Blogs, Bathrobes, and Homeschooling

Posted by Heidi Vriesman | 3 comments

I thoroughly enjoy reading about homeschooling. Learning about different approaches and ideas inspires me. I can?t wait to watch videos on homeschooling blogs where the mom shows how her super organized homeschool is set up or how they go about their daily tasks. I soak up so many ideas and suggestions, wondering how I can incorporate more of this and a little of that into our homeschool days.

I admire how different families keep order in their school days. I admire the structured schedules and have fun brainstorming how what I just saw or read could work in our house. I have high ideals, especially at the beginning of each school year, of how our homeschool will run. I relish printing, laminating, and organizing my teaching materials in preparation for what is to come.

And then, as the school year progresses, I have many days that look something like this?

Instead of getting up before everyone awakes (exercising, showering, and doing devotions by candlelight while drinking steaming tea), I open my eyes to a warm, footy-pajama clad two-year-old who has crawled into my bed. After snuggling for a while, multiple children begin calling out my name for various reasons which lets me know that it?s time to get out of bed. I don my bathrobe and pad into the kitchen, well aware of yesterday?s dinner dishes that didn?t fit in the dishwasher.

Breakfast usually consists of something cold and crisp?and possibly sugary ? frosted shredded wheat being a particular favorite at this point. I get the kids their cereal while they are watching a show.

I may get on the computer while still dressed in my beautiful attire. If the kids didn?t sleep in what they wore the previous day (my tip for saving time ), they are still dressed in their pajamas as well.

After breakfast we usually settle into a calming routine that involves multiple bare-skinned boys wrestling in the living room, a young lady who conveniently disappears when she knows that it?s almost time for school to start, and a mom who wraps up her online business while simultaneously saying, ?No more wrestling. Time to get dressed?, ?Get out your school work?, ?Emilia? Where are you??, and ?Something stinks. Tommy, did you go poo??

All thoughts of a beautifully organized, ?bloggingly? efficient day get wiped away and rolled up in the poopy diaper.

I think of those blogs that I read where the mom says she gets up early in the morning (probably around 5am) and I conjecture the even flow of her days. She?s all serenity and calmness when her husband and children awake. She has laid out everyone?s clothing and everyone (yes, even the hubs has a color-coded chart) has their checklists to complete before they come into the kitchen for the delicious hot breakfast that awaits.

School and chores take place the exact same way every single weekday because it?s all laid out on pretty paper, laminated, and hung on the wall. They have a family system and they all know how it works, even the two year old who only poops once per day precisely at 11:34?on the toilet (because we all know that this child is already potty-trained with such an organized and efficient mother).

Snapping back to reality, I remember that no one is perfect and no mother has everything all planned out. No matter what the blog says or how pretty those pictures are, there will always be days that do not go as planned. There will be times that parents sleep a little too late and children watch too much TV. There will be moments that the two-year old poops not once, but three times during a school day, causing the mom to have to get up (yet again), interrupting the history lesson and enabling the students to start a game of ?Hide and Go Seek.?

Yes, I do enjoy learning about the myriad of ideas that are out there, but I also know that I have the freedom and ability to pick and choose what works for our family. I am not supposed to homeschool just like someone else. While I can admire those color-coded chore charts, I know (from experience) that they don?t work so well for our family. And that?s okay.

Every family homeschools differently. The main thing for each family to make sure they are doing is educating their children (I?m speaking of spiritual education as well) and doing a Really Good Job. That ?Really Good Job? will look completely different in each home.

In our home, it happens to involve a mom who sometimes wears a bathrobe for half of the morning.

Heidi Vriesman, a follower of the Good Shepherd, is a rather spontaneous wife to her detailed husband and mom to their 4 sweet children, ages 8 and under. She has a BA in Elementary Education and was fairly against homeschooling until the Lord worked on her heart. Now, after 3 years, she couldn?t imagine educating their children any other way. You can find her recounting their days in word and picture at www.dearlylovedmist.blogspot.com. She?d love for you to stop by and say, ?Hi!? ?

Source: http://heartofthematteronline.com/blogs-bathrobes-and-homeschooling/

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New BlackBerry to be released in US in mid-March

TORONTO (AP) ? The chief executive of Research In Motion says he's disappointed the new BlackBerry won't be released in the United States until mid-March, but he says early data suggests sales in the U.K. are above expectations.

Thorsten Heins said Monday in an interview with The Associated Press that he would be lying if he said he wasn't disappointed in the mid-March U.S. release date. But he says the U.S. and its phone carriers have a rigid testing system.

RIM unveiled the new phone last week and announced a March U.S. release date.

The first device in the new crop of revamped BlackBerrys will be the touchscreen Z10. It was released in the U.K. last Thursday and will be released in Canada on Tuesday.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blackberry-released-us-mid-march-023446557--finance.html

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Software Predicts Disease And Disaster - Business Insider

Researchers from Microsoft and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed software that can predict when and where outbreaks might occur, Tom Simonite of MIT Technology Review reports.

The system, which taps into 22 years worth of archives from The New York Times, works by identifying and analyzing clues from news reports and more than 90 other data sources from the web. ?

The prototype software can predict things like disease outbreaks, violence, and natural disasters.

For example, when tested on historical data from 2006, the system correctly predicted a cholera outbreak based on reports of droughts in Angola.?The software is right between 70 to 90 percent of the time.

Eric Horvitz, a scientist and co-director at Microsoft Research, told Simonite that a refined version of the system could be used in real settings to help experts prepare for emergency and humanitarian response, for example.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/software-predicts-disease-and-disaster-2013-2

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North Korea nuclear test would face "firm" U.N. action: South Korea

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council is united on North Korea's nuclear arms program and will undoubtedly approve tough measures against Pyongyang if it carries out a new atomic test as expected, South Korean U.N. Ambassador Kim Sook said on Monday.

"The North Korean nuclear test seems to be imminent," Kim, who is president of the Security Council this month, told reporters. "Obviously there are very busy activities going on at the (North Korean) nuclear test site, and everybody's watching."

"Everybody is unified and they are firm and resolute," he said. "I would expect very firm and strong measures to be taken ... once they go ahead with such provocation."

(Reporting By Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/north-korea-nuclear-test-face-firm-u-n-180254819.html

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Drug manufacture: Going green with iron

Jan. 31, 2013 ? Safe and inexpensive iron catalysts provide a 'greener' alternative to typical pharmaceutical production methods.

More than one-quarter of all known pharmaceuticals contain the chemical group known as amides: carboxylic acid derivatives derived from ammonia or amines. Most methods for synthesizing amides, however, are inefficient and use hazardous reagents. New work from Anqi Chen and co-workers at the A*STAR Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences in Singapore promises to make amide chemistry more economical and sustainable than before1. The team has uncovered a way to convert aldehydes and amine salts into amides using iron(II) sulfate -- a harmless, inexpensive substance as the catalyst to perform this transformation efficiently and with little waste.

Most alternative methods to produce amide molecules use expensive noble metal catalysts such as palladium and ruthenium, which are incompatible with industrial demands for cost-efficiency. Funded by a GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)-Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) endowment on sustainable drug manufacturing, the researchers investigated a different approach known as 'direct oxidative amidation'. This method couples an aldehyde and an amine salt in the presence of a catalyst and an oxidant, generating an amide in one step.

Nontoxic and cheap catalysts with sufficient chemical activity for amide transformation are hard to find. To identify an efficient and inexpensive catalyst, the team screened a range of iron compounds and discovered that iron(II) sulfate (see image), a supplement for anemia that costs less than a dollar per kilogram, has strong potential to catalyze amide formation from aldehydes with amine salts.

Apart from the environmentally benign iron catalyst, the transformation uses an inexpensive oxidant known as tert-butyl hydroperoxide and very cheap calcium carbonate, the main composition of limestone, as a base. By combining these inexpensive ingredients together, the researchers achieved excellent amide yields under conditions convenient for both laboratory and industrial operations.

Further experiments revealed the versatility of this amide synthesis. A range of amine salts and aldehydes with different structural and electronic features could be transformed into amides with good-to-excellent yields. Importantly, salts derived from natural amino acids such as valine and proline also underwent oxidative amidation without disrupting their chirality or 'handedness' -- a critical structural phenomenon for drug molecules and peptides.

The team demonstrated the potential of this iron-catalyzed amidation for drug manufacturing by synthesizing the antiarrhythmic drug N-acetylprocainamide in a one-step procedure that is more efficient than previous multiple-step routes. "This environmentally benign method has significant advantages over conventional techniques," says Chen, "and we intend to identify pharmaceutical targets where this promising method could bring about significant cost-savings and improved sustainability."

The A*STAR-affiliated researchers contributing to this research are from the Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), via ResearchSEA.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Subhash Chandra Ghosh, Joyce S. Y. Ngiam, Christina L. L. Chai, Abdul M. Seayad, Tuan Thanh Dang and Anqi Chen. Iron-catalyzed efficient synthesis of amides from aldehydes and amine hydrochloride salts. Advanced Synthesis & Catalysis, Volume 354, Issue 8, May 21, 2012, Pages: 1407%u20131412 DOI: 10.1002/adsc.201200020

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/INUoGgXrz1s/130203145436.htm

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FNATIC.com: The Future of eSports

The Future of eSports

The recent discussions and issues in eSports have caught my attention and I thought about the future of eSports.?

Introduction

?In my opinion eSports most certainly have a bright future. Things that are happening now and numbers involved with eSports, such as the number of competitive games, international LAN events and the number of people watching these events, as well as the money involved is something that I simply couldn?t imagine 10 years ago. When you look at it from a certain angle, you will see that eSports is all about people spending their time together on events all over the world, sharing great moments together and most importantly - doing what they love, together with people from all over the globe. And, as for myself, I think this is one of the best things about eSports. However, with lots of money being involved, everything has to be done in a certain way, and that is a professional way. There are many people already working strictly professional for companies, organisations as well as themselves.?The most important thing is - they all have the same goal and that is to expand and develop eSports as much as they can. That is what matters the most. I'm sure if we keep developing eSports, and if everyone gives his/her best, we will grow along with the community we love, and raise it on a different, even more professional level.? - Andreja Mahovic, former Professional Gamer.

We all see that the community is growing and the entire scene is improving, money is involved and people are interested, but is that enough for a bright future of eSports ?

Naturally the people who are interested in gaming are becoming more and more, but I think this can not only be contributed to gaming itself, but comes along with the technical progress.

Yet this does not mean a bright future for eSports ?in General, as there is still a huge majority of people who think Gaming is only something for males and nerds. The problem is that they don?t have access to this community and do not know what it is about. Spending 8 hours in front of the computer is still frowned upon the society, but spending 10 hours on your smart-phone and computer on social networks on the other hand is not. The question ?is how can we, as the community and the scene reach out to the people and make eSports something ?normal? in the modern society.

It is for sure, that this is not possible by just waiting and keeping the status quo, but by gaining stability and professionalism towards the outside.

Source: http://www.fnatic.com/content/95350

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Carbon for Android (the Twitter app) now available

Carbon is for Android smartphones only, separate tablet app in the works

After more than a year in the works and a couple of false starts, Carbon for Android -- the Twitter app -- is finally available on Google Play. Everything we showed you a week ago in our exclusive preview still stands. The scrolling is the gold standard for any other application. The animations are as subtle as they are impressive. And the overall design and feel is among the best we've seen in a Twitter app. And the keyword and hashtag filters can help clean up your timeline in a way usually reserved for desktop Twitter clients. This initial release is just for phones, but rest assured a tablet version is on the way.

Best of all, Carbon is free.

One update from our preview regards the settings menu, which wasn't active in our early build. We've updated our post with a bit on it. 

read more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/ylp3RrVxfiM/story01.htm

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