Friday Thoughts

Taking my cue from ANP, I'm doing lists of links rather than individual posts about what captures my fancy. Read and enjoy.

Goodbye, Oil. Hello, Mother Earth
Scientists have discovered a way to make plastics and fuel from glucose. They're already making water bottles from corn.

Little Capers
Maddie and Josie already have Batman and Superman pajamas with velcro-attached capes, but they could wear these every day!

Clogged Drain
Genius! Add this to the category of "wish I'd thought of that." We need one of these for our house.

Will Danger Robinson
I've always been intrigued by names and how trends influence them -- in the same way that my 6th grade school project tracked how events in the 20th century affected fashion in each decade. I'm fascinated by this blog and the plotting of statistics. "Danger" reminds me of a girl I knew in high school. Her middle name was the city in which she had been conceived. She chose to use that as her first name, but otherwise no one would have known.

Darwin fights back
Take that, Creationists! You've got to do something to react to things like this (yes, I live in Cobb County, GA). Anyway, wouldn't these be more appropriate?

It's a small world
Check out the photos by my Icelandic friend Gunna. We met through Flickr by odd circumstances (well before I even dreamt that I'd be visiting Iceland). She's a flight attendant for Icelandair, so there was even talk that she'd be on our flight to Iceland or back. Unfortunately, she was on vacation those days, but it would have been great to meet her in person. She was a great help when Bill and I were deciding exactly where we should tour while we were on the island.

Idle time: a thing of the past
Finally, someone who will deny that TV is evil evil evil. Obviously, I don't think that your kid should park in front of it for hours, but I watched a lot of TV as a kid too. A lot of the stuff I know today comes from what I saw. I learned my alphabet from Sesame Street -- not from flash cards my parents held in front of me. I became interested in science through much of what I saw on 321 Contact or Schoolhouse Rock. I still remember some segments of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood that made me appreciate the kind of arts that the rest of my family just couldn't understand (this video that made me fall in love with modern dance.) I find myself starting to fall into the trap of scheduling too much for the girls, but then I look at their "quiet time" during the afternoons when they have to play quietly in their room for an hour (because they don't take naps and we all need down-time). The girls use that hour playing with one another, making up games (today, they asked me to put ponytail holders on the back of their shirts to make "puppy dog tails") giggling, looking at books (and "reading" from memory). It's not so bad after all to just let your kids play without interruption, to have free time, to just hang out. It's like a sleeping baby: you don't wake it. And you don't disturb two kids playing quietly by themselves.