So, to be clear, students did not get plopped down in front of computers. For the most part, their classes were conducted without technology. (In fact without things like chemistry lab equipment, among other things. *sigh*) Students did sometimes use computers to create projects, but the *learning* -- what there was of it -- was not done with computers, for the most part.
So, here's the deal. Two charter schools start in pretty much the same area, and draw from much of the same student base. One succeeds, and the other fails miserably. To me, that says -- among other things -- that the problem with HTHB wasn't "charter schools don't work", but rather that their *particular* implementation of a specific charter model didn't work. And as someone with experience *at that school*, I can tell you the problem was never the charter school model, but largely the administration.
The servers were Linux-based, open source, and free software. The student equipment was Mac. Gates' money didn't come with Microsoft strings attached.
One of my children was a student at the school for three years, before leaving because it sucked big rocks.
Re:"It's the curriculum, stupid" -- 3 years at HTH
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Wow, that sound like HTHB, alright, especially the part about being stuck in a slower math class. I tell people that HTHB has had two kinds of teachers: good ones, and ones that get hired back each year. My son's transfered to another charter, and it's much better. While it still has every student taking the same class for each grade, the coursework is more traditional and much more rigorous. He's taking AP Lit, AP Stats, AP History and Gov, AP Environmental Science, and Spanish. And yes, he's happy to be actually learning stuff again.
I think what was upsetting is that HTHB has been unapologetic that they want to educate "the middle third" -- students that were C students in middle school. This is probably a terrible thing to say, but it appears they do that by basically offering classes that don't really challenge those kids, so they end up having good grades because not much is being expected of them. As I know you know, they do projects on particular aspects of a subject, but basically ignore anything else -- so my son had a lot of information about the peace process at the end of WWI, but not much else about any other aspect of early 20th century history. There's a *lot* of PR, and a lot of slickness and marketing, but as you said, not much emphasis on just having strong teaching.
I agree with you. Here's the deal: two charter high schools started at the same time, with campuses within two miles of each other. Both planned to serve 100 students per grade, or about 400 students total. One spent money on having 1 computer for every 2 students and tech infrastructure. The other school put money in the teaching staff, hiring incredibly well qualified (though mostly recently graduated) teachers from top schools, most with masters' degrees. Their building, on the other hand, was small and older. Eventually the first school moved into a swanky newly renovated building, while the second school moved into portable classrooms. The second school has some computers, but mostly has a traditional classroom structure.
The first school is High Tech High Bayshore. Their test scores have gotten worse every year, and now they're closing. The second school is Summit Preparatory Charter High School, which has consistently outperformed HTHB. If you ask me, the "secret" of their success has been in putting money into their teaching braintrust, and not into computers and a fancy building.
I answered your question elsewhere. The folks who set up the school infrastructure were opensource/Linux guys, and the hardware was Apple. There was explicitly no limit or stictures relating to using MS products, etc. There was also no MS class content, despite the jokes. The students used computers a lot and did a lot of multimedia presentations and things. I was *very* wary about these issues when they announced the changeover, but it was never a problem. If you didn't know that there was Gates money, it would not have appeared to be any different than any other small school -- no big "Work for Microsoft" posters, no "DRM is good for you!"
Re:high-tech-high is alive and well...
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You're completely correct. I've said elsewhere that the HTH concept *works*, and I was actually really hopeful when San Carlos High School converted to being a HTH school, because I thought having the strong curriculum and established model would help. But bad choices in the administration really drove a lot of students away -- things like keeping instructors on after it became clear they were incompetent, stuff like that.
Parents and others have been putting the blame on the money situation, but as I've repeated elsewhere, the problem was the horrible implementation of the HTH curriculum and poor administration.
Re:Unfortunately No Parents?
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No, parents were *very* involved in the school. I used to spend as many as 8 hours a week there, coaching a quiz team, etc. Parents pretty much paid for much of the school, donated supplies and equipment, ran the front desk for the first couple of years. The problem was not parental involvement. Honestly, really? The problem was hiring a *marketing guy* to be the principal. No, really. Not kidding.
Oh, and about the Microsoft touch
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By the way, we're Linux people in our household, so one of the questions we asked about the school during the High Tech High changeover and funding is "Will this mean the students are stuck using Microsoft products?" No, they weren't. The school was Gates-money funded, but the computers were all Macs and the network was Linux-based. I think the only Microsoft there was the Office suite on the Macs.
"It's the curriculum, stupid" -- 3 years at HTHB
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Wow, it's interesting to see this show up on/. -- stories haven't been about things happening to me personally since the coverage of Be Inc. dying. Anyway, my son was one of the first students at High Tech High Bayshore. The first year, 2003-2004, they were actually just "San Carlos High School", because the deal with the HTH franchise came later. Originally, the idea was to have the school be run on the HTH model, not be an actual member school.
Anyway, here's what the articles aren't saying: the school sucked. The articles are making a big deal about the money issue, and yes, they are closing because of the money, but the reason they don't have funds is that they're incredibly under enrolled, and they're under enrolled because they've had so many students leave.
Initially, we had really high hopes for the school, and the first year wasn't that bad -- some good teachers, some mediocre teachers. The next year they had a new principal, and there were more mediocre teachers. As an example, that year all 10th graders (like my son) were in Chemistry. They had no lab equipment, and the instructor frequently taught them just *wrong things*. Wrong as in, the wrong value for Avogadro's number. Since the class was supposed to be a lab science, they were told they had to be doing lab work weekly. To meet that requirement, they did a "learning to measure" lab. And the next week, they did it again. For weeks on end, they essentially repeated the same basic labwork, so that the school could say they were participating in a lab component. At the end of the year, the administration apologized and admitted that they hadn't actually learned any Chemistry. Oh, and at the end of that year, many of the remaining *good* teachers left.
So, by this year, they had something like 30 seniors, and were losing those fast. They've had attrition at two ends of the spectrum. They lost students dropping out or failing out, but they have also continued to lose students at the high end of the academic spectrum. My son, for example, studied two years of math in one year in his first year there, because he was allowed to have a more independent study approach. His sophomore year he was studying Calculus with two other students, but the teacher they had assigned to oversee them -- the "10th grade math" teacher -- couldn't actually *understand* math at the pre-Calc or Calc level, so he didn't give them any tests, couldn't grade their homework, etc. For the second semester, the school agreed to have the students take community college math classes instead. That would have been fine, except the next year, they decided the students should rejoin their grade level math classes -- now 2 years behind -- and just do that.
I have tons of stories like this -- my son being taught flat out wrong things, having some classes where they learned a lot about one "project-based" subject, but had huge gaps in other areas. While some of the instructors were incredible people and really engaged my son, increasingly that wasn't true.
But what made him leave in the end was the paucity of college assistance. My son's aiming pretty high for schools, but the school was pretty much set to tell students "Pick a University of California school you want to apply to, and a Cal State school, and you're done!" Son has watched some very gifted students fall through the cracks because there wasn't enough coaching in place to help kids find and apply for schools other than that. So we reached a point where it began to appear that staying at HTHB was going to negatively impact his ability to be accepted at the schools he really wanted to attend. He ended up transfering to another small charter school, where he's doing his senior year now.
It sort of frustrates me as a parent to see all the focus be on the money situation at the school. If the school hadn't had ongoing problems with the quality of education, if it hadn't driven away high-achieving students by saying things like "academic quiz teams are not in keeping with the school's
Got a use for you, albeit a sort of silly one. I own one of these durabooks; it's a collection of water-based erotica. It's done as a durabook so you can read it in the bathtub (or hot tub, or pool) without damaging it, even if you errrrr, splash about a bit.
Okay, I have an weird example that contradicts the "my parents told me" explanation. It concerns my daughter.
Every year I make elaborate Halloween costumes for my children. When my daughter was 7, I was fitting her costume, a cat beanie baby suit. I was reminiscing to her about previous costumes. Our conversation went like this:
Me: You were a cat before, you know....
Her: I know, I was!
Me: When you were three, I think, you had a black --
Her: *cutting me off* I was a cat before and I liked being a cat. And then I was the baby inside, and I could hear daddy singing to me. Then I was born, and I couldn't figure out, why is everyone talking to me and calling me by a different name? Then I realized it was because you didn't know I was a cat, I was a girl to you, and now I'm a girl, but I was a cat before.
Me: *weirded out* Errr, I meant, when you were three, you had a black cat suit for Halloween...
Yes, my daughter randomly spewed forth some kind of past life / womb memory. While I can believe that she had at some point been told that her father used to sing to her before she was born, none of us *ever* said anything about a past life, or the idea of past lives, or cats. She also has quite vivid memories of things that happened when she was a toddler, including things that happened to her when she was alone.
My other child, on the other hand, steadfastly maintains he has no memory of anything before fifth grade.
Oooo! I know the answer to this one, because it happens to some kinds of dolls, too.
The answer many common plastics make use of "food" components, including corn solids and syrup. Here's a listof things made with corn, including plastics.
Plastics "separate" over time, with components migrating to the surface. It's the organic parts of plastic that cause problems like mold/fungus on plastics, as well as make them tasty for bugs.
I'm with this guy. I use Paypal to pay my child support. I live on one side of the country and my ex is on the other. Every other method I used caused problems of one kind or another. Checks get "held" for sometimes a week or more because they're interstate. Money orders get lost by the post office. Bank transfers are slow and unreliable -- his bank once lost a transfer for over a month and required me to jump through all kinds of hoops before they fixed the problem. So, now we use Paypal. I send the money and it's in his Paypal account instantly. He has some kind of Paypal debit card, so he gets instant access to the money, at no cost to me. We never have to worry that a check will bounce, or a bank will lose a wire transfer.
I looked over the c2it thing and I wasn't impressed. It just doesn't have the features that Paypal does.
There are actually a number of drink companies using Splenda. Hansen's soda uses it; Snapple does in *some* flavors. Mostly it's the high-end boutique beverages. I thought it was just Diet Rite until I started actually looking at labels.
It's my understanding that the Atkins diet is a high-protein, high-fat diet.
It's my understanding that Atkins is a high-protein, don't-worry-so-much-about-fat diet. Early in the Atkins history there was more of an emphasis on high-fat, but that's mostly gone at this point. However, there are also several other low-carb strategies that are lower-fat.
It's not *either* high carb *or* high fat. You can have a reasonable low carb, low glycemic index way of eating that isn't high fat.
I'm another person who moved towards a low-carb way of eating in July, in part because of the NYT article (and a number of friends who had suggested trying it). So far I've lost somewhere between 25-35 lbs; I don't know the exact amount because I didn't have an accurate scale for the first month. I do know that I lost about 15 lbs within the first 2 weeks -- the often reported water weight -- and I've lost between 1-2lbs a week since then.
I'm eating in the same pattern as I did before I started -- two meals a day plus a couple of snacks. Around noonish, I have brunch: usually an omelet with lean meat and cheese in it, but sometimes a couple of turkey dogs with cheese (no bun), and some low-gycemic index fruit. For dinner, I have a meat-centric meal: things like steak, tandoori chicken, rotisserie chicken or In & Out burger done protein style -- often with green salad. For snacks I have string cheese, almonds, macadamias, or small amounts of peanut butter. I have no idea how many calories I'm eating, and I don't plan on keeping track.
I'm less concerned about some of supposedly scary side effects, because most of them I already *have*. I've had chronic gall bladder issues for five years now -- but it seems to have improved since I started eating low carb. I think part of this is what most often triggered my attacks was a higher-fat meal after weeks of low-fat eating. Now that my gallbladder gets 'flushed' more regularly, I haven't had any problems at all.
The bottom line for me is that I'm losing weight in a way that *I* feel comfortable doing. I have never been interested in "dieting", and I don't think of this as dieting. I have friends who do things differently, and that works for them. But for me, eating low carb is working. In some ways, losing weight is just a side effect; what I'm most impressed with is how much better I feel these days, how much my mood has stabilized, and how much *healthier* I feel.
I will probably stay very low carb (fewer than 20 grams of carbs a day) for at least six months, with occasional breaks for higher carb stuff. I sometimes get the feeling that people aren't happy with low carbers because we don't seem to be *suffering* enough. I mean, I've got a friend who treats all food as "fuel" at this point and measures out weights and calorie counts to take a regular intervals. When he's not eating his 6 oz of lean ham or his 8 oz of apple, he's exercising his ass off. It looks boring. It looks tedious. It's netting him almost exactly the same loss rate as I have -- a little less, but about the same. What does he have that I don't? Well, injuries from a fall he sustained when a car cut him off while he was rollerblading. A complete inability to eat out -- he won't eat anything that hasn't been weighed and measured exactly.
I'm sure we're going to see more posts from the "eat less and take up running!"/. camp. You know, that may work for them, but it's not going to work for me, or for people like me. Not everyone on the planet is physically able to exercise in traditional ways. I'd like to see low carb eating taken seriously as *one* strategy available to people who want to lose weight or reduce their dependence on high-glycemic index foods. It doesn't have to be THE way -- but it is A way.
Pardon me for A) not going through the trouble to find the proper special character to display the accent correctly
B) using my household's shorthand-speak on/.
C) vastly underestimating the literalist/. crowd.
I've a pretty good background in four languages, actually, and can read a couple others. It sounds like you'd rather I said "I don't eat the burnt sugar topping on those desserts that have a burnt sugar topping". Happier now?
I second this guy. I went to low carb as an experiment in July, and I've stayed on it since then. I eat omelets for breakfast/lunch (with turkey bacon and cheese in them, mostly), and a meat-food dinner -- steak, tandoori chicken, In & Out burgers done protein style. I also have a fair amount of salad greens, often as a chicken caesar salad, as well as small amounts of peanut butter and almonds. When we eat out (which is several times a week), I sometimes have creme brulee (but I don't eat the brulee part!) or a little cheesecake -- so I do "cheat" some.
The result: I'm not watching calories, I'm not exercising -- which is difficult for me anyway for medical reasons -- and I'm losing about 2 pounds per week. I'm wearing clothes I haven't worn in two years, and I feel sexier and energetic and very happy with my food choices.
I wouldn't suggest low carb for everyone, but I think for a particular physiology -- lots of weight to lose, borderline Type 2 Diabetes -- it can be a really useful strategy.
Eh, I don't think you're that much of a hardass -- but then again, I'm a stone bitch, myself. I think I address the financial concerns in another post in this thread; basically, I feel like if you're going to be "traditional" in choosing a ring, then treat it like the traditional escrow item it is. (I noticed this evening that there are some etiquette guides that suggest that the ring should always be return to the giver, but it's not the norm.) I think it's very modern of us to talk about money in negative terms with regard to marriage; for most of human history, marriage has been a decidedly financial event that had little to do with emotions at all. Even through the turn of the 20th century, marriage was still approached very explicitly as a largely financial transaction between two families -- misrepresenting one's financial situation could result in the engagement being called off.
I'm all for exchanging plastic gumball machine rings in an informal ceremony on the beach, wearing birks and jeans, if you're into that marriage thing. My position is that if you're going to do something because it's traditional, well, by all means, treat it as traditional. *smile*
Well, I take a traditional view of the engagement ring. From an etiquette standpoint, if the man calls off the engagement, the woman gets to keep the ring -- unless it's a family heirloom, in which case it's muddier territory. Historically, this gave the woman a kind of monetary escrow in case she got err, screwed. (There's also a history of British women during the 1800's filing legal suit against men who broke off engagements, too.)
This was much more important before women gained more rights and a foothold in the work world. If my financial future is linked to marriage and my fiance' diminishes my value to the marriage market, I should be entitled to recoup some of that lost value.
There's also the matter of buying the ring *before* you ask. I mean, if you don't know that she's going to agree to marry you, you can't very well assume that she's going to want to go halfsies on a ring she isn't going to accept, can you?
So, I side pretty much with the traditional idea that engagement rings should be purchased by the partner proposing, and should not be considered a "joint purchase".
That said, I'm also *for* prenuptial agreements. Particularly in community property states, I think it's insane to get married without a prenup.
Of course, people who know me personally find my weighing in on this whole matter amusing, given that I'm known for "Trin's Law" on Marriage:
Trin's Law: Never get married. If you love someone enough to marry them, you love them enough to *not* marry them.
Yes, I'm one of those few mythic creatures, a./ poster with no Y chromosome. Though I'm not that chick-identified, here's some advice from the girl point of view:
1. Even the most progressive feminist can sometimes be profoundly cliche'd when thinking about marriage. Our society teaches and reinforces strong ideas and imagery around weddings and marriage from a very early age -- heterosexual women are steeped in cultural tradition around marriage. It's hard to fight decades of "this is every girl's dream".
2. If she wants a diamond, get her a diamond. Don't make her spend the next 50 years of her life looking down at her hand and thinking, "Instead of a diamond ring, I got a symbol of his political and social stance."
3. If you don't want to support new diamond sales, consider estate jewelry. For a reasonable price, you can buy a ring that has a sense of history to it, that is a beautiful thing, and is less charged with the modern baggage. For that matter, an estate jewelry specialist can also help you make the choice. Talk to a pro! Explain you want something beautiful and unique, that you want to spend X dollars, etc.
4. If you decide not to go with the diamond, give your bride-to-be *positive* language around your choice. Don't get her a different kind of ring because you don't like the social ramifications of diamond mining -- get her a different kind of ring because you don't feel a run-of-the mill diamond ring accurately reflects the special and unique qualities in her and in your relationship.
5. Don't use not getting a diamond as an excuse to skimp on the cost. Buying a 300.00 ring instead of a 3000.00 ring 'because diamonds are tainted with the blood of workers' says you were looking for an excuse to be cheap. It's not about the money, but it's not just the thought that counts, either.
6. Size *does* matter, but it cuts both ways. Dicks *and* diamonds can both be tooooo big.
Actually, I don't think it *is* being updated. I know the FAQ hasn't been updated since I stopped doing so in January of 2001. As far as I know, all the programmers originally on the project have long since moved on.
Slashdot Mirror
So, to be clear, students did not get plopped down in front of computers. For the most part, their classes were conducted without technology. (In fact without things like chemistry lab equipment, among other things. *sigh*) Students did sometimes use computers to create projects, but the *learning* -- what there was of it -- was not done with computers, for the most part.
So, here's the deal. Two charter schools start in pretty much the same area, and draw from much of the same student base. One succeeds, and the other fails miserably. To me, that says -- among other things -- that the problem with HTHB wasn't "charter schools don't work", but rather that their *particular* implementation of a specific charter model didn't work. And as someone with experience *at that school*, I can tell you the problem was never the charter school model, but largely the administration.
The servers were Linux-based, open source, and free software. The student equipment was Mac. Gates' money didn't come with Microsoft strings attached.
One of my children was a student at the school for three years, before leaving because it sucked big rocks.
Wow, that sound like HTHB, alright, especially the part about being stuck in a slower math class. I tell people that HTHB has had two kinds of teachers: good ones, and ones that get hired back each year. My son's transfered to another charter, and it's much better. While it still has every student taking the same class for each grade, the coursework is more traditional and much more rigorous. He's taking AP Lit, AP Stats, AP History and Gov, AP Environmental Science, and Spanish. And yes, he's happy to be actually learning stuff again.
I think what was upsetting is that HTHB has been unapologetic that they want to educate "the middle third" -- students that were C students in middle school. This is probably a terrible thing to say, but it appears they do that by basically offering classes that don't really challenge those kids, so they end up having good grades because not much is being expected of them. As I know you know, they do projects on particular aspects of a subject, but basically ignore anything else -- so my son had a lot of information about the peace process at the end of WWI, but not much else about any other aspect of early 20th century history. There's a *lot* of PR, and a lot of slickness and marketing, but as you said, not much emphasis on just having strong teaching.
I agree with you. Here's the deal: two charter high schools started at the same time, with campuses within two miles of each other. Both planned to serve 100 students per grade, or about 400 students total. One spent money on having 1 computer for every 2 students and tech infrastructure. The other school put money in the teaching staff, hiring incredibly well qualified (though mostly recently graduated) teachers from top schools, most with masters' degrees. Their building, on the other hand, was small and older. Eventually the first school moved into a swanky newly renovated building, while the second school moved into portable classrooms. The second school has some computers, but mostly has a traditional classroom structure.
The first school is High Tech High Bayshore. Their test scores have gotten worse every year, and now they're closing. The second school is Summit Preparatory Charter High School, which has consistently outperformed HTHB. If you ask me, the "secret" of their success has been in putting money into their teaching braintrust, and not into computers and a fancy building.
I answered your question elsewhere. The folks who set up the school infrastructure were opensource/Linux guys, and the hardware was Apple. There was explicitly no limit or stictures relating to using MS products, etc. There was also no MS class content, despite the jokes. The students used computers a lot and did a lot of multimedia presentations and things. I was *very* wary about these issues when they announced the changeover, but it was never a problem. If you didn't know that there was Gates money, it would not have appeared to be any different than any other small school -- no big "Work for Microsoft" posters, no "DRM is good for you!"
You're completely correct. I've said elsewhere that the HTH concept *works*, and I was actually really hopeful when San Carlos High School converted to being a HTH school, because I thought having the strong curriculum and established model would help. But bad choices in the administration really drove a lot of students away -- things like keeping instructors on after it became clear they were incompetent, stuff like that.
Parents and others have been putting the blame on the money situation, but as I've repeated elsewhere, the problem was the horrible implementation of the HTH curriculum and poor administration.
No, parents were *very* involved in the school. I used to spend as many as 8 hours a week there, coaching a quiz team, etc. Parents pretty much paid for much of the school, donated supplies and equipment, ran the front desk for the first couple of years. The problem was not parental involvement. Honestly, really? The problem was hiring a *marketing guy* to be the principal. No, really. Not kidding.
By the way, we're Linux people in our household, so one of the questions we asked about the school during the High Tech High changeover and funding is "Will this mean the students are stuck using Microsoft products?" No, they weren't. The school was Gates-money funded, but the computers were all Macs and the network was Linux-based. I think the only Microsoft there was the Office suite on the Macs.
Wow, it's interesting to see this show up on /. -- stories haven't been about things happening to me personally since the coverage of Be Inc. dying. Anyway, my son was one of the first students at High Tech High Bayshore. The first year, 2003-2004, they were actually just "San Carlos High School", because the deal with the HTH franchise came later. Originally, the idea was to have the school be run on the HTH model, not be an actual member school.
Anyway, here's what the articles aren't saying: the school sucked. The articles are making a big deal about the money issue, and yes, they are closing because of the money, but the reason they don't have funds is that they're incredibly under enrolled, and they're under enrolled because they've had so many students leave.
Initially, we had really high hopes for the school, and the first year wasn't that bad -- some good teachers, some mediocre teachers. The next year they had a new principal, and there were more mediocre teachers. As an example, that year all 10th graders (like my son) were in Chemistry. They had no lab equipment, and the instructor frequently taught them just *wrong things*. Wrong as in, the wrong value for Avogadro's number. Since the class was supposed to be a lab science, they were told they had to be doing lab work weekly. To meet that requirement, they did a "learning to measure" lab. And the next week, they did it again. For weeks on end, they essentially repeated the same basic labwork, so that the school could say they were participating in a lab component. At the end of the year, the administration apologized and admitted that they hadn't actually learned any Chemistry. Oh, and at the end of that year, many of the remaining *good* teachers left.
So, by this year, they had something like 30 seniors, and were losing those fast. They've had attrition at two ends of the spectrum. They lost students dropping out or failing out, but they have also continued to lose students at the high end of the academic spectrum. My son, for example, studied two years of math in one year in his first year there, because he was allowed to have a more independent study approach. His sophomore year he was studying Calculus with two other students, but the teacher they had assigned to oversee them -- the "10th grade math" teacher -- couldn't actually *understand* math at the pre-Calc or Calc level, so he didn't give them any tests, couldn't grade their homework, etc. For the second semester, the school agreed to have the students take community college math classes instead. That would have been fine, except the next year, they decided the students should rejoin their grade level math classes -- now 2 years behind -- and just do that.
I have tons of stories like this -- my son being taught flat out wrong things, having some classes where they learned a lot about one "project-based" subject, but had huge gaps in other areas. While some of the instructors were incredible people and really engaged my son, increasingly that wasn't true.
But what made him leave in the end was the paucity of college assistance. My son's aiming pretty high for schools, but the school was pretty much set to tell students "Pick a University of California school you want to apply to, and a Cal State school, and you're done!" Son has watched some very gifted students fall through the cracks because there wasn't enough coaching in place to help kids find and apply for schools other than that. So we reached a point where it began to appear that staying at HTHB was going to negatively impact his ability to be accepted at the schools he really wanted to attend. He ended up transfering to another small charter school, where he's doing his senior year now.
It sort of frustrates me as a parent to see all the focus be on the money situation at the school. If the school hadn't had ongoing problems with the quality of education, if it hadn't driven away high-achieving students by saying things like "academic quiz teams are not in keeping with the school's
Got a use for you, albeit a sort of silly one. I own one of these durabooks; it's a collection of water-based erotica. It's done as a durabook so you can read it in the bathtub (or hot tub, or pool) without damaging it, even if you errrrr, splash about a bit.
Okay, I have an weird example that contradicts the "my parents told me" explanation. It concerns my daughter.
Every year I make elaborate Halloween costumes for my children. When my daughter was 7, I was fitting her costume, a cat beanie baby suit. I was reminiscing to her about previous costumes. Our conversation went like this:
Me: You were a cat before, you know....
Her: I know, I was!
Me: When you were three, I think, you had a black --
Her: *cutting me off* I was a cat before and I liked being a cat. And then I was the baby inside, and I could hear daddy singing to me. Then I was born, and I couldn't figure out, why is everyone talking to me and calling me by a different name? Then I realized it was because you didn't know I was a cat, I was a girl to you, and now I'm a girl, but I was a cat before.
Me: *weirded out* Errr, I meant, when you were three, you had a black cat suit for Halloween...
Yes, my daughter randomly spewed forth some kind of past life / womb memory. While I can believe that she had at some point been told that her father used to sing to her before she was born, none of us *ever* said anything about a past life, or the idea of past lives, or cats. She also has quite vivid memories of things that happened when she was a toddler, including things that happened to her when she was alone.
My other child, on the other hand, steadfastly maintains he has no memory of anything before fifth grade.
Oooo! I know the answer to this one, because it happens to some kinds of dolls, too.
The answer many common plastics make use of "food" components, including corn solids and syrup. Here's a listof things made with corn, including plastics.
Plastics "separate" over time, with components migrating to the surface. It's the organic parts of plastic that cause problems like mold/fungus on plastics, as well as make them tasty for bugs.
I'm with this guy. I use Paypal to pay my child support. I live on one side of the country and my ex is on the other. Every other method I used caused problems of one kind or another. Checks get "held" for sometimes a week or more because they're interstate. Money orders get lost by the post office. Bank transfers are slow and unreliable -- his bank once lost a transfer for over a month and required me to jump through all kinds of hoops before they fixed the problem. So, now we use Paypal. I send the money and it's in his Paypal account instantly. He has some kind of Paypal debit card, so he gets instant access to the money, at no cost to me. We never have to worry that a check will bounce, or a bank will lose a wire transfer.
I looked over the c2it thing and I wasn't impressed. It just doesn't have the features that Paypal does.
There are actually a number of drink companies using Splenda. Hansen's soda uses it; Snapple does in *some* flavors. Mostly it's the high-end boutique beverages. I thought it was just Diet Rite until I started actually looking at labels.
It's my understanding that the Atkins diet is a high-protein, high-fat diet.
It's my understanding that Atkins is a high-protein, don't-worry-so-much-about-fat diet. Early in the Atkins history there was more of an emphasis on high-fat, but that's mostly gone at this point. However, there are also several other low-carb strategies that are lower-fat.
It's not *either* high carb *or* high fat. You can have a reasonable low carb, low glycemic index way of eating that isn't high fat.
I'm another person who moved towards a low-carb way of eating in July, in part because of the NYT article (and a number of friends who had suggested trying it). So far I've lost somewhere between 25-35 lbs; I don't know the exact amount because I didn't have an accurate scale for the first month. I do know that I lost about 15 lbs within the first 2 weeks -- the often reported water weight -- and I've lost between 1-2lbs a week since then.
/. camp. You know, that may work for them, but it's not going to work for me, or for people like me. Not everyone on the planet is physically able to exercise in traditional ways. I'd like to see low carb eating taken seriously as *one* strategy available to people who want to lose weight or reduce their dependence on high-glycemic index foods. It doesn't have to be THE way -- but it is A way.
I'm eating in the same pattern as I did before I started -- two meals a day plus a couple of snacks. Around noonish, I have brunch: usually an omelet with lean meat and cheese in it, but sometimes a couple of turkey dogs with cheese (no bun), and some low-gycemic index fruit. For dinner, I have a meat-centric meal: things like steak, tandoori chicken, rotisserie chicken or In & Out burger done protein style -- often with green salad. For snacks I have string cheese, almonds, macadamias, or small amounts of peanut butter. I have no idea how many calories I'm eating, and I don't plan on keeping track.
I'm less concerned about some of supposedly scary side effects, because most of them I already *have*. I've had chronic gall bladder issues for five years now -- but it seems to have improved since I started eating low carb. I think part of this is what most often triggered my attacks was a higher-fat meal after weeks of low-fat eating. Now that my gallbladder gets 'flushed' more regularly, I haven't had any problems at all.
The bottom line for me is that I'm losing weight in a way that *I* feel comfortable doing. I have never been interested in "dieting", and I don't think of this as dieting. I have friends who do things differently, and that works for them. But for me, eating low carb is working. In some ways, losing weight is just a side effect; what I'm most impressed with is how much better I feel these days, how much my mood has stabilized, and how much *healthier* I feel.
I will probably stay very low carb (fewer than 20 grams of carbs a day) for at least six months, with occasional breaks for higher carb stuff. I sometimes get the feeling that people aren't happy with low carbers because we don't seem to be *suffering* enough. I mean, I've got a friend who treats all food as "fuel" at this point and measures out weights and calorie counts to take a regular intervals. When he's not eating his 6 oz of lean ham or his 8 oz of apple, he's exercising his ass off. It looks boring. It looks tedious. It's netting him almost exactly the same loss rate as I have -- a little less, but about the same. What does he have that I don't? Well, injuries from a fall he sustained when a car cut him off while he was rollerblading. A complete inability to eat out -- he won't eat anything that hasn't been weighed and measured exactly.
I'm sure we're going to see more posts from the "eat less and take up running!"
Pardon me for
/.
/. crowd.
A) not going through the trouble to find the proper special character to display the accent correctly
B) using my household's shorthand-speak on
C) vastly underestimating the literalist
I've a pretty good background in four languages, actually, and can read a couple others. It sounds like you'd rather I said "I don't eat the burnt sugar topping on those desserts that have a burnt sugar topping". Happier now?
I'm pretty sure the sexual charges weren't deemed "false" -- I want to say he plead out on them, but I'm not certain.
I second this guy. I went to low carb as an experiment in July, and I've stayed on it since then. I eat omelets for breakfast/lunch (with turkey bacon and cheese in them, mostly), and a meat-food dinner -- steak, tandoori chicken, In & Out burgers done protein style. I also have a fair amount of salad greens, often as a chicken caesar salad, as well as small amounts of peanut butter and almonds. When we eat out (which is several times a week), I sometimes have creme brulee (but I don't eat the brulee part!) or a little cheesecake -- so I do "cheat" some.
The result: I'm not watching calories, I'm not exercising -- which is difficult for me anyway for medical reasons -- and I'm losing about 2 pounds per week. I'm wearing clothes I haven't worn in two years, and I feel sexier and energetic and very happy with my food choices.
I wouldn't suggest low carb for everyone, but I think for a particular physiology -- lots of weight to lose, borderline Type 2 Diabetes -- it can be a really useful strategy.
Eh, I don't think you're that much of a hardass -- but then again, I'm a stone bitch, myself. I think I address the financial concerns in another post in this thread; basically, I feel like if you're going to be "traditional" in choosing a ring, then treat it like the traditional escrow item it is. (I noticed this evening that there are some etiquette guides that suggest that the ring should always be return to the giver, but it's not the norm.) I think it's very modern of us to talk about money in negative terms with regard to marriage; for most of human history, marriage has been a decidedly financial event that had little to do with emotions at all. Even through the turn of the 20th century, marriage was still approached very explicitly as a largely financial transaction between two families -- misrepresenting one's financial situation could result in the engagement being called off.
I'm all for exchanging plastic gumball machine rings in an informal ceremony on the beach, wearing birks and jeans, if you're into that marriage thing. My position is that if you're going to do something because it's traditional, well, by all means, treat it as traditional. *smile*
Yeah. See also same login. OH, I only talk about tomatoes and sewing there, though. I'm fucking obsessed with my tomatoes. *grin*
Well, I take a traditional view of the engagement ring. From an etiquette standpoint, if the man calls off the engagement, the woman gets to keep the ring -- unless it's a family heirloom, in which case it's muddier territory. Historically, this gave the woman a kind of monetary escrow in case she got err, screwed. (There's also a history of British women during the 1800's filing legal suit against men who broke off engagements, too.)
This was much more important before women gained more rights and a foothold in the work world. If my financial future is linked to marriage and my fiance' diminishes my value to the marriage market, I should be entitled to recoup some of that lost value.
There's also the matter of buying the ring *before* you ask. I mean, if you don't know that she's going to agree to marry you, you can't very well assume that she's going to want to go halfsies on a ring she isn't going to accept, can you?
So, I side pretty much with the traditional idea that engagement rings should be purchased by the partner proposing, and should not be considered a "joint purchase".
That said, I'm also *for* prenuptial agreements. Particularly in community property states, I think it's insane to get married without a prenup.
Of course, people who know me personally find my weighing in on this whole matter amusing, given that I'm known for "Trin's Law" on Marriage:
Trin's Law: Never get married. If you love someone enough to marry them, you love them enough to *not* marry them.
Yes, I'm one of those few mythic creatures, a ./ poster with no Y chromosome. Though I'm not that chick-identified, here's some advice from the girl point of view:
1. Even the most progressive feminist can sometimes be profoundly cliche'd when thinking about marriage. Our society teaches and reinforces strong ideas and imagery around weddings and marriage from a very early age -- heterosexual women are steeped in cultural tradition around marriage. It's hard to fight decades of "this is every girl's dream".
2. If she wants a diamond, get her a diamond. Don't make her spend the next 50 years of her life looking down at her hand and thinking, "Instead of a diamond ring, I got a symbol of his political and social stance."
3. If you don't want to support new diamond sales, consider estate jewelry. For a reasonable price, you can buy a ring that has a sense of history to it, that is a beautiful thing, and is less charged with the modern baggage. For that matter, an estate jewelry specialist can also help you make the choice. Talk to a pro! Explain you want something beautiful and unique, that you want to spend X dollars, etc.
4. If you decide not to go with the diamond, give your bride-to-be *positive* language around your choice. Don't get her a different kind of ring because you don't like the social ramifications of diamond mining -- get her a different kind of ring because you don't feel a run-of-the mill diamond ring accurately reflects the special and unique qualities in her and in your relationship.
5. Don't use not getting a diamond as an excuse to skimp on the cost. Buying a 300.00 ring instead of a 3000.00 ring 'because diamonds are tainted with the blood of workers' says you were looking for an excuse to be cheap. It's not about the money, but it's not just the thought that counts, either.
6. Size *does* matter, but it cuts both ways. Dicks *and* diamonds can both be tooooo big.
Actually, I don't think it *is* being updated. I know the FAQ hasn't been updated since I stopped doing so in January of 2001. As far as I know, all the programmers originally on the project have long since moved on.