Anachronistic Mom Blog

A wonderful toy for a rainy day

I bought these years ago. They are a way for a child to make a drawing or to send a photo.

Check them out.

http://www.post-a-photo-store.com/Post_a_Photo_Std_Kids_Crayola_Mailable_Frames_p/kdcr014.htm

We're drawing pictures to make postcards and sending them to friends today!

Are you a writer? Here's a writer warmer-upper

http://onetwofiver.com/

Found in my bookmarks: Write like and Egyptian

Check it out. Your name in hieroglyphs!  Why isn't this on my iphone?

best educational video games

This is a cool website. It looks at educational video games!  And here's their article about educational video games from the 80's.  Remember Carmen San whatever it was?

Here's their Top sites for finding free educational video games

I'll have to make a page on this topic because I disagree with a lot of these suggestions.  Here's a wonderful game that **I** recommend. It's called Fantastic Contraption, you probably have to play it with your kid because it's so complicated, but it's a fun game about ... physics!

There used to be some games that would let children "build" things with gears and such to see how they worked. These seem to have falled by the wayside, but in my humble opinion, learning about physics and how gears work is waaaay better for you than the pap most video games provide.

It's Beijing - and the smog is deadly

So here's a question: Once the Chinese have finished raking out all of the algae bloom and jailing all the possible loose dissidents around, do you think that this Olympics will incent them to fix their air quality? Or will that take another fifteen years?

This article describes the situation to a T, although it was written in January.

Here are more current pictures from the Nasa earth observatory website.  Note that Beijing residents haven't been allowed to use their cars since (and some factories closedon) July 20.

Although this is a horror show for the athletes participating, things look to be far better than they were in 2005, or in 2004, when an air show had to be cancelled because nobody could see the sky.

Olympics Notes: Awesome diagram of a gymnastic performance

OK, so here's a little something that will make your toes curl.  Replete with diagrams AND video, Justin Spring shows just what he does on that bar.  One word:  Yeeeeowch!

Neat second life

From the New World Notes blog on second life, here are some remarkable examples of what people have done in second life.

First, Robbie Dingo's remake of a Van Gogh classic.

Fun stuff with photos and video

The BBC has a video segment where they juxtapose satellite images and data to create neat images

I sent this out to my friends and was greeted by some run images in response.  These images are such fun for children - especially the images of unseen activity overlaid on the world.  The telephone calls amazed my son.

large hadron collider
tour de france
tour de france conclusion
recent volcanic activity
views of jupiter

And of course there's this fun panoramic cam site

And the Earth from Space website.

Thank you Onion! Parents outsourcing childcare to India!

Oh this is just creepily lovely.  Check out the Onion's take on outsourcing and the nanny crisis.

Excellent advice

I really like the concept of totally bizarre advice.  Like today, Andrew Sullivan talks about tips for joining a cult, with a reference to Scott Adam's post on the subject.

Allow me to give you some advice: If you ever decide to join a cult, the first thing you should ask about is the quality of their doomsday cave. A poorly constructed cave could kill you, and that would take most of the fun out of doomsday.

Check it out. Great stuff, given the financial news this month!