Best home-made play-doh EVER

If you have kids, you probably love playing with them and making things together.  One of the best things you can do for them is to encourage imaginative play, and few things enable imagination in a young mind better than a nice lump of play-doh.

After experimenting with several different variations, my wife found this simple yet excellent play-doh recipe.  It is the best version of home made play-doh by a long shot.  Have fun with it!

In a medium pot, combine and stir the following:

• 1 cup warm water
• 1 cup white flour
• 1/4 cup salt
• 2 tsp cream of tartar
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 packet of kool aid (optional, adds color and a nice scent too)

Now heat pot over low-medium heat while stirring constantly.  Eventually the dough will combine into a ball.  Remove from heat, and make sure it's all well combined.  Flatten the ball out on a piece of wax paper to cool, and start playing whenever you think it's ready for those little hands!

Be sure to store in an air-tight bag or container when done, to prevent drying out.  If a batch does dry a bit, it can be revived by kneading in a little water and a little vegetable oil.

There you have it, the best home-made play-doh EVER!

Don't trust the marketing!

The harder someone tries to sell you something, the more suspicious you should be.  Why don't more people realize that?  When something is truly great it sells itself.  When it doesn't, throw marketing at it!  Got milk?  Seen a McDonalds add lately?

If you've ever wondered why food makers switched from using animal fats in cooking to using factory-produced abominations, now you know.  Profit, pure and simple.

"Convincing homemakers to swap butter and lard for a new fat created in a factory would be quite a task, so the new form of food needed a new marketing strategy. Never before had Procter & Gamble -- or any company for that matter -- put so much marketing support or advertising dollars behind a product. They hired the J. Walter Thompson Agency, America's first fullservice advertising agency staffed by real artists and professional writers. Samples of Crisco were mailed to grocers, restaurants, nutritionists, and home economists. Eight alternative marketing strategies were tested in different cities and their impacts calculated and compared.
Health claims on food packaging were then unregulated, and the copywriters claimed that cottonseed oil was healthier than animal fats for digestion. Advertisements in the Ladies' Home Journal encouraged homemakers to try the new fat and "realize why its discovery will affect every family in America." (from The Atlantic)

This new fat discovery certainly did affect every family in America!  Here we are 100 years later and we're the fattest nation in the world.  We're number one!  GO TEAM!

Use your brain; lose your religion

Those who know me well will not be surprised to see me share a few articles on this topic.  I've said for years that the most dangerous thing about leading a "faith based" life is that it dulls critical thinking.  In order to live that way, you need to actively train your brain to NOT think about some things.  These two articles reference a related study, finding that analytic thinking leads to a a loss of faith (who would be surprised by that?)

"Analytic thinking undermines belief because, as cognitive psychologists have shown, it can override intuition. And we know from past research that religious beliefs—such as the idea that objects and events don't simply exist but have a purpose—are rooted in intuition. "Analytic processing inhibits these intuitions, which in turn discourages religious belief," Norenzayan explains." (from Scientific American)

"Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein famously did not believe in a supernatural God, and neither do some scientists today. It now appears there may be a good reason for this: thinking analytically dims supernatural beliefs, apparently by opposing the intuitive thought processes that underpin them." (from New Scientist)

In a very related series "Confessions of an Ex-Priest" and "Dismantling the Vatican", a man who spent eight years being trained for his position only to leave the church after a single year as an ordained priest reflects on religion and the power structure the church relies on.  In part 2 he talks about an exciting moment in the catholic church, when a feeling of openness and empowerment almost swept through the organization.  Luckily the bishops and priests managed to shut it down, lest their followers be encouraged to actually read the book their faith is based on.

"That the Catholic Church, or, rather, those who lead it and exercise power within it, prefer a message dominated by pessimism, fear, and control, rather than one inspired by openness, trust, and hope seems to me to show a weakness of faith in the life and message of the man/God they claim as their foundation and inspiration."

All the pieces matter

This David Foster Wallace commencement speech (read here, or watch here) is one of the most inspirational things I've ever read.  It's great to be reminded to be mindful, to be aware of those knee-jerk reactions and consider whether or not they're completely off base.

"The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me."

On the same topic (making a conscious choice about what and how you'll think), this amazing essay by David Simon talks about missing the point - like if watching The Wire inspires you to bet on who the coolest character is (rather than discuss social injustice and the decay of humanity).  Or talking about a vigilante in Florida without considering the astounding legal precedent being set in the Trayvon v. Zimmerman case...  It's an amazing read, and should get you thinking (and talking).

"A week or month or a year from now, someone else is going to walk up to a fresh victim in Florida or some other state burdened with stand-your-ground absurdity and we’ll have a new body over which to argue. Which is just fine, because does anyone really believe that our instant-assessment, instant-gratification media world  is capable of anything beyond the ad hominem?  Let them begin again and do what they do best:  Which one was the asshole?  Who is the bigger dickhead?  He deserved it.  No, he didn’t.  Which one am I rooting for?  Which one gets my vote?  Who wins?  Who loses?"

Your to-do list

It's easy to lose sight of your dreams when you're neck-deep in the day to day stuff you need to do just to survive.  If you are at least taking time to make lists of things you need to get done, and prioritizing them at that, Paul Graham makes a great suggestion for what should be at the top of your list every time:

"I would like to avoid making these mistakes. But how do you avoid mistakes you make by default? Ideally you transform your life so it has other defaults. But it may not be possible to do that completely. As long as these mistakes happen by default, you probably have to be reminded not to make them. So I inverted the 5 regrets, yielding a list of 5 commands:
Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy."

(From Paul Graham's to-do list, commenting on "Regrets of the Dying")

Fix your brain!

Can you make yourself smarter?  There's a lot of evidence you can, but it takes a little effort on your part (15 minutes a day is enough to yield pretty significant improvements.)  You can no doubt find something each day that you're spending 15 minutes (or more on) that you can drop, in favor of fixing your brain and making your life a little easier :)

"[...] young adults who practiced a stripped-down, less cartoonish version of the game also showed improvement in a fundamental cognitive ability known as “fluid” intelligence: the capacity to solve novel problems, to learn, to reason, to see connections and to get to the bottom of things. The implication was that playing the game literally makes people smarter."
Can you make yourself smarter?

If you have an iPhone, there's a great FREE Dual N-Back game here.

If you want to try it on your computer, the best one out there is also free.

Work requirement

If you have a job, you need to read this.

"Although some meetings are inevitable, even necessary, the principle he's advocating here is an important one. Meetings should be viewed skeptically from the outset, as risks to productivity. We have meetings because we think we need them, but all too often, meetings are where work ends up going to die."

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/02/meetings-where-work-goes-to-die.html