Right On! Blog

300 or 400 pound kids?  This story is almost too insane to believe!

Dr. William Cochran, a pediatric gastroenterologist and nutritionist for the Geisinger Clinic in Danville, Pa., said he sees many youngsters in his weight management clinic who weigh 300 to 400 pounds. He is also seeing more and more children with diabetes, high blood pressure, even liver disease.

I remember cartoons and futurists predicting humans would have huge heads and little bodies, since robots would be doing all the work and humans would be doing all the thinking.  Guess they got the body parts mixed up.

I could blame this on our instant, TV dinner, no attention span society where no-one has time to bring up the kids, but I’d be repetitive now, wouldn’t I?

I have to say that overall, Canada’s and the world’s generosity has been fairly amazing to the earthquake victims.  I just gave what I could to the Red Cross – it sure was easy and fast.

Many of my Tamil co-workers are collecting their own money.  Apparently they don’t trust anyone to help them, as they are of course at war with the Sri Lankan government.  I am more leary giving them money directly, but they may have a point. 

Here’s a neat link describing a wireless project to rebuild communications networks.  Obviously wireless can be rebuild far more quickly than the old ways. 

BoingBoing pal Mike Outmesguine gives us an update on the blog-driven project to provide free wireless communication services to areas cut off by the disaster:

Here’s something that every Canadian could use.

Over many years, various prototypes were tested and ultimately refined to produce today’s most advanced snow removal machine – and human powered Whovel!

via Metaefficient

Some intelligent commentary on the latest world tragedy.

The world’s thoughts are with the victims of the tsunamis that swept across South Asia Sunday, killing at least 23,000 and leaving millions homeless. In the coming weeks and months, the priority must be to render the survivors every possible assistance.

via C & F

(more…)

An interesting post over at Family Scholars discussing ways to place more value on women that choose to stay home and raise their kids.  In the wake of all the horrible kiddy crime going on in Toronto, where kids are running around stabbing each other, we can see the dividends are slowly being realized of absentee parenting.

Neil Gilbert, Chernin Professor of Social Welfare at UC-Berkeley, attempts to answer that question in a piece in the current issue of The Public Interest. He has an interesting way of talking about different kinds of women, more sophisticated than you usually see. He divides women into three categories, traditional (women with three or more children, who tend to be fulltime homemakers), neo-traditional (working women with about two children who tend to feel the pull of home over the pull of the work place), modern (working women with one child who tend to feel the pull of the workplace over the pull of home) and postmodern (childless women dedicated to their careers).

…and so are some funny cartoons.

via J-Walk

Saw this on the German news this morning: it is quite an engineering feat.

Piercing the sky above the verdant hills of southern France, a stunningly modern roadway bridge hailed as the tallest in the world was officially inaugurated Tuesday.

Coren has a scary story that will make anyone think twice about the sadistic power of the state.

The state has for some time assumed that it can raise families more efficiently and compassionately than, well, the family itself. The arguments against such intrusion are legion and will doubtless be repeated in the coming weeks. But first we should think of the Cleary family.

I’ve heard kidney stones are excruciatingly painful, now I can see why.

via J-Walk

Fred on the downside of the war that you don’t hear too much about.

Yet the wounds will remain. Arms do not grow back. For the paralyzed there will never be girlfriends, dancing, rolling in the grass with children. The blind will adapt as best they can. Those with merely a missing leg will count themselves lucky. They will hobble about, managing to lead semi-normal lives, and people will say, “How well he handles it.” An admirable freak. For others it will be less good. A colostomy bag is a sorry companion on a wedding night.

Why Canadians don’t support defending their own country is beyond me.  Clearly, we’re going to be involved in it whether Paul Martin chooses to admit it or not.

Red Mayor Miller really does have some nerve, as Sue Anne says.

You have to hand it to our smooth socialist mayor. He has a lot of chutzpah. How can he talk about the flagging aerospace industry with a straight face when, almost to the day one year ago, he and his trained socialist seals scrapped the $22-million bridge to the Island airport?

Any mother knows a baby can drive them crazy after hours of crying … so it’s no great leap to understand what may have led to this incident.

“ ‘I did it; I shook her and I didn’t mean to hurt her,’ “ Bainbridge said, according to the complaint.

Bainbridge said the girl had been crying much of the day and she could not figure out why she was crying.

I pity anyone that has to dump their kids in daycare – and question anyone else who does that doesn’t have to.

More fodder for the great abortion debate.  It is hard to understand how a fetus so close to term could not be considered human.

A woman whose fetus died from a car accident lashed out yesterday against the law that says her unborn son was not a human…”Just because he’s in my stomach doesn’t mean he’s not a human. Without the accident, he would have survived.”

:neale: