Are Adults the Problem?

This morning on the Today Show, I caught the last part of a story about British parents objecting to a new kids television host who has a physical disability. The disability--Cerrie Burnell was born with an incomplete right arm. The accusation--Burnell would scare children and shouldn't be a children's television host.* One father claimed that the host gave his child nightmares and another parent claimed that her daughter refused to watch the program since the addition of Burnell because of her disability.

The video clip focuses more on explaining the controversy, but I really like that the article asks whether or not a television host will actually "scare" children as some parents claim or whether this is a case of adult being the ones with the problem. Most notably, one expert said,

I think what's happening is a number of adults do have prejudices, do have very negative views about disabled people, and instead of admitting the views are their own, they're projecting them on to their children and saying the children are doing this.

Ironically, the article does imply that such a parent outrage would be unlikely in the United States where "Kids are going to school with people with different abilities. " As much as I like say that I agree with that idea, I'm not sure that's fair. If we go with the logic that adults are the ones who are truly bothered by difference, then it shouldn't matter how much exposure children have to difference, parents are still likely to complain. I wish the article included more on the connection between parent objection and child reality, but I think I'll use it in my 170 class nonetheless.

If you're interested in the clip from the Today Show, here's the video.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

And because I think that everyone should run out and support texts that are banned in the name of ignornance, here is the show's website.

*There were also other complaints regarding the BBC and Burnell "forcing" parents to talk about disabilities with children before parents were ready and accusations that Burnell "flaunts" her disability and the BBC has "caved" to political correctness.

Bad Mothers: Media Edition

It makes me really sad that while the media seems obsessed with still talking about Nadya Suleman and her worthiness as a mother/person/woman, this was buried in the news. I only saw it because I subscribe to several feeds about pregnancy issues.

I'm guessing that her death is probably related to the availabilty of health care, as the article does note that Nigeria's maternal death rate is the second highest in the world. I really wish that maybe instead of obsessing about whether or not Suleman is or is not getting government aide, they would spend more time talking about women who are so limited in their health care options that they lose their lives in exhange for getting pregnant in a country that doesn't have the healthcare system to support them. Or better yet, why don't they talk about the taboos women who choose egg donation face.

Okay, I'm stepping down off my soapbox. Here's the whole article if you want to read it.

Nigerian woman dies after birth of sextuplets - Women's health- msnbc.com

Adsense Irony

Today, I've had a really crappy day. I went to bed annoyed because I am trying to find a reasonably priced, safe, and gender neutral car seat and Target doesn't seem to want to keep any in stock or be helpful at all. So I literally spent hours researching whether or not I could use a convertible infant-toddler car seat and finally gave up and went to bed frustrated after I read numerous website/message boards which all told me I was a bad parent for thinking of skipping the infant carrier and being a parent isn't about trying to save money.*

I woke up in a bad mood and then discovered that the grad forum event that I am in charge of planning for tomorrow seems to be unraveling at lightening speed because the university email system arbitrarily eats emails. Since I didn't know what kind of mood my advisor was in and didn't think I could handle getting in trouble for anything, I sat on the couch and sobbed for a good 15 minutes while contemplating career changes.

Rather than deal with university drama, I decided that hunting down the car seat we were looking for would give me a sense of accomplishment.** Long story short, I called Target. They were rude. I asked to speak to someone else who suggested that I was overreacting and that the car seat was scheduled to be back in stock by June 1 which shouldn't be a problem since first babies are usually late.***

By the time, I wrote the weekly update for the baby blog, I had moved from overwhelmed to pissed and instead of talking about the baby's development this week, I basically vented about Target's incompetence. When I went to check my Google Reader a little while ago, this is what I saw. Please note the sponsor of today's blog post...

*Actually, I think it is about being responsible. Do I really need to spend $300 on an Eddie Bauer car seat. Wouldn't an investment in a college fund be a much more beneficial use of the money?
**Because Google can find anything right? Wrong there are some things that Google cannot make appear in stock and I do know that you aren't supposed to buy used car seats, so Ebay is out. BTW if any of you happen to see a Graco Stylus Morocco Travel System, will you please buy it. I will send you a check.
***I'll give him that I probably overreacted to the email situation this morning, but considering that I'm due May 24th (probably about to be a week sooner), I don't think it's really unreasonable to want a car seat before I have the baby, especially considering that I can't leave the hospital with the baby is we don't have one. As much fun as it would be to send Rakicy or M to the store to find one on the excitement plan, I don't think that trying to avoid that situation makes me unreasonable or irrational.

I <3 John Green

John Green is a YA author with a blog, but it isn't aimed at teachers or parents or some idealized version of the American teenager. If you ask a dumb question, he tells you what he thinks, and I really enjoy that.

Example from today's Q and A blog:

Q. What is your view on Jessica Simpons' weight gain?
A. When I look deep down into the very core of my being, into the darkness which is me, I truly do not give a shit.

He also vlogs, which I'm secretly envious of.

Lost Post-It

Someone left their post-it note To-Do list on the floor of my classroom today. It made me laugh way harder than it should have:

1. Read Research
2. Go to library
3. Do laundry
   
4. Stay awake during Calc

iPhone for Teachers

I really hope this means that someday (soon) the University will buy me an iPhone or at least give me a really good discount. Otherwise this email was just mean and cruel.

iPhone Development for Education
Wed, Feb 18 2009 - 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM Central
Join Apple for an engaging introduction to the tools and techniques
used for building native and web-based iPhone applications.

The iPhone Development for Education Seminar will be presented by
Steve Hayman, a National Consulting Engineer with Apple's Education
Team based in Toronto. Steve specializes in Apple's developer tools
and UNIX core. Prior to Apple, Steve worked with that other Steve at
NeXT Computer, where he first fell in love with the combination of
powerful object-oriented development tools and a great Unix core;
before that he was Network Manager at Indiana University; before
that he picked up an M.Math at Waterloo, and before that he had a
summer job painting construction equipment. Steve is delighted that
Apple's blend of Unix and OO is reaching many more users than NeXT's
tools ever did, and although he enjoys a good "vi vs. emacs"
argument as much as any Unix geek, he's even more intrigued with
what you can do with strong OO tools and libraries. Steve is
particularly fond of the WebKit open source objects included in Mac
OS X 10.5 and has built and thrown away dozens of different web
browsers as a result.

Google Made Me Do It...

A few weeks ago, I posted a status on Twitter about how I was vowing to never abuse my drafts folder ever again. I abuse my Gmail in many ways, but probably my worst Gmail habit is using my drafts folder as an electronic junk drawer. Rarely are any of the items in the folder actual drafts that need to be sent, but I recently I was looking for a copy of a Eng 101 handout and found an email that I had actually drafted to send out months ago that had been buried in my drafts folder and had never actually gotten sent.

While I will take full credit for many of my less than productive and organized habits, I blame this one on Google. They make it too easy for me to abuse my Gmail and use it for non-email related purposes.* In some ways I miss the lack of functionality and limited storage capacity of Missouri State's old Bearmail system.** With that email account, I literally ran out of space a couple of times a semester, so I had to be vigilant about deleting old emails and prioritizing what I really needed to keep. I couldn't email myself multiple drafts of a paper and store them all on my email.

Somewhere along the way, I got a Gmail account and instantly fell in love. I didn't have to worry about Bearmail being down or getting overrun with spam. Most of all, though I didn't ever have to delete email or empty the trash ever again.

I instantly developed some bad habits. I stopped distinguishing between important and unimportant email, but more importantly, I began using Gmail as a replacement for disks and flashdrives. Early on this wasn't really a problem because I didn't have that many documents that I had emailed to myself and digging through a handful of emails was so much nicer than having to constantly regret deleting something because of space concerns. I liked that the drafts folder was a convient place to put attached files without cluttering my inbox, so I started putting stuff there and never really stopped.

Fastforward 6 years... Same bad habits as above, plus add:

• emails that I drafted but never listed a recepient because they were responses that I knew I could never send
• hyperlinks that I'm sure I'm going to need in the future
  
• reminders for everything from meeting times to grocery lists
• files that I emailed to myself for later access but failed to include a specific subject line***
• emails that I used as templates for things like responding to student proposals
• nearly 100 blank emails****
  

When I went into my drafts folder to look for something a couple of weeks ago, I knew that I had to work on cleaning out my email. Even Google's wonderful search capabilities were being hindered by the sheer volume of email I had kept. My problem is how to tackle this reorganization of email without becoming completely overwhelmed.

I haven't gotten my email completely organzied yet, but I did make some progress. I completely deleted nearly 6,000 emails in the last two weeks and created some filters and labels to help sort the new mail, but I'm still quite a ways away from undoing 6 years of abuse. I really wish I could set up a feature on Gmail that would say things like "is this really a draft?" or "do you really mean archive?" or better yet, I need gmail to create an option to have all email that I create but don't send to self-destruct in 30 days.

I know once again relying on Google to fix my problem isn't really fair, but seriously 7,000+ MB of space is not helping me be a more organzied person.

*Yes, I realize that it is not Google's responsiblity to keep me organized, and that they create many other tools that could theoretically help me get more organized, but if my students don't ever have to take personal responsiblity, why should I? :)
**To clarify here, I mean the one that couldn't automatically empty the trash, didn't have a spam filter, and often ran out of space if you emailed too many Word documents (pictures were not even an option). That system didn't even warn you that you had run out of space, you had to verbally tell people that you tried to email them and got a message back that they were out of space.
***I have tried to stop doing this in the last couple of years, but have since found that I my solution (i.e. 170 handout) is not much more help.
****seriously, I guess when I hit compose and then get distracted or decide to do something else and Google asks if I want to discard, I subconsciously save them all. Sometimes, these have an addressee, but no subject line or message. Most of them are just blank.