Actual conversation with Ana today

Part of the reason I'm recently posting far more cute stories from Evangeline than from Ana, btw, is that Ana can be really hard to talk to. For example, on the first day of school....

Me: So, Ana, did you like school?
Ana: No.
Me: Why not?
Ana: It was boring.
Me: What did you do?
Ana: I sat. It was stupid.
Me: What's your teacher's name?
Ana: Ms. Stupid!

Compare this to Evangeline's conversation, and you can see the difference....

Me: Hey, Evangeline, did you have fun at school today?
Evangeline: Yeah! My friend Briana was there, I thought she was going to another school but she's not she's in my class, and my teacher is nice - I forgot her name - and I didn't get to put my crayons away today, and we had fun, and I only had a half day you know, and there's no school tomorrow, and....

It's somewhat less like pulling teeth!

But, on to today. (As regards the four-day weekend, btw, Ana's comment was "Even my TEACHER said it was stupid!", which I believe.)

We were walking to the library, and we saw a little kid walking home in a uniform - not one I've seen before around here, but I think it's from the new school that just opened in the PS 16 annex. Dark green top, khaki bottom.

Ana: That's her uniform? *looks down at own uniform* It's so... the colors are so dull!
Me: What, you don't like green?
Ana: Well, it's green and that skirt, what color is that?
Me: Khaki? Well, khaki does mean dust colored, but, you know -
Ana: *totally not listening* Of course, it's not blue. I AM SO SICK OF BLUE BY NOW! I am SEE SICK OF IT!
Me: Seasick?
Ana: I see it, and I'm sick of it! *laughs maniacally*

I can, uh, see that, though she never complains about wearing her uniform anyway.

On that note, here's this article on identical quadruplets all dressed up for THEIR first day of school. Cute picture, story's what you'd expect.

Sometimes, I just despair....

In the comments to this post on spending all of a preschool's fundraising money on a fancy-pants security system with PINs and everything....

Anyone ever hear of Beslan?

Most anti-terrorism experts believe that Beslan was a dress rehearsal for what they will do to our children here in America. They believe that the plan will include hitting multiple schools in multiple cities across America. Small cities, preferably.

Please don’t take security at schools lightly. We are not dealing with ordinary, every-day risks. We are at war.

http://www.terroratbeslan.com/

1. Beslan was in 2006.
2. Who, exactly, are the "experts" who think this was a dress rehearsal for the US, and why do they think that?
3. Who is "they" exactly? Since when are we at war with Chechnya? I even double-checked this because, honestly, who can keep track nowadays, but happily it seems we're still not fighting there.
4. How, exactly, will having PIN codes prevent terrorists from harming children? This is the fatal gap in logic that baffles me. I mean, the rest does too, but this one - yeah.

Anybody sufficiently determined to do harm will find a way to do it. They're not going to be stopped by a security system, they'll either find a way around it or change the location of their attack. Look at the planes - you scan for guns, people bring knives. You lock the cockpit, people bring bombs. You scan for bombs in the obvious places, they find weird places. You make people take off their shoes, they stick a bomb in their undies. (Admittedly, most of these were stupid plans, but that's not the point.) You can't possibly predict everything. There is no way to guard against every contingency. It simply cannot be done, and it's pure madness to even try.

Make the obvious changes that at least weed out the most lazy attackers, and don't worry about the rest. If there starts to be an actual rise in terrorism in US schools, then we can change what we do. But changing because of bizarre and hopeless what-ifs (and ones that wouldn't even work for what she thinks, incidentally) is just... it's not only not helpful, it's counterproductive.

OMG I HURT.

It *must* be my period. I am SO wiped out today - spent all night feeling like I'd just had a tetanus shot all over, today I'm barely keeping conscious and my back hurts (well, that's normal, anyway). OMG. I just feel so out of it.

Anyway, though, I'm awake enough to get these articles onto the journal and close up these tabs, so let's do that!

The corn lobby wants HFCS to be relabeled "corn sugar". I want corn to be less heavily subsidized - and I want a greater variety of foods to have those subsidies instead. The problem really isn't the HFCS (although whether or not "my body can tell", I can tell, corn syrup tastes nasty), it's the fact that, since corn is subsidized up the wazoo, HFCS is used as a cheap filler in everything. In jelly. In applesauce. In "juice" drinks. In pasta sauce. In hot dogs. In crackers. In bread. Most of this stuff doesn't need any sugar whatsoever (and certainly not in the proportion that HFCS has been added!), but it's in there. Why? Because it's cheaper than making real food. And very few people are really willing to commit to making EVERYthing from scratch.

Another article on the difference between static and dynamic stretching.

On the World Memory Championships.

On miniature nuclear reactors. I didn't read this, I'm getting fuzzy.

On 3D illusions in the street to get drivers' attention. I can think of better (safer) things to paint on the street than the image of a kid with a ball. If they're going to do this, it should be in very FEW spots and they should remove it after a short time, possibly putting the image somewhere else.

Gay couples seek immigration rights

Okay, let's clear out some more tabs!

( First, a cute baby squirrel adopted by a mama cat! And it purrs! )

Now, here's an article on the possibility of a "shadow biosphere" on earth.

And there's a huge diamond twinkling in the sky!

Well, that was fun!