“It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.” Alice…in Wonderland
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Picking up the check
Everything we do requires trade-offs. Say “yes” to one opportunity, and you have to say “no” to others. Choose the right turn; miss out on the adventures to your left. Everything has an opportunity cost, and there is no way to avoid paying it. TANSTAAFL and all that jazz. One of the marks of maturity […]
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Let your “No” be No.
“No,” is a complete sentence. It doesn’t matter how many winding roads we take to get there–“I’ll think about it, let me check my schedule, I’ll pray about it, I need to talk to my spouse”–whatever feints and delaying tactics you engage in, in the end, we only have “yes” or no. But too often […]
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Harrison Bergeron, the prequel
“THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and […]
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The real monsters
Yesterday brought the horrific news that ISIS (ISIL/Daesh/murdering, inhuman scum) had burned alive the Jordanian pilot Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh. As awful as it was, and as frightening as the growing global thuggery is (see also Nigeria, Ukraine, etc.), we in America have decided we need to face the real monsters in our midst. I’m talking, […]
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An appeal to my fellow Gen-Xers
Kids are funny. Their responses are unfiltered by cultural conventions. They say what they mean and they mean what they say. And honestly, if we weren’t allowed to laugh at our kids, none of us would survive parenthood. Gen-Xers*, in particular, seem to make their way through life by mocking most everything, and parenthood is […]
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Making better people
When I first started homeschooling, people would ask, “They let you do that?” I had to work to keep calm when answering, not because I was irritated at the questioner, but because of the too-common assumptions behind the question. “They” (the government) “let” (gives their consent to) “you” (Me: a private, free citizen) “do that?” […]
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Fine Arts Friday: Naturalists & Scolds
This post is a little ranty, which isn’t normally what I do for Fine Arts Friday, but it has to be said! Also, this post contains affiliated links. Sprite has had an affinity for sharks for as long as she’s known of their existence. When she was about eight, we had this conversation on the […]
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Be smarter
Tuesday morning was the first of four total lunar eclipses that will occur over the next 18 months. The total lunar eclipse is often called a blood moon because. . . science. Something about the light spectrum (explanation here, scroll down a bit). Why is the sky blue and all that jazz. Apparently, some Christian […]
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Widgetizing people
A few days ago, I came across an article about kindergarten students taking standardized tests. Kindergarten students. Five-year-olds forced to sit for as many as five hours to do a test on a computer using the rage-inducing technology of a trackpad for those whose fine motor skills are still developing. Someone apparently hates five-year-olds. Today, […]
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And what have we learned?
In my Washington Times Community Pages column, I’ve been posting an interview/primer on the budget process with Norm Ornstein, congressional scholar and political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute. If you haven’t read those, you should read them before continuing. Part 1 and Part 2. And now the last section of the interview is a […]
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