CPS Photocopy Budget

What is up with the restriction on teachers making Xerox copies at Cincinnati Public schools?

I've noticed that our children's teachers refer to this often. For example, yesterday, I received a notice from my daughter's teacher that stated:

"My copy budget is limited thus your child will only receive one sheet of math homework per week instead of five."

WHAT!!??

Does this make any sense at all? Has anyone else dealt with this in their school?

Do some parents donate paper and toner? Should we return to use of the mimeograph?

Also, the Enquirer has an article today on one of my other pet peeves: short lunch periods. It is so frustrating when the kids bring full lunchboxes back home. I think a parent at our kid's school brought a proposal to the CPS school board that would mandate longer lunches, but they decided to leave it up to each principal.

Intersection Density

The Power of Intersection Density

Intersection density is the number of intersections in an area. It corresponds closely to block size — the greater the intersection density, the smaller the blocks. Small blocks make a neighborhood walkable.

...Of all the built environment measurements, intersection density has the largest effect on walking — more than population density, distance to a store, distance to a transit stop, or jobs within one mile. Intersection density also has large effects on transit use and the amount of driving...

Continued here

End of Feminism - Are Men Needed?

In my parent's generation, a single paycheck usually was enough to support the family. This allowed more for a more relaxed child rearing situation, and it also had a built-in saftey mechanism in that in rough times, the mother could pitch in to make ends meet. Today families need both full-time incomes to make ends meet and if one parent loses their job the result can be foreclosure. Couples today work more hours for less stability.

I've recognized these issues, but this article goes further along the path wondering what the growing strength of women in the workforce will do to the family structure:

Childrearing and marriage are no longer connected

...In 1970, women contributed 2 to 6 percent of the family income. Now the typical working wife brings home 42.2 percent, and four in 10 mothers...are the primary breadwinners in their families...

... it is going to become more common for women to have children outside marriage. But this doesn't mean you're necessarily going to see a rise in single motherhood. Women will be free to experiment with many different kinds of parenting arrangements, from raising children alone or with a female partner, to raising them in an extended family.

More reproductive freedom does not mean women will want to lead non-traditional lives or abandon their families. In twenty years, a woman might decide she wants children, but instead of getting married she wants to live with her parents and grandparents. Because she has the income to pay for her child's needs, and to contribute to the family home, she now has the freedom to choose this option.

...We may return to arrangements that look a lot like what people had over a century ago, when servants and nannies took care of middle-class homes while the middle- and upper-classes ran countries and businesses. Except this time around, women's incomes will be what allows a household to afford its servants. (Remember, the wealthiest families are dual-income.)

...In a future where women workers report to women bosses, fewer and fewer women are going to feel that they share a common social status with their sisters. In fact, female nurses might feel like they have more in common with male nurses than they do with the female hospital administrators who treat them like crap and cut their hours.

Women's equality with men may spell an end to women's solidarity with each other. But women will forge new alliances - ones that have nothing to do with gender. And maybe that isn't so much the end of feminism, but the beginning of a world that no longer needs it.

As a side, look at some famous man-caves.

Janis

the only


An album I just found, that I had never seen before:

Holding Company video: