iPandora

Speecy Spiicy, Hotsy Totsy

American parents tend to feed their children bland foods to avoid potential allergies or just because that’s what Dr Spock or the latest parenting magazine told them. Easy on the stomach, and the poop ain’t so bad.

Parents in other countries tend to feed their infants whatever they are having, and their children experience the full gamut of cultural flavors from very early ages.

And yes, I’m advocating for American parents to be more like foreign parents. Look out the windows, there be pigs in the air!

First, bland doesn’t necessary mean easier for the stomach. Take ginger, for instance. A very sharp and strong flavor, nobody would call it bland. But is the natural and effective remedy for upset stomachs? Ginger. No citations here, just try this: Purchase a bottle of Reed’s Ginger Brew. If you can handle the Extra Strength, get that. Then fast, and when your stomach is most uncomfortable, usually just after the normal time for the next meal, drink the Reed’s. Instant stomach relief.

Second, you’re limiting your child’s future ability to eat and enjoy wide varieties of food, including many foods you and I take for granted.

This article chronicles the embarrassment, the worries, the challenges of being an adult picky eater. One telling comment?

Amber Scott, of Enon, Ohio, has eaten only about 10 different foods since she was 3 years old.

Not that exposing your children, when young, to significant varieties of food will totally preclude such problems, but they would take a significant bite out of them.

The Office

Empty office space keeps rising. This is not a good sign for the economy that is on the mend, according to certain people whose grand plans are fully in swing here. Corporations are using less and less office space, which means they aren’t hiring.

The really scary part?

Job growth and office-space use are closely intertwined. While some major users of offices, such as federal regulatory agencies, have been expanding, big banks and corporations have lagged behind in increasing their real-estate footprint, according to some analysts. That is a sign that these larger companies have been slow to return to their pre-recession staffing levels, a contributing factor to the persistently high U.S. unemployment rate.

Yea, that’s a sure sign of a growing and recovering economy. Regulators are gearing up for more business. Only one problem, regulators business is to keep real businesses out of business.

My Buddy Hugo

The ones really benefiting from the drilling moratorium? National oil companies. That means President Obama’s marxist buddy Hugo Chavez is loving us right now. Was this a quid pro quo? Or was it yet another unintended consequence of a short sighted and dishonestly supported policy? I’d say the latter, but wouldn’t be too surprised at the former.

Oh, and this would be the same Venezuela that just stole oil rigs from US corporations and we heard nary a peep in protest for this thuggish thievery from the government that is supposed to be supporting US interests abroad.

Muhammed In Space

Perhaps a new round of “Let’s Draw Muhammed” is in order. It would probably improve our chances of NASA actually being less irrelevant than it already is going forward.

NASA has apparently been ordered to reach out to Muslim nations in an effort to improve goodwill. And NASA is the right agency for this why?

Former NASA director Michael Griffin says sympathetic nations will be drawn to us when NASA succeeds at great things, not when they’re given an inflatable space shuttle and commemorative plaque.

Griffin said Tuesday that collaboration with other countries, including Muslim nations, is welcome and should be encouraged — but that it would be a mistake to prioritize that over NASA’s “fundamental mission” of space exploration.

“If by doing great things, people are inspired, well then that’s wonderful,” Griffin said. “If you get it in the wrong order … it becomes an empty shell.”

Griffin added: “That is exactly what is in danger of happening.”

And the coup de’ etat?

He also said that while welcome, Muslim-nation cooperation is not vital for U.S. advancements in space exploration.

“There is no technology they have that we need,” Griffin said.

Once again, why is it NASA’s job to reach out to any nation?

I’d draw Muhammed in space alongside the Muppets.

Just A Reminder

Some people still claim that Liberals are the bigger and better givers, both of time and money. They’re wrong. Badly wrong.

People who said they were “very conservative” gave 4.5% of their income to charity, on average; “conservatives” gave 3.6%; “moderates” gave 3%; “liberals” gave 1.5%; and “very liberal” folks gave 1.2%.

And this cannot be explained by religious versus secular giving:

The 2008 data tell us that secular conservatives are now outperforming their secular liberal counterparts. Compare two people who attend religious services less than once per year (or never) and who are also identical in terms of income, education, sex, age and family status — but one is on the political right while the other is on the left. The secular liberal will give, on average, $1,100 less to charity per year than the secular conservative. The conservative charity edge cannot be explained away by gifts to churches.

Or by giving of time versus giving of money:

Q. Monetary giving doesn’t tell us much about total charity, does it? People who don’t give money probably tend to give in other ways instead, right?
A. Wrong. First of all, there is a bright line between people who give and people who don’t give. People who do give time and money tend to give a lot of it. According to the Center on Philanthropy, the percentage of givers donating less than $50 to charity in 2000 was the same as the percentage giving more than $5,000. Similarly, the same percentage of people who only volunteered once volunteered on 36 or more occasions in 2000.

Second, people who give away their time and money to established charities are far more likely than non-givers to act generously in informal ways as well. For example, one nationwide survey from 2002 tells us that monetary donors are nearly three times as likely as non-donors to give money informally to friends and strangers. People who give to charity at least once per year are twice as likely to donate blood as people who don’t give money. They are also significantly more likely to give food or money to a homeless person, or to give up their seat to someone on a bus.

And it is not offset by political giving either:

Perhaps you suspect that the vast political contributions given to the Obama campaign — $742 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, versus $367 million for the McCain campaign — were crowding out charitable giving by the left. But political donations, impressive as they were this year by historical standards, were still miniscule compared to the approximately $300 billion Americans gave charitably in 2008. Adding political and charitable gifts together would not change the overall giving patterns.

Conservatives continue giving more in economically difficult times, decreasing their giving by less than their liberal counterparts:

Economists measure the “income elasticity of giving” to predict how much people change their giving in response to a particular percentage change in their income. It turns out the response in 2008 was dramatically different for left and right. For instance, a 10% decrease in family income for a conservative was associated with a 10% decrease in giving. The same income decrease for a liberal family led to a 16% giving drop. In other words, if this relationship continues to hold, the recession will almost certainly exacerbate the giving differences between left and right.

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding: Modern liberal ideas are selfish ideas.

Read this short article first “Shrek and SpongeBob have superpowers over your kid’s food choices”.

Given that this article is a summary of articles in three major news outlets, and given the subject matter and tone, how long do you think it’ll be before we’ll hear cries for the regulating of food packaging a la Joe Camel?

Especially with a First Lady adopting childhood obesity as her pet project, (absolutely nothing against that) the fact that based on current trends, this First Lady’s pet project will be a bit more popular with pop culture than previous First Lady’s projects and more likely to be based on the actions of government than the actions of individuals.

It’s the parent’s responsibility to teach their children healthy eating habits and to purchase food not based what is on the label but what is inside.

It’s the parent’s responsibility that children learn self-control and not Barney-control or SpongeBob-control (perish the thought!). It’s the parent’s responsibility, and parents are entirely capable as well.

Sure, those kids seem to figure out all too quickly the exact buttons to press to get mom and dad to cave in to their whim. The hardest thing in parenting has to be the consistency, the strength to make no mean no.

You won’t damage little psyches if you don’t get them Shrek Twinkies with green filling. There will be no lasting harm from failing to buy those cookies or crackers SpongeBob vouches for. The only harm will come if you do give in and the children learn you don’t mean no when you say no and they’ll fail to learn self-control and obedience.

I came across the Blueberry Story recently. It didn’t pass the sniff test, but I couldn’t immediately explain why.

Jamie Vollmer was the CEO of an ice cream company that made, at one time, what some considered the best ice cream in America. He was also a sharp critic of the public school system, and shared his criticisms before an assembly of teachers and educators.

I was convinced of two things.  First, public schools needed to change; they were archaic selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the industrial age and out of step with the needs of our emerging “knowledge society”.  Second, educators were a major part of the problem: they resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by tenure and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly.  They needed to look to business.  We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! TQM! Continuous improvement!

At the end of this particular talk he took questions from the audience.

As soon as I finished, a woman’s hand shot up.  She appeared polite, pleasant – she was, in fact, a razor-edged, veteran, high school English teacher who had been waiting to unload.

She began quietly, “We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream.”

I smugly replied, “Best ice cream in America, Ma’am.”

“How nice,” she said. “Is it rich and smooth?”

“Sixteen percent butterfat,” I crowed.

“Premium ingredients?” she inquired.

“Super-premium! Nothing but triple A.”  I was on a roll.  I never saw the next line coming.

“Mr. Vollmer,” she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to the sky, “when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?”

In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap….  I was dead meat, but I wasn’t going to lie.

“I send them back.”

“That’s right!” she barked, “and we can never send back our blueberries.  We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant.  We take them with ADHD, junior rheumatoid arthritis, and English as their second language. We take them all!  Every one! And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it’s not a business.  It’s school!”

He was unable to reply to such ideas. And it took me a day to realize what was wrong with this teachers argument.

First, there is truth in both what Mr. Vollmer said and in what this teacher said. Neither of them are completely correct, and neither of them are completely wrong.

The big hole in this educators argument is that children are not the only resource in a school.

When you’re building a product commercially you gather all sorts of raw materials and assemble them and process them to create a finished product. Businesses are primarily rewarded by doing this more efficiently and with more quality than other companies. However, simple physical raw materials are never the entire picture.

You can take blueberries and cream and sugar and eggs and ice and salt and throw them together all day and it will not turn into ice cream. You must have a goal, a guiding principle, a primary idea which directs the process from beginning to end. This idea begins before any raw materials are assembled and achieves fruition and is born into reality in the end product.

In a school children are both a raw material and eventually the fruition and reality of this idea. A healthy, intelligent, wise, productive and strong member of society is the hoped-for result of any school. When children are the raw material (as small children first coming into the school) they indeed cannot be turned away. The school must take any and all. The teacher is right about this.

However, there are many other raw materials which may (and indeed should) be turned away at the loading dock for insufficient quality. Teachers are one of the raw materials of our education system. Those who can’t do, teach, is a sad but true tale of many who comprise the front lines of education in America. Low academic standards does not attract the best and the brightest to this profession. Many of the best teachers teach because they love to. Many others do it because they cannot find so secure a position with as healthy a payroll or extensive benefits in the private sector.

Education philosophies are another raw material that can and should be examined in light of reality and not in light of the establishment’s preconceived notions of the state of the world.

Specific subjects that do not pertain directly to healthy functioning in society also ought to be turned away at the door.

The lesson that schools should take from business, first and foremost, is that competition is good for everybody involved.

The only people who will be hurt by school vouchers, charter schools, more local control of education, and less federal nannying are teachers who aren’t up to snuff and entrenched and ensconced administrators who cannot really justify their silly existence.

The teacher was right, they can’t turn away children from school. Every child can and will benefit from learning truth. But learning and truth are not necessarily the same, and to fail to see the difference and to support a system that is so obviously and painfully failing yet another generation of children is to fail to see yet another blade laid to the neck of our great nation.

Pudge at Sound Politics doesn’t “know Rep. Matt Shea (R-4th LD, around Spokane), but… consider(s) him a bit of a hero, actually standing up for rights and liberty when most people, on either side of the aisle, don’t.”

Read the list of bills Rep. Matt Shea has submitted that were dropped by that august assembly.

In the critical race for “the people’s seat” in Massachusetts, the ideological walls are as high as can be. Incumbent Martha Coakley (D), the favorite for the seat recently vacated at the passing of Teddy Kennedy is defending herself against the increasing tide that is support for Scott Brown.

Coakley supports ObamaCare, opposes the war in Afghanistan, and favors higher taxes on the wealthy. Brown is against the health care legislation, backs the president�s surge in Afghanistan, and wants across-the-board tax cuts � la JFK. Coakley is an EMILY�s List prochoice hard-liner; Brown condemns partial-birth abortion and is backed by Massachusetts Citizens for Life. Coakley has no problem with civilian trials for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Brown thinks it reckless to treat enemy combatants like ordinary defendants.

Other differences abound. Coakley doesn’t like being questioned about her stated and public views when they may reflect poorly on her and she doesn’t like admitting the possibly she may have been incorrect in the past. Even CNN reveals her follies. While Brown homeschools his kids, speaks eloquently regarding the true nature of government, and promises to be a serious thorn in the side of the currently prevailing powers in Washington.

Should Brown win, the Democrats are already threatening to block his appointment to the Senate, until after the �health-care� bill is passed.� We shall see.

Pat Robertson, again

Neil asks for someone to please take away Pat Robertson’s microphone. I agree.

But they won’t take it away because the portions of our culture that despise Christianity are much happier if they don’t have to misrepresent. Even denying morality and absolutes, they’ll take a juicy truth over a conjured or fabricated tale if it achieves the desired result.

So I’d love for that man to just go away, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t going to happen until God deems his time right.

Neil again

Neil continues his fight against liberal theology and liberal theologians.

That man has more patience than I could ever find in dealing with these people so invested in lies and fabrications, so intransigent in their fallacies.

I am glad Neil is that way, though. Perhaps those he preaches against will someday hit their heads on a doorpost so hard the voices of rationalization and self-justification will shut up, and they’ll see, through the might hand of the one true God, the truth as it is, and not as they wish it to be.

Keep up the good work my friend.

The way things ought to be

WinteryKnight is very much about that, hence his many “MUST-READ’s“.

The good news is, they all are.

He’s also very concerned about the plight of manhood and boyhood in our society. From the feminized path that boys must take through our public school system to the extreme cases of insane feminism beating down men trying to do the right thing by their children and families, WinteryKnight chronicles the sad story of the life of the man today.

Frankly, I didn’t know quite what I was up against.

But I’m glad to have found this new blogging buddy and I encourage you to check him out to.

Bonus for single ladies: he’s single, is a great catch, and has very high standards (which some of us are working to fix).

I can’t stand having pockets over full. Too often pants pockets today are constructed shoddily, almost as an afterthought, and the contents of the pockets bump against my legs and rub and get in the way and abrade.

But what can you tell about a man from his pockets? The Art of Manliness posted a selection from a 1933 Esquire magazine which portrayed the story of a man through the contents of his pockets.

Contents of His Pockets at Ten

1 watch, lacking a main spring.
1 report card, badly frayed and unpresented at home.
1 much damaged cigarette, unsmoked.
1 penknife.
1 rubber band, for use in sling-shot.
Remains of an exploded toy balloon.
2 marbles.
4 caps of milk bottles, won in competition
1 dirty handkerchief.
1 piece of chewing gum.
2 keys which do not fit locks.
7 pieces of string.

Read A Pocket History Of Milton J. Wurtleburtle.

Matthew William Kelly Bedford

After 14 hours in labor, my wife Grace gave birth to the most beautiful baby boy.

Matthew William Kelly Bedford is named after a dear friend of ours who was called home to be with our Lord not quite 1 year ago.

I only hope that this little man will grow into the true man that was, and is, Matthew William Kelly.

For those who like details. Matthew weighed 8lbs 6 oz, 20in long. He has a Bedford face but borrows his nose and mouth creasing from his mother. My dad says the nose is also his mothers.

He was very alert and inquisitive from the get go, earning an APGAR score of 9. He smiled for mother and will follow us with his eyes. He likes being sung to. And I was overwhelmed with emotion when he was born.

Something that struck me is how much birth must be like death: The womb seems safe and good and a nice place to spend your life, and birth is this scary thing. All of a sudden your senses are bombarded with light and noise and pain and… more. More than you’d experienced ever before.

The womb was good, but it was temporary. A place of preparation. Preparation for life.

Then life become comfortable, known, expected. Life is good enough, full enough, and not long enough. And we fear death.

Once we die, I believe we’ll experience sensations we’ve never experienced before. The sounds and sights, smells, and sensations we’ve experienced in life will seem like the dull sensations of the womb.

Life is good, but it is temporary. A place of preparation. Preparation for…

From last week: I learned I’m not allowed to decide how responsible my children are and the resulting levels of freedom they can then enjoy.

And in the re-running of the classic comic For Better or For Worse, we learn that Ellie is an abusive parent, allowing and even requiring her children, and her friend’s children, to walk to the park.

She ought to have helicoptered as the current social freaks require, driving the boys to the park, catered to their every whim.

And allowed their legs to shrivel up and fall off.

…I’m not allowed, as father and parent, to decide when and how my children are allowed to be mature.

I was quite capable, at 10 years old, to go to the grocery store by myself, on my bike, and pick up various thing my mother needed but couldn’t load the whole family into the car for.

But in Illinois, if I allow my children to be unsupervised before they’re 14, I’m negligent and liable.

So the question is:

Do I make myself the target in order to illustrate how ludicrous such nanny-state tactics are in arming do-gooders and busy-bodies the world over with false moral standing in their quest to ruin the world for the rest of us normal people?

Or do I keep my kids in the back yard until they’re fully feral?

What kind of responsibility did you have growing up? And how much responsibility would you give you children today? How similar are you to your parents or how different?

And what about the mother who let her son ride the subway home alone in New York city?

While the world burns around me:

• Obama and the leadership of the greatest nation in the world refuse to condemn the naked theft of a nation’s election allowing a despot and megalomaniac to continue his aggression against the lone hope of freedom in the Middle East, Israel. A conservative, however, can and does stand up.
• Socialized medicine fails someone else: woman delivers baby without trained medical attention while in a hospital. Shortage of medical staff in Canada means she can’t get a bed to have her child. I’ll be she still get’s a bill. Or at last the Canadians will.
• ABC News decides to air a live infomercial for our Comrade in Chief from the White House in place of the evening news. In true Marxist fashion there will not be opposition presented.
• Scientists admit they don’t know the slightest thing about the most studied fundamental force: gravity.

And I’m upset over a movie.

An early 90′s comedy even.

Father of the Bride, billed as good clean family fun.

It’s dangerous, folks.

I even got a few laughs in before it just got so bad I couldn’t even laugh at the, few, funny parts any more.

The father is an idiot. No self-control. Few moral qualms. He’s the butt of every joke, and not in a nice way either.

He is not wise or caring.

He has no personal charisma or drive that should make us want for him to mature and grow through the movie.

And his character is inconsistant and false. He runs a successful business, has the adoration of his children and wife, and adores them in return. Yet he sneaks and fears and bumbles about like a complete fool.

The “here he goes again” looks from his wife are supposed to evoke further chuckles, but I couldn’t.

What good does this kind of portrayal do?

Is the only purpose of this movie to make us laugh? It failed at that. The “humor” was too shameful.

Consistently, the other characters are smart and likeable and have depth and a future. It’s the dad we’re supposed to laugh at.

And supposedly Steve Martin is good at that.

As Inspector Clouseau, it’s a good thing. He’s supposed to be an idiot hero, a hapless savior.

But when he is portrayed as an “everyman” and a father it’s ugly and terrible.

As a husband and expectant father I took personal offense and umbrage at this portrayal of what I aspire to.

I’m no fool taking my queues from Hollywood. My dad and my heavenly Father are quite enough for me to aspire to, thank you very much.

But what about those who do not have a father or who do not yet know their heavenly Father? The father on the silver screen may be their only target.

What responsibility is borne for those who see this dad and despair because they recognize his idiocy and the fun had lampooning his foolhardy attempts to be involved in his daughters wedding?

The only victories he achieves occur when he gives up.

In real life, the only victory that occurs that way is the most important one: salvation. Everything else requires determination and purpose.

I’m not planning on being an idiot dad, and so I’ll gladly forget Father of the Bride and heartily recommend against anybody seeing that abomination.

Is it entertainment when fatherhood is played for the fool?

H1N1 (swine) flu isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Gee, it’s just aweful when the bugbear doesn’t live up the trumped up claims the media seems to want us to believe.

The Illinois Public Health Director has not drunk the koolaid:

The Illinois Department of Public Health director told state lawmakers Tuesday that it’s important to remain vigilant in the face of the H1N1 flu virus, but fears of a pandemic flu are overblown.

“We have to keep these things in perspective, look at them rationally, know what the threat is and deal with it in a rational way. We know right now that this virus is acting very similarly to the regular seasonal flu,” said Dr. Damon T. Arnold, head of the state public health agency.

“At this juncture, this virus seems to be in a mild course,” Arnold said. “We’re recommending now that for routine cases you take care of yourself at home as you would for seasonal flu.”

As ShatteredChina wrote here earlier, fear is not a reasonable response to this flu.

Yet fear is a powerful tool. Those desiring power desire a fearful populace. When someone tells you to fear, they are seeking to gain power over you.

Fear not, we are told.

An unfearful populace is a strong populace. The Christian following the most frequent admonition of God is a person who cannot be lead by whim or desire of the power-hungry.

And the kids can go back to school now.

And big brother wishes we’d die younger.

Two reasons: It’s a sure fix for the Social Security cesspool, and they can adjust the artificial, age-graded stratifications of service wherein those with greater potential determined by mathematically “fair” judgments of age and expected longevity.

Just a few of the many benefits of the new socialized medicine system President Obama and the Democrats laid the groundwork for in the big spending bills they’ve been forcing us tax payers to swallow since he entered office:

• Reducing costs by “guiding” doctor decisions
• Doctors surrendering autonomy and learning to operate less like sole proprietors
• Establishes the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research, whose goal would be to slow down new medications and techniques because these drive up costs
• Forcing the elderly to accept the realities of aging and surrendering certain advanced treatments

Betsy McCaughey says HillaryCare 2.0 (ObamaCare) will ruin your health, especially if you’re old.

It’s being sold as the solution to our current health care system. But with our current system, if the old were forced out of treatments that would improve their lives, there would be an uproaor. If the government says they can’t be treated, who is there to turn to?

It always starts as something good:

As elsewhere, the combination of an aging population and the increasing cost of new technologies has started to put immense pressure on the French health system. But the French system of compulsory insurance – something for which many Democratic leaders are calling in America – acted as a Trojan horse, allowing the government to seize control over increasing areas of health care.

When costs became a political issue, the government mounted a cost crackdown. But instead of eliminating inefficiencies through greater individual responsibility, broader choice and more competition, the French government did precisely the opposite: It sought to control costs by fiat – that is, by piling on more bureaucracy.

But don’t worry: the Obamessiah will look out for each of us with the personal care of his omnipotent eye.

Oh, and it’s also why Obama is for lawful, government funded, unlimited and unrestricted abortion: fewer of us the government has to support.

As of a few days ago, Grace and I’ve been married 9 months. And our son is due to emerge into the world in 3 more months.

Marriage has settled down a little, perhaps. I feel safe and comfortable around my wife and maybe take her a little for granted, too. I’m less and less capable of imagining myself in a single state and marriage, such as my wife and I enjoy, is my default position, as it were.

As the seasons change and weather brightens, the days lengthen and warm, and the sun climbs higher in the sky, there is less of a ‘stuck’ feeling in being cooped up in the apartment together and more of an “I prefer being with her” choice.

Not to say I didn’t enjoy cuddling with my wife and enjoying her closeness and proximity during the winter, but there is something about no longer being compelled by the elements that makes marriage even better to me.

And she’s growing. Our son and his accompanying entrails and apparatus are definitely showing in Grace and we both enjoy feeling him move about. Or, I enjoy it all the time, and sometimes she doesn’t. Like when he pushes on the inside of her ribs, or when she’s trying to sit still in church. Our son really becomes active in church, it seems.

In 3 months he’s scheduled to make his grand debut, and I’m facing fatherhood.

The pregnancy website told me today I’m experiencing hormonal swings right now: testosterone levels are falling and estrogen levels are rising. So the lipstick and nail polish I’m wearing are completely understandable. It’s the high heels I can’t seem to explain away.

In a darwinian perspective, this is my body working against my darwinian male desires for independence to create a nurturing ability in me.

In a Christian perspective, I’m amazed that God made these natural systems that work just so changing the very attitudes through the chemical balance of the male to bring about a more nurturing attitude.

But all that to say: Summer is coming, life is good and getting better, I can’t wait to meet my son (I finished painting his room and we’ve nearly got all the furniture we need for him), and I (still) love my wife.

I’m truly blessed beyond all measure and thank God for His amazing work in my life heretofore.

Now for the future.