As a bilingual Christian (I speak, read and write both Catholic and Evangelical), I can’t recommend this enough:

Learn How to Speak Christianese.

Funnier, though, if you regularly attend an evangelical-type home group.  So true.  So, so true.

nice Haiti riot coverage

The riots are not nice.  The riots are violent and destructive.   But here is some clear, informative coverage of what is going on in Port-Au-Prince. Includes some quotes from peaceful protesters that sums up the situation.

(At least one bloody photo, but it isn’t all that bad.  This guy can take some good photos.  How come mainstream news coverage is always so . . . I don’t know . . . distant?  When you have guys like this on the ground?)

Previous entry explains why all the protests.

Day 2 @ OP: TV Kills

2nd day in the series is  up: Can Sitting Too Much Kill YOU?

The answer is yes.  But this was the alarming one – death by television:

These findings linking sedentary behaviour with poor health are far from isolated.  For example, a similar longitudinal study from Australia reports that each hour of daily television viewing is associated with an 11% increase in the risk of all-cause mortality regardless of age, sex, waist circumference, and physical activity level.

I’m feeling quite superior right now, since I’m not much of a TV person.  But heaven help me if ever they ever do a study on the dangers of reading.

Sitting Still. Bad Idea.

The slightly mis-named blog Obesity Panacea has put up the opening post in a week-long series on Sedentary Physiology.  Good blog.  Written for normal people, and covers the intersection between body weight, fitness, and health, from a what-does-the-research-say perspective.  Where “what the research says” is still a developing topic.

From a homeschooling perspective, the opening article validates one of my reasons-I-like-homeschooling: School kids sit still an awful lot.  And that doesn’t strike me as all that healthy. Referring here to the school schedule as it stands today, where kids spend more hours per day and days per year in class than they did in early years of public/town schooling. It’s not a contrast of home-versus-school anywhere and everywhere, but homeschooling versus how school is being done right now.   No reason the school situation can’t  change.

–> And in my neck of the woods, no one is walking five miles each way, either.  Or even half a mile.  When a new school was built by MIL’s house recently, within ball-throwing-distance of five or six neighborhoods, the road was rebuilt and expanded to handle the car traffic, but no sidewalk or crosswalk to be seen.  (In my case it wouldn’t help though — we live half a block from our nearest school, and must-drive distance to the next two options.  So the commute wouldn’t increase my kids’ exercise amounts.)

Funny story: This past Saturday at the “ADVENTure” parish program, by midday I had a kid ask if he could please stand through our class period, because he was “tired of sitting”.  I let him stand up front, near me, where he wouldn’t block anybody’s view.  Worked great.  He was calm and not distracting and both of us were happy.

More personal: Wow has it been annoying dealing with the new sedentary lifestyle of the foot injury.  Even with eating much less.  I remember the same problem when I went from grad school to working full-time as an accountant.  All that sitting.  Not easy to keep a body healthy that way.

Mrs. Darwin’s Birthday Game – Again!

(A little something cheerful to offset my venom below).

Mrs. Darwin has gone and had another birthday.  Which means another round of “I remember Mrs. Darwin”.  Go play.  Lots of fun.

 

St. Nicholas Center – Coloring Pages & Crosswords

Imagine you are a catechist.  Imagine that tomorrow from 9am – 3pm you’ll be manning the “St. Nicholas Room” for your parish’s ADVENTure Day.  You might want to visit here. Soon.

Or if you just want coloring pages, crossword, word-search puzzles, and the like, click ahead to here.

The Saint Nicholas Center.  Our friend.

 

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Three things you might be wondering:

• Yes, the coloring pages are cool.  And you have lots of choices.  Cartoon-y, greek-language-icon-y, and in between.
• The more advanced word search is the one with the cool religious ed words like “crozier” and “wonderworker”.
• Fine print says that yes, you can print out copies for your non-profit group event.  No sweating DRE’s.  Yay.

random off-topic photo

I thought this one was cool enough to deserve a cross-post.  And I couldn’t very well pester Julie again.  So I figured I’d better put it up myself:

Enjoy.

the economics of sugar vs. corn syrup

Nice post here.  For all of you who are with me when I complain the movie didn’t include enough accounting stories.

(For the record: I personally vote for sugar over corn syrup. Ceteris paribus. Though I had never considered the exploding factories thing.  Then again, I also eat flour, and you get exploding factories with that, too.  Maybe I am not a good example in the eating-for-worker-safety department.)

Cholera in Port-au-Prince

Not cheerful reading:  http://goatpath.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/cholera-reaches-port-au-prince-as-victims-are-left-in-mass-graves/

Thanks to the Livesay’s for the link.

UPDATED to add:

Sanitation and the cholera panic from the Mangine’s.  Additional perspective, not graphic.

Here and here are photos of the RHFH Rescue Center’s Cholera House in action.

And if you are a Catholic Relief Services supporter, here’s their report on what they are doing to help curb the spread of the epidemic.

 

Mater et Magistra Magazine – Fall Issue Free

The fall issue of the catholic homeschooling magizine Mater et Magistra is now out in electronic format, and you can get a copy free Here.

Worth a look, eh?

(It was worth a look even when it wasn’t free, I would note.  You can see my review of my first issue here.)

Tell your friends!