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.

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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.   

What’s more fun that making a giant Easter Egg out of Rice Krispy Treats?  Making a bunch of little Easter Eggs that you can just pop in your mouth!  Here’s my latest Rice Krispy Treat sculpture. Okay, I’m obsessed… But, when is Kelloggs going to start putting my sculptures on their boxes of cereal? Hello Kelloggs!!!!

When my dad asked me if I wanted to go up to Haleakala volcano to sightsee after he picked us up at the airport in Maui, I told him that I’ve been there and done that. So instead of soaking the rays and sipping pina coladas on the beach, we headed out to Home Depot to buy supplies for the closet organizer in one of his guest bedrooms.

I do love to build furniture – I’ve built just about all of the furniture in my house, office, and school.  So as my dad and I perused the closet organizer section of the store, we got so excited that we bought enough supplies for 3 closets!

That night I couldn’t sleep because I was so excited to put these closets together. 

I thought it would take a day to install all 3 closets, but boy was I wrong.  Finding studs in the walls of his old beach house was impossible – I swear the house was built without 2” x 4’s”!  And there were no 90-degree corners! Then, I made so many mistakes, I’m surprised I got it done before I headed back to California 4 days later.

But it was fun.  Doing projects is something that my dad and I have in common. 

Way back in 1991, Nicole built a leprechaun trap in Tess’ kindergarten class.

What fun to watch her drop the can as she tried to capture the little green guy!

Being half Irish and half Japanese, Nicole would ask me what side of her was Irish.  Funny kid!

Experts have been recommending that we turn off our TVs, computers, and mobile phones hours before bedtime to help us fall asleep faster.  Apparently the blue light emitting from our electronic screens suppresses our melatonin (a hormone that helps regulate sleep and wake cycles), which increases our alertness, and keeps us from getting sleepy. 

But seriously, who really does that? I check emails and text messages after I turn off the TV, and then I peruse Facebook to see what my friends are up to until I fall asleep. 

So if turning off these devices is not happening for you, I found a few solutions that can help you get to sleep while having your phones and tablets by your side.

1. Wear amber-colored glasses a few hours before bedtime.  They protect your eyes from the blue-wavelength light.  According to Reuters [source], a Swiss study found that  study participants who wore the glasses before bedtime were relaxed and sleepy at bedtime.
2. Use General Electric’s PM Bulbs that mimic natural candlelight without disrupting circadian rhythm. They also sell AM Bulbs to promote alertness in the morning.
3. Place light-filters on flashlights and other lights in your house. Check out LowBlueLights.
4. Use the Night Shift feature on iPhones. Apple uses your location to determine when to automatically shift from the blue to a warmer amber tone. They’re claiming that Apple has improved the sleep of millions of people each year.  On Android devices, check out the Twilight app, which does the same thing.  It’s free!

Sounds like it’s time to change up our lighting systems to protect our eyes and improve our sleep. Let me know how this works for you!

I just read a disturbing quote from the Boston Globe:

“Thursday, while the nation debated the relative size of Republican genitalia, something truly awful happened. Across the northern hemisphere, the temperature, if only for a few hours, apparently crossed a line: it was more than two degrees Celsius above “normal” for the first time in recorded history and likely for the first time in the course of human civilization.”

Let me repeat that. This is the first time the North American average temperature rose above 2 degrees Celsius. That’s 35.6 degrees (Fahrenheit) higher than normal.

While the politicians focus on distracting issues (with arguably less consequences), our planet is warming up and beginning to cause catastrophic disasters.  We need to deal with reducing CO2 NOW.  

In my opinion, there is nothing more important than stopping the corruption behind politicians, big oil, and manufacturers that deceive the general population into thinking that we have time to solve global warming. It’s time for everyone to get their heads out of the sand and take action to lower their CO2 footprint today.

What are you doing that is more important than this?

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