My nephew’s film debut!

Youth Team – How to do Research from
North Van Museum and Archives

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Live within limits without limiting life

Follow me and check out my new blog! Meat Eating Vegans

Produce, publish, and promote: Tell your story

Atavist facilitates the process from beginning to end, in any digital format:

Likened to Etsy by the NY Times, Atavist is a platform for media craftsmen. It’s a platform that integrates all media formats and adapts to emerging devices, and not just for “serious” writers, this app may very well do for writing what the printing press did for reading and the Internet did for knowing.

I can here the click-click-clicking of your thoughts already!

Check out four other “revolutionary apps for digital storytellers” vetted by the Tyee.

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Live within limits without limiting life

Follow me and check out my new blog! Meat Eating Vegans

This is not a baby sweater

In a post dedicated to an aunt’s love for her niece, my words fell short when trying to describe the mathematics of knitting, and other handwork. Well, no need for words. These miracles of “Making Mathematics with Needlework: Ten Papers and Ten Projects,” illustrate just how dorky mathematicians can really be!

susan-marie is a total math dork, what’s worse? She knits! Check out her work in an article she wrote for American Scientist:

 

 

That is one continuous surface people. Think about that.

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Live within limits without limiting life

Follow me and check out my new blog! Meat Eating Vegans

Hands on household gadgets

Another gem from Houzz:

People-powered AND pretty!

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Live within limits without limiting life

Follow me and check out my new blog! Meat Eating Vegans

Neutral technology is exactly the problem

This is dedicated to my former students. In case I didn’t quite make clear my message about technology being good, bad, or neutral, let me sum up…

Philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, and even some savvy technologists (engineers included), have long debated the neutrality of technology: Is it inherently good or is it inherently evil?  Even as I am writing this, an article just appeared in my inbox asking “Is The Digital World Hurting Us Or Making Things Easier?”

There was a protest at school today…

“There was a protest at school today,” my 10-year-old began. “At recess, 200 kids started chanting: We want our playground back! We want our playground back!” It brought tears to my eyes: He knows the word PROTEST!

Recently, he and his sister also learned the word indentured. Oddly, this little lesson came from a Christmas song: 

Why does everyone who comes to visit us have to leave?

Tears this morning. She awoke remembering her grandparents would be gone, stumbled up the stairs and delivered this little chestnut: “Why does everyone who comes to visit us have to leave?”

11. Hrududu (the first of my car series)

I often find my family’s long line of matriarchal legacies earn credit in my writing, but today is Dad’s turn.

Cars. We are stuck with them. The fortunate pocket of folks in our society who can live deep in urban centres and rely solely on the amazing transportation infrastructure that only cities can sustain, is a small proportion of our society. As for the rest of us, well, there just isn’t quite enough space for everyone.

That doesn’t mean we are without choices. Here’s where my Dad comes in. He’s an accountant. He seeks out the numbers and the US Department of Energy provides exactly that. When I was buying my first car, Dad put me onto this fantastic interactive USDE website that allows visitors to compare the fuel economy of vehicles. Hint: Look for the highest number possible in the Fuel Economy column.

Toyota Prius

Because of this website, I own a Prius. It is my family’s only car, so my husband and I took the liberty of spending a pretty penny on it. Regardless of size or type of personal vehicle , the Prius wins, every time. My vote was uncontested.

8. Push, don’t pull

or even better, you guessed it, make the kids mow the lawn!

Without even mentioning the noise
push mowers get a running start. Lawn experts will tell you that lawns are healthier when they are trimmed by reel mowers (when kept sharp!).

In Good Faith

I just can’t let go of the idealism that journalists and politicians truly desire to make the world a better place. At some time, each of them must have sat in a college class, hardly able to sit still through lectures on social injustices, and decided to do something about them.

It seems to me that political imperatives arise out of the mechanics of working within “the system,” and rising above that system is a challenge most of us do not take on. We have all seen the news about the toddler who was run over in China, and no one came to her aide. I have not been able to bring myself to watch the video, but there have been a flurry of theories rationalizing the behaviour, which points to our capacity to excuse and rationalize our actions, regardless of how gruesome. Judging the would-be samaritans in China, is similar to judging journalists and politicians. We take on “holier-than-thou” assumptions that we would behave better, yet there is resounding evidence that we wouldn’t.