I love this!  Finally, 21 kids may have the opportunity to force the government to stop the devastation that Climate Change has and will continue to wreak on earth. 

It’s about time!

Dr. James Hansen, an adjunct professor at Columbia University and former director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies is the guardian of “future generations” and his granddaughter is the plaintiff in the case. It’s about time that kids step up to the plate. 

Julia Olson, lawyer with Wild Earth Advocates and Our Children’s Trust, says that the government has continued actions to “permit, authorize and subsidize fossil fuel extraction, development, consumption and exportation.”

The government is not just sitting by and doing nothing, they are actually doing everything to cause this problem.

[Source]

Ever since my oldest daughter Nicole did research on GMO’s (genetically modified organisms) back in 2001, I have been worried about the GMO giant: Monsanto, and their mission to genetically alter plant genes to grow super food. 

Progressive countries around the world have banned food products made with GMO’s and refuse shipments of American products made with GMO’s.  You’ve probably noticed all the chatter about Monsanto trying deceive the public by passing legislation that would require food manufacturers to inform the public about what they’re eating.  Hmm.  This seems like a no-brainer to me, but I’m once again flabbergasted by the public’s lack of concern for the safety of their food.  But that’s not why I’m writing about Monsanto today. 

While Monsanto created SUPER CROPS, they also created SUPER PESTS, that needed SUPER PESTICIDES to kill them. Yup! And did you know that Monsanto owns the largest herbicide product?  Heard of ROUNDUP? The active ingredient in Roundup is Glyphosate which is used on most American GMO crops as well as on just about everyone’s lawns, gardens and landscaping. 

Okay, so you know about Monsanto and GMOs, but you’re not worried because you buy organic fruits and veggies, and health foods at Whole Foods.  Right? Are you safe? NOPE! In a recent study by oncologists Dr. Lennart Hardell and Dr. Mikael Eriksson of Sweden, Monsanto’s Glyphosate was found in California wines and even wines made with organic grapes! Glyphosate is linked to cancer, birth defects, miscarriages, and infertility in humans.  It’s been found in all kinds of food, beer, wine, and fertilizers.  Even Kellogg’s Kashi cereal has been tested positive for cardinogens and GMO’s.

So, what are you to do?  Stop buying and using Roundup on your weeds!  You’re poisoning the water, plants, and ultimately all of us.  Grow food in greenhouses or aquaponic systems – they have virtually no weeds.  Plant rock and succulent landscaping that needs minimal water. It’s time to rethink the chemicals we use in our gardens and stop buying food made with GMO’s, and eating food that have been genetically modified. 

Bottom line: stand up to Monsanto and boycott their GMO’s AND Roundup!

All dressed up in their Sunday best clothes, my paternal grandfather, father and aunt were one of the first to arrive at Manzanar (one of 10 relocation camps) after the US government imprisoned 120,000 Japanese Americans after the start of WWII in 1942. 

My father and aunt were patiently waiting on the 2 suitcases that they were allowed to bring with them for this 3-year incarceration.  Guilty of “looking like the enemy,” they lost all of their personal possessions and businesses.  In hindsight, not one Japanese American was convicted of spying or doing any non-patriotic acts prior to, during, and after the war. As a matter of fact, many young Japanese American men enlisted in the 442^nd Regiment – the most decorated battalion in WWII – to prove their loyalty to their home country of America, while their parents and family members were incarcerated behind barbed wire through the duration of the war. 

This was the greatest violation of civil liberties in American history.

Wouldn’t you think that all AP classes were created equally? After all, every student who takes that AP course will take the exact same AP exam in May.  Makes sense, right? Wrong! 

Ii find it really disturbing to see the disparity in the quality of the preparation students receive in standardized AP courses from coast to coast.  As a college advisor, I work with public and private high school students from Monterey to San Francisco in my offices, and nationwide online.  I coach them on how to study for exams and how to implement projects that will get them into top colleges.  And, to ensure that they maintain decent GPA’s, I teach them how to study for class and AP exams.  

Here are 2 very different examples of how teachers prepare their students for the big test at the end of the year:

AP Teacher #1:
 “Joe’s” teacher at his elite private school organized a thick reader filled with photos, images, charts, and timelines that students must read and complete as part of their coursework.  His teacher also gave the students multiple practice exams (real AP tests that students across the US have taken in the past) to prepare them for the big AP exam that they will take in May.  When students receive this type of structured introduction to key points and topics that will be on the official exam, they’ll undoubtedly ace the final exam at the end of the year.  It’s almost impossible for these students to receive anything less than a 3 (on a scale of 1 to 5; 5 being the top score) simply because every lecture, discussion, homework assignment, class projects, films, and papers were designed to give the students the foundation they need to get 4’s and 5’s. This is the ideal way to teach AP courses.

AP Teacher #2:
Just yesterday, on the other hand, I met with “Jessica,” a student who attends a public school with a history of students who don’t pass the AP exams (scores of 1 or 2).  She is on spring break this week and asked me to help her organize a plan to study for her AP United States History exam.  A great student with a 4.0 GPA, I was prepared to suggest my regular recommendations for AP test prep.  What I learned from her about the poor preparation she has received so far was gut wrenching.  Jessica’s teacher has been pregnant most of the school year and she just left on maternity leave a few weeks ago (just 6 weeks before the AP exam).  The teacher had assigned homework from the textbook but didn’t offer a comprehensive reader filled with vital information and facts that she’ll need to pass the exam.  When I quizzed her on the US presidents, their claims to fame, and other monumental historical events, I found that she had a general foundation but certainly not enough depth to answer the difficult questions she’s expected to know on the big day.  With her preparation to date, I wouldn’t expect her to receive anything above a 2 (on a scale of 1 to 5). 

That’s when I decided to even the playing field.  I asked Joe if I could copy his reader to give to Jessica.  Not feeling threatened because of her apparent lack of preparation, he graciously allowed me to make a copy. When Jessica looked through the reader, her face lit up.  She loved how everything was organized and I could see that US history was beginning to all come together for her.  Then I ordered the AP United States History workbook so she could read tips on how to ace the exam and take several practice exams.  Jessica was thrilled to have these tools and promised to read through the entire reader and do all of the worksheets over her spring break.  I felt like Robin Hood stealing from the rich to give to the poor! This type of systematic inequity in our educational system is going to lead to a class division where only the rich get into the best colleges – further shrinking our middle class. Not good for anyone.

I would hope that teachers who teach standardized classes like AP or IB classes would offer their students the tools they need to do well on the end-of-the year exams.  I would love to see students who attend elite private schools donate their expensive flash cards, readers, and volumes of practice exams to students who can’t afford these types of luxuries. Hmm – sounds like a new project in the making!

Did you know that our congressional representatives are NOT representing us on Climate Change?

I’m confused. I thought our congressional representatives were supposed to “represent” our beliefs when they vote on initiatives that impact us.  If 76% of Americans believe that climate change is caused by man, then why is it that only 41% of the House and 30% of the Senate vote accordingly? That means that over 202 million Americans are represented by climate deniers in Congress.

Say what? Well, maybe the fact that these same climate deniers have received over $73 million dollars from Big Oil might have something to do with it. Hmm. 

I like what U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said, “Members of Congress should be accountable to their constituents, not to a fossil fuel industry that uses the threat of unlimited campaign spending to command their silence.”

[Source]  Want to put faces to names? Check this out.

With teens demanding their independence, and driving being on of their top lists; parents, this is the time that you need to wear your “Parent Hat” to protect them from… well, themselves!  That’s why actuaries give car rental companies great advice: Don’t rent any vehicles to anyone UNDER 25 years of age! 

Research shows that youth maturity – the kind that keeps teens and 20-somethings alive – doesn’t actualize until they become 25 years old.

When states have laws that require that new drivers to wait 6 months before driving with friends (non-family members), there’s a good reason for it.  Teen drivers get wrapped up in conversations with their friends, share text messages, answer phone calls, and do just about everything except drive carefully when they’re behind the wheel with friends.  That’s why teens are involved in over 350,000 accidents per year and almost 3,000 result in teen death.  According to Nichole Morris, of HumanFIRST Lab at the University of Minnesota, “The most dangerous two years of your life are between 16 and 17, and the reason for that is driving.”

As the parent, you can set up your own driving rules – and you should!  I didn’t allow my daughters to drive friends in their cars until they were in college.  We set volume controls so they could hear sirens.  And when my youngest went off to college at Claremont McKenna College, her car stayed here safely at home until the last semester of her senior year. I just wasn’t willing to risk losing her to the 7-lane freeways in LA and the temptation to drink and drive with her friends.  Trust me, it wasn’t easy to implement… but I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

[Source]

Good news! The UC System has changed their application essay prompts for 2017!

I can’t believe it took the UC’s 10 years to finally toss out their ridiculous essay prompts. These topics used to be nearly impossible for top students to discuss meaningful projects because the UC’s wanted them to talk about their families or community for one essay, and about an important quality or talent for the other.

This is really good news for juniors who will be writing these essays this summer.

There will be a total of 4 essays for the new UC applications.  These essays will be shorter – just 350 words each – and you’ll have 8 topics to choose from. 

Transfer students will also have 4 essays to write but one of them will be major-specific.  All essays will have equal values so students can choose from several topics.

The new UC application will be ready on August 1^st for the Fall 2017 applications.

I’ll post the prompts as soon as they are available!

We’ve been making Ukrainian Eggs every year since 2002.

The process is similar to batiking. 

After creating a base coat, you use a wax-resist technique to create a design with a kistka (metal holder with a tiny spout where the heated wax is released). 

Then you dip the egg in a darker dye, and repeat the process!

It seems that almost all of my Caucasian friends, and even my husband and daughters, have a bit of Irish in them.  They are proud of their Celt ancestry and enjoy identifying with anything Celtic.  But a recent discovery of an ancient burial site and the subsequent DNA evidence proves that Irish origins did NOT include the Celts.  The 3 skeletons found at the burial site predate the Celts and their purported arrival in Ireland by over 1,000 years.  This may be a game changer when considering the origins of language and culture.  But if you’re Irish by ethnicity, you probably have DNA from other genes because your European ancestors traveled back and forth across the continent, so everyone is probably a mix.

For more information about this finding, check out the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/17/a-mans-discovery-of-bones-under-his-pub-could-forever-change-what-we-know-about-the-irish/?tid=sm_fb

This is a post by guest blogger Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman (from the Pajaronian March 2016)

That the Republican Party is heading toward a demolition is no surprise by now. This is not the first time a major American political party fell apart. In the 19th century, between the 1830s and 1860, the Whig Party was the political rival to Jefferson’s Democratic Republican (Democrat) Party. The Whigs ran candidates every election, but elected only two to the presidency.

Political parties are not cast in stone; they change over time. The Jeffersonian Democrats began as an elite party of landowners (mostly slave holding). They supported the equality of white propertied males, plantation owners versus city dwellers. 

In 1830, President Andrew Jackson, a Democrat, changed all this. He pushed for the enfranchisement of all White males, property and literacy not required. American politics in the 19th century reflected this sort of democracy, the best democracy that a free flow of liquor on election day could buy. This is the origin of “populism” that roils American politics even today. Power to the people! 

The Democrats split further in giving birth not only to rabid populists, but to populists who rejected learning, science, and education: the “Know-Nothings” and “Mugwumps.” If this sounds familiar, they are indeed alive and well in today’s angry supporters of the likes of Donald Trump and most of his current fellow candidates.

The Whig party, which rose during the 1830s, represented a new kind of elites, captains of industry as the industrial revolution transformed the north. It also appealed to a growing middle class in the north who were beginning to rue the institution of Black slavery. The party wobbled between big money interests and anti-slavery moralists, failing to convince the electorate well enough to win the White House more than twice in 30 years.

By 1860, the Democrats dominated the southern slave states, which promoted “states’ rights” and disdained any interference from the US government. The slavery issue then dominated all political rhetoric until the anti-slavery faction of the Whig Party finally defected and created a new party, the Republicans. President Abraham Lincoln and most of his cabinet began as Whigs and became Republicans.

For the rest of the 19th century, Democrats were the conservatives, the embittered Southerners who mourned the loss of their “states’ rights” to agricultural slavery. The slaves were emancipated, but remained as sharecroppers deprived of political participation. 

The Republicans lost their progressive edge after the Civil War ended. It became the party of industry and big money power until President Theodore Roosevelt reawakened its “progressive” roots, providing a more equitable playing field for the growing Middle Class. He was the last Republican president to do so until Eisenhower. 

The New Deal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt picked up the progressive movement of the earlier Roosevelt, as did Presidents Truman, Kennedy, Carter, Johnson, Clinton, and Obama. 

The Republican Party, which began as an anti-slavery progressive party under Lincoln, became over time the “conservative” party, representing those segments of society that feared too-rapid change, believed in conservative and traditional religion, and trusting educated elites rather than populist ignoramuses. Until the end of World War II, a vast majority of university intellectuals considered themselves conservatives as well.

Today, both political parties are rife with internal divisions, much like the period of the Civil War. Most Democrats stand for moderate progress, social justice, and strong central government to protect us from our less noble instincts. The minority, largely found in and around the academic world, have raised the standard for radical change, “multiculturalism,” and elimination of such  “outmoded” values as religion, polite speech, clothing, and manners. Vulgarity has become bipartisan, and both Democratic and Republican extremes detest government.

The Republicans are now divided between mainstream fiscal conservatives who can work with their counterparts among Democrats, and a resurgence of “Know-Nothings” who wildly support any demagogues who inveigh against “government,” science, and the rising tide of female equality. One of these pretend Know-Nothings may force the nominating process to accept him, which will lose them the election and send reasonable Republicans looking for a new party. Not a moment too soon.

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author of God’s Law or Man’s Law.  You may contact her atLfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.