Photos of Food Choices

Yoni Freedhoff is posting pictures of why it is difficult to maintain a healthy weight in our society. He is especially interested in photographs from hospital and university cafeterias because of the extended time period people might eat exclusively in those environments.

http://bmimedical.blogspot.com/

If you know of a hospital or university doing it right, that too would be helpful to prove that it can be done.

Online Learning Text

The Theory and Practice of Online Learning edited by Terry Anderson is a free read at
http://www.aupress.ca/Terry_Anderson/
This is a book from Athabasca University which has always been on the cutting edge of online learning.

Workshop Day

Calligraphy Club Workshop: Learned:
How to make paper by tearing up old magazines, blending the pieces with water, pressing the pulp on a screen and drying the pulp in the oven.
How to decorate coffee filters with markers, bleach solution and salt.
Decorating paper with a mixture of acrylic paint and wallpaper paste
Spritzing paint on paper
Marbling paper
In the afternoon, we used our decorated pages in card making
Also learned how to make a flower center piece using cream-filled cookies, wooden sticks and spearmint leaf candy

I Need a Hero

Dancing as a Non-Violent approach to Rehabilitation in prisons - this is such an exciting concept. There are so many layers to how people find themselves imprisoned - illiteracy, oppression, discrimination, hopelessness, rebellion, economic hardship, escapism through drugs and alcohol, etc., etc. If music and dance and heroic role models can light a path out of the various prisons people choose to live in, the church definitely has much to contribute if it can raise itself out of its own loss of joy.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=fDdPuCsOLaQ

Twitter

After considering twittering, I've decided to condense my blog postings instead. Bought long blue sleeves to cover my flabby arms for the wedding. Later I heard of a Cat in the Hat themed wedding where the mother bought sleeves decorated in tatoos. Talk about not knowing one's options.

Indiana Jones Theme Song Parady

For a quick Indy fix, check this out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTrK4VQG93Y

Commencement Speeches

I love commencement speeches. Here's the link to Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement speech given at Stanford in 2005. It's great.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPL_NjBjUWE&eurl=http://richgrad.com/category/public-speaking/

Sing a Prayer for the Military

Our Military Service People deserve our prayers. Before going to bed, I play the following youtube videos and remember both those serving our country and those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice.
Navy Hymn - Eternal Father Strong to Save
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA4oMek-xOQ&feature=related
The Falklans Hymn - for fallen soldiers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JIXFL44mQ8&NR=1
Bring Him Home
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI9BJGH-nuI&feature=related

High octane generation

http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i27/27b00701.htm
"Dwelling in possibilities" Mark Edmundson is a professor of English at the University of Virginia. Personally I don't know any young people who come remotely close to the young students that Mark Edmundson describes. Mostly I wonder how my children's generation are going to cope with skyrocketing food prices, gasoline prices, childcare costs, etc. After a 25 year commitment to lowering the child poverty rate in this country, the number of preschoolers living in poverty has fallen by less than a percentage point and the statistics are comparing apples and oranges as the Dick and Jane family has become a bit of an oddity.
So who are these kids with infinite possibilities doing triple majors and pursuing infinite possibilities and choices?
According to Edmundson "If Socrates looked out on the current dispensation, what would he see? He'd see the velocity and the hunger for more life, faster, faster — sure. But given his interests, he'd notice something else, too. He'd see that by the time students get to college, they have been told who they are and what the world is many times over. Parents and friends, teachers, counselors, priests and rabbis, ministers and imams have had their say. They've let each student know how they size him up, and they've let him know what they think he should value. Every student has been submitted to what Socrates liked to call doxa, common sense, general belief."
I find it a bit interesting that religious leaders play such a prominent role in his assessment of who is responsible for this high octaine group who would need a 3-volume novel to record everything they did during their summer vacation. Did you ever see a crowd of young people appearing in church because they received a facebook message saying church was the most exciting of the infinite options available at 11 a.m. on a Sunday morning?