Thursday, February 28, 2008

Random Bits of News

I found some interesting things online this week...

  • Have you ever stepped into bright sunlight & sneezed? I do it all the time. It’s actually a minority trait that has been recognized by the medical community for over 40 years. It's called Photic Sneeze Reflex & it affects about 17% to 35% of people.
  • One of my favorite new websites is Local Harvest. We all know that fresh fruits & veggies are the best (both for taste & your health). Using this website you can find farmers' markets, family farms & other sources of food grown local to your area. I found 4 pages of results around us!!!

  • The format war is over.... Toshiba will stop making HD-DVDs by the end of March, which means Blu-ray will officially become the standard. Apparently, "...the two formats were about even in sales until Warner Brothers decided in early January to join the Blu-ray camp, which also includes Walt Disney and 20th Century Fox studios." This leaves Universal, Paramount, Intel & Microsoft out of luck... & a whole lot of people admitting, "I'm the idiot who bought an HD-DVD player."

  • Newsweek ran a story this week on how more photo studios are offering retouching of grade-school pictures. According to the article a 'total makeover package' includes things like "restyled hair, blended skin, added makeup, reshaped eyebrows, enhanced eyelashes-even changed facial expressions. And then, of course, the photos are cropped and sharpened." Umm.... isn't this taking things a bit too far? Isn't youth beauty in and of itself? Isn't this helping to enforce our society's belief that beauty is perfection & only perfection? I'm slightly disturbed.

  • NPR has had some great stories lately about the importance of old-fashioned, creative play. The articles discuss how children develop life skills, including self-regulation, during imaginative play. If you're a parent, teacher, counselor, etc.... I think it's worth reading. They'll probably confirm what you already believe... those noisy pieces of plastic really are junk!

  • And finally... remember MASH? Not the TV show, but the game in elementary school? MASH is now high-tech. Another example of modern technology ruining childhood play... at least the original game reinforced counting skills.

No comments:

Related Posts with Thumbnails