7 Quick Takes

1.)

I excised  Quick Take number one because it was too long to be a Quick Take.
If you want to read it go here!




2.)

I found this video for childen about the Fatima story and  wanted to keep it somewhere so that I could show it to the children later. So I thought I'd put it on my blog since it's the best way of ensuring that I'll be able to find it again. Please ignore ( unless a cartoon of the Fatima story is your kind of thing! )



3.)

My son showed me this. For some reason the last line just cracks me up. It's the sort of thing a 3 year old would say.



4.)

This is something to keep you ( or the children)  fascinated for hours:
World clock

A friend sent it to me. Here's what he says:

"Not only does it tell the exact time anywhere in the world but also thousands of other bits of information based on right now. The more you check through and analyse all of the info available the more absorbing it becomes.

It updates information automatically every fraction of a second and runs on a yearly, monthly, weekly or daily basis covering not just time anywhere in the world but also things like births, deaths ( + cause ) , cereal crops grown, cars and bicycle built, no of spam mails sent worldwide, Nigerian scam mails (an interesting one to include) crimes and types of in the US etc etc etc

Once you have exhausted all of the buttons on the front page make a click just to the right of the arrow bottom left and a new page opens with further icons along the top.

Clicking on ALL APPS opens a whole raft of more specific ones including on page 3 a page for the number of deaths in the Holocaust  by this date in October in 1944.

An interesting, and very telling and sad one is to compare the number of deaths from war since Jan 1st 2010 with the number of abortions and suicides

Glancing just now I could see

WAR                  146,000

DROWNING     309,000

SUICIDE           674,000

ABORTION       33million 200,000 " 

5.)

My friends 15 year old daughter has had enough of the aggressively sexualised images that clothing companies use to market their brand at her and her friends. 
Jack Wills have attracted some controversy in the past over their use of partial nudity ( and smoking, although personally that's the least of my worries) in their seasonal "handbooks". 
They have rather cynically found a way around this by requiring customers to be 18 or over to be able to sign up to recieve the handbook. Of course this in no way means that the handbook won't find it's way into the hands of fashion conscious, cool hunting young tweens and in fact  increases it's allure for them. 
This makes them cynically manipulative gits in my opinion.
Here's Veronicas letter:


Dear Sir/Madam
      Honestly, I have so far been a fond buyer of your “fabulously British” clothes. Yet receiving the termly handbook brings me to a dilemma as to whether I should continue to support your stores. The advertisements you produce, especially in this Autumn Handbook 2010, seems far too shallow for the expensive smart clothing you produce. Is it really necessary for you to publish such explicit and Graphic imagery of two almost nude youths in bed or two young women passionately kissing? I personally do not give these images any artistic merit as these images are close to pornographic, involving as they do, highly sexualised scenes. You should consider that young girls read these handbooks.
I wonder what your intention is in encouraging young girls to see such sexualised images; and this at a time where paedophilia seems to be the worst of all crimes. Your implicit claim that these images are “Fabulously British” and something to aspire to is offensive to the patriots!
     I would be more likely to purchase from Jack Wills again if I were not concerned that I might be supporting such cheap and shallow minded imagery.

    Yours Faithfully
(signed)




Good for her!

6.)

Two very good articles on contraception this week in the blogosphere.

This one,which I came across over here.

And this one over at the always readable and thought provoking Conversion Diary.

Here's a teaser:

When people see me out and about with my four young children, one of the most common questions I get is, “Do you want more?” (Or, more accurately, “DO YOU WANT MORE?!?!?!?!“)

I’m never sure what to say. “Yes” doesn’t sound quite right. Our fourth baby in four-and-a-half years is only eighteen months old, so I can’t say that I’ve spent a lot of time yearning for another baby lately. In fact, I’ve never really been a baby person. I’ve never had that moment other women talk about of holding a newborn and thinking, “Oh, I want one!” On the other hand, “no” doesn’t encapsulate what I’m feeling either.

I’ve thought about this a lot over that past few months, and I eventually realized that I have such a hard time coming up with the answer simply because it’s not the right question. Here’s why:

.

6 reasons why “Do you want more?” isn’t the right question

1. It’s not all about me

When I used to think about pregnancy and babies, I wouldn’t think a whole lot further than the first couple years of new life and how it would impact me. My first thoughts would be along the lines of, “But I don’t feel like being pregnant!” or “I don’t want to deal with all the work of the baby period!”

Thanks in part to my conversion and in part to watching my children grow, I’ve since had the epiphany of realizing that those high-maintenance pregnancies and fussy newborns are actual human beings! I know this sounds crazy, but I had a total mental disconnect where I kind of forgot that all the adults I know and love were once fetuses and newborns themselves. I hadn’t internalized the fact that a new pregnancy will lead to a full human being, just like me. Now that I get it, when I evaluate when and if to have more children, I try to remember to consider the life of the potential new man or woman as much as I consider his or her impact on my own life.

2. It’s not all about what I want

One of the biggest revelations of my conversion was this:

Doing what I want ≠ Happiness

All my life I thought that if I could just spend enough time meditating on what I feel like doing and then amass enough control over my life to go do it, I’d finally have lasting happiness. I was shocked when I found out that that assumption was wrong. I was more shocked when I realized what is the path to lasting happiness: serving others.

I used to think that if I could just hurry up and stop having kids so that I could get back to living “my” life, I’d be happy. Now I see that, not only is serving others the right thing to do, but it’s the only path to joy and peace. So the ideas of not having more children vs. having more children aren’t all that different: either way, I’ll be sacrificing and serving.

It's a great piece. I really recommend clicking over and reading the rest over at Jens blog.

7.)

I thought this was funny. A friend of mine ( the same one that sent me the clock) recieved this unsolicited email from someone rejoicing in a most beautifully apt name:

How are you today, I hope all is well with you .I am sorry to worry you with my Proposal for a relationship with you, but I know that you will grant my request in good sense and understanding, My name is miss Shady I saw your contact today in the internet forum site and became interested in you, I will also like to know more about you. I’m hoping to hear from you soon so that I can send you more details about my self including my picture. I believe we can move from here. Bear in mind that friendship and Love has no colors barrier, no educational back ground barrier, no social-economic barrier, religious, language, nationality or distance barrier, the only important thing there is love.

Yours Sincerely
Shady

OK. I  totally realise that I am incapable of making my takes "quick".
Mea culpa.
To see  Quick Takes  properly done, go here.