Heads up, Gramps... Get on the horn.

Also, check the clock, Grammaw.

I ❤️ Saif.

From twitter, a cinematic life lesson.

Good from 4/1.

The "plastic straws choking the oceans" thing isn't so much about the United States anymore, it's other countries from which that detritus is streaming.

Still glad to see this happening. It looks kind of labor-intensive, but I bet the process a source species can be refined substantially.

There's gotta be a broad-leaf plant out there that can be commercially grown, harvested, and formed into smaller grocery bags.

Nice idea about the straws, but it would be better if parents would gently but firmly let their kids know that they expect them to enjoy their meals without useless frills. (Not to mention that small kids typically use straws to blow bubbles and other forms of bad manners.) In the same vein, plenty of mothers around the world simply make their toddlers go from breast to cup, with never a bottle or sippy cup in sight. (Plenty of mothers can't afford those anyway.) If that's OK for poor parents, why not rich parents?

Hint: If your kids are clumsy, simply give them very small amounts of liquid until they're old enough not to spill a full cup.

More on why sippy cups are a bad idea:

https://www.recordnet.com/article/20020321/a_life/303219986

Excerpt:

"The sippy cup controversy is but one aspect of a much broader problem: the tendency on the part of today’s parents to overuse every manner of technological means to avoid working through and resolving fundamental child-rearing issues in a timely fashion (that is, to avoid having to accept parental responsibilities.

"Included are the overuse of disposable diapers to avoid toilet training, pacifiers to avoid teaching children to control crying and tantrums, bottles (and yes, sippy cups to avoid wiping the spills that go along with teaching children how to drink from lidless cups, television to avoid teaching children how to entertain themselves creatively, and videos
to avoid reading to children..."

"There’s a Larger Lie Beyond the College Admissions Bribery Case"

By Bryan Caplan, "a professor of economics at George Mason University and the author of The Case Against Education."

http://time.com/5551315/college-bribery-larger-lie/

Last two paragraphs:

...So why cheat your kid into the Ivy League or a similarly elite school? For the lifelong benefits of corrupt certification. When I was in high school, my crusty health teacher loved to single out a random teen and scoff, “You’re wanted … for impersonating a student.” If you can get your less-than-brilliant, less-than-driven child admitted, he’ll probably get to impersonate a standardly awesome Ivy League graduate for the rest of his life. Of course, the superrich parents the FBI is accusing could have just let their kids skip college and live off their trust funds, but it’s not merely a matter of money. It’s also about youthful self-esteem — and parental bragging rights.

As a college professor, I’ve spent years blowing the whistle on the wasteful system that employs me. When the FBI went public with this case, many of my Twitter friends declared victory on my behalf. Yet truth be told, this salacious scandal proves next to nothing. It just illustrates the obvious. Though we casually talk about our “institutions of higher learning,” little learning is going on. Sure, college is an intellectual banquet for the rare students with a passion for ideas and the energy to locate the also-rare professors with a passion for teaching. The vast majority, however, come in search of a stamp on their foreheads that says grade a — and leave with little else. If the parents accused by the FBI are guilty as charged, don’t say they failed to understand the purpose of a college education. Say they understood its purpose all too well.

Some friends of a sweetheart bought me a sippy cup a few years ago. One for her, too. For wine, when visiting their house... We'd never spilled or anything, they just wanted to be nice. Had our names on them and everything.

Now, some mothers will let a child go straight from the breast to wine gla

"let a child go straight from the breast to wine gla"

Fine form, sir, fine form.

Well, I could have told him that. #Reconquista

Tucker Carlson: Mexico has become a ‘hostile power’ that the U.S. must deal with (Video)

Transgender issues:

House Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization Disappoints, Fails to Protect Women

Billboard took Lil Nas X’s country song, “Old Town Road,” off its country chart. So Lil Nas X, a rapper, was smart: he added Billy Ray Cyrus to the remix.

Now “Old Town Road” is number one not only on the iTunes pop chart, but it’s number 1 on the country chart.

…“Old Town Road” is also at the top of all Spotify’s streaming charts!

Nashville has for many decades been an embarrassment for America's pop culture, a sty in need of mucking. (Says ME, that's who says so.)

Nice to think that after about five postwar generations of listless dreck, along came a cohort that said 'We'd like something new now, thankyousomuch.'

There's no comparable cultural project. Someone's finally mopping up the South!… What's the next undertaking on that scale? Nothing comes to mind.

I think this is about social media. Maybe not that it cut new pathways of communication between different sectors of American character and taste, but rather that it made younger consumers more desperate than ever for novel stimulation.