facebook, I hope, is not a reflection of america

Facebook has made me lose faith in my country.

I have used it to reconnect with some old freinds, including my old room mate Melissa, who is as awesome and smart and funny as I remember. I am glad that I have some contact with her again. Unfortunately I have also seen many other friends, and I have seen some ugly ugly opinions and ideas.

1. 'Death prayer for the President' This horrendous group on face book advocates praying for the president's death in a funny witty way. Obama is a scapegoat in so many ways, He is facing one of the most difficult presidencies in recent history and has performed, so far in an exemplary way. He is not making everyone happy, but that is not his job. No one really wanted to be president this term, The republicans chose McCain, who was as much a democrat as they could get, and the Democrats narrowed it down to Clinton (who was unelectable due to her husband) and Obama. There really wasn't a choice. He was put in this crazy situation and now he is doing the best job that anyone else so situated could do. I HATE how health care is pinned on the president (though I am glad that it passed) when every detail of the plan is a compromise between the white house and the senate.

2. 'Drug test everyone on welfare!' and other such ill-formed political minded groups.
Rife with misspellings, these groups are full of lots of resentment and hate, but are not directed in a rational direction. There are no welfare recipients who sit home and do nothing all day long. There is a welfare to work program. I am afraid that the old system that attracts so much ire and hate may have actually been better. A full-time mom taking money from the government to support herself and watch her kids is at least able to raise her own children in a decent secure way. When government subsidized childcare, and insists the moms work to 'earn' their living, the children are shuffled off to substandard care.
I am not saying that every mom is better than every babysitter (I do not want to get into the mom wars) but rather that the average low income Mom loves her children and takes better care of them than the average low-income childcare center.

I saddened to think that people I know may actually subscribe to such false ideas and racist, classist ideology.

3. "Vaccinations/Hospital birth/Modern science is very possibly a government conspiracy"
ACK! I have had to block some friends because they kept posting stuff like this and then other people would agree with them. I know that there are crazy people out there with bad ideas, but now because of facebook I know who they are. I have lost so much respect for so many people because they are just so incredibly stupid. There are real problems in our country right now, actual gaps in the education system, environmental challenges, and sociological issues that need attention and public understanding. Wasting our time on fake problems (which conveniently can be solved by products sold by these same friends' multilevel marketing businesses) wastes our collective time and mental energy.

4. wanton idolatry
bedazzled, farmville, kidnapped game, foodfight
they are all silly time wasters, and now I know who wastes their time. so sad.

5. breast cancer/heart disease/skin cancer/infertility awareness
clicking on a button may make you think that you are supporting the said cause, but in reality it just makes you feel good. If you really want to help, donate money or go to the website and explore ways to volunteer. Joining a facebook group may be counter productive in that it may fulfill your need to do real good thus preventing some real action.

Most of these 'causes' are fairly benign. Cancer is bad, but also highly cureable. It also tends to strike randomly, thus eliminating any guilt or blame for any action or inaction. There are far fewer groups devoted to potentially controversial disease such as diabetes, lung cancer, type2 diabetes, or obesity. These afflictions are preventable and to care about them presupposes action and activism. But actually doing something is not a part of the facebook culture. People sitting at home trolling their friends statuses are not, in their hearts, wishing to be people of great action. So these more active causes are less popular.

how to behave in church

Last week, a silly converstaion in a church class left me sad, discouraged, and feeling like m ytime was being wasted. I left the room when my kid started ating up, and jsut didn't try that hard to go back inside.

What I shoud have done; r5ised, my hand, and voiced my problem. I am sure I was not the only person annoyed with the message of the conversation,s and perhaps a more helpful lesson could have ensued.

When I don't agree with stuff st church, my job is to contribute to the action, steer it in the right direction. I am a part of this church, it means that I need to contribute and I will. This is the proper way to conduct my life.

This could lead to some interesting conversation, we will see.

The great debate

THis week in sunday school , we discussed leviticus 23, teh story of Balaam and the talking Ass. This Balaam was a non-0Israelite prophet, and probably was not such a bad guy. The fact that he couldn't wee the angel that his Ass saw, was probably due to the Lord removing his prophetic sight from him, that he was only able to communicate with god intermittently. I feel that I am only able to communicate intermittently, but this is not due to God removing the means of our communication but rather my own intermittent worthiness. That being said, Balak, who is tryign to get Balaam to curse Israel thinks of God as soemone who can be bought or manipulated into doing the will of man. Balak may not be such an awful person in general, be just has a very wrong idea of how God works.
ANyhow, Balak builds 7 altars, sacrifices a bunch of animals, the Balaam goes to curse Israel, then ofcourse God tells him to Bless Israel, and he does that instead. Then Balak, not being one to give up, builds 7 more altars, and offers up a bunch more animals. Balaam is again constrained to bless Israel.

The big question that our wonderful teacher brought up at the end of this lesson is this;
How much of our church service is done like Balak, building 7 altars and offering animals so that God will do our will?

This brought up some introspection. What exactly is God's will concerning my life? I want my life's master plan to include a 3:30 marathon, possibly a few 100milers and being a seminary teacher. I also want to serve my fellow man by teaching high school math, after raising my 4 wonderful children. I also want to spend every saturday evening watching Dr. Who with my Husband who will continue being my faithful spouse well into eternity. I want to be a democrat who works towards real change in this country's foreign policy.

I am afraid that my life might contain some difficulties. If my marriage were to prove undesirable, I would be uncomfortable. Perhaps my political ideas will develop into something more than heartfelt wishes and half formed ideas and I will actually have to take drastic action to live a life in accordance with what I believe to be right. Financial devastation could occur in the form of job loss, or a family member could die, or I might have to talk to my parents about serious matters and watch them face their own craziness.

I wish they would separate. Marriage is not about being chained to the albatross forever. This is the bad side of temple marriage. When there is abuse -especially emotional, which is harder to see and often perpetrated by the woman- the abused spouse feels extra obligation to stay in the bad relationship and the abuser can use that to guilt them into staying.

So far my strategy has been to ignore their craziness and move far away. I also have a lot of kids, so if they are on the phone I can just pretend that someone needs me and hang up. This will not work when they kids are older, but because my Mom is so self destructive she will probably be dead by then.

I am so not visiting them this summer.

math in these united states

help. the quality of math education in this country is abysmal. I have been reading math teacher blogs in preparation to go back and get certified, then teach high school math. this has been a goal of mine for some time. However the more I read, the more discouraged I get. Teaching is hard, and our standards are so low, children are not challenged. My 3rd grader is top of his class, working at a very high level, and yet, is probably behind compared to kids his age from any other country.
This summer I am engaging in an intensive three-month long math discovery summer boot camp for my kids. I do want to teach math to all children, improve the abilities of kids everywhere, but for now I am teaching my own children. The best learning is done when children build the math concepts themselves. This is difficult to implement in a classroom, but I hope to achieve this with a series of hands on activities and projects this summer.

I am also doing other projects too, here is the master summer school plan;

personal weather station;
we will record the daily weather on the weather underground and become an official station.

Probability and statistics; ratios
figure out most common letters in the language by finding them in print
collect data and graph it in various ways collect info from the weather station, track growth of grass vs. amount of rain.

learn the bones of the body and Muscles via anatomy coloring book.

geometry-
learn shapes, polygons, platonic solids, types of triangles, why shapes work the way they do, measuring angles, area and circumference.

greedy us....

If I were a person of all seasons, then I would not live in this house. As an american I am by definition using up way more than my share of world resources. I cringe when I hear people plan to build bigger homes, or to build, especially when these new housing developments are green-washed so that if the buyers don't look too closely they might actually think that they are helping the planet by building a 35,000 sq foor house on 1/2 acre of former prairie.

I criticize, yet I am guilty of the same crime. I had a comfortable apartment, and chose quite against all efficency arguments, to move into a large lovely home and I would have chosen a larger home If I had had more money at the time.
If I were a person of my social justice convictions, I would use my time and abilities to enrich the lives of others. I would send money to the poor and those who are in need, and I would do a lot of volunteerism.


I will be a teacher, and through this career I will bless the lives of my students by preparing them for the world and their future employment. I plan to teach math, which is a vital skill and can really make a difference in a young person's life.

Right now I am the mom to 4 lovely children and I hope that spending my time on their upbringing is good enough.

castle---- it just doesn't work.

I have been watchign Castle, a crime/ writing drama starring Nathan Fillion (from FIREFLY) adn some other girl, anyways, the story line is that Kaet Becket is a crime fighting detective, and RICHARD Castle follows her around supposedly to get ideas for his crime themed detective novels. He also helps to solve crimes.

The sub themes are; Kate Becket and Castle sexual tension and secret jealousy. Richard Castle has a teenage daughter and lives with his Mother and there are some occasional firefly relicts sitting around the living room.

The problems with the show are;
1. Kate Becket is supposed to be a detective, an employee of the police department. She dresses like a teenager even when she is supposedly investigating crime scenes and interviewing witnesses. totally unprofessional and unbelievable.
2. Richard Castle is the comic relief, and the comedy factor leans too heavily on his facial expressions and reactions. I used to think that he wasn't a good actor, but I think that the writing is just really off. There is no way anyone could pull off his role well. He is just put in weird positions that make little sense. The character is not consistent.
e.g. There was an episode where they were looking for poisonous spiders that where part of a murder. Apparently Castle was scared of spiders. He was made to scream and be scared of spiders like 6 times. It was funny the first time.
3. The premise of a writer helping a real life detective is not super believable to begin with. I might be able to look past the shaky premise if the writing were middling. I might be able to excuse the writing if the characters were believable and consistent. Taken together its just not that great.

You know, Nathan Fillian starred in a nice show a couple of years ago that I really enjoyed, and watching the train wreck that is Castle begs the question
"WHY does junk like this get on Television while FIREFLY was cancelled??????"

I guess I'll just have to watch some episodes, work on my ZOE costume, and try to move on.

antiscience movement

So there was/is a movement to deny the existence of Aids, apparently soem people think that it is a government conspiracy.

http://denyingaids.blogspot.com/2010/04/another-tragic-case-of-aids-denialism.html

And these people are slowly dying, when their lives could have been made longer and more comfortable with the use of treatment and modern drugs.
This is absurd, of course, and these people are clearly a case of denialism in the extreme.

Let us compare them to parents who do not vaccinate their children for diseases.
There is clear science that vaccines are beneficial. There are some cases like extreme allegies, or a history of bad reactions in which a child should not be vaccinated, barring these exceptions, The analogy stands.

The negative effects of not vaccinating are not so great for any one individual, but the potential effect of a largely less vaccinated public are tremendous.

The anti-science movement is so bad in so many ways.
I am going to be a teacher just so I can work to promote science and the responsible reading of statistics and sound critical thinking skills. Seriously, when I see stuff like this it just make me angry, and all I can do is rage during playgroup (hence alienateing the homeopathic/homebirth moms) or write this silly blog that no one reads (except for YOU!). So, as soon as my youngest child gets off to school, I get certified and become a math teacher. I am sure that this will not lessen my frustration level in general, but at least it has the potential for making a difference in the world.