National Parks

There is only one word to describe how I feel about national parks. What is it? Fantastic! National Parks are great for three reasons. They help preserve the environment, they are fun to travel to, and they are educational. I, personally, make sure to take my kids to at least one national park every two years. So far I've gone to Yellowstone and Grand Teton, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Mammoth Cave, Great Sequoia, and a few others. They are all great fun with many down to nature options of how to spend your day. I highly recommend a visit to one of them.

Blogs

I, in all honesty, think blogs are great. If you have anything you would like to publicize, I strongly encourage you to make one for yourself!

1. Blogs allow you to share things with the rest of the world
2. Blogger gives you so many choices so you can use blogs for a variety of purposes
3. Making your very own blog is free and easy
4. Blogs are fun to use
5. Blogs are fun to read

Those reasons are pretty much why I decided to make my own blog. There's not much that can go wrong with a well thought out blog on blogger. I enjoy posting and I hope all you readers out there enjoy reading my blog.

Stereotypes

I don't think there is anybody who think stereotypes are a good thing, but a thought has always lingered in the back of my mind when I was learning about stereotyping. Now I want to share it with you: Stereotypes had to come from someplace.

By this I am not saying, by any means, that stereotyping is good. It is terrible, and something that should never be done. Some people say people get stereotypes from TV or things like that. But TV had to get their stereotypes from someplace. It isn't something random when somebody gets a stereotype. It often means that the person is just thinking of the majority group as everybody. Let's take the example of scientists.

Picture a scientist in your head. What is (s)he doing? What gender is (s)he? Most people will probably think of a male scientist, versus a female one. It's true, believe it or not, that many more scientists are male than female.  As for what your scientist is doing, it's harder to predict. However, your scientist is most likely to be a chemist (but not by much) because chemistry is the most unique and interesting of the types of scientists.

Electric Pencil Sharpeners

Sure, electric pencil sharpeners have their pros. They may be faster, and other things like that. But they aren't by a large margin. Electric sharpeners are much louder. When in school, they disrupt class. They can be distracting to people near you. Not only that, but they are too easy. This may sound strange, but many little things contribute to a general lazyness. The fact that you can get up, walk to a pencil sharpener, insert the pencil, and have it sharpened is not a good thing. Just the tiny amount of extra work needed when using a good old X-acto sharpener with a crank can help get rid of a feeling of lazyness.

Towels

Useful things, towels. They can do so much. Keeping you dry and giving you something to lie on are just two of the marvelous possiblities. Did you ever consider keeping yourself wet with a towel? Using it as a blanket on a hot summer day, wrapping something in it... The possibilities go on and on!

Fences and Gardens

Fences are nice. Gardens are nice. But put them together and you get a completely pointless combination. See here, if you put all that work into making a beautiful garden, even if it isn't quite how you pictured it, there is no reason to block it with a fence. I've seen houses with five foot tall iron fences. And what's on the other side? A beautiful garden you can hardly see. Absolutely terrible!

iPods

I don't say this very often, but what a great invention! I, for one, like listening to music. And having all that information in just one little iPod - I still can't get over it. iPods are great, at least they were great. There was the iPod Nano was so useful for me, the iPod video was for other people, the iPod shuffle for those who don't need something perfect, and all those iPods. Then they began to overdo it. I welcomed the iPod Nano Video grudgingly. The iPod touch? It was hardly and iPod, the only thing different about it from the iPhone was that it had no phone and a couple other features. And you know how I feel about iPhones.

French Fries

There are many things people could say about french fries. They are unhealthy, for one thing. But that is not why I am writing this. Think about the name "French Fry." Yes, it says the are fried. But it also uses the word "French." Maybe some of you think I've gone to far on this, but think about it. The name suggests the French, but it is likely they were invented in Belgium or Spain. I know it doesn't matter, but this is a real life example of how things creep into people's subconscious without them noticing. I bet without noticing, those deep-fried potatoes are asosiated with France in your mind. No, this post was not about French Fries. This post is proving that things can creep into your subconscous with out you noticing.

Apple Cider (Pastuized)

Apple cider is a great drink. It tastes good, it's good for you, and, well, there's not much wrong with it. I used to love apple cider, and I still do, but it has gone downhill. Why? Because of a law to protect people's health. All apple cider must be pasturized. Now, I'm not saying it is a bad thing to protect people's health, but I don't think this is the right way. Pasturizing apple cider gets rid of some of the freshness and suddenly it doesn't taste as good. If the law was that all apples made into apple cider must be picked fresh from the tree, and that they can't be used if they were on the ground, it would treat the same cause. And guess what? We'd still have genuine apple cider. Why didn't anybody think of that? Here is a perfectly good solution and they partially ruin apple cider!

Computer TouchPads

Personally, I'm a big fan of mice. Not the ones that run around and have big ears and tails, but the electronic kind used with computers. After a while it becomes so natural to you that when you aren't using one, you do the same thing. You want your whole hand to move when controlling the cursor. But recently, with laptops becoming more and more common, it seems people think touch pads are the way to go.

Most people have used a touch pad, and many of you reading this blog probably find them very easy to use. But that brings us to another problem: Macs or PCs. Macintosh computers have more or less the same touchpad as IBMs, Dells, and all those other PC brands. More or less. Those little changes can throw me off so much. With mice, every one is the same. Touch pads? Not so! The engineers making the computers don't understand that if you only used mice, nobody would get confused and not be able to do what they are trying to do. I recently bought a mouse for my laptop, and all my friends are so happy they can finally use it!