Notable (To Me) News

This story from The AZ Republic just sickens me. Three extremely malnourished children were taken from their home and their parents were charged with child abuse. The children are 3, 9 and 11 and weigh 12, 29 and 36 pounds respectively. The typical weight for their ages is 33, 69 and 87 pounds.

The parent's excuse? The kids were on a vegan diet because that's healthier for them. What a crock! Yes, vegan diets can be healthy but how do you not realize you're starving your kids?

What I want to know is, how much do the parents weigh? Are they less than 50% than the average weight for their heights? Somehow, I think not.

Here's another item that bugged me. Arizona implemented the AIMS test to ensure that kids graduating from our high schools had certain levels of proficiency. Guess what happened? A bunch of kids can't pass the test. So, what's the answer? Lower the passing score, of course.

Here's an idea - how about instead of spending money on designing, implementing and defending this test, we hire some more teachers and increase the salaries of these grossly underpaid folks while we're at it?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TV At Its Finest

I was talking to someone today who didn’t know who Bob Newhart was. I cut him some slack because he’s a youngster and didn’t grow up in the U.S. I told him about The Bob Newhart show and how it became a college drinking game and about Newhart, "Hi, I'm Larry; this is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl." He was going to go to Wikipedia and do some research. The conversation got me thinking. Back in the day (like when dinosaurs were alive and I was young and there were only four channels on TV), we caught a lot of reruns of what are now considered classic TV. Especially, if you were a latchkey kid like I was, there wasn’t a lot going on in the afternoon/early evening so it was either soap operas or reruns unless you were allowed to be outside and play. And, of course, during summer vacation you had even more time to watch the boob tube. Here’s what I remember watching during those years: Gilligan’s Island, Big Valley (I’m still looking for my very own N...
Read more

February 2020

Image
Most of 2020 sucked. But, there were some good moments that made memories to cling to. I'm going to review some of those moments from each month. (Disclaimer - my memory isn't what it used to be so this is my story and I'm sticking to it regardless of reality.) I moved into my house in May of 2019 and it was already hot out so I used the Arizona summer as an excuse not to do anything to my patio or yard. I don't recall what excuse I used to justify ignoring the both in the fall and winter. Let's go with complete laziness. It's entirely plausible. However, I had to get on the stick and pretty it up because I had a bunch of company scheduled for the spring. The first thing I did was get some inexpensive chairs from Target for my beat up table. I honestly thought I could jam them into my car. I really, really did. One would never guess I was a Tetris master. After several futile attempts, this is how it ultimately went down. Adam (answering cell): Hi, Kathy! Me: Hi...
Read more