Dear parents,

the hw is to find and stick pictures of the letter m and to colour the picture of the angel visiting Mary.

Happy Weekend and see you again on Monday!! Hope to see you Noah and get well soon!!

This week I’ve decided to focus on MyMathLab homework and the grades we assign to it. (Sorry for the delay – exams, exams, exams …)

How I’ve Always Done It

For the last few years I have made MyMathLab 25% of my students’ grade. I divide the 25% equally among the following 3 categories: homework, chapter quizzes, SLO quizzes. I have always felt comfortable assigning a little over 8% of my total grade to homework. I know some instructors get a little worried about students getting high homework grades without actually learning, and therefore setting themselves up for failure on exams.

I spend a significant amount of time at the beginning of the semester talking about how to do the homework to maximize understanding. I explain each of the learning aids and how to incorporate them in an effective plan to learn, while also explaining some of the pitfalls associated with the learning aids. (See my article on “Student Pointers” on my web site for more information.) With this approach I have a very small number of students who do well on the homework but do not learn.

Here are a few other strategies you can use if you worry about the homework.

Option 1 – Limit the number of attempts per question.

MyMathLab now allows the instructor to limit the number of attempts per question. I have a colleague who currently uses this strategy, limiting his students to 3 attempts, and has found it to be successful. First, he says, this is actually 9 attempts – 3 chances to answer each of the 3 questions. Second, he feels that his students take each question more seriously due to the limited number of attempts, rather than just going through the motions.

Another benefit to this approach is that the use of the “Help Me Solve This” learning aid uses up one of their attempts. This makes students less reliant on the learning aids, which should improve their exam scores.

(Keep up the good work, JB.)

Option 2- Turn off the learning aids.

MyMathLab now allows you to turn of some or all of the learning aids for an assignment. So, if you don’t want your students to abuse the learning aids, turn them off. You could create one assignment that leaves them on, and another that leaves them off. You could turn them off in homework assignments, and direct students to Study Plan problems for help.

Option 3 – Make the homework worth 0%.

What?!?!?! If the homework is worth 0%, the students won’t do it. Not so fast, my friend.

At Pioneer VI in Kentucky, I got a great idea from two instructors (one from Hazzard County) that I plan to implement next semester. For each section, create a homework assignment and a quiz. Leave the learning aids on for the homework, but not for the quiz. Make the homework a prerequisite for the quiz; for example, set the prerequisite to 90% for access to the quiz.

Students still need to do the homework to learn, because they will need to be able to solve the problems on the quiz. This way, they use the learning aids as they were intended – to increase understanding.

This is a win-win situation. We can get students to do the homework and demonstrate proficiency on the quizzes, without inflating their grades.

Summary

MyMathLab homework is not the “magic bullet”. It needs to be one part of a comprehensive plan to help students understand. Using quizzes, without learning aids, is one way to make sure students understand and are not simply clicking through problems until they get one they have seen before. Also, if you want to make sure your students are understanding the material, find a way to check out their written work. I give quick quizzes at the beginning of class and group assignments at the end of class so I can take a look at their work.

If you have any questions, leave a comment or drop me a line through the contact page on my web site. – George

Note – MyMathLab related articles appear every Monday.

I am a math instructor at College of the Sequoias in Visalia, CA. If there are topics you’d like me to address in future MyMathLab articles, send in your requests through the contact page on my web site. – George

Brandy is at it again.  Giving her fans another behind-the-scenes taste of her magnificent talent.  She has posted another video of her singing acapella in her bathroom on her YouTube channel.  This time it’s a powerful rendition of the Sam Cooke classic, “A Change Is Gonna’ Come.”

Is there a city you like?
I’m sure there is.
Have you ever thought how it would be living in it?
Have you ever compared it to your own town?

No?

Anyway, now you ‘ll have to.

Your next assignment is to compare two cities or towns of your own choice. Here’s an example. A good site to visit might be also Wikipedia. For all those who would like to live in the USA, here’s this link.

You can also help with the Student’s  book, page 49.
And don’t forget about Google Translate: it translates both ways. But don’t rely too much on the computerised translations…

Your homework for this week is to play typer shark and post your best scores here.

Click here to be taken to the game

Honestly I don’t like this video at all. I should have shot in different angles and aspects. Anyway…

Once again I find myself writing a blog, without anything clear-cut and worthy of being said.

Got myself a shiny new contract for a flat back where I lived Winter semester last year, to begin January 1st. Outstanding. 12th floor (highest floor in the building). Current flatmate may join me, or she may not. It’s her call. I will naturally have to re-arrange and pack-up my life before departing Finland (I’m rather accustomed to this practice by now, unfortunately) which I certainly am not looking forward to. Anyway, as I haven’t properly ranted about the current flat, or well, perhaps just a wee bit and certainly not enough, here goes:

There’s a construction site literally 20 feet away, right opposite my window. The noise has been kept to a minimum, I’ve gotta say, but they do commence every morning bright and early at 7 am. Actually scratch the “bright” since the sun never shines here. Further complications arising from the construction include my short-cut being built over, and extreme, extreme ice and/or mud whilst cutting through the site on the way to the bus-stop (i.e. the next quickest route). I’ve almost fallen on ice (no lighting, of course) and I’ve thrashed my dear Adidas All-Stars. *cue angry fist shaking*

The flat itself blows. We have no table or chairs in the kitchen. There’s no bookshelf in the bedroom. I have massive quantities of nonsense everywhere, and it’s increasingly impossible to keep things tidy. I’ve got a tiny, creaky bed with the typical 3,5 inch thick foam pad as a mattress and a desk with an oily top which has made my laptop’s mouse pad disgustingly oily. Not to mention the opening for the chair/one’s legs in the desk is 2 feet wide, so there is no comfortable way to do work/compute. The bathroom is in a league of it’s own as well, complete with mysteriously stained floor, and a shower that floods the entire bathroom. Our entrance-way and the hallway leading into the kitchen are without light; it is impossible to remove the lighting fixtures too, to replace the bulbs. Which is a nice touch given just how dark it is here from 3 pm until 10 am.

I just managed a few moments ago to procure a random copy-editing job. First free-lance work, here. I can use some extra money, woo.

The weather sucks. Although it’s been warmer, and we are looking at a possible 46 F (8 C) on Friday! Toasty! Residual snow and just mud and puddles everywhere!

I’m an American, who feels Irish, tries to speak German and lives in Finland. Make sense out of my life, please?

San Fran this Summer is on my mind. Still in the idea phase. How sweet would it be to flat-share with a certain Mr. Stello and work at Walzwerk (or somewhere similarly awesome?). Wishful thinking perhaps, but it will be a cold day in Hell before I intern anywhere, ever, in some Poli. Sci. capacity. Don’t have it in me. Should I change my mind, as I’m want to do, I could do it Summer 2011 anyway. If I sort all I plan on sorting this academic year, I’ll be left with my lousy German minor and a Bachelor’s thesis. This Summer ought to be one of rejuvenation, lots of working, and enjoying the best city in the world, if things shake out that way. The more I think about it, the less I care about experiencing the “wondrous Finnish Summer” (anteeksi suomalaiset!). So who knows about Summer plans. Summer feels so far away, but on the other side of January it won’t anymore. Especially since my Winter/Spring term here is entirely over by the first week or so in May, and if all goes accordingly nothing will begin in Germany until late September or October.

H-dub check: 3 textbooks to read, 3 tests to take, 14 misc., smallish writing assignments to do. Time minus: 3 weeks.

On the off-hand chance anyone reading this plans on mailing me something, I will be at my current address until the 30th. Mail will be delivered here for me however, until the end of December. From January onward it should be sent to my new address, which I can gladly email you. If you are among the “immediately relevant parties” I shall inform you anyway, shortly. I depart for Germany on the 9th of December, so please don’t bother mailing me anything after November 30th, since I likely won’t receive it until I return in January.

In case anyone missed it by the way, my main man Gavin Newsom is out of the Gubernatorial race. I can hear the collective sigh of relief. Bollocks.

Back to contemplating life and doing what I do.

Amanda Harmon

Follow this link to watch the Working with MS Office video

Once you have watched this video add a comment to this post to say that.

… or singer.

Please write a paragraph about your favorite band or singer. Write approximately 150 words. Be as creative as possible and try to include some interesting info about the band or singer’s past.

Here’s some help…

One of the best concert I’ve been to this year was the concert of the British band Coldplay in Udine, Italy. They also played their famous song Yellow. The members of the band started playing together already at the university…

P.S. If you want you can also post a link to your favorite song but you’ll have to do it in text format not as a hyperlink.
For example: My favorite song is Speed of sound. Please visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNftO3-_sxQ&feature=channel

For your 2nd “blog” please write about an event from the past.

This could vary from childhood memories, funny childhod memories, first day at work/school, to the holidays you took with your family last summer.

Write approximately 100 – 120 words.

Hope to read your entries soon

Mojca

P.s Little something to make you laugh…

Previously I was working on my soundslides

Click http://students.washington.edu/livial/publish_to_web/ to view.

It’s my first project. I have never realized that it’s that hard to work on a project like that. I have listened to the raw audio for more than a thousand times when editing. And it was only a two minutes soundslides, I can’t imagine how difficult it would be like if it’s an hour of documentary. I absolutely appreciate those people out there who have done excellent and fabulous soundslides.

1- Finish presentations
2- Discussion Questions, p. 420 #4, 6, 11-13
3- Podcast: Honesty

HW: Review Questions, p. 420 #:4-10, 12-17

Blog #1
www.hypebeast.com
I like this blog because it is very updated on sneakers, clothes, toys, and all kinds of fashionable items. I visit this blog at least couple times a week. If you are in the game of clothing, or if you are a sneaker head, you would definitely love this blog.

Blog #2
http://seattleartblog.com/
This blog is very informative about art galleries, shows and events in the Pacific Northwest area. It would be even better if it provides more opinions.

Blog #3
http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/
There are lots of photos of cakes in the blog. If you like cake and sweets, you would love this blog. Also, it is a user generated blog, so you can get a lot of different perspectives from around the world about cakes.

اولین جلسه ی گروه ، در روز شنبه برگزار شد.

از آنجایی که قالب خاصی برای صورت جلسات، توسط استاد ارائه نشد صلاح دیدیم که صورت جلسات گروهمان را بدین صورت در سایت قرار دهیم. طبیعتاً با ذکر نقاط ضعف ، می توانیم نوشته های آتی را بهتر و بهتر کنیم.

روز و تاریخ برگزاری جلسه : شنبه 16 آبان ماه سال 1388

مدت جلسه : 45 دقیقه

حاضرین در جلسه : بامداد عقیلی ، مرتضی فرازمند، پوریا تازیک و جلیل رستمی

خلاصه مباحث عنوان شده در جلسه :

در ابتدای جلسه توضیحاتی پیرامون سایت، ارائه شد و قرار بر این شد تا همه ی اعضای گروه پس از عضو شدن در سایت ، به صورت متناوب مطالبی را در آن قرار دهند. به گونه ای که هر نفر حداقل 2 مطلب در هفته در سایت گروه قرار دهد.

پس از آن بحثی پیرامون عنوان پروژه ی تیمی مطرح شد. آقای جلیل رستمی موضوعی را با عنوان «امنیت در B2B » مطرح کردند و پس از ارائه توضیحات کوتاهی در این خصوص و آشنا کردن اعضا با عنوان پیشنهادی، قرار شد مطالبی را جهت آشنایی بیشتر، از طریق ایمیل در اختیار دیگر اعضا قرار دهند. ضمناً مقرر شد با توجه به عدم پیشنهاد موضوع دیگری توسط اعضا، همین موضوع جهت بررسی بیشتر به استاد معرفی شود. نکته ی حائز اهمیت اینکه هنوز عنوان پروژه قطعی نشده است.

در آخر هم اعضای گروه به بررسی و تبادل نظر در مورد HW2 پرداختند. به گونه ای که با ایجاد فضای طوفان فکری، اعضا پیشنهادات خود را در مورد هر قسمت ارائه دادند. یکی از اعضا هم تمامی پیشنهادات دوستان را یادداشت می کرد. پس از طی زمانی نزدیک به نیم ساعت و جمع آوری پیشنهادات خوبی در این خصوص ، مقرر شد هر یک از اعضا با توجه به تعداد مباحث HW که 4 تا بود، مسئول یک قسمت شود و مباحث مطرح شده را در قالبی منظم و منسجم، جهت ارائه به استاد آماده و ویرایش کند.

جلسه در ساعت 14 پایان یافت .

The S3 Stadnard Grade Computing Studies class are to complete the games for Spreadsheets this week for homework and have it posted up on the Flickr group.

Post a question in the group if you have any problems.

Have you ever had to do you HW by candle light?  Well I have and it is not that pleasant.

So as most students at stony brook know their was a black out in roosevelt qaud ealier this week.  Their was also no hott water in kelly at the same time.  These two issues go hand and hand.  John Sparano, the director of residential operations, had this to say, “the interruption of the electrical service resulted from the failure of several electrical feeders located in the proximity of a high temperature hot water leak near Roosevelt quad.  Residents lost heat, hot water, and power in Roosevelt Quad and heat and hot water in Kelly.”

When I found out about this I got in touch with John Sparano because many students feel we should be reimbursed for having unlivable housing for two days.  Sparano responded by saying unlivable was a harsh word to use.  Personally I am sick of this.  Their is always something happening in my building.  With this blackout people were trapped in elevators for two hours.  No one was able to take a shower in their own building.  How is that livable.  I think we should be reimbursed for 2 days of housing.

As some of you may be asking now.  What does this have to do with doing HW by candle light.  If you couldn’t tell I had no power in my room the night of and I had to finish a presentation for the next day.  So at 2 am I sat at my desk with 2 candles and did all my reading to prepare for it.  Not the best way to do my work but I had to finish it.

If not being able to shower or do my HW in a reasonable enviorment is unlivable than I don’t know what is.

As we near the end of yet another Domestic Violence Awareness month, let’s evaluate the costs and benefits {say, what??} of domestic violence, and Let’sGetHonest — there IS a benefit to some folks for perpetuating it, and for some of the folks perpetually stopping it.

Face it:  An asset on one person (or institution’s) balance sheet is a liability on another.  An expense on one’s is income on another’s.  A loss on one’s may show up as a profit on another’s.  That’s called “transfer of wealth” and “marketing.” 

Right now, the American people (at least) have mortgaged their conscience (and families) to others in too many categories, and hopefully by paying taxes, the experts will take care of the major problems and the rest of us can get back to the grindstones, our passions, or whatever makes our days.

Hearing about slayings related to family breakups (innumerable and geographically widespread), or gangrapes after a homecoming dance (Richmond, CA — recent) , or workplace shootings by disgruntled ex-employees (Orlando, Florida), or international parental child abductions, asylum IN the United States from abuse abroad, or asylum abroad FROM abuse in the United States, and — now — at-home military massacres of  yet-to-be-determined cause (mental health caregiver stress + fundamentalist religious protest against the war in terror — Ft. Hood, TX — 13 dead) — and so forth.  These are high costs.  

How many common values do we really share?

The question is who’s invested in maintaining it, and who really is invested in stopping it.  Once that becomes clear, then another question is who is invested in the fruitless effort to turn a sheep into a goat, or a bad apple into a good apple. Are all apples really potentially good apples, or is this line of reasoning quack science?  And how long, and how much must WHO pay WHOM in trusting that the experts experimenting on — guess which communities — have those communities’ best interests at heart. 

Institutions do what institutions are designed to do — grow, and perpetuate themselves.  And pay employees to run them, PR to promote them, and advocates to advocate for them.  Face it, domestic violence is now an institution, and with many similarities to slavery.  And I do believe it has its own carpetbaggers — one reason I started this blog, too. 

I ran across TheLoop21.com, and was immediately taken by its common sense and uncommon points of view.  Here is one of their series on Domestic Violence:

(1)   Blacks, Domestic Violence, and the price of abuse
TheLoop21.com

By Nsenga K. Burton, Ph.D.

Tue, 10/27/2009 – 07:18

Guns killed 305 Black women in 2006.

Read more of TheLoop21.com’s Red, Black and Green series on domestic violence.

Domestic violence in the African–American community must stop. It seems like an easy enough thing to say, but doing it seems like something else all together. We live in a society marked by violence. This country was founded on violent acts, many of which were against women, particularly Black women who were slaves

AND 

(2)  Second, consider whose loss == whose gain. 

now that we consider for whom DV is a literal $$$ EXPENSE, I suggest we consider, to which groups, businesses, entities, and/or individuals or professional classes of individuals DV is actually an INCOME, if not a business, a livelihood, a name, and a pretty solid cash flow, whether private or governmental. 

now here’s that article. . . .

Domestic violence in the African–American community must stop. It seems like an easy enough thing to say, but doing it seems like something else all together. We live in a society marked by violence. This country was founded on violent acts, many of which were against women, particularly Black women who were slaves. It would seem that having suffered such violence at the hands of former male and female slave owners, our cultural practices would demand that we respect and protect Black women from harm. It is truly sad, when the one thing that we can count on statistically speaking, is harm in the form of physical and emotional abuse from our intimate partners. 

According to the study “When Men Murder Women: An Analysis of 2006 Homicide Data,” released by The Violence Policy Center, a national non-profit organization that conducts research on violence in the United States, 551 African American women were murdered by males in 2006. The study stated that there were 1,818 race-identified females murdered by males. While white women accounted for the largest total of those killed (1,208), African American women were killed at a rate nearly three times higher. How did most of the murders occur? Guns killed 305 of those women.

Intimate partners are literally blowing Black women away for a variety of reasons that include stress, mental illness, control, narcissism and pathology. Mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, nieces and cousins are leaving this earth with wounded bodies and spirits and sadly enough the numbers are increasing, not decreasing. What does this mean for the black community?

It means that we have to do something to break the cycle of abuse and violence in our homes. If the majority of Black households are headed by women, what happens when those women are killed or injured? Talking about domestic violence hasn’t helped. High profile cases like those involving Chris Brown and Rihanna, Bebe Winans, Big Pun, Don Cornelius, Jennifer Hudson’s sister and Tyrese Gibson haven’t helped. Women offering testimony in church and on YouTube hasn’t helped. Men and women creating awareness campaigns during the month of October hasn’t helped. 

If you turn on the television or read a newspaper, there is a very high likelihood that a woman murdered by an intimate partner is somewhere in the content.

We know that domestic violence breaks up families. We know that children suffer emotionally, financially and spiritually with the sudden loss of a parent. We know that it leaves irreparable mental and emotional scars on women and men. But do we know the economic costs of domestic violence to the black community? Let me break it down for you.

According to the National Network to End Domestic Violence, in the United States, the cost of intimate partner violence exceeds $5.8 billion each year, with $4.1 billion going towards direct medical and mental health services. 

Victims of intimate partner violence lost 8 million days of paid work because of violence committed against them by current or former husbands, boyfriends or dates. That equals 32,000 full-time jobs and almost 5.6 million days of household productivity.

According to the National Funeral Director’s Association, the average cost of a funeral in the U.S. is $7,323 thousand each year. In 2006, Black families spent over $4 million burying African American victims of domestic violence.

According to the World Health Organization, the cost of domestic violence in the United States amounts to 3.3 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP).

Sadly, I could go on but I’ll stop. Domestic violence is costing this country, and our community, much more than our mental, physical and spiritual health. It is costing us our economic viability and the ability to create financial freedom in our communities. How will we build wealth in our community, when so much of it is going towards costs related to domestic violence?

Appealing to the heart, mind and spirit has not worked in ending or decreasing domestic violence incidents in our country and in the Black community. While we are underachieving in so many arenas, we are overachieving in this one.

When strategizing on how to end domestic violence, think about it from more than an emotional, physical and spiritual perspective. Think about the economics of it. While we’re killing women, we’re killing the economy and our economic growth too.

Nsenga Burton, Ph.D. is managing editor of TheLoop21.com. She also writes the pop cultural blog Tune N, is a cultural clinic for Creative Loafing and an Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Goucher Collegelike it!

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Read more of TheLoop21.com’s Red, Black and Green series on domestic violence.

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LET’S GET HONEST COMMENTS:

Dr. Burton, are you aware of IAADV?  May I also recommend randijames.com and rights4mothers.wordpress.com? 

Also, on my blog, I have a rather harsh, in some senses, response to a Kansas Legislator promoting another fatherhood initiative.  This is an African American woman raised by a pioneer activist, her own mother.  Yet the logic totally eludes me – - search “Oletha Faust-Goudeau” on this site.  I then researched her, a bit, and found that some key connections had convinced her to go in a certain direction, and not another. 

I personally wish more blacks could homeschool, rather than put their kids in HeadStart, then inferior K-12 school systems in which too many teachers have bad attitudes, but the one with great attitudes still have a bureaucracy to deal with.   The educational, economic, and court/law enforcement institutions, as well as our federal tax dollars are closely woven together in an operational LOOP. 

The comparison wish slavery is a good one.  Slaveholders profited, immensely, from free labor — obviously if you pay a slave nothing, or a subsistence wage, discourage literacy, break up families, rape enough of the women, and repeatedly tell them their problem is really discontent with their lot, that’s a lot of effort, but it’s also a lot of profit.  hmmm . .. kind of reminds me of aspects of our educational system, too.  but back to the point. . . . . . .        

Appealing to the costs of abuse to ‘us all’ as a society assumes that those economic costs to those profiting are actually higher than the benefits of abuse, in which those profiting from it have actually invested.

Following my line of reasoning yet?  . . . .  A chronic abuser does so because it is allowed, it produces benefits that that individual wants, and because no one has forced him, or her, to stop. . . . .      

I challenge “us” to consider — really consider — is ‘we’re all in this together’ a myth or not, in matters of DV, neighborhood violence, or national debt. 

In Richmond, California, a community is in shock – it will last a few weeks or months, I am sure — when a 15 year old girl leaving a homecoming dance and walking to be picked up by her father — there was a father involved — never made it there.  She took a detour with some friends, inhaled a lot of alcohol, it seems, and then she was no longer one of the gang, she was gang-raped.  And photographed.  And the gang was substantial.  This only stopped when someone at a nearby houseparty finally got outraged and called the police.  It is all over TV and newspapers.

People, where do we really think the gang mentality is formed???  Why was a 15 year old wanting to drink?  Why, in one of the highest homicide cities in the nation, and that’s the truth, was not her Dad able to show up at the FRONT door?  How could a young girl not have some friends (not the come, get loaded, and whoa — here are the rest of my male friends who’d ‘love’ to get to know you type of friend) walk her straight into her Dad’s car?  If her Mom and Dad were employed, were they paying taxes for an educational system where THIS happened, and where a 15 year old doesn’t have a real friend to support her even a few dozen yards after a dance, and set some better values?   Would the fatherhood movement have helped avert this situation?  I sincerely doubt it.

In the USA we have a remarkable thing happened.  We have an African American President and First Lady.  Not only, but our President was raised by a single mother and is bi-racial.  How much better hope can we have that someone at the top of the ladder of the top country in the free world, or at least one close to the “top,” would speak for us, feel for us, care for those hurting and those at the bottom, especially after what he went through as a youngster. 

I voted for President Obama.  Afterwards, and after losing my livelihood, and children, and watching friends also take repeated hits, because of family court corruption, I looked at whitehouse.gov and found out where the word “mother” stood, as far as usage.  I found uncomfortably close connections pre- and post-election between fatherhood groups and individuals, particularly Jeffery Leving, Esq., of Illinois, and the honorable stream of feminist backlash conservatives wanting to make sure the WOMEN (any color, but for sure African American) didn’t get too uppity and forget their place in life.  I learned that the Obamas were in 2007 the 10th richest US Congressman couple, somewhere underneath Rockefeller, Boxer, McCain, I think Feinstein?, and a Senator from Tennessee who was making a large profit in corporate daycare business, multinational.  How “us” is this Congress, really?  How many of their children went through the public school system and came from dangerous neighborhoods?  How many of them inherited no wealth or, what’s more, no business sense? 

How many of them are women??  Let alone African-American women.  Let alone African American Women who raised children alone?  Apply this also to the other institutions running national policy — I mean at the decision-making level, not the support staff level..  And where these top decisionmakers ARE women, how many of them are holding to policies which go against the grain in the matter of stopping domestic violence, vs. making a profit studying low-income people ground up by one system or another of many?

I fled my home yesterday, briefly I hope, because of a male without a professional or personal life of his own other than his refusal to acknowledge that in the USA, it is permissible to divorce, and no, you canNOT come back in my life.   I happen to know some of the fathers’ rights talks he has been egged on by, and this was after one of the firmest, plainest NOs it is possible to deliver.

This man alone was never the sole problem.  I survived and got out.  For years now, I have appealed to their own economic common sense in the enablers both local, familial, and in an everwidening circle, all I ran into, seeking my own life back, and if possible some contact with children who were being, in essence, held hostage to this IDEA that a single mother is a threat to society and her own children, per se — no evidence required, but proesting this in any form is evidence of bad character — and trust me.  For enablers, it has to hit VERY close to home economically or personally, to cause a change of position, opinion, or action.  And for those with the added religious gas in the tank — it’s an offence to their God, it’s disrupting society, it’s against nature, to let a competent woman leave a violent man with children in tow — and not go back!!!   their own life {and apparently maybe there wasn’t much life outside of dominating women} – - may not even be close enough.

I am typing on a strange computer from a strange place, struggling again with another technology, and I am getting damn tired of this of the stress on my friends, and acquaintances, children, and self. 

No struggle is without costs, and all worthwhile things are going to take a fight.  But maybe — TheLoop21 folks — we need to really understand that there are indeed sides, and who is on which one.  

The marginalized of society are the canaries in the coal mine.  They are the barometer and feedback to its institutions, because those institutions are run by like human beings with like instincts, only not so tested yet, perhaps. 

So are you a canary, a miner, or do you own the mine– or hope to?  The miners and the canaries had best know which one they are appealing to when it comes to domestic violence in the community.  Are you part of the Gold Rush, or did you have the foresight to invest in Levi Strauss, and the technology and suppliers of the gold rush folk?  Where’s the parallel in this topic?

I can tell you who some of the Levi Strauss investors, with real foresight and a replicatable business plan, were in the BUSINESS of DOMESTIC VIOLENCE.  Can you?  If not poke around this blog, ones linked to it, or figure it out yourself.  HINT:   AFCC.  HINT:  MMPDI  HINT:  Center for Policy Research and a few others in the Denver area.  HINT:  practically the entire family law field.  Analyze a few of these, and you’ll recognize the business model.

Thank you for your tolerance, and hopefully this post offends someone enough to stop, pause, and ask other questions.