Offbeat

This Rocky Mountain National Park chipmunk is ready for his closeup This just in from the National Park Foundation: Top 10 ways to celebrate National Park Week 2011. Our national parks are our treasures and should not be missed. The handful I have visited over the years (some repeatedly) cannot be expressed in mere words or pictures; they truly have to be experienced. If not during National Park Week, at some point make it a priority to visit a national park or two (or more, discover for yourself that feeling of awe and amazement as you explore new places that…

My school was never this cool! Take a look at what happened when a T-Rex (driven by its fantastic puppet-master) arrived at a Sydney, Australia school. The looks on the kids’ faces when the dino roars at them are priceless … but what’s really cool is how it takes a moment to realize how the puppeteer is working the puppet, but even then — the T-Rex is so lifelike, you can easily forget it’s not some kind of digitalized movie extra. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HFf3ZWNF6EY JWZ via Boing Boing

The U. S. Civil War was the bloodiest conflict to ever occur on the lands of the United States that addressed several issues regarding Federal authority versus States rights, but ultimately came down to a single issue: slavery. Today marks the day that the war began as Confederate troops fired on a Union garrison at Fort Sumter. There is a great historical recounting of events here: On April 10, 1861, Brig. Gen. Beauregard, in command of the provisional Confederate forces at Charleston, South Carolina, demanded the surrender of the Union garrison of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. Garrison commander Anderson…

If you put on any so-called ‘discussion’ show over the last decade or so you would have heard a level of discourse that sounds like you put two people with opposing views in recording chambers and told them to state their case without supporting data other than the other side are idiots, pretend to listen for 30 seconds occasionally and then talk over the other person saying pretty much that they are an idiot with idiotic ideas but that is what you’d expect from such idiotic people. In other words, whatever avenues for thoughtful discourse existed when I was younger…

When the show ‘Secret Life of the American Teenager’ debuted in the summer of 2008, it presented viewers with an intriguing scenario: a 15-year old incoming high school freshman got pregnant her first time having sex when she was at summer band camp, being seduced by an older boy who had a ‘bad boy’ reputation. The show’s first season addressed how everyone involved, from family and friends to the girl and boy, dealt with the issues of teen sex and pregnancy. For my wife and I, it was a great way to share a ‘question raising’ experience with our tween…