Tag Clouds

This has got to be one of the most useless widgets invented.  If you haven't seen one:

Someone please tell me:  how are these useful?  They function by counting the number of times words appear on a website- the more often the word appears, the bigger the font of the word in the tag cloud.

So, they don't capture ideas at all- they're just counting the number of times the word appears on the site.

When you click on a word in the tag cloud, honestly, what are you expecting to happen?  I would expect that you would go to a search results page with all instances of the word listed out as if you'd searched for the word.

So, then my next question is this:  every website seems to have these now and the words that are in the cloud...well, I'd never use the search function on a website to search for "learning", for example.

Nor "students"

Nor "Technology"

These are just lame.  Please stop using them.  And it's not just my opinion- all of my clients think they're lame, too.

Education Book Thinks Test Scores Are Real

WELL...I was looking through the new additions on Amazon for coloring books for my daughter this book came up:  The Reign of Error by Diane Ravitch.

Now, intrigued by the pun, I had to click on the book title.

When I read the subtitle being against the privatization of education, I felt I had to read this.

It turns out that the author agrees that the presidential farce called "No Child Left Behind" is an education, and educator, damning law that can only result in the downfall of education.

However, her basis for debasing this law resides in graduations rates and test scores.

Now, this woman has never been a teacher.

She can't have.

Otherwise, she's understand that grade inflation and passing students is the only way that teachers survive and remain employed.

It's also obvious that this woman has never been an educator of any kind because she believes test scores.

What test scores should tell you is this:  the school districts scoring well are cheating; the ones failing just don't have the smarts to cheat.

But she's evidently an "expert" because she was an assistant Secretary of Education.

In other words, a secretary.

To someone who might have had some sway over political policies because of friendship with someone in power.

Where does the idea of education come into play anywhere in there?

Anyone who thinks that the US public school system ISN'T broken doesn't have a child in it and probably went to private school themselves.

The Problem With Toilet Seat Covers

So, I was pretty excited about the idea of these toilet seat covers for kids...

They're foamy.
They're thick.
There's tape on them so they stay in place.
And, heck, they're even big enough to fit the industrial-sized oblong public toilet.

It all sounds good.

What I didn't consider was this:

They have Cookie Monster and Big Bird and Elmo on them.

What do little kids want to do with things that have Sesame Street characters on them?

They want to touch.

So, it kind of back-fired on me that when I put down the nice, clean potty surface for my daughter, all she wanted to do was try to pull it off and hug it.

UGHUGHGUGHUH!

And, no, they DON'T make any character-free toilet seat covers.

Evidently, these people don't have kids.

You Know It's Been A Week When

1. Your tomato plants are being drowned by the deluge outside,
2. You get done writing roughly 300 defects on a project for work that you weren't supposed to have to test,
3. Your house smells like wood stain and bacon, 
4. And when you finally sit down to relax with your knitting, you realize that after an inch of 396 stitches (in other words, thousands of stitches), you have a twist in row 1 of your brand new project, which means that, no matter how beautifully you made the stitches, you can either pull the needles on the whole thing, or slice open the stitches and sew them on the sewing machine.

It just is kind of the epitome of the week.

Still In Search of Children's Potties

And yet another place that you'd think would have a child's size potty:  the Children's Museum.

Alas, struck out again.

Reorganizing Groceries

So, American grocery stores seem to have a particular configuration:  all of the healthy food around the perimeter of the store and all the processed food in the aisles.

It's true of EVERY grocery store I've ever been in.

I think it's because processed food comes in boxes and cans, which stack well on shelves...whereas produce needs a custom shelf/display...and milk and eggs need to be refrigerated, which is much easier along the perimeter.

And for the past 10, perhaps 20 years, the supermarket-sized grocery stores have also set aside space for "green" or "organic" groceries.

Now, I don't buy a lot of organic foods (somehow I feel this is a bit of hypocritical thing to do since I was a gene surgeon, myself), but this is also where the gluten-free items have been housed, so I visit it often.

Well, the local Cub Foods grocery, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to not only integrate all of the organic and specialty foods with the other foods in the store, but to move them into obscure places.

For example:  The frozen gluten-free bread is now in between the frozen pizzas and the frozen entrees.

Thanks makes sense, right?  Right in the middle of everything glutenous and unhealthy?

And the gluten-free flours are on the middle shelf of the baking aisle, right below the Pillsbury cake flour (uhm, GLUTEN?!?) and between the "whole grain" flours.

Nice, planning, huh?

It's about a great as hiding the organic Sunbutter (which is just nasty, but it is peanut-free) amongst the peanut butters.

Evidently, the grocery store planners are unaware that peanut allergies can be inhaled, so any broken jar of PB and it's DOA for the someone shopping peanut-free.

While gluten-free is not as dramatic as aliphatic shock, I still won't be buying any of their contaminated products.

Child IVs

Why do nurses put IVs in children's hands?

Not only is this a particularly OBVIOUS place for children to want to dismantle them, but it's a choking hazard in the middle of the night.

Who thought this was a good idea?

I know, let's strap a 3 foot cord to the kid's hand and watch them wrap it around their throats at night.

Great idea.

IVs can be put in the foot.

Then, at least, you could cover it up while you're cooped up in the little hospital rooms AND, let's face it, unless you're a contortionist, you're not going to choke yourself in the middle of the night.

You'd think that a children's hospital would think of these things instead of balking when you ask for the IV to be put in a foot, but that hasn't been my experience.