Nine Shift

No more stuff - - how Gen Y 'spent' Christmas

Crystal Green, in a session at our annual conference, said Gen Y prefers gift cards to actual stuff.

So that's mostly what we gave Willie for Christmas. But he also got some real stuff.
Yet he went back to Portland with only one suitcase, the same one he came with, and no more stuff than when he came. (photo Crystal Green)

He kindly rejected a sweater he didn't like. He left behind some other items of no importance (that his parents would probably have saved and stored).  It was a Gen Y Christmas, and a happy holidays for all.
What did your Gen Y kids, relatives or friends get and give?

Get your Nine Shift Special Report for 2008 - - FREE !

Yes, our annual Nine Shift Special Report is out, and you can get the New 2008 edition for FREE !

The 16 page report contains the best and most important blog entries over the past year.
Use it as a summary of the 21st century in progress, as evidence to your boss change is actually happening, or as references for an easy "A+" on your next term paper.

Just email me at draves@lern.org and we'll send you a complimentary copy.
Thanks for being a NIneShifter and making 2007 so successful for Nine Shift.

Can a mother breast feed during an exam?

Can a mother breast feeding her child take an exam with extended time?

Great issue. Yes, she should.  But no, the National Board of Medical Examiners said that med student Sophie Currier could not get an extra hour to breast feed her child while taking the 9 hour exam.
Here's the story.

The irony: the Academy of Pediatrics recommends mothers breast feed their babies. So a soon-to-be doctor is doing this, then denied the medical exam to become a doctor.

Later the judgment was overruled by a court.  The bad news: it takes a lawsuit to change anything in education.  The lesson:  education becomes personalised.  Treating everyone the same is not treating everyone equal.  Treating everyone differently is treating everyone equally.

Back to nature - is it happening?

Julie and I went wild ricing this past summer. A first for us.

We had no idea how to harvest wild rice. At the boat landing, we ran into four Ojibway tribal members and in 15 minutes they had taught us how to harvest the rice. They even gave us tobacco so we could thank the Great Spirit for the gift of the rice.  We had a wonderful time. Then Julie researched the history of ricing, which is quite a story about nature's balance, the white man's destruction of the rice beds, and the restoration of the rice beds under Native American supervision.

Are you going back to nature? Do you think people in this century will gravitate back to nature, or become even more divorced from nature?

Biggest Lie of the Year 2007

Well, this USA Today headline gets our vote for the biggest lie of 2007:
"Lowest fatality rate ever on roads in '06"

You have to be really delusional, and apparently USA Today and Transportation Secretary Mary Peters both are, to statistically claim this.

Some 43,000 people died last year, about the same as the year before and in 1996 and much of the last quarter century.  Your odds of getting killed in a car accident remained about the same (really high, the third highest preventable cause of death).
For teenagers, cars are still the leading cause of death.

However, you get to drive more miles before you get killed. And that, they claim, means you didn't statistically die at the same rate as before.  Before you would drive 10,000 miles before you got killed. Now you can drive 15,000 miles before you get killed!   Statistics don't die, but you do.

100th anniversary of plastics

It's the 100th anniversary of the invention of plastic.
Invented by Leo Bakeland in 1907. 

One of the "gifts" of grown ups today to future generations, it supposedly can be "saved" for hundreds, maybe thousand years (only your great great great great great grandchildren will know for sure).

Each year Americans throw out 250 billion pounds of plastic.  It is now being blamed for toxic chemicals seeping into water supply, even seeping into your bottled water.
Let's celebrate by figuring out how to get rid of it.

What digital/techno gadget did you get this year?

Here's Julie's latest digital/techno gadget.

A receipt scanner, so she can save her receipts by category and item and throw all the paper receipts away.
What's your latest digital/techno gadget?  Share with us please : : :