Should high schools have webcams in classrooms?

Posted on 30. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in education

I’m testing out PollDaddy. Please vote!

You can see more about this in yesterday’s post.

I’m angry but I’m not stupid

Posted on 30. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in my life

I wish I’d waited until tomorrow to get the sprinklers fixed. If I had, the toilet paper that someone threw all over our lawn last night would be dry now, and much easier to pick up.

It’s pretty easy to guess who did it: they left their abbreviation spelled out on our driveway. But as tempting as it is to call their parents or send out a mass email, I won’t. It might invite more serious vandalism. I wish one of them would come over and get it off my roof, however. I’m not sure how I’m going to reach up there. I bet they wouldn’t like it if I threw toilet paper on their roof.

The perps even left some tp and packaging on our neighbor’s lawn. When I went out to pick it up, there were two peahens poking around our front yard. I told my husband I thought it was cool, a sort of yin to the yang of the toilet papering. He said he hoped they don’t stay, because they poop so much. At least we have enough toilet paper to clean up after them.

After I took these pictures, I started cleaning up the neighbor’s yard. The peahens started cruising around another yard, and were about to cross the street when a car was driving up the street. I stopped the car, and the birds crossed the road safely.

Yesterday my daughter and I drove past another house that had been tp’d. I told her I was glad we no longer had easy trees to tp in front of our house. It’ll be much easier to get the toilet paper off our palm trees than it would have been off our old ash tree. I also reminded her that I wouldn’t clean up after her friends if they tp’d our house. But today I’ll make an exception. She’s no longer on the sports team in question, and had nothing to do with this.

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Big Mother’s Watching You

Posted on 29. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in education

Do 17-year-olds really need to get an automated phone call reminding them they have a test tomorrow? I hope not! If they aren’t self-organized by that age, they’d better figure out how to be, pronto.

Sandy Banks writes in today’s LA Times story Logging off e-monitoring of child’s schoolwork that she received such a phone call at her house. Not surprisingly, her daughter knew all about the test. But Sandy reports that notification systems like these are popping up in many school districts:

They are ubiquitous at schools today, these e-monitoring notification systems: TeleParent, Parent Portal, Edline, Parent Connect. It’s not just for little kids still getting the hang of homework routines. It’s used widely for high school students — and their parents.

Want to know when your sophomore’s book report is due? You can find out on yourhomework.com. Worried that your senior’s been showing up late to first period math? Sign up for Parent Connect and you can monitor attendance in every class. Wonder if your 11th-grader missed a homework assignment? Expect a phone call from TeleParent.

Today’s online educational tools include a computerized debit card for the cafeteria that conveniently lets parents load it with money, then allows them to ban the purchase of snack foods and sweets and dictate how many burritos their child can buy at once.

What’s next? Webcams in each classroom, so you can see if your kid is napping in biology?

Our school district has several such systems. Elementary school parents can fill their kids’ cafeteria accounts via PayPal, and jr. high and high school parents and students can check grades online with Pinnacle. When there’s an emergency or an important announcement, principals can broadcast a phone message on Connect-ED that goes to home phones and cell phones. And of course, don’t forget our famous PTA Constant Contact emails.

Other than making the kids start their homework as soon as they get home from school, I’m hands-off as far as homework is concerned. I figure the kids have got to learn to keep track of their schoolwork, or face the consequences. It seems to have worked. (Kaynahora!) We usually only check the grades online in our house when one of the kids wants to know how he or she did on a test or an assignment, although we should use it more to make sure teachers aren’t losing work or marking grades down wrong. (You’d be amazed at how often those happen.)

I actually like the idea of webcams in the classroom. I think everyone would be on better behavior if they knew they were being watched. Of course, the teachers’ union would probably never allow it. But some of the stories I hear…ok, I’ll stop now. Some things are better left off the blog.

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New business concept: safe & healthy teen hangouts

Posted on 28. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in parenting

Here’s a brilliant concept: create teen hangouts that incorporate fitness, tutoring, food and a safe place to relax.

That’s the idea behind O2 Max, a new fitness center opening up for teens in El Segundo, CA. The center will include classes in Budokon, Hip-Hop, Yoga, Spin, Martial Arts, and more, as well as SAT prep. and Princeton Review tutoring. There will be basketball leagues, sports training, exercise classes, special events and concerts.

I wish we had one in La Canada!!! My church is planning on opening up its new youth facility one afternoon a week soon. This is a step in the right direction!

I found out about this when one of the founders, Karen Jashinsky, emailed me and invited me to a kickoff event in Beverly Hills this Sunday. I can’t make it (soccer!), but if you’re in the area, check it out. They’ll have all sorts of bands and giveaways, and it sounds like fun!

How I’m going to protect my credit now that my mail was stolen

Posted on 27. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in my life, parenting

I told my next door neighbor about how our mail was stolen, and she’s totally on board with getting secure mailboxes. She also said that she and her husband are signed up for LifeLock, a credit protection service. I checked it out, and it looked like what I need, so I signed up. At risk of sounding like a commercial, here’s a summary of what they provide:

• They ask the credit bureaus to set fraud alerts on your behalf.
• Unless your circumstances change and you tell them not to, every 90 days or so they ask the credit bureaus to do it again.
• They request that your name be removed from pre-approved credit card and junk mail lists and they keep making the requests as they expire.
• Every year, they order free credit reports on your behalf from the major credit bureaus and they are sent directly to you.
• If your Identity is stolen while you are their client, they do whatever it takes to recover your good name.
• They guarantee that if your identity is misused while you are their client, they’ll spend up to $1,000,000 to make it right.
• “If you have a reason to think that you will become a victim of Identity Theft, we can help you stop looking over your shoulder, because we’ve got your back.”

I love this idea. I don’t have the time to be tracking our family’s credit report each month, or to deal with the fallout when something goes wrong. As the LifeLock website says, we can all change our own oil, but most of us choose to pay an expert to do it. I even paid the extra $25 to protect my teens. It’s amazing how many free credit card offers they get since they have frequent flyer numbers. I don’t want them to have bad credit already when they apply for credit themselves someday.

I’ll rest easy tonight. Seriously.

A crackhead stole my mail

Posted on 27. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in my life, things that bug me

Or maybe it was a meth addict. I don’t know, and I probably never will. I got so excited about the packages on my front porch yesterday that I forgot to go across the street and get my mail. When I checked this morning it was gone. (Though they were good enough to leave a sales brochure for a really expensive house – thank goodness they know that stealing my identity won’t get them that far!)

I reported it to the USPS this morning. They were very gracious, and apologized even though it wasn’t their fault. I hope the perp didn’t get anything important or revealing. I checked the dates on my past credit card and bank statements, and it doesn’t look like any would have arrived yesterday. My son’s hoping they didn’t get his Nintendo Power or Mad magazines.

When we lived in Pasadena, the postal carrier would come to our front door and drop mail in a slot. It was incredibly convenient for us, especially when we went on vacation. Why don’t we have that in La Canada? Maybe it’s part of being a “rural” community. (as if, haha) Note to self: talk to neighbors about getting a locking mailbox stand.

So if you see any crackheads reading Nintendo Power, please notifiy the LA County Sheriffs. A certain boy I know will be forever grateful.

Male scientists justify older men marrying younger women

Posted on 26. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in parenting

This is for real: scientists from Stanford and UCSB have determined that when older men reproduce with much younger women, it helps the species to survive and live longer. According to a report from the Stanford News Service,

Evolutionary theory says that individuals should die of old age when their reproductive lives are complete, generally by age 55 in humans, according to demographer Cedric Puleston, a doctoral candidate in biological sciences at Stanford. But the fatherhood of a small number of older men is enough to postpone the date with death because natural selection fights life-shortening mutations until the species is finished reproducing.

Makes sense to me: if some people are reproducing longer, the species will replicate itself more. And if your father lives to an old age (or if he starts out being your father at one), then you’re likely to live longer also.

One thing I didn’t see in the news report was what the effect is on the welfare and survival of the species due to increased birth defects in babies of these older men. Perhaps these babies are more likely to live longer, but according to The International Herald Tribune, they’re more likely to have autism, muscular dystrophy, schizophrenia and a host of other disorders. Their grandchildren are also more likely to inherit the likelihood of having certain birth defects.

So before guys decide to dump First Wife and move on to Trophy Wife #1, be warned: fatherhood could be much tougher the second time around.

I’m sure David Letterman will have lots of fun with this study!

Shred your sins away

Posted on 25. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in religion

According to Saturday’s Wall St. Journal article, Confession Makes a Comeback,

To make confession less intimidating, Protestant churches have urged believers to shred their sins in paper shredders or write them on rocks and cast them into a “desert” symbolized by a giant sand pile in the sanctuary. Three Catholic priests from the Capuchin order now hear confessions at a mall in Colorado Springs., Colo.

Thank goodness I have a cross cut paper shredder!!

Marcel Marceau, WWII Hero

Posted on 24. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in inspirational people, international

As you probably know, acclaimed French mime Marcel Marceau recently died at the age of 84. Here’s one tidbit I didn’t know about him, from today’s LA Times:

When the Germans invaded France during World War II, Marceau’s father was taken to Auschwitz, where he died in 1944. Marceau was 21.

Marcel and his older brother, Alain, changed the family name to Marceau — after Francois Severin Marceau-Desgraviers, an 18th century French general — and both brothers became part of the French underground.

Marceau found he had a talent for forging documents to help young Jewish men avoid the Nazi concentration camps, and he also helped spirit children across the border to neutral Switzerland. Toward the end of the war, he joined the Free French Forces, fighting alongside U.S. troops under Gen. George S. Patton.

It was before 3,000 of Patton’s soldiers that Marceau gave his first major performance, which was favorably reviewed by Stars and Stripes.

What an amazing man.

Partying down in the suburbs

Posted on 24. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in my life, shopping

Lest anyone think I’m merely a geek with no time to socialize, I threw a CAbi party yesterday for about 30 wonderful friends. (That’s why I had no time to blog.) My next door neighbor, Laurie Candelora, has found a way to balance her love of organic chemistry with her love of fashion, and is a representative for the terrific line of CAbi (Carol Anderson by Invitation) clothing.

If you didn’t receive your invite in the mail, it was either because:

• You’re a guy. Sorry, it’s all women’s clothing.
• I don’t know you.
• I didn’t think you’d be interested.
• I thought you’d already be invited to another CAbi party.
• You live too far away.

The party was a great success. I think everyone had a good time, and I think that even the few people who didn’t join the fashion feeding frenzy didn’t feel pressure to purchase anything. I enjoyed introducing people to new friends and catching up with old friends. I even made amazingly yummy appetizers: chicken curry pate, spinich dip, mushrooms topped with heavy cream / garlic, and figs topped with a puree of feta, toasted walnuts and honey. (The latter was my own invention – Tableau Vivante and Michele J. would be proud!) Oh yes, and brownies! See? I don’t just do Dream Dinners!

If you want an invitation to the spring party, please !

PS – If I may channel my inner teen girl for one moment: “I call getting to wear the LaBelle dress to Boosters!” If you don’t get this message, I shall compliment you on your excellent taste.

Startling Statistics III: Drunk Driving Deaths

Posted on 22. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in articles, startling statistics

According to this week’s Time Magazine, 42% of traffic deaths in California involve at least one vehicle operator with a blood-alcohol content of .08% or more. Utah has the lowest rate, at 24%, and Hawaii has the highest, 52%.

To fight drunk driving, state courts may require that prior DUI offenders install devices that prevent impaired drivers from starting their cars.

Sounds like a great idea to me – do it now!

Startling Statistics II: Muir High School in Pasadena

Posted on 21. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in articles, education, startling statistics

It’s incredible that less than a mile away from a high school with scores that rank it as one of the top in the state, there lies a school that’s on the brink of being taken over by the state due to its poor performance.
Yesterday’s Pasadena Star News reported in “Muir’s Mustang Spirit Lost” that a consultant who studied John Muir High School in Pasadena found the following sorry statistics:

• Muir’s daily attendance hovers between 60 percent and 70 percent.
• Student proficiency rates in math, English and science are below 25 percent.
• In this year’s state-mandated standardized testing, 75 percent of Muir’s ninth-graders scored below proficiency in English. By the 11th grade, that number climbed to 84 percent.
• Ninety-four percent of ninth-graders tested below proficient in Algebra I, while 100 percent of 10th- and 11th-graders tested below proficient in that subject.

Of course, many reasons are cited for this sad state of affairs. Large class sizes, poor ground maintenance, lack of district support, mistrust of the district, and open enrollment were all on the list. I’d also add student and parent apathy: how else could you account for attendance between 60 to 70 percent? It’s hard to teach kids that don’t come to school.

Bless the new superintendent, Edwin Diaz, who hopes the school will become a model for secondary school reform. I hope he’s right. But it’s going to take a lot more than money and small school reorganizations to fix this mess.

Startling Statistics Part I: Marriage

Posted on 20. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in my life, startling statistics

I’m starting a new series today: Startling Statistics. As the name suggests, I’ll share surprising or significant statistics I’ve stumbled upon.

First up: Marriage. Here are what I consider the most significant stats from today’s New York Times article, 25th Anniversary Mark Elusive for Many Couples:

• In 2004, among people in their late 20s, a majority of men – 54 percent – had never married, and 41 percent of women had not. In 1996, the comparable figures were 49 percent among men and 35 percent among women.
• Among Americans married in the 1950s, about 70 percent were still married by their 25th anniversary.
  Only 49.5 percent of men and 46.4 percent of women who married in the late 1970s were married 25 years later.
• About 80 percent of first marriages that took place in the late 1950s lasted at least 15 years.
  Among people who married in the late 1980s for the first time, however, only 61 percent of the men and 57 percent of the women were married 15 years later.
• Among men over 15, the percentage who have never been married was 45 percent for blacks, 39 percent for Hispanics, 33 percent for Asians and 28 percent for whites. Among women over 15, it was 44 percent for blacks, 30 percent for Hispanics, 23 percent for Asians and 22 percent for whites.
  

Phew! My husband and I celebrated our 20th anniversary this year, so we’re bucking the trends. It’s strange to think that nearly half the newlywed couples who were at Club Med when we honeymooned there are probably divorced by now.

I looked up the statistics for my city, since I think there’s a higher percentage of married couples here than in most places.

• Sure enough, census data for La Canada Flintridge shows that the percentage of the population over 15 that had never married was 18.8% in 2000, and the percentage that were currently married was 69.1%.

Is it because it’s expensive to live here, because we’re a conservative community, or because singles don’t want to live here? Who knows? Here are how some other communities compare:

• Santa Monica’s 90402 zip, which was named 12th most expensive by Forbes in 2005, showed 23.2% never married and 59.7% currently married. La Canada was 89th most expensive on that list, which implies that it’s not just expense keeping singles away from here.
• Hermosa Beach, which was #88 on the list, has a whopping 47.3% never married, and only 37.7% currently married.
• My old hometown of Rumson, NJ, had statistics right between La Canada and Santa Monica: 21.1% never married, and 64.1% currently married.
• At this point, I tried finding a zipcode with more conservative statistics than ours, so I thought I’d try Utah. I don’t know much about Utah, but I figured I’d try the zip code where the Mormon Tabernacle is (84150). Census data shows that in that zip, 27.9% had never married and 58.8% were currently married.

So here’s the challenge: can anyone find a zip code with a higher percentage of married people than 91011?

I could go on and on. Anyway, it’s sad that so few marriages stay together. So much for “’til death do we part.”

Coming soon: “Quidnunc Queen”

Posted on 20. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in tv

I had to laugh when I saw today’s Merriam-Webster Word of the Day in my email inbox:

quidnunc \KWID-nunk\ noun

: a person who seeks to know all the latest news or gossip : busybody

Example sentence:
Those who criticize Joanne for being a quidnunc are usually the first to go to her when they want to know the latest gossip.

Forget “Gossip Girl.” That’s so passé. “Quidnunc Queen” could be the next iteration, when the rich private school kids go off to the Ivy Leagues.

“You’re nobody until you’re talked about.”

Posted on 19. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in books, tv

Or so says “Gossip Girl,” the mysterious narrator of the new CW television series.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Not really. But when my daughter wanted to watch the premiere of this much talked-about new teen series, I figured I should sit on the couch and watch it with her. After all, she’d read some of the books, though she says she stopped reading the series because it was so trashy. She’s nearly 16, and has a good perspective about what’s appropriate / inappropriate. Besides, I figured that by watching it with her, I could comment on what was going on.

Maybe I’m just naive, but are there really people who live such shallow, licentious, nasty lives? If I had known what garbage was in these books, I never would have let my daughter read them. (I’ve wised up more since then, but it’s still tough. See my Teen Books Guide.) The parents in the “Gossip Girl” TV show are no better than the kids. They belittle their children and expect them to do anything for the almighty dollar.

Thankfully, there were a few decent characters to root for. Hopefully they’ll stay that way. Only time will tell. And I’ll probably be sitting on the couch finding out…

Matt White’s “Love” FINALLY on iTunes!

Posted on 18. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in movies, music

I’ve been waiting forever for this song to show up on iTunes. I first heard it in the movie “Little Manhattan” over a year ago. I downloaded the video from iTunes a few months ago, but couldn’t play it on my (relatively old?) iPod Mini.

The song is on Matt’s “Best Days” album. It’s different from most of the album, and I’m afraid to say that I chose not to purchase the album. Thank goodness iTunes lets us download a song at a time!

In case anyone’s curious, here’s my list of all-time favorite songs:

Breaking my Diet Coke habit

Posted on 18. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in food, health

No one’s ever said Diet Coke’s good for me. But it’s the one vice I have, and I hate to give it up. I haven’t been drinking it for too long, but I really have been enjoying it. Unfortunately, I’m really starting to think it’s bad for me.

Here are the ingredients in Diet Coke, per McDonalds’ website:

Carbonated water, caramel color, phosphoric acid, sodium saccharin, potassium benzoate (to protect taste), natural flavors (vegetable source), citric acid, caffeine, potassium citrate, aspartame, dimethylpolysiloxane.

Scary stuff. Definitely not au naturel. I read about the dangers of sodium benzoate in this week’s Time Magazine, so I thought I’d check out the similar Diet Coke ingredient, potassium benzoate. Here’s what Wikipedia says about it:

In combination with ascorbic acid (vitamin C), sodium and potassium benzoate may form benzene, a known carcinogen. Heat, light and shelf life can affect the rate at which benzene is formed. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently (as of March 2006) performing tests, but the Environmental Working Group is calling for the FDA to publicly release all tests and use their authority to force companies to reformulate to avoid the potential benzene forming combination.^[3]

Potassium Benzoate (or E212) was recently described by the Food Commission, who campaign for ’safer, healthier food in the UK’, as “mildly irritant to the skin, eyes and mucous membranes”. ^[4]

Wow. Does that mean adding a lemon slice to Diet Coke makes it even worse?

Well, it looks like I need a new vice. Advice? Of course, it can’t be dangerous, cancerous, fattening, or evil. So, maybe there’s nothing that will qualify. Maybe my time spent blogging will have to count as my vice.

(Note: The image above comes from an excellent 1999 Salon.com article written by a woman trying to kick her diet soda habit.)

Tivo this: “Inside the Living Body”

Posted on 17. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in health, tv

I’ve seen lots of IMAX / Discovery Channel / National Geographic specials about the human body over the years, but the “Inside the Living Body” show we saw last night on the National Geographic Channel beat them all. Technological advances allow their videocameras to reach far into the human body and produce incredibly vivid images. Also, the computer graphics that simulate various cell and aging processes make complex concepts quite clear.

My “aha!” moment occurred when they explained that perhaps the reason we change as we age is that each time DNA replicates itself, it loses a little something in the process. It’s like making a copy of a copy of a copy…the last copy won’t resemble the original nearly as much as the first copy did. I also shrieked when they did the rapid age progression from 45 to 70. But, I guess it beats the alternative.

Anyway, I highly recommend this for anyone of any age. Not only did I learn a lot, but now I’m more determined than ever to treat my body right. The images of fat surrounding internal organs were quite frightening.

This must be Body Week at the National Geographic Channel: tonight we’re scheduled to start recording a series which includes The Science of Dwarfism, The Science of Conjoined Twins, Brain Child, The Science of Babies, The Science of Obesity and more. I think I learned about them by reading The Week. With the limited space on our old Tivo, it’ll probably start deleting all of those unwatched Colbert Reports soon!

Pot ‘o Gold in Angeles Forest

Posted on 16. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in articles, local news, travel

Although I live in the heart of suburbia, my city includes the southern edge of the thousand square mile Angeles National Forest. The forest’s windy roads are beloved by daredevil motorcyclists, and its vast remoteness is favored as a place to dump bodies and grow pot. Is it no wonder that local children are warned never to drive north of our city? Despite its sheer awesomeness and beauty, I regard Angeles National Forest the way Tahitians regard the center of their islands, as a place where evil spirits may dwell.

Yesterday’s Pasadena Star News reported that there was yet another pot bust up in the mountains. This one brought in about $18 million worth of plants. If they’re not already doing so, hopefully the authorities are using the Google Maps satellite feature to find pot farms, just as people are using it to find Steve Fossett’s plane.

Here’s my favorite snippet from the article:

Outdoor grow farms are run mostly by Mexican drug cartels who recruit laborers at the Mexican border and throughout California to run the camps, said an officer who would only identify himself as “Gunny.”

The laborers hike in and receive food drops. They remain in place all summer, “Gunny” said.

Jameson said that many of the laborers receive what they consider to be huge paychecks to do the growing. Those who are caught often don’t speak English or know anything about the area they are in.

“We arrested one man up in the Fresno area,” said Jameson. “He thought that he was in Arizona.”

He was actually in the state of Confusion.

Animoto made me a slideshow set to music

Posted on 15. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in art, my life, videos

Here’s an amazing slideshow set to music that Animoto made for me for $3.00. It would have been longer if I’d entered more pictures or used a slower song. There’s a free version of Animoto you can use which makes a 30-second long video, but I’m not sure you can embed it on a webpage or blog. This video took almost no time on my part to make other than choosing the pictures and the music.

Are males guilty until proven innocent?

Posted on 14. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in parenting

In our efforts to protect our children, many in our society have overgeneralized and made all men into bogeymen.

Here are a few examples from Jeff Zaslow’s recent Wall St. Journal article “Avoiding Kids: How Men Cope With Being Cast as Predators“:

These days, if Rian Romoli accidentally bumps into a child, he quickly raises his hands above his shoulders. “I don’t want to give even the slightest indication that any inadvertent touching occurred,” says Mr. Romoli, an economist in lif.

Ted Wallis, a doctor in Austin, Texas, recently came upon a lost child in tears in a mall. His first instinct was to help, but he feared people might consider him a predator. He walked away. “Being male,” he explains, “I am guilty until proven innocent.”

In San Diego, retiree Ralph Castro says he won’t allow himself to be alone with a child — even in an elevator.

Today’s Dear Prudence column contained another example:

My younger, 13-year-old sister is having a slumber party for her birthday, and invited three or so of her 13- to 14-year-old girlfriends to our house. Shortly after, “Sara’s” mother suggested that my sister’s party should be held at “Tammy’s” house. Why? Because Tammy has a single mother. Sara’s mother is concerned that my father will be in his house during the festivities. There is no reason to be concerned about my father doing anything inappropriate to any of the girls (all the parents have met each other), but she is just uncomfortable about the idea of her daughter sleeping in the same house with another nonfamily man.

In my own life, I exercise caution and don’t allow a new male tutor to be alone in my house with my teenage daughter. I also see parents who don’t want to hire boys as babysitters.

I live with two wonderful guys, my husband and my son, who would never dream of hurting a child. It’s a shame that the prurient thoughts and actions of a small percentage of males in our society has hurt the reputations of the majority to the point where they’re unable to contribute to the healthy development of our children. We’re missing out on a lot, and so are the guys.

In an earlier article, “Are we teaching our kids to be fearful of men?” Zaslow writes that

Child-welfare groups say these are necessary precautions, given that most predators are male. But fathers’ rights activists and educators now argue that an inflated predator panic is damaging men’s relationships with kids. Some men are opting not to get involved with children at all, which partly explains why many youth groups can’t find male leaders, and why just 9% of elementary-school teachers are male, down from 18% in 1981.

People assume that all men “have the potential for violence and sexual aggressiveness,” says Peter Stearns, a George Mason University professor who studies fear and anxiety. Kids end up viewing every male stranger “as a potential evildoer,” he says, and as a byproduct, “there’s an overconfidence in female virtues.”

So please, consider what you’re doing when you refuse to allow a male to be close to your child. Exercise caution when necessary, but don’t shut out someone who could make a positive impact on your kids’ life.

And if you need a babysitter, I’ve got a great one here! He’s taken the Red Cross babysitting class, and has great experience watching his cousins and kids at church camp. When you hire a great boy babysitter, you send a wonderful message to your children about males.

Trade books online at Bookins

Posted on 13. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in books, shopping

I discovered Bookins yesterday, and I’m hooked. This book trading site allows you to trade your books with other people, and all you have to pay is the cost of shipping a book to you. It’s organized brilliantly:

1. You register. No cost, but you do enter your credit card so that you can be charged shipping when you receive a book. You start out with 15 points.
2. You enter the ISBNs of books you’re willing to part with. Each has an assigned point value. If someone wants one of your books, you get an email asking if you’re ready to ship it. If so, you print out a mailing label, tape it to the envelope with the book in it, and put it in a mailbox within 48 hours. You never need to enter a post office. Bookins tracks the shipment. Once it’s delivered, your points are credited to your account.
3. You enter the ISBNs of books you wish to receive. If someone has a book you want, they ship it to you and you pay $3.99 for the shipping cost. Your account is debited the number of points that book is worth.

Within hours of signing up, I’d already shipped out one book and had two on the way to me. It was so simple. Many years ago I sold a bunch of books/audiobooks on Half.com (before it folded into eBay) and it was such a pain in the neck to wait in the line at the post office. This was painless. I can’t wait until the book I shipped arrived and I get my points credited.

Now to find time to read all the books I have waiting for me!

Making childhood memories for kids who need some good ones

Posted on 12. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in art, international, non-profits

Last night my kids and I had a great time watching old videos of them when they were babies. They were so cute! It was great to see how well they got along even then, and how much my daughter helped her little brother. It was also neat to see our old dog, and to see how little I’ve changed. (haha)

Some kids never get the chance to reminisce like that. If you’re an orphan, or are abused or neglected, chances are good that there’s no one who will remember what you were like when you were little. But the Memory Project is trying to change that. They’re organizing advanced high school art students to paint portraits of these children from photographs of them. Once the kids get them, they send a thank-you picture in return. The project started in 2004, and by the 2006-07 school year there were over 8,000 portraits produced by children in almost every state.

This is a win-win for everyone involved. Not surprisingly, I learned about this from Daryn Kagan’s blog. She’s doing a fantastic job of highlighting uplifting stories of everyday people. Thanks, Daryn!

Pain without morphine

Posted on 11. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in health, international

My son winced last night when I told him that people in poor countries often don’t have access to morphine for their pain. He’s been given morphine each of the last two times he’s broken his arm, and he genuinely appreciated it. The first time he had it, he was in so much pain that they had to quadruple the original dose.

The New York Times is running a series of stories about how little access there is to morphine in poor regions. Yesterday it reported in Drugs Banned, Many of World’s Poor Suffer in Pain that morphine is routinely denied to impoverished nations because of the fear of addiction or the fear of increased drug trafficking.

At pain conferences, doctors from Africa describe patients whose pain is so bad that they have chosen other remedies: hanging themselves or throwing themselves in front of trucks.

Today’s article, In India, a Quest to Ease the Pain of the Dying, reports that of the 1.6 million Indians who suffer cancer pain each year, only about 0.4% get pain relief. A combination of bureaucracy and inadequate funding conspire to keep morphine out of the hands of Indians who need it.

Hopefully this situation will improve soon. Pain is awful, particularly when there’s no relief in sight.

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Yiddish word of the day: kaynahora

Posted on 11. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in education, my life

I learned this one from my stepmother: “kaynahora.” (also “kenahora” and “kena hora”) According to tv.com (!!),

The Yiddishism “kaynahora” (there are many spelling variations) is roughly similar to “knock on wood” and is often spoken to ward off a jinx after praise or good news.

So this weekend when I basked in the glow of children taking school seriously and being organized, I should have said “kaynahora” afterwards. Then, perhaps the first pop quiz wouldn’t have gone poorly and the textbook wouldn’t already be lost. Oy!

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The Queen of Plasticland

Posted on 10. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in environment, food, my life, shopping

That’s what I felt like this morning when I opened my refrigerator and saw this:

Since when did so much food start coming in plastic clam shell packs? Didn’t berries used to come in boxes or green baskets? Thank goodness this stuff is recyclable, but it still seems like a waste of energy to produce all this packaging.

Yesterday’s multicultural day

Posted on 09. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in articles, education, music, my life, politics

Now that school’s started, our calendar is filling up! It’ll get even busier once my son’s arm has recovered enough to play club soccer again.

Yesterday was not only busy, but it was very multicultural. The first phone call of the day was from a parent who will be translating the high school PTA newsletters into Korean this year. We’ll publish our first issue soon.

Later in the morning, I took my daughter to an orientation session for the STARS tutoring program in Pasadena. It’s run through the Lake Avenue Foundation, and is supported by our church. My daughter’s going to tutor there one evening a week, and will probably tutor younger kids who are either Latino or African-American.

In the early afternoon, my husband and I attended the funeral of Donald Long Chu in Rosemead. (see obituary) His son, Newton, lived across the street from us when we lived in Pasadena. We’ll always remember Mr. Chu’s big smile, and how he loved carrying the American flag as he led the tricycle/bicycle parade at our neighborhood block parties. Before he retired, he was a film editor, and in fact was the first Chinese-American film editor in Hollywood. His son Nathan read a very touching letter from the Motion Picture Editors’ Guild praising Mr. Chu’s skill and dedication. One of the most memorable parts of the ceremony was learning that the box that contained his ashes was made from a tree that he’d planted in his yard many years ago.

After the service, we rushed to downtown Los Angeles to attend a Stanford alumni conference about Immigration. There were great speakers, including Xavier Becerra, Zoe Lofgren, Alan Acosta, Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, Hazel markus and Al Camarillo. I especially enjoyed my breakout session with Monica McDermott. My biggest takeaway from the event was that the immigration debate is often colored more by negative images of immigrants, and could benefit from a more balanced view. That’d be tough, however, as most illegal immigrants would be loathe to publicize their status.

Finally, as we were leaving the Wilshire Grand Hotel where the conference was held, we passed the venerable Prairie View A&M University Marching Storm band. We felt like we were in the presence of celebrities, since they were featured on the front page of the NY Times yesterday, hailed as having an incredibly entertaining, disciplined, and high quality band. I’d even taken the time yesterday morning to watch the online video about them. We asked some of the band members if they knew about the story, but they didn’t. It turns out they were in town to play North Carolina A&T in the Angel City Classic at the Coliseum. My husband and I are both former high school trumpeters, and we love the direction today’s innovative bands are going.

Note to self: get tickets to next year’s Angel City Classic. Unless there’s soccer, of course.

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Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

Posted on 08. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in articles, religion, startling statistics

Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom thinks there’s a 20 percent chance we’re living in someone else’s computer simulation. I’m not sure how he comes up with his 20 percent figure, but it’s a nice round number that’s not too big to be crazy but not too small to be dismissed. According to the recent NY Times article Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch,

Dr. Bostrom assumes that technological advances could produce a computer with more processing power than all the brains in the world, and that advanced humans, or “posthumans,” could run “ancestor simulations” of their evolutionary history by creating virtual worlds inhabited by virtual people with fully developed virtual nervous systems.

That sounds like Orson Scott Card’s book Pastwatch, where future humans attempt to change the course of human history by interfering with Columbus’ discovery of America. (see my past blog post about this book)

If our descendants do have this computing capability, I’m sure they’d use it. After all, our generation clearly enjoys SimCity, The Sims and Second Life. (Watch out for Second Life though: see this WSJ article about the married guy who married another woman on Second Life.)
Perhaps Madeleine L’Engle and Albert Einstein had it right. In her obituary in today’s LA Times, she’s quoted as follows:

“I had to have something that made sense, and I wasn’t finding anything that made sense in the logical places,” she told National Public Radio in 1998. “And then I just came across a phrase of Einstein’s, which completely excited me. He said, ‘Anyone who is not lost in rapturous awe at the power and glory of the mind behind the universe is as good as a burned-out candle.’ And I thought, ‘Oh! There’s my theologian.’ “

Einstein as theologian? Why not?

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Graffiti? Hobo symbol? We may never know.

Posted on 07. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in art, my life

Rattling the Kettle’s post about aboriginal art in the Antelope Valley reminds me of the drawing someone made on the side of our house in the middle of the night at the end of May, 2003. I can’t find the photograph I took of it, but the symbol to the right is what it looked like. It was about 18″ high, and was drawn in a dark marker or paintbrush. It was covered over when we painted our house a few years ago.

I have no idea who put it there. It was on the south side of our house, halfway down our driveway. It was very deliberately drawn, and reminded me of a hobo symbol. I looked all over the internet for what it meant, and here’s what I found:

The combination of the diagonal cross with a vertical line is of special importance in Western ideography. It is the sign for Jesus Christ (from the initials of the Lord’s name in Greek: I and X).

In the form it is a sign for Sunday on clog almanacs (for more details on clog almanacs, see in Group 5).

Why would someone leave that on our house? It was pretty surreal. At least it worked for us, since we’re Christian.

Sure beats being tp’d!

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R.I.P. Fish A: 2001-2007

Posted on 06. Sep, 2007 by kchristieh in my life, parenting

We held a heartfelt, guilt-filled ceremony last night. Fish A is no more. I’m sure that six years is longer than a tetra would have lived in the wild, however. The fish used to have a name – either Billy, Bob or Joe – but over the years he became Fish A.

Life is relative. When we went into the garage to get a shovel, we saw a black widow spider. I whacked it with my sandal. Didn’t feel guilty about that.

I related the story about my childhood guinea pig, and how I didn’t treat it well. Redemption is possible: Fish B is still alive. I’ve treated all kids and pets well ever since…

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