There is no education like adversity
© Copyright 2006 by All Pro Dad. All rights reserved.

Benjamin Disraeli said, "There is no education like adversity." Amen! It's the tough periods of our lives where we grow the most. The same is true for your children. You're not doing them a favor if you're always bailing them out of tough scrapes. In fact, you're doing them a disservice. Kids need to know their actions have consequences for them personally, not just for Mom and Dad. It's how they grow. But "helicopter parents" stunt their kids.

Helicopter Parents
Colleges Ward Off Overinvolved Parents
By: Sue Shellenbarger

As colleges and universities gear up to receive a new class of freshmen this fall, they're bracing for a potentially more daunting onslaught:

Helicopter parents are going to college.

A new generation of overinvolved parents are flooding campus orientations, meddling in registration and interfering with students' dealings with professors, administrators and roommates, school officials say.

Read more at All Pro Dad

Open Letter To Our Leaders
Posted by Bong C. Austero

Dear Tita Cory, Senators, Congressmen, Businessmen, Media people, Leftists, and all Bleeding Hearts Out There:

I am angry. And I know that there are many out there who are angrier than I am for the same reason. And that reason is simple. I am sick and tired of all you guys claiming to speak for me and many Filipinos. I feel like screaming every time you mouth words about fighting for my freedom and my rights, when you obviously are just thinking about yours. You tell me that the essence of democracy is providing every citizen the right to speak his or her mind and make his or her own informed judgments, but you yourselves do not respect my silence and the choices I and many others have made. In other words, your concept of democracy is limited to having your rights and your freedoms respected, at the expense of ours.

I am utterly flabbergasted that you still do not get it: we already responded to your calls, and our response has been very clear - we chose not to heed your calls to go to EDSA or to Fort Bonifacio not because we do not love our country or our freedoms or our rights, but precisely because we love our country even more. Because quite frankly, we are prepared to lose our freedoms and our rights just to move this country forward. You may think that is not correct, you can tell me all the dire warnings about the evils of authoritarian rule, but quite frankly all we see is your pathetic efforts to prop up your cause. You tell me that you are simply protecting my freedoms and my rights, but who told you to do that? I assure you that when I feel that my rights and my freedoms are at a peril, I will stand up and fight for them myself.

Read more at Bong Austero's Blogs

SLR vs All-in-one: Which way to go?
By Shawn Barnett
Written: 06/24/2005

The digital camera market has changed in the last three years. Quality digital cameras that used to cost $500 are now available for between $200 and $300. Digital SLRs that used to cost well above $2,000 without a lens are now available between $700 and $1,000, complete with lens. The former high-end prosumer digicam that used to occupy the $600 to $1,200 range has been eclipsed, with most users interested in upgrading their digital camera now looking at either a Long Zoom Family digicam (generally available for between $400 and $500) or a Digital SLR.

So the question is, with such quality and variety now within your economic means, which is for you? An SLR with interchangeable lenses and a big sensor, or a highly-capable All-in-one model that packs loads of functionality into a more compact package? The answer depends on several factors, and you need to know a few basics about both All-in-one digicams and digital SLRs before you can choose what you really need. The separate categories do exist for a reason, as we'll see.

Read more at Imaging Resource