Being a Good Parent

[editor Catholic Data: I thought this was some good advice on parenting--it is secular but in general pretty good link to original here]

Edited byWpendy and 84 others

Article Edit Discuss History

Being a parent is one of the most fulfilling experiences a person can have. The most important thing a parent can give their child, however, is a sense of being loved. Just keep in mind that you don't have to be infallible to be a "perfect" parent.

Edit Steps

Express Your Love and Affection

1. 1
   

   Express love and affection:.
   Express love and affection:
   Ads by Google

   Scary Signs Of Depression

   These (3) Signs Of Depression Are A Clear Sign Of Depression. See Now.
   knowwhatsbest.com
   • A gentle cuddle, a little encouragement, appreciation, approval or even a smile can go a long way to boost the confidence and well-being of your children. Sadly, many children seek this kind of acceptance from their peers.
   • Tell them you love them every day.
   • Give lots of hugs and some kisses.
   • Love them unconditionally; don't force them to be who you think they should be in order to earn your love. Let them know that you will always love them no matter what.

Of Gods and Men

US "FIRST"--- break out of the culture

Pop culture programs our children from an early age to want to be basketball players ( or professional athletes in general), movie stars, and pop singers. Children's imaginations are being captured by a superficial future that frankly few are successful at and even fewer who are, last more than 5 years at the top. Not to mention the hedonistic culture that accompanies these "dreams" too.

Here is an option--  US "First" is "sports" with a different flavor and future. It gets children to use their minds develop problem solving skills and inspires their dreams to a practical future in the sciences. Lets face it, science and technology are places where we would astronomically improve our children's possible future at a good job and financial security.

"First" is a technological competition that gives children a chance to be part of a team, learn math, science and get role models that are scientists an engineers, instead of rock stars and fashion models. Unleash their imagination into a possible science career and win scholarships for their brains, and not their brawn.

FIRST was founded in 1989 by businessman Dean Kamen and physicist Woodie Flowers.The competition is a yearly event. The most intense participation occurs between the months of January and April, but "mini-competitions" are hosted by many teams in school gymnasiums throughout the year.

Really smart --String Bike

Stringbike's roots lie in a postgraduate challenge at Budapest Technical University in the early 1990s, to think outside the box and overcome some design issues relating to chain-driven bicycles.

The Stringdrive alternating drive system benefits from 19 different "gear" transmission ratios – the outer position gives maximum and the inner gives minimum ratios – which are selected by moving the rope wheels up and down the notch positions on the swinging arm.

I think it will have advantages in the leverage you can get on the pedals.

Galileo : Making the Case for Faith & Science

Dangers of the contraception Pill

The Business of Being Born

There is a growing trend of Cesarian Sections being performed in hospitals for birthing of babies. As a an alternative there are certified midwives that should be considered as an alternative. Especially if you don't want you baby shot up with harmful vaccines. U.S. has second worst newborn death rate in modern world, report says

Here is an interesting film that may shed some light on midwifing. Watch it some time

How the Catholic Church Became Cool Overnight

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Marc

Taken from the blog:  "Bad Catholic" link here

Or, to be precise, how all the balling was duly recognized.

Having tested the waters of agnosticism, the general culture, and a whole host of personal heresies, sins and stupidities, I have come to Walker Percy’s conclusion:

Q: What kind of Catholic are you?

A. Bad.

Q: Are you a dogmatic Catholic or an open-minded Catholic?

A: I don’t know what that means . . . . Do you mean do I believe the dogma that the Catholic Church proposes for belief?

Q: Yes.

A: Yes.

Q: How is such a belief possible in this day and age?

A: What else is there?

Q: What do you mean, what else is there? There is humanism, atheism, agnosticism, Marxism, behaviorism, materialism, Buddhism, Muhammadanism, Sufism, astrology, occultism, theosophy.

A: That’s what I mean.

Q: I don’t understand. Would you exclude, for example, scientific humanism as a rational and honorable alternative?

A: Yes.

Q: Why?

A: It’s not good enough.

Q: Why not?

A: This life is too much trouble, far too strange, to arrive at the end of it and then to be asked what you make of it and have to answer “Scientific humanism.” That won’t do. A poor show. Life is a mystery, love is a delight. Therefore I take it as axiomatic that one should settle for nothing less than the infinite mystery and the infinite delight, i.e., God. In fact I demand it. I refuse to settle for anything less.

So get at me.

As far as I’m concerned — though I’m certainly open to scientific humanism making a big, total-fulfillment-of-the-human-person comeback — Catholicism is the addict’s fix, the starving child’s Chipotle burrito, and the UVA student’s pastel shorts and button-downs, etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitum et in saecula saeculorum, amen. What I didn’t realize – how could I? — is that the world would catch up to my particularly brilliant brilliance.

DCA anti- Cancer Hope still alive!

[ed. careful about trying to obtain this drug now many have gone to jail.]

Dichloroacetate inhibits neuroblastoma growth by specifically acting against malignant undifferentiated cells.

Vella S, Conti M, Tasso R, Cancedda R, Pagano A.

Source

Oncology, Biology, and Genetics Department (DOBiG), University of Genoa, Genoa-Italy.

Abstract

The small, water soluble molecule Dichloroacetate (DCA) is recently arousing lively interests in the field of cancer therapy for it has been shown to be able to inhibit the growth of human tumors acting specifically on the mitochondria of cancer cells without perturbing the physiology of nonmalignant cells. Neuroblastoma was one of the tumor types on which DCA was considered ineffective as it is composed of cells with few recognized mitochondrial anomalies. Neuroblastoma, however, is composed of different cell types in terms of metabolism, phenotype and malignant potential. Despite the above prediction, in this work, we show that (i) DCA exhibits an unexpected anticancer effect on NB tumor cells and (ii) this effect is selectively directed to very malignant NB cells, whereas the more differentiated/less malignant NB cells are refractory to DCA treatment. This result supports the need of a detailed investigation of DCA anticancer properties against this tumor type with the final aim of its possible use as therapeutic agent.
Copyright © 2011 UICC.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21557214

More info here
http://www.thedcasite.com/

From New Scientist

Article originally published online 17 January 2007:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10971-cheap-safe-drug-kills-most-cancers.html

It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their "immortality". The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.
It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.

Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body and found that it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but not healthy cells. Tumours in rats deliberately infected with human cancer also shrank drastically when they were fed DCA-laced water for several weeks.

DCA attacks a unique feature of cancer cells: the fact that they make their energy throughout the main body of the cell, rather than in distinct organelles called mitochondria. This process, called glycolysis, is inefficient and uses up vast amounts of sugar.

Until now it had been assumed that cancer cells used glycolysis because their mitochondria were irreparably damaged. However, Michelakis's experiments prove this is not the case, because DCA reawakened the mitochondria in cancer cells. The cells then withered and died (Cancer Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.ccr.2006.10.020).

Michelakis suggests that the switch to glycolysis as an energy source occurs when cells in the middle of an abnormal but benign lump don't get enough oxygen for their mitochondria to work properly (see diagram). In order to survive, they switch off their mitochondria and start producing energy through glycolysis.

80+ MPG Car

Write your congressman that the car industry is sitting on car efficiency that can get 80+mpg!
Full Series Hydraulic Hybrid Vehicle (HHV) in a Passenger Car Test Chassis
In the 1990s, the Partnership for New Generation of Vehicles was established to help U.S. automakers design a family-sized sedan that could achieve 80 mpg. A team of engineers working at EPA’s National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Michigan, succeeded in meeting this goal by using a revolutionary type of hydraulic hybrid. The chassis shown at right represents a large car platform, like a Taurus or Impala.

This HHV:




Achieved 80+ mpg on combined EPA city/highway driving cycles



Achieved 0-60 miles per hour in 8 seconds



Used a small 1.9 liter diesel engine



Showed no need for expensive lightweight materials to improve fuel economy



EPA estimated that in high volume the hydraulic components would only add $700 to the base cost of the vehicle and would pay for itself very quickly

http://www.epa.gov/otaq/technology/research/demonstration-vehicles.htm

The truth is this technology is from the 1970's
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Transportation/1977-11-01/Can-This-Transmission-Really-Double-Your-Cars-Mileage.aspx

 Followed by an independent proof of concept a in 1978

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Transportation/1978-03-01/This-Car-Travels-75-Miles-on-a-Single-Gallon-of-Gasoline.aspx

The truth is the patten of Vincent Carman has expired so now the tech can come out. Anyway I will be happy if it gets into production. Just sad it took so long.

President Obama is pushing the auto industry to accept a new fuel economy rating of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025,Back in July of 2011, President Obama, a few days after giving a speech on new MPG standards for the US, was asked if he felt the future 50 MPG goal was too high a mark. He responded by saying that he, “knew for a fact,” that there are cars available today that get 80 miles per gallon.

Now you know he was telling the truth.

Love really is like a drug Love (or maybe lust) not only blocks pain, it also seems to stimulate the same parts of the brain as cocaine

Romeo and Juliet: Love conquers all – including pain. Photograph: Dee Conway

Intense spells of passion are as effective at blocking pain as cocaine and other illicit drugs, a team of neuroscientists say. Tests on 15 American students who admitted to being in the passionate early stages of a relationship showed that feelings for their partner reduced intense pain by 12% and moderate pain by 45%.
full article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/oct/13/love-drug-pain-relief-cocaine

More of the Preventive Method for Children of St. Don Bosco

THE HEART OF ST. JOHN BOSCO

This conference is going to look at the method of formation for children of St. John Bosco. Fr. Fullerton could be doing it himself because it's the method he implemented at our St. Joseph's Boys' Academy [Richmond, Michigan] for the six years he was the principal there. He thought it was important at this Principals' Convention we see St. John Bosco as an inheritor of the Church's wisdom regarding education, which he perfected in its practice, and crystallized in a method approved by the Church and handed down to us. My talk will be mainly theoretical yet adapted from my experience of teaching the past three years in our boys' school. At the outset, I want you to know that whatever I say to you I say to myself.

To understand the "method" of St. John Bosco is to understand this Saint of the Church. His first principle of education is to conquer the heart of the students. That was the wisdom of the ancients–Plato, St. Augustine, St. Anselm, etc. As we know in our teaching apostolates, if you want to have an effect on someone, you firstly have to win that person. Obviously the means of doing this have to be regulated by virtue and prudence. But the heart must be conquered, especially of children. This is the essential end of John Bosco's "system." Therefore, to understand the heart of this man is to understand his system. It's really to get a glimpse into the heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, many saints may have had opinions about education, but St. John Bosco's sanctity was built upon his particular vocation as an educator of children by means of a system permeated by the charity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is important we don't separate the saint from his method.

We have to continuously remind ourselves of the objective which needs to be obtained. What are we shooting for here? It's the formation of the Christian man. In his great encyclical On Christian Education [Divini Illius Magistri], Pope Pius XI wrote:

[T]he proper and immediate end of Christian education is to cooperate with divine grace in forming the true and perfect Christian....Christian education takes in the whole aggregate of human life: physical, spiritual, intellectual, and moral, individual, domestic and social, not with a view in reducing those in any way, but in order to elevate, regulate and perfect them in accordance with the example and teaching of Our Lord Jesus Christ.