Category Archives: creativity

Plagiarizing isn’t really stealing….

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Rachel Maddow has an issue with Rand Paul claiming someone else’s writing is his own….and how he pretends “it’s no big deal”.

If you recall the post on only the crooks get jobs.…there seems to be a pattern here, eh?

But, no, we’re not done…I was watching the Ed Show on MSNBC, and he was stating that Bill O’Reilly has made the claim he knows why Jesus died–because he went after the tax collectors.  Ed said it was because he was sent here to die for us so that we could have everlasting life.   He also said something about the moneychangers being thrown out because they were in the Temple.

Hmmm….I remember making the statement on a comment on crooks and liars regarding this subject.(tried to find it,but it’s not on the website).

It’s been probably a year since I made the comment, and some of you might remember it–someone on the blog had made a crack about Jesus not caring about the poor, etc.  To which I replied that Jesus fed the poor with loaves and fishes, he touched those with leprosy (which was like AIDS in those days), and he threw the moneychangers (bankers) out of the Temple when the religious leaders had allowed them to set up shop there.  I said that was probably the real reason Jesus was murdered–he made the religious leaders look bad (and pissed off the bankers by interfering with their business).

I haven’t read O’Reilly’s book.  I don’t know the exact quote or context of it ….but it would piss me off to know this creep has a book out there, making $$$, while he stole an idea from someone else.

Oh….and O’Reilly claims that Jesus told him to write the book.

Um-hmmm….if Jesus had really told him that, he would have told O’Reilly to pay for the costs of printing it and hand out copies for free.

Never ceases to amaze me when people try to make money off of Jesus….I can’t imagine he would have healed someone and then said “That’ll be $100.”

 

New faces of soul food

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Michael Twitty has a link up to a piece on soul food.  I like how he characterizes it as not necessarily West African, but a food of an enslaved people.

I recently made collard greens with chicken fat to flavor it….and I couldn’t believe the difference in taste.  It took the bitterness out and added something sweet to it.  I also put in chopped garlic cloves.  Yum.

 

 

Food, Food, Food

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Apparently, there is a square knish shortage due to a factory fire in New York.  I had no idea what a knish was until this piece, so thanks for enlightening this writer.  It sounds yummy.

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In other food blogs is Michael Twitty’s piece on the life of a slave.  A great glimpse into history we don’t usually read about.  It’s well written–puts the reader into the daily struggle for them.  I was thinking when he wrote about catching the fish, that the fish must have tasted so good being caught in non-polluted waters.  And even though the work was hard,  it must have been nice to work outside in the sunshine….don’t misunderstand me–I know it was very hard, but I personally really enjoyed working on a farm.  I even liked it when the rain came down.    I would be weeding the old fashioned way of pulling them, and a grasshopper might leap onto a leaf nearby…..or a butterfly come floating past….birds singing….

 

 

Signs of Dyslexia

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(A note~ I changed the video in the previous blog on Education and Malala)

As you know, I’m dyslexic.  I thought I’d pass along this list of symptoms for those who may be similarly affected:

1. Known in family tree.

2.  Not speaking by 1st birthday.

3.  Twisted Oral Speech – Multiple Syllables  (like saying am-in-al for animal or pasghetti for spaghetti — my daughter did this and I thought it was just a cute part of being a little one “dutchy” as my Mom would call it.)

4.  Stuttering in early years

5.  Cluttering early

6.  Articulation Difficulties m/n, r/l, even in adults

7.  Chronic Ear Infections  (I would say chronic earaches, too.  Get this–many of us on the mercury poisoning list have earaches or history of ear infections.  When I’m chelating, I always get an earache.)

8.  Can’t master tying shoes.

9.  Trouble with left/right

10.  Late to establish a dominant hand.   (I’m not sure why it is important to establish a dominant hand.  I would think after all the years of abuse connected with forcing left handed children to use their right hands, that the thought of a dominant hand being important would die away….)

11.  Mixed dominance w/hand per task.  (Again, I don’t know why such importance is put on this–)

12.  Can’t say or write alphabet in sequence.

13.  Difficulty spelling last name.  (Ha.  Try one with four syllables)

14.  Address/Phone # difficulty

15.  Sequence, Names, and Sounds of alphabet (where one has to keep starting over from the beginning to name all the letters)

16.  Sequence Days of the Week and Month  (I solved this by creating a picture in my mind of the months and the days of the week–the days look connected like a telephone pole line.  The months look like a calendar in my head.)

17.  Multiplication facts (Math is difficult because there is no reason.  Dyslexics need to have a reason.  This really slammed me–one of the things I told my calculus adviser was that the instructors tell you a problem. I wanted to know “why” .  I knew by the look she gave me that there was a reason they didn’t do this (in Indiana University, their math program featured books written by women mathematicians that explained it in a way that I (and probably other dyslexics) could understand.  We want to know why and if we don’t know why, it gets in the way of solving the problem.

18.  Knows a word on page 1, but not on page 3.  In the excellent book I got from my PUBLIC Library, it explained that dyslexics get stuck on words that they can’t associate with a picture.  This was my daughter’s difficulty, too.  I would point to the word “the” and then turn the page and point to it again, and she couldn’t recognize it, even though she just looked at it.  This was because a, an, and the don’t stand for any particular object.  She could remember words like “ball” because it stood for this round thing that bounced.

19.  Won’t try to sound out unknown words.

20.  Terrible Spelling – often no vowels.  This is the opposite of me–I was an excellent speller.  I have lost the ability, however, with the mercury poisoning.  I misspell words that I know. (updated 5.2015: I am now recognizing and spelling words better….so there’s progress in that direction.)

21.  Terrible Penmanship–dysgraphia.  (Again, the opposite of me–I have very nice penmanship.  This is explained that dyslexics are highly creative–supposedly, the right side of their brains are larger.)

22.  Impacts Visual Memory–3D is the gifted area

23.  Handwriting posture – Often head on desk or turning paper.  Yup, that would be me.

24.  Extreme difficulty with cursive. (Again, not a problem for this dyslexic — nice cursive writing.)

25.  Reversals after 2 years of writing practice instruction.

26.  Writing Conventions are very poor, but content is okay.  (Poor capitalization and paragraphing.  Dyslexics need to write first, take a break, and then come back to edit later.)

27.  Word retrieval issues

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Seriously, writing this entry, I’ve had to re-type several times because of the backwards letters.  Being dyslexic requires more energy–hence the reason they tend to want to give up in frustration. (I’m also chelating, and it’s amazing how much worse my symptoms are….so yeah, you know what I’m thinking–is dyslexia related to mercury/heavy metal poisoning?)

It also should be noted that dyslexics are often treated as if they are stupid, but evidence proves that is not correct.  Dyslexics are highly intelligent.  My daughter would have been branded stupid for the rest of her life if I had listened to her teacher.  I just want to encourage parents that you are the best judge of your child, and to listen to your instincts.

It’s not Obamacare….it’s Social Security they’re after

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Center for Media and Democracy has this up on what the Koch Brothers and Pete Petersen and their toady Paul Ryan are really after–what they’ve been after all along—Social Security and other “entitlement” programs.  I still hate that term”entitlement”  as it alludes to a giveaway when folks pay into these programs all their lives.

Here’s the video by Mark Fiore:

 

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Also from CMD–

Profiting off the poor.  With Indiana being All Republican, All the Time in the Legislature, I rather doubt that they have slayed this dragon.  I suspect that privatization will be back…probably by backdoor deals.

Also, Indiana will be dropping ISTEP (Indiana Statewide Testing Educational Progress)next year BY FEDERAL REQUIREMENT.

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…and profiting off of our children-–and ultimately, our Democracy. (Just a refresher of the Charter school scams and hedge fund managers/Wall Street making a profit off of schools.)

From the report:

In recent years, there has been an explosion of full-time “virtual” charter schools paid for by the taxpayer. From 2008 to 2012, 157 bills passed in 39 states and territories (including the District of Columbia) that expand online schooling or modify existing regulations. Many of these bills are attributable to American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) politicians.

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I was thinking about this other day while teaching–online is such a ripoff in that you don’t get human interaction.  Granted, the Wall St. types probably loathe human interaction…but I really wonder if they’re human to begin with….the rest of us,however, actually want to be around other humans.

Anyway, a teacher can often pick up on cues to help a student “get” a subject that a stupid computer could never do.

A teacher can give encouragement when a student wants to give up.  This is especially important for students who are having difficulty–I thought of myself  and my daughter being dyslexic.  If I hadn’t tried to teach my daughter through Phonics and patiently sitting down with her every night to read, she most likely would not have reached her potential.  Again–computers cannot help when there is a learning disability.

Lastly, a teacher is going to lay the hammer down if a student comes in without homework done or starts goofing off during class instead of doing the work they’re supposed to be doing…online courses cannot do that, either.  And a teacher is also a sounding board for a student who may be dealing with issues at home…

As I’ve noted before, there is something lost when the classroom lacks discussion and interchange of ideas or more in-depth on the subject.

And, of course, a computer can’t teach art or music the way that it should be done.

The article makes note that the virtual schools enroll kids that never take courses, never answer emails, and so on, but still take tax dollars for them.  One had to reimburse the state $800k for “ghost” students.  This is a huge red flag in that while the neocons are so very worried about voter ID to “prove” who someone is so they don’t vote twice….well, I don’t see the same concern with these “ghost” students who may or may not even be real persons.  Who is checking on them?

And this just made my heart sing:

Affidavits from former K12 Inc. teachers that were incorporated into the complaint paint a devastating picture of an enrollment-driven, profit-driven corporate culture that leaves kids in the dust. (Note to Wall Street: If you want to exploit children, don’t hire a bunch of teachers who actually care about kids.)

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Sadly, I think Wall St. will actually take that advice and will screen teachers who don’t give a rip.  Or Wall Streeters will make a construct that they “can’t find any good teachers” so they will be “forced” to plead for the ability to hire non-teachers to….teach.

 

 

 

Coconut oil deodorant

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I happened upon a blog with a recipe for coconut oil deodorant  while doing some research for coconut oil.  Wonderful stuff for the gut, but I never thought of using it to make deodorant!

This one uses probiotics in the recipe.  And it is shelf stable.

This one uses less ingredients but must be kept in the fridge.

Toxic folks like myself become super sensitive to chemicals, so we must avoid them at all costs…..but, really, we should all avoid chemicals so your immune system isn’t damaged.

Since I didn’t have the probiotics to make the first recipe, and cannot use cornstarch or arrowroot, I made a very basic recipe of 3 Tablespoons of unrefined coconut oil with 1/8 cup of baking soda.   I’ve read on three different sites that the claim that baking soda was aluminum free was a great PR stunt because baking soda never had aluminum in it–BUT Bob’s Red Mill is processed without chemicals, so for me, it is  the preferred kind to use for something I’m going to put on my body.   I mean, if I’m trying to get away from chemicals, it doesn’t make much sense to use baking soda that has been extracted by chemical process, does it?

You don’t have to use very much of it, either, just a couple of finger tips’ worth works fine.

I’ve used the coconut oil deodorant for three days now, and I can say that it works perfectly!