Our state and our county continue to keep our children in the dark ages in the public schools system. The children are still being issued hard copy, bound textbooks instead of moving them into the digital age. I proved to the school board that they could buy a Kindle for every school child and download the textbooks for a fraction of the cost of hard copy books and they just stared at me like I am an idiot.

Children need to become comfortable and proficient with digital media and school books are full of errors, become obsolete the day they are published, they are heavy to carry and bulky to store. The pages get torn and written on, the covers get damaged, and often the books get wet and are totally ruined.

I don’t see any reason at all to continue forcing our children to carry textbooks back and forth on the bus every day when they could just download what they need on a digital reader at less than half the cost. This dogged resistance to switching to digital media makes me think there must be some secret back room deals with the book publishers and perhaps some kickbacks to certain school board members to keep spending the public’s money on outdated books.

Not Pet Friendly

Posted: 17th January 2012 by Owen in Home, Life
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Statistics always seem to confirm that a majority of households in the United Stated have one or more pets. Some have just one dog or one cat, some have multiple dogs or cats, and still others have a combination of dogs and cats. I think pet owners are the most compassionate caring people, and frankly I do not trust anyone who does not like animals. About the reason good reason for not having a dog or a cat is that your landlord does not allow pets or that you have so little money that you can barely feed and care for yourself and just cannot afford to feed or care for an animal.

So many apartment complexes and condos are not pet friendly. I really do not see the logic in that. Pets are far less destructive than children. The worst thing a pet can do to a home is pee on the carpet or floor. Most carpet in apartments and rental units are the cheapest possible and end up being replaced frequently anyway.

And after all these years of modern architecture, you would think that the new home being built would be pet friendly. You know, like have a doggie door option or planning a spot to put the cat’s litterbox. Yet they fail to incorporate any kind of pet friendly accommodations in the homes.

Musical Influences

Posted: 12th January 2012 by Owen in Music and Concerts

Some of the biggest bands that were popular when I was a kid are still touring today. A few of them have broken up and a few guys have died, mostly overdoses, but a lot of them are on geezer tours this year.

I’d like to see the Guns and Roses reunion tour or the Van Halen tour. Those groups rocked it, back in the day. Who knows how much longer any of them are going to be around – we better go hear them this time.

PBJ Cookies

Posted: 6th January 2012 by Owen in Food and Dining, TV and Movies

There was a street vendor in New York City selling fresh baked cookies. I saw her on a TV talk show. She had two specialties that were big hits. One was her pecan pie bar cookies, that tasted just like pecan pie. And the other was taking two peanut butter cookies and spreading grape jelly in between them to make a PBJ sandwich cookie. As much as I like pecan pie, I want to keep it as a pie. But the PBJs sound good – I’d buy those at least once.

Black Eyed Peas – for Luck

Posted: 1st January 2012 by Owen in Food and Dining, Life

Its a southern tradition to eat black eyed peas on New Years Day. What do peas have to do with luck, I couldn’t tell you. But we all do it. Evidently, some cultures think that eating cabbage brings you luck. I don’t see that, either. Maybe if they wanted to say that cabbage brings you money . . . since we use the word cabbage as a slang word for money. Don’t know why they do that, either. Might need to start searching Wikipedia and found out some of these puzzling questions.