Tag Archives: thoughts

Home School Domination

Below is an infographic that was shared with me, and I thought it would be appropriate to post here.

I’m somewhat of a homeschooling fan, as I was homeschooled for 3 years, and I feel like I benefited greatly. Granted, I had an eduNazi mom for a teacher (love you mom!) and I loved school. I think the benefits would mostly in allowing me to move forward at a pace that kept me interested.. When I was excited about a topic or concept, I would get lost in learning about it.
Continue reading Home School Domination

WTF is “Natural Flavor”?

Checking out the pantry, I discovered a jar of Planters Five Alarm Chili natural flavor with other natual flavor Dry Roasted Peanuts.  Such an interesting byline to put on the front label of your product.   Now I’m wondering, wtf is natural flavor anyway?… and why are they mixing it with “other natural flavor”?   Here are the labels: 

So, on the back of the label under ingredients:

They have things you would probably expect: peanuts, sea salt, brown sugar, dried onion, dried chili pepper, dried garlic and dried tomato.  But, you won’t find them in that order.

They sprinkle in things that sometimes seem silly, for example: cornstarch and modified cornstarch..  are they disguising their secret ingredient in corn starch?

There are those things I only vaguely understand their purpose: gelatin, dried corn syrup, and gum arabic.

Things I completely don’t get, such as: maltodextrin and autolyzed yeast.

Then, there are these two seemingly intentionally vague phrases to describe ingredients: spices and natural flavor.

Well, I don’t see the “other natural flavor”.  Why is it on the front, and what is natural flavor.    I wonder what other people think.  I”m going to find out and come back to this.

Continue reading WTF is “Natural Flavor”?

Can someone please clean up the Gulf already?

I realize that it’s difficult to accept responsibility sometimes, but its an achievement we all have to face at some point in our lives.  Until this mess is stopped and cleaned up, it doesn’t matter who’s fault it is… really.  Just fix it, pay the bills, the fines, the PR, etc…  and if it was the fault of Haliburton, or Joe Plumber, or whomever, you can take them to civil court and try to get your money back.   In the meantime, clean up the mess..  Oh, and thanks for not paying in money in US taxes last year, that was awesome… Oh, and thanks for raising gas prices right now even though the price for a barrel of oil is dropping.. Oh, and stop being so lame.

Here are a couple of interesting notes from the web:

10 Things You Don’t Want To, but should, Know about the BP Oil Spill – Very informative article!

courtesy of 9gag.com

Here is a great video by Rachel Maddow of MSNBC talking about the unfortunate coincidences between this oil spill and oil spills in history:

Here’s something we can fix about Health Insurance

Most insurance policies provide coverage for claims arising from a loss that occured during a policy period.    When I say most insurance policies, I mean to say all that I can think of with the exception of health insurance.

For example.   If you are in a car accident, but your policy lapses 2 days later.  That accident is covered.  They are responsible to pay for the damages, medical bills, etc..  (all within your limits of course!)…. but it doesn’t matter that you no longer have insurance with them.  You paid for coverage during that period of time.

Liability insurance?… you betcha 🙂  They are responsible to for any claims stemming from incidents that occurred during your policy effective dates.  If I have liability insurance for two years, and then I switch companies.   If a claim comes up for something that happened during the time I had insurance with the first company  (lets say someone waits a few years to sue me..) then the company I had coverage with at that time is responsible. Continue reading Here’s something we can fix about Health Insurance

Thoughts on the Current Education Problems

Update 10/27/2010 – WATCH THIS VIDEO – https://jakebohall.com/sir-ken-robinson-on-education/10/2010

Read a cool article at the NY TimesThe Case for Working With Your Hands – about education and the important role of a child’s/youth’s direct interaction with the things they are interested in pursuing.   Loved it…

I started writing this post end of May, but never finished.  I read another article today about a Professor losing his job over grades, and his lack of desire to acknowledge their value.

“Grades poison the educational environment,” he insists. “We’re training students to be obedient, and to try to read our minds, rather than being a catalyst for learning.” – University of Ottawa professor Denis Rancourt

I don’t necessarily agree with his opinions in all of the conflicts that Prof. Rancourt has had, I must say that I agree with him on this one.  It is extremely important that the education systems not discourage struggling students by giving them poor grades.  Encourage the students to find their own paths, question everything, be imaginative, and not be weighed down by years of psychological self-confidence issues because we have a societal judgement that we pass in the form of letter grades..

I started writing the following on 12/14/2007… in an effort to express my distaste for our education system.  I went to a private school, received great grades, learned many things.   But I saw others who did not. I discovered how much of my delusioned “superiority” was biased based upon my years of perception deprivation and lack of exposure to those who could/did challenge/beat me.  I discovered how several years of early life experience with “hands-on” training proved to have taught the most valuable lessons.  Please enjoy, crtique, add to, duplicate, share, proselytize, etc as long as you give me a link/reference  🙂 Continue reading Thoughts on the Current Education Problems