Jill and Eric Penne

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I don’t think they quite get the concept.

Submitted by:

CheezWoofer

Picture by: wjhg.com

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state authorities could be taking the initiative to protect residents’ property rights and ensure that an oil pipeline doesn’t harm ecologically sensitive landscapes, the economy or the public’s health.

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This wonderful video is about changing the way we educate everyone, but there are many lessons that are particularly relevant to little geeks. For example, recognising that we live in a world where kids are surrounded by information and input and embracing that fact rather than fighting it.

“Our children are living in the most intensively stimulating period in the history of the earth… and we’re penalising them for getting distracted.”

Regardless of geekiness though, this is fascinating insight into how the Western world’s current education system came to be, and a thought-provoking presentation on what needs to change.

And even if the content of the talk wasn’t great, it would be worth watching just for the entertaining animation.

[If you'd like to leave a comment, please do so on Evan Predavec's original article from Wednesday.]

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According to the British Medical Association, the health benefits of cycling outweigh risks by 20:1. It’s healthier for a child to cycle than not to cycle. The real risk is creating a generation of obese and risk-averse children.

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Ahhhh yes. Helicopter parenting at its finest. If I put Max in the overhead compartment while playing Hide and Seek he would LOVE it. Whiny parents produce a whiny kid.

A flight attendant for Virgin Blue, Richard Branson’s Australian airline, has been fired over allegations that he placed a passenger’s infant child in the overhead bin during a flight from Fiji to Sydney.

“My husband… was standing one metre behind my son when the air steward picked him up and placed him in the overhead compartment,” the boy’s mother told reporters. “I stood up and there were people laughing and then I said ‘Get my son out of there now.’”

The mom says her son was in the closed compartment for around 10 seconds.

The airline doesn’t deny the incident occurs, but says that the boy’s father was playing peek-a-boo with the baby and that it somehow involved the overhead compartment; the attendant was just playing along.

Regardless, the attendant has been pushed down the emergency slide. “We conducted a thorough investigation of the incident and the staff member involved was subsequently terminated,” a Virgin rep says. “The safety of our guests is our top priority and we do not tolerate any breaches of this.”

In addition to firing the attendant, Virgin Blue offered the mom three free flights.

She says the baby now sees specialists because of the trauma from the incident: “He won’t leave my sight now. He sleeps with me. If I’m not in the same room as him, he will scream and yell ‘Mum, mum, mum.’”

Of course, that also sounds like any number of toddlers I’ve seen. And I don’t think any of them have been place in the overhead compartment.

Tot ‘put in plane’s overhead locker’ [CourierMail.com.au via SFGate.com]

Thanks to Peter for the tip!

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This pictures is of Melanie’s house as it burns to the ground within 60 minutes. It was a fixer-upper she and her husband had poured their savings and souls into with all sorts of DIY projects, and they and their two-and-half year-old son escaped it becoming their pyre by only minutes and with only the clothes on their backs. These are 9 things she wished beforehand, now that she is wrestling with insurance and filing claims:

From the Young House Love blog:

1. Subscribe to an online data backup service (my external back up drive sat right next to my laptop in my office)
2. Keep passports in a safe deposit box
3. Take pictures of each room initially and update them as improvements are made (storing them somewhere offsite – like Flickr)
4. Take pictures and keep hyperlinks of all expensive purchases, including jewelry
5. Hire an architect (my dad in our case) or use floorplanner.com to document each floor layout along with precise wall/ceiling measurements, each outlet, light switch, crown molding, other trim, type of flooring, any unique items to structure of property
6. Put phones in a consistent place each night
7. Get fire ladders for any second floor bedrooms
8. Scan each photo and receipt [for expensive purchases], again keeping them offsite, or on an online data backup service
9. Do not be frugal with homeowner’s insurance. Spend the extra $50 per year for the most coverage

It was a tragedy, but now Melanie and her family are pulling through, thanks in no small part to the generosity of their neighbors. She just wishes they had taken some precautions in advance to make the insurance claims filing process easier, and is now sharing what she’s learned so others don’t make the same mistakes.

For info on choosing and using a home safe, check out this Consumer Reports guide.

On A Serious Note [Young House Love]

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Gorgeous Punch-out cross stitch… Sewsew-a-Gogo writes -

After about two years and almost 80,000 x’s, my Super Mega Punch Out Project is finished. It measures about 12″ by 28″ so it’s pretty big and I have yet to find a frame that will actually fit it. I really don”t want to spend $150 to custom frame it so I’m not sure where it’s going to go yet. I’m kind of sad to see it finished because now I have nothing to do.

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Rather than trying to disguise another misguided round of stimulus in
the cloak of a tax cut, we should deliver what the economy really needs
– genuinely smaller government.

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this isn’t about freedom. These are the nannies, folks. They want to tell us who we can love, what TV shows we can watch, what stores we can go to, how to celebrate holidays, and what we can view on the Internet. They want to tell private firms how they must operate.

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Last week, The New York Times published a story about people depriving their brains of downtime by filling every spare moment with e-mails, phone calls and electronic games.

The story cited a University of Michigan study that found people learn better after a walk in nature than they do after walking through an urban environment. The Times story suggested a radical idea for a woman who was interviewed while multitasking with her iPod, iPhone and a a high-def TV as she exercised at the gym: Perhaps, the story suggested, her head would be clearer if she went for a run outside, without all the gadgets.

Downtime allows the brain to process experiences and turn them into long-term memories, according an assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco. When your brain is constantly stimulated, the learning process is disrupted. He might has well have said, “mountain biking makes you smarter.”

What baffles me is why we still need to be told things that so obviously fit under the category of “No shit, Sherlock.” Why do we seem to forget that simply playing outside is more relaxing than staring at a screen?

It doesn’t matter if a person likes to ski, hike, run or—like you and me—take solace in the meditative benefits of singletrack. You’re better off if you unplug for a few hours and get out in the woods.

I think that’s one of the reasons I like to take it slow and enjoy the ride. Pedaling fast is fine, but half the fun of a mountain bike ride is swapping tales at the trailhead or during water breaks along way. What’s the rush? All the bullshit of daily life will still be waiting when the ride ends.

You can even hurry home and blog about it.

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Take a look at the evidence, and you’ll start fretting more about accidents and less about nefarious strangers when it comes to childhood safety.

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A Real Man
(author unknown)

A real man is a woman’s best friend. He will never stand her up and never let her down.
He will reassure her when she feels insecure and comfort her after a bad day.

He will inspire her to do things she never thought she could do; to live without fear and forget regret.
He will enable her to express her deepest emotions and give in to her most intimate desires.
He will make sure she always feels as though she’s the most beautiful woman in the room and will enable her to be the most confident, sexy, seductive, and invincible.

No wait… sorry… I’m thinking of wine. It’s wine that does all that…

Never mind.

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My friend Paul Marlier has a pretty fun gig at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. His job as a workshop specialist is to come up with new ways to teach science to children (and their parents!). Recently, he took a few minutes to explain his latest prototype, which is a set of wooden blocks with electronics on them that museum visitors can connect up in any way they like. The idea is that they can learn by trying out different things to see what happens. The blocks themselves are nothing more than squares of plywood with different components stuck to them, and finishing nails for binding posts that can be connected to using alligator clips. To run the activity, he sets them out on the table without instructions, and participants are invited to hook things up and see what happens.

Paul explained that he chose this simple design over commercial products because he wanted to emphasize that these are just parts that anyone could find and put together. So far, the blocks have met with great success, with some interesting results. His favorite moment of discovery was when an inquisitive child hooked a motor up to a battery, through a speaker- the result was an amplified version of the noise that the motor makes when running!

He’s certainly not the first person to construct a setup like this, however I like the homebrew way in which it is made. I’m also a huge fan of the radically different switches that all do basically the same thing.

Have you ever built something similar? Have any tips for how to improve the design, or suggestions for cool components to include? There are more photos of the setup in my Flickr stream.

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