Disqus - Latest Comments for Rebecca_Clayton

Re: How to Eat Bread and Still Lose Weight

Rebecca_Clayton — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 11:34:33 -0000

I like to bake bread, and have good recipes for 100% whole wheat bread, pitas, and bran/cranberry/molasses muffins. Is there any way to enjoy these again while still losing weight? I've cut out baked goods trying to work up to Full Plate's Level 3.

Re: Here Is A Video Of Sarah Palin Interviewing Donald Trump. It Is Bonkers.

Rebecca_Clayton — Mon, 31 Aug 2015 15:13:36 -0000

I'm disappointed. When I sit down to watch Sarah Palin, I want to hear word salad. She was reading those questions, and they were in complete sentences. Sure, the questions and Trump's responses (not technically answers, as is his custom) were ridiculous, but not incoherent enough to be worth my time. I expect less from these two--much less. One star.

Re: Have Plans Tonight? Cancel Them. Sarah Palin Is Interviewing Donald Trump.

Rebecca_Clayton — Fri, 28 Aug 2015 13:45:32 -0000

It says, "Look at ME!!!!"

Re: Marijuana Research Just Got a Green Light From the Obama White House

Rebecca_Clayton — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 15:50:56 -0000

Surgeon General Sanjay Gupta? I thought it was Vivak Murthy. Gupta was considered back in 2009, but that didn't happen....

Re: Is Coding the New Literacy?

Rebecca_Clayton — Mon, 16 Jun 2014 13:02:42 -0000

Interesting article; my single quibble is your acceptance that the U.S. has "universal literacy." According to some stats I've seen about adult basic education, about 20% of Americans are "functionally illiterate," defined as reading at or below the fourth grade level. This means they don't read well enough to follow directions for power tools, medications, or cooking instructions. While some parts of the country include people struggling with English as a second language, that is not true of the rural area where I work, and our population's literacy is about the same as the national numbers. And don't get me started on innumeracy.

Before I got involved with adult education, about 10 years ago, I was unaware how many people can't read well enough to look up something on the Internet, or determine whether a calculator result like "5 x 3 = 503" is correct or incorrect. Even worse, many of these people are high school graduates.

I think your conclusions are spot-on, and I think introducing children to "computational thinking" can encourage them in their reading and math endeavors as well.

Re: Robots Will Win Our Hearts Before They Destroy Us All

Rebecca_Clayton — Fri, 06 Sep 2013 13:38:03 -0000

Wow. Growing up in the 60's, this is the way I was taught to act toward male authority figures. Feign deference, appear child-like and unthreatening, use those charming, litle-girl metaphors....How come nice girls haven't taken over the world yet?

Re: How GI Joe, Barbie, and Darth Vader Taught Children About War

Rebecca_Clayton — Sat, 17 Aug 2013 17:38:51 -0000

"a chorus of deep, male voices sang (to the tune of "The Halls of Montezuma"), "G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe, Fighting man from head to toe on the land, on the sea, in the air."I'm pretty sure that melody was "The Caissons Go Rolling Along," not "The Halls of Montezuma." All you have to do is look at the cadence of the lyrics quoted.

Re: What It Means to Be “From Here”

Rebecca_Clayton — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 19:37:32 -0000

In this rural community, it seems to take more than a single generation to be "from here." Young adults who were born here are not "from here" because their parents moved here in the 1960's. Of course, not all the 10th-generation folks are so picky--many of them have been very welcoming to me.

I've only been here 15 years, so I don't expect to ever be "from here," but I'm happy with my friends and my home, and I don't worry much about what other people think. However, I know several long-term residents that are really hurt that their 20 or 30 years of community participation is not enough to let them truly "belong here," and I can't help but think that rejection has something to do with the "backward elitism" you mentioned.

I hope you keep on being friendly and encouraging to the new folks, and don't take it as personal rejection if they find they can't make a living in your community. I know that in this community, many of the young "from here" folks find they can't make a living and they also move away. That's been going on for generations.

Re: Hating on Software Companies

Rebecca_Clayton — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 15:44:45 -0000

People who use tools are more passionate about them than they are about ordinary consumer goods. I've heard mechanics go on at length about how they hate one particular make of car, and the loggers I know will rant about a particular chainsaw manufacturer. I get unreasonably irked when I'm trying to get something done and the software won't do something I need. "!@#$$##@!!! commercial software! If only I were using UNIX."

Re: After the Storm: The Haves and the Have-Nots

Rebecca_Clayton — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 15:59:44 -0000

We live in Pocahontas Co, WV, one county north of Rhonda and Donna. It's more rural here, and our power goes off frequently, so people have the canned goods, battery-operated radios and scanners, generators with gas to keep the freezer from thawing. (We don't have to drink ditch water, but thanks for thinking of us.)

However, after a few days, generators run out of gas, and if the local stations have no power, they can't pump it for you to buy more. If your road is blocked with downed trees, it will take quite a bit of time and chainsaw gas to get you out. Communications were down here--no phone, no police radios, limited over-the-air broadcasts, and the heat was unusually severe.

We were inconvenienced, uncomfortable, lost some groceries, and had some property damage. Neighbors lost their homes or ran out of the oxygen they need for COPD.

The Doomsday Preppers still look stupid, but that's because they are prepared for just a few of the things that can go wrong on Doomsday. This storm aftermath has us thinking about some changes we need to make here at home. I hope our local community, state government, electric company, and telecommunication company will do the same, but I'm not really optimistic about it.

Re: 90 Percent of Corn Seeds Are Coated With Bayer's Bee-Decimating Pesticide

Rebecca_Clayton — Wed, 16 May 2012 18:49:07 -0000

The dead insect in the photo is a fly, not a bee. FWIW, it's probably also a pollinator, and it does appear to mimic a bee.

Good luck with your speech--I hope you'll tell us about your experience.

Re: The Most Important College Prep Test You've Never Heard Of

Rebecca_Clayton — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 11:40:01 -0000

Where I live, over half the college applicants have been out of school at least a couple of years. If you were a C+ algebra student in high school, and you've been home with your small children until the youngest is in kindergarten, your skills won't be ready for MATH 101.
Some of the students in my "developmental" math classes should have been encouraged to study a few hours for the placement test, and spare themselves the time and expense of the developmental class. Others stopped advancing in math skills in middle school, but got by in high school because the teachers had to focus on the utterly innumerate kids. These students leave high school with high grade point averages--A's in everything but math, where they get the gentleperson's C for behaving decently and making an effort. Accommodating this group in Math 101 will just dumb down Math 101 further. When I went to college, Math 101 was Calculus I; now, Math 101 is Basic Algebra.

West Virginia (like many other states) has free Adult Basic Education classes that could take the place of the community college's developmental classes or prepare students to pass admissions tests (they use COMPASS here), but very few people take advantage of this.

Re: Policing the Language Police

Rebecca_Clayton — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 09:55:00 -0000

Shouldn't it be "I hope that...." ?

Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave

Rebecca_Clayton — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 11:36:16 -0000

Yes, thank you Mac for reporting on this extra layer of human misery, closer to home but just as invisible to the consumer as the overseas factory workers' conditions and the environmentally damaging raw materials extraction that makes it all possible. I'm not sure how to change manufacturing practices, but you've clearly outlined what it would take to make fulfillment workers' conditions better, and it just wouldn't cost THAT MUCH. This is something public outcry could fix.

Re: What is Too Political for Fun?

Rebecca_Clayton — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:08:18 -0000

This summer, I got out all your V.I. books and re-read them in chronological order. I'd always admired the way you got the "feel" of Chicago, but this time, I noticed how clearly you captured the "feel of the times." This would surely be lost (or diminished, at least) if you left out social and political issues. Your evocation of "time and place" is why I enjoy your books more when I already know "how it comes out."

Re: Image-of-the-Week: Boozy Fruit Flies

Rebecca_Clayton — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 16:18:52 -0000

Actually, fruit flies live on yeast growing on spoiling fruit, not the fruit itself. They have an amazing array of alcohol dehydrogenases because their larvae swim in a boozy slurry. Tea-totalers are an impossibility in Drosophila-World.

Re: http://current.com/shows/countdown/blog/complete-transcript-for-sept-26-2011

Rebecca_Clayton — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 12:47:18 -0000

Thank you for posting complete transcripts in addition to video excerpts. Not everyone has access to TV or broadband internet, and some of us are just better readers than listeners.

Please keep up the good work getting the word out in as many ways as possible! Thanks again.

Re: Netflix Falls to Earth

Rebecca_Clayton — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 12:35:53 -0000

I dropped the 1-at-a-time DVD service because we got, at best, 4 movies a month, and we had a high rate of DVDs that wouldn't play--about one a month.

I'm surprised that so many people say they can't find anything to watch streaming. Right now, I have over 200 "instant watch" movies and TV series queued up, and I keep running across more things that look interesting. If a movie disappoints, we can stop it and select another one. A disappointing (or non-playing) DVD means nothing to watch until a replacement comes in the mail.

Our rural area has no TV or radio reception, satellite service is $70 per month for 150 channels of "there's nothing good on," and there are no Red Box kiosks in the National forest, so Netflix streaming is a treat, even when our download speed is slow and we have to wait several minutes for the video to buffer.

Re: Rosario Dawson Acts Up

Rebecca_Clayton — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 13:18:42 -0000

Interesting interview. FYI, "Winter's Bone" is set and filmed in the Missouri Ozarks, half a continent away from Appalachia. Appalachia is not a synonym for "rural poverty," it is a specific place, just as New York City and the Rocky Mountains are specific places. "Winter's Bone" made a great effort to be true to its unique place and people, and it's a pity to conflate the Ozarks with Appalachia.

Re: A Mouse in the Woods -- Eeeek!

Rebecca_Clayton — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 18:33:40 -0000

I've only found one of these in 10 years here on Droop Mountain. When I see them, I imagine these balloons are lost, rather than released, but that's probably just my own perspective. I see the balloons as escapees.