Beautiful deleted scene from Parks and Recreation. Wyatt reveals that he’s been sneaking vegetables into Leslie’s waffles for years. Maple seeds! Reminds me of the three years that my wife— then fiancée— thought that cars needed blinker fluid. And then my mom ruined it. My dad was so proud of me and my wife was so mad. Still doesn’t think cars need break fluid.
PermalinkIn an age of Amber alerts and a constant culture of fear propaganda, helicopter parents cause us to imagine these stats are opposite. We’ve imagined and created dangers and fears where they simply don’t exist. Our kids suffer because of it. We should be parenting from a position of trust, not hard-wiring them for a life of fear.
When I was a teenager, I road my bike to school once or twice a year. I lived outside of town in the farmlands of southern Illinois, so that trek was 7.5 miles of hilly country roads in the middle of nowhere out to one major highway. I was around fourteen and completely unsupervised, though often with my twin brother. This was only fourteen years ago.
In fact, violent crime is half of what it was just 20 years ago. Yet, parents live in constant fear that something horrible is about to happen to their kids.
Yeah, crime is at an all-time low, yet parents are in complete freakout.
But why do so many people feel this will happen to them? Internet posts and the 24-hour news cycle have created the illusion that pedophiles and kidnappers lurk just around every corner.
I’d go further. It used to be said that it takes a village to raise a child. In the village I grew up in, everyone knew my parents. They went to school with them, church with them, and were friends with them. If I didn’t tell my parents when I did something stupid, all likelihood pointed at them hearing it through the grapevine. It used to be that we trusted our neighbors to help with our children. Now we seldom know them. What’s worse, when our neighbors see our kids unsupervised, they call the cops. So now we fear what our neighbors think about our parenting. We’ve forsaken the village that could help with our children for fear.
PermalinkCool new product for cars that provides a powerful, heads-up display connected to your iPhone or Android. Easily use hand gestures and voice to control it. Not only does it allow you to control music, answer calls, and get turn-by-turn directions, but it also plugs into your car’s computer to show mileage and other real-time statistics. $299 for pre-order.
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Adam4d is easily one of my favorite web comics. Today, Adam shows the inconsistency of those that cry “closed-minded,” “intolerant,” and worse at Christians. There is no absolute truth except the absolute truth that there is no absolute truth. Word.
PermalinkHell, let's be honest, if you're relying on Google's own email apps on the iPhone, your experience is doubleplusungood. But there are plenty of alternatives in Apple's App Store, and it just so happens that the best among them now bears the name of Microsoft Outlook.
Never thought this would happen, did you? Gmail’s iPhone app has always sucked. When they bought out, and shut down, Sparrow years ago, we had a glimmer of hope that it would launch as a new Gmail app that was amazing. But it did. And here Microsoft buys out Acompli and does just that, rebrand and relaunch.
For me, personally, I love Mailbox for email, both on the go and at the desk. But for the pro emailer that lives by email, much more than inbox management is necessary. And it looks like Acompli had it. And now Microsoft does. And what’s more, the new Outlook supports Gmail, Dropbox, and more than just Microsoft services.
One could hope that this would convince Google to make the next move, but Google seems to ignore these kinds of things.
Permalink"I'm a bit stunned by this" said Elliott. "Comcast is a big company. They can't control all their employees. But you'd think this is part of the basic training they give to their employees -- don't call your customers a-holes"
Comcast apologizes for changing customer's billing name to profanity
Not really stunned. When your customers have zero options but your company (this used to be called a monopoly), teaching your employees not to call your customers assholes comes long after teaching them to transfer you to a “retention specialist” when you request to cancel your service.
PermalinkFor years now, Go Daddy has been running sexually explicit ads that objectify women. Where was the public outcry demanding that Go Daddy pull those ads? It didn't happen. Do we truly care more about protecting puppies than honoring the women in our culture?
Go Daddy Ad Shows that We Care Too Much About the Wrong Things
I was about to post about this yesterday when it broke, as I too have had a major problem with Go Daddy and their advertising practices. For years there ads have been horribly sexual and, as I.N.F.O writes, objectifying of women. While there have been murmurs and groans from Christians and other family-oriented groups, Go Daddy hasn’t once been forced to pull an ad. But when there’s even a chance that they could be supporting puppy mills— which I don’t even see when watching this ad— all Hell breaks loose and demands are made for Go Daddy to retract and apologize for their heinous ad.
Where are our priorities, America? As I posted yesterday, little shocks us anymore. We’d stand up for a puppy, but not for the modesty and dignity of women? Isn’t something wrong here?
PermalinkBut what's next? What does she, or any of these women, do for an encore? Where does a jaded culture go from here for kicks? The envelope has already been pushed beyond what we once thought were the limits. What is left?
The world that my daughter has to grow up in is becoming increasingly scary, with no regard for modesty and humility, and no sense of shame. And I have to raise her here, keep her safe here. Fathers, don’t surrender.
PermalinkDarn you, Budweiser, with your puppies and your Clydesdales, making me cry. You win.
Permalink[T]he earliest watches lacked a minute hand because of the need to pack so much technology in to power them and also to drive the “display.” This wasn’t a problem since the accuracy was so poor they drifted off accurate timekeeping by up to hours every day! Their tiny springs and inefficient clockwork also meant they didn’t store much power. Thus they needed winding very regularly—at first with a key, just like traditional grandfather clocks and whatnot, which is self-evidently inconvenient.
Don’t Stress About Smartwatch Battery Life—It’s A 500 Year Old Problem, Kit Eaton
Great article about the history of watches and battery life, going back 500 years. It’s interesting to me that Apple is very much positioning their Apple Watch as a watch and not just a wearable.
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