Archive for March, 2010
A Nightmare On Elm Street Trailer
Posted in Movie Trailers on March 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Iron Man 2 Movie Trailer
Posted in Movie Trailers on March 17, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Green Spotlight: Raising Eco-Responsible Children
Posted in Green Spotlights, tagged eco-responsible, environmental conservation, green children, green technology on March 16, 2010| Leave a Comment »
One way to feel like a responsible citizen of the planet is to raise environmentally conscious children and/or influence the children close to you. Here are a few things we practice in my home:
Teaching my children to respect all animals and nature by never killing bugs in or outside the house. We always make an effort to either transfer them out of the house with a piece of paper or let them be. When I hear shouts of, “kill it mommy!” I teach my children to respect the life of all beings. When we are playing outdoors, I pick up worms and bugs and place them in their hands. I try to teach them not to fear or dominate other living creatures, to be gentle with life. When they make comments about an animal/insect’s appearance, “Ehew he’s ugly”, I teach them that beauty is relative and some other animal on the planet is attracted to it. Then I throw in, “Look at your ears, the caterpillar probably thinks they’re funny looking”.
Children will learn to respect the land if we teach them the importance of picking up litter. We allow plants and flowers to live instead of picking them or cutting them down. This is hard when you have a child who always wants to give you picked flowers. I just say “thank you”, and remind them that I can only enjoy them for a short time due to fact that it will soon wilt and die. When we are on an outing, and I can stop the picking before hand, I say… “I think we should let the flowers live and allow other people to enjoy them”. I believe this lesson teaches them to value the life of plants and the importance of keeping their habitats clean.
Conservation is something children can easily help out with at home. You can teach them to conserve water by turning off the faucet while brushing teeth, letting two small children share a bath, and remind them to turn off lights and the television when not in use.
Recycle, recycle, recycle… allow them to take part in this process at home. Have an extra garbage receptacle or bag for your recyclables and have your children help with sorting. Reuse zip-lock bags and containers from take-out restaurants. Have them give their out-grown clothing to a Goodwill or Salvation Army.
The biggest thing we can do to show our children how to be environmentally responsible, is to practice what we preach – being examples of positive planetary citizens ourselves. Consistency with these behaviors and lessons like the ones above will produce eco-friendly offspring 🙂
Feminist Geek Gurls
Posted in Articles, tagged Feminism, geek, geek culture, geek girls on March 4, 2010| 11 Comments »
Here’s what I’ve come across in my recent attempt to network with other geeks. I’ve found that you can’t run into a gurl geek without simultaneously running into a feminist – they are one in the same. Anyone with a brain can figure out, the reason they are feminists is because they have had to fight for respect in the male dominated genres of comic books, action and sci-fi films, video games and the world of technology and science – easy enough. They’ve had to prove that their love and passion for all things geek, is as legitimate as anyone’s with a penis. An unfortunate result of this is that many geek gurls become consumed by their quest for equality. During their mission to have their male counterparts look them in their glasses instead of at their boobs, they have forgotten the very reasons they were honored with a geek status in the first place – at the end of the day, we tomboy geek girls don’t, and never did care about what anyone thought about what we love to do.
My fellow sisters, you think it’s a bad thing when geek guys make fun of your love of hot vampires, well… many of you do love hot vampires. AND most of the geek guys making fun of you for it, if given a magical potion from one of their geek games, would drink it in order to look like that hot vampire.
You think you’ve got it bad, try being a minority female geek who’s spent their entire life trying to prove they’re the real deal. A quest, not only to prove ones self in the nerd world, but also to prove… we possess the ability to eat with chopsticks, we love alfalfa sprouts, we spend time listening to Silverchair and the Beatles, we tan on the beach, and have seen every episode of Seinfeld!
During my years as part of this male dominated stereotypical society, I’ve learned to not give a shit about what people think about me, what I like, who I love nor the reasons why I do what I do. Live by that philosophy and you’ll live a more peaceful life.
All hail GEEK GURLS!