Yeah, sure, this is trivial, and nothing to get excited about, as we’re not exactly foodies around here — but, hey, it’s a new recipe, uncovered because I had some round steak I needed to make in the crock pot today, but discovered that I couldn’t make my usual round steak crock pot recipe, Round Steak with Mushroom Gravy, because I had no cream of mushroom soup. So I put the steak in the crockpot with half a can of... Read more
This is new-to-me, though not new per se: Amazon has a side business selling not just stuff, but online piecework. It’s called Mechanical Turk, and I found it via a google search after reading a lament that “crowdworking” sites pay workers pitiful wages and ought to be regulated under minimum wage laws. (It’s in a book which I’ll tell you more about later.) The concept is simple: Amazon connects together workers and requesters, who offer small sums of money for... Read more
Here’s the context: I spent a fair bit of time writing on the issue of the working poor and the minimum wage back in April, e.g., “When did the idea of the “working poor” become a bad thing?” and ““The [working] poor you will always have with you”: more on minimum and “living” wages” on the fact that proponents of a high minimum wage are losing sight of the fact that welfare benefits for the working poor were originally meant... Read more
This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Longtime readers will know that a good friend of the family died this past November. Young. Father of four. Involved in Scouts, a cantor, and well-known in the parish in general. An extended circle of friends and parishioners jumped in to help with making meals for the family (especially the weeks when Ray and Betsy were travelling for treatment and grandma was staying with the kids), school lunches for the... Read more
And, having restrained myself from clicking on all manner of articles purporting to explain plot holes and other mysteries until now, now that I’d like to, they’re nowhere to be found. So what did you think — about the movie itself, and the various mysteries we’re meant to wait until the next film to find out about? Tell me in the comments, please! Read more
So it would seem, based on this Washington Post article from a couple days ago, that is, if your impression of food banks is (as mine was) organizations that collect canned and other shelf-stable food from the public via food drives and drop-off sites, to give to the needy. According to that article, well, that’s not true at all. “Keep your canned goods. There are better ways to help feed the poor.” That’s the headline, and the article starts off... Read more
Continuing my look back at the various things I’ve written: 25. February 10, 2015, “Thinking about Obama’s denial of Radical Islamism, and his “anti-Crusades” speech“, on his Prayer Breakfast comments, plus “Obama seems to think that ISIS is a new incarnation of the People’s Temple. Is he right?” from February 19th, and “Does it matter whether Obama is a Christian?” from February 25th, all connected to the question of what, and who, defines what a religion is. 26. February 25, 2015,... Read more
Continued . . . 13. September 2, 2014, “Back from Michigan, part 3: Schools of Choice and Charter Schools,” in which I point out that, for all the discussion about charter schools and schools of choice, no one seems to pay any attention to the Michigan experience, where they’ve been operating both these systems for a good two decades. 14. September 16, 2014, “What about a liberal arts GMI?” in which I suggested building a new kind of liberal arts... Read more
This appears to be the time of year when bloggers look back, to their most popular/successful posts. But, let’s face it, I’m still a new name, and can’t particularly boast of viral posts. So instead, my retrospective consists of “blog posts I wish had been more successful, because I really thought I had something useful to share” — and I’ll start back with the beginning of the blog, in 2013, rather than simply its move to Patheos earlier this year,... Read more
By which I mean not the celebration of Christ’s birth, but the orgy of shopping. I should start by saying that in our household, we don’t do much: we, that is, my husband and I, buy things for the kids that they will enjoy, and, hopefully for more than just one afternoon. If it’s beneficial for them, that’s a bonus. And the kids buy small things for each other, and my husband and I buy modest things for each other,... Read more
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