintendents at school districts across the state to come to him with ideas.Some of the ideas, he said, have been ridiculous, like the suggestion from one superintendent to eliminate special education because it is so expensive.<<

Like he even thought that would be lawful?!?!

We have our own building. Granted it is a beyond ancient portable. In the spring weeds start growing up between the foundation and the inner walls - you can have a really nice weedy flower arrangement in your office.

Today I was feeding junk mail into the shredder when the word 'nickel' caught my eye. AK! I don't think my shredder can eat a nickel.

The Paralyzed Veterans of America sent me a nickel and some lovely, flowery address stickers.
And then proceeded to tell me that a nickel is an invaluable amount of money to a veteran suffering from spinal cord injury.

WHY ARE YOU SENDING ME THIS NICKEL IF IT IS WORTH SO MUCH IN SERVICES??

Then I went on the web to see what this group is about and found the legal issues page.

>>Paralyzed Veterans of America's (Paralyzed Veterans) attorneys have litigated hundreds of cases on behalf of members and other veterans, helping them receive the benefits they have earned. When veterans are denied benefits by Board of Veterans’ Appeals, they have a right to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims and then to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Our professional staff represents claimants in these courts and tracks legal issues that matter to veterans.<<

Sigh. WHY do our veterans have to fight for benefits? Why aren't we taking care of our veterans?
Why do we have groups raising money? There should be no need to raise money if we were honoring our promises.

They want me to mail back the nickel if I choose not to send them $3.
This just ticks me off on so many levels.

when you want to soar with eagles...

First you take over their nesting platforms.

oh well, it's all fine and good NOW!!!!

>>Education: Senator promises to help WA students with WASL

The chair of the Senate education committee wants high school seniors and juniors to know she is paying close attention to their struggles with the Washington Assessment of Student Learning.

Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe promised a hearing room full of teachers, students and education group representatives on Wednesday that her committee would find a way to quickly resolve some obstacles for students.<<

WHY WAS this flawed test and high stakes roadblock EVER allowed to be used on MY son? And the whole class of 2008 - the first class held to these tests. A decade of this crap, a decade of promising some kind of accommodation for dyslexia and it NEVER happened. A decade they used the students as lab rats, tried to hold ONE class to it and watched it all crash and burn. If you were a student of 2008 you were screwed. They dumped the math and science after one try (those my son blew away, of course, and it didn't count!). I watched my son become ill with anxiety over the writing test, throw up, not be able to finish. He had to take it three times and the promised accommodations (we're still working that out) never came. I'd been asking after these since he was in fourth grade!! The depth of anger I have over this is really, really deep. And may have a lot to do with the disconnect I felt when trying to teach in this system and why I feel so drawn to my Lost Boys who are as much a victim of the high stakes testing era as my son.

Sophomore off to his next village

So my morning gig is done. Slacker, Skater, Surly, Sad and Scary Sophomore will be enrolled in our alternative high school for yet another try at educating this kid. Good luck and I'll kind of miss him... I will be subbing with another boy for four days until his new tutor can start. This is one job I do NOT want. Very scary, prone to wandering in alternate galaxies and usually drugged to the gills. I'll pinch hit and that's it.
I may take on more testing of my Recovering Moms if we can get it worked out. And I still have my adorable second grader. Second graders make all things seem right with the world.
Update: Added another student, my free mornings lasted about four hours... A girl this time, transitioning from Juvie. Said it won't take too long - my first student was supposed to be for two weeks, ended up being seven months and through summer too!

did I really see that??

This morning, on MSNBC, an advertisement for clean coal was on. This guy held up a lump of coal and sniffed it. "It even smells good!" I must have imagined it...

frogs r us!

Ten new species of amphibians are discovered!
You can never have enough frogs :-)

Today's quote

"All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do."
Leo Tolstoy

Sometimes it just takes a ballot box.

Is your computer out to get you?

Hasn't this already happened??

>> Google and Nasa are throwing their weight behind a new school for futurists in Silicon Valley to prepare scientists for an era when machines become cleverer than people.

The new institution, known as “Singularity University”, is to be headed by Ray Kurzweil, whose predictions about the exponential pace of technological change have made him a controversial figure in technology circles...

Proponents say that during the singularity, machines will be able to improve themselves using artificial intelligence and that smarter-than-human computers will solve problems including energy scarcity, climate change and hunger.

Yet many critics call the singularity dangerous. Some worry that a malicious artificial intelligence might annihilate the human race.<<

Well, yeah... my computer is always plotting to overthrow me. The other day it sold my email password, ungrateful machine, probably for a handful of tasty-silicon-bites.

The Hundredth Man

I ordered one of every author you all recommended. This one arrived first. I started reading it. You know that feeling when you start reading a book and it is GOOD? And you find out that there are more by the same author. And that happy feeling that you have a bunch of good reading in front of you. Just a warm and cozy and geeky bookish feeling. Now I've got to figure out more of Charlie's GoodReads site so I can expand my universe of bookish people.

Ice Age H20 with a twist of lemon, please

Well, this is just alarming and intriguing all at the same time...

>> A study of the groundwater in four Columbia Basin counties found that deep wells are tapping 10,000-year-old water left by the last Ice Age, and the aquifer is not being recharged.A study released last week by the Columbia Basin Ground Water Management Area, based in Othello, found that over pumping will cause what one of the authors called a "race to the bottom."It's a problem for irrigators and cities in the area that covers Adams, Douglas, Franklin and Grant counties. The study found some recharging of upper level wells by surface water. But old water is not being replaced because it lies beneath layers of impermeable basalt.<<

These counties are north of us but we are all considered the Columbia Basin. Interestingly the Columbia River, which is why we are named the Columbia Basin, flows through this region to the tune of 90 billion gallons of water a day. But, being the West, it is all about water rights.

more heros

>>SPOKANE, Wash. A python, a boa constrictor, a tortoise and a lizard were saved by Spokane firefighters in a house blaze during the weekend.

The firefighters also saved several dogs.

A neighbor told KREM-TV he heard an explosion right before flames engulfed the house Saturday night. It took crews about 15 minutes to get the flames under control.

The firefighters say no one was home at the time of the fire, which they believe started in the basement the house before working its way up into the attic.<<

mothers of boys take note

You know how insurance companies make you PAY to insure boys. Well, the first child in the family to damage another car was Daughter. The poor fellow's brand new (to him) car. She dented the back door. Called The Engineer - Daddy! That's her at the end of the white car
and friend at the passenger side. The Engineer estimates about $1k and an unhappy insurance company.

Now the boys managed to be in our Volvo when it was totaled. But not by them. A crazed, out of town, Christmas shopper was lost and looking for a store. Ran a stop sign and nailed them. She was driving one of those huge four seater pickups. Totaled a Volvo! Gorilla Boy was in physical therapy for that injury (adding neck rehab to his lifetime achievement award for shoulder, knee and ankle rehab).

Brains can be tricksy

Sophomore and I have been reading The Brain, The Missing Manual. One of the things I'm trying to show him his strengths as a visual-spatial learner - he can nail optical illusions and see things I can't. In the book there are two examples of how the brain can be fooled into seeing colors that really aren't there. We cut up index cards and isolated colors and you really can be fooled! And even when you KNOW what the color truly is, you will still see it as the tricky color.

Go here and scroll down to the above illustration.
In the book there is one where you will see blue and yellow even when the illustration is gray.

Do you swear, to tell...

I have been known, at times, to be a CourtTV junkie. The channel doesn't exist anymore and I'm busy in the mornings so I haven't checked out its replacement.

>>Witnesses still hold sway in the courtroom, even as the reliability of human memory is called more and more into question. According to the Innocence Project, a legal group devoted to exonerating the wrongly incarcerated, mistaken eyewitnesses account for three quarters of convictions later overturned by DNA evidence. Now two new reports in the journal Psychological Science suggest that eyewitness reports may be even more prone to inaccuracy than previously thought, even when memories are fresh in one's mind, and especially when someone confesses. <<

Eldest was once pulled in for a crime he did not commit. It was very scary in one sense and very funny, in another, as the crime was felony egging. Egging was funny, felony was not. I'll leave that story for another day.