Daily Archives: September 16, 2007

Chicken Wire

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That’s such a lovely sound. Chicken wire, or maybe better: “chickenwire”. (I would put it alongside “cellar door”…[update: almost. I suppose it is not as transcendent, really.])

I digress. I just thought I’d share with you a picture of the things I went to the hardware store to get last night1 (Click for larger view):

    chicken wire project

  • Several feet of chicken wire (it really is called that on the labeling, but better: Poultry netting. Excellent. I like the idea of going home to construct an enclosure for my wayward happy fat chickens), 3ft high.
  • A collection of bricks (I chose some nice miniature ones… they called out to me while I was trying to find the regular bricks).
  • Large black plastic bags. Heavy duty.
  • Steel wire.
  • A 25 inch machete. Annoyingly, it comes from the store so (deliberately) blunt I’d be better off using a wet fish to perform the tasks intended for it2. Going to have to put an edge on it later.

Yes, you guessed right, I’m going to be constructing something. Any idea what the project is?

But I won’t start now. Just got back from a hike over at Runyon Canyon among the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Home School

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simpsons schoolThis is very interesting to me. I just heard a story (by Nancy Mullane) on NPR’s Weekend Edition about home schooling. (The link is here, and audio will be available at that page shortly). It focuses on the issue that African Americans are the fastest growing group of adopters among minorities in the US. I was also not aware that homeschooling is on a rapid rise.

This raises all sorts of questions for me. Very basic ones. How well does homeschooling work? Does the “product” – an educated person – perform well afterwards, once they’ve rejoined educational settings with the more traditional social environments (colleges and universities). Does the reduced level of social interaction during those homeschooling years have an adverse effect, or is it compensated for by social interaction that presumably takes place after school? Perhaps there are arguments that the reduction in social interaction even helps in some ways? I really don’t know much about this. Do you? I presume there’s all sorts of statistics on this, but I’d be curious to hear a bit of anecdotal discussion in the comments. Perhaps you were homeschooled? Have friends who were? Are homeschooling someone now? Are being homeschooled now? Tell us what you think!

I wonder about this since I’m curious as to whether this results in a different (better, […] Click to continue reading this post →