John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight this week was outstanding! The lack of uniformity in Sex Ed is troubling, and I had no idea that it was this dispar within the US. It’s shocking! And I’m glad that he did this program, because it’s something so important!
“There is no required standard for Sex Ed in this country. In fact, only 22 states mandate that kids receive it, and 13 require that the information presented be medically accurate. Which is crazy. You wouldn’t accept a history class not being historically accurate… we essentially have a weird patchwork system that varies wildly and not just from state to state, but from district to district, and even from school to school.”
This is a weird reality for me. In my time, in Portugal, there wasn’t any Sex Ed classes, but I remember having a Sexual Education “reunion” of sorts, as early as the 5º grade – 10 years old. I remember that in middle school we did various papers on STDs and contraceptive methods, and we were 12/13 years old… nobody complained about the gross pictures, they thought us what could happen…
Also, abstinence was never a “plan”, a choice YES, but not a prevention, at least not where I lived, information and explanation were. So, take the time and watch the segment below, it’s funny as hell, although a little worrying.
By the way: a lot of points to LWT, that had John Stewart as the personality of the week! =D
Welcome back for the 11th day of The Harry Potter 30 Days Challenge! As you know by now, Leannaatc @Short Story Longhad this idea of a month full of Harry Potter and you can find the prompt for each day here here.
– Day 11:Which character would you say you are most like? –
Wow, this is one deep question! I’ve actually been thinking about it for the last couple of days… as much as I love Luna or Hermione or Tonks, I don’t think I’m nothing like them… though I wish I could be. I definitely have something Hermione-ish, in the “i think I know it all” spectrum…
But the one I’m most like?! Minerva McGonagall! Below in the bit about her personality and traits on Harry Potter Wiki, I’ll highlight those that seem to describe me…
“Minerva almost constantly exuded magnanimity and sternness and was held in great respect (and some fear) by nearly all students and staff. Used to having her way, she tolerated neither audacity nor silliness from her pupils and was known to turn cold towards people who said or did things in front of her that were stupid, or if she thought they were trying to be funny.Despite her strict demeanour, however, Minerva did exhibit a dry sense of humour which usually came out when times were tough.
True to Gryffindor, she valued bravery and loyalty highly, thinking cowardice a heavy flaw. Despite her loyalty to her house, though, and a fair-minded person, McGonagall was known for docking points from students in her own House when she saw it must be done so.
Minerva was not afraid to speak her mind and showed quite a sharp tongue, especially during arguments. For the most part, though, she usually maintained great emotional composure, without being indifferent. Although she was not always particularly personable, she was a huge supporter of Harry and trusted the likes of Dumbledore, Sprout, Flitwick, Pomfrey and Hagrid. She could be very warm and supportive during times of trouble or loss and cared a great deal about her students, both personally and academically.
As the devoted instructor of Transfiguration classes, Professor McGonagall highly respected the specific branch of magic, and considered it to be more complex and sophisticated than all others, though she respected most others just as much; she became an Animagus to further her study in the magic. On the other hand, she has very little patience with Divination, due to its impreciseness and rarity of true Seers.
As well as this, she has a temper that can reveal itself on occasions when she is angrily flustered.”
I mean, I love the woman to death, maybe because I see so much of myself in her…
Last month I did a bunch of awards, a lot of them, including this one, the Blogger Recognition Award. But as time went by, I got nominated a few more times for this award, I realized that although the “origin” story will be the same, I could put some more thought into the advices.
So here we go, Blog Awards – August Edition: The Second Blogger Recognition Award!
Select 15 other blogs you want to give the award to. Do some digging if you must! Find those blogs. You cannot nominate yourself or the person who has nominated you.
Write a post to show off your award! Give a brief story of how your blog got started, and give a piece or two of advice to new bloggers. Thank whoever nominated you, and provide a link to their blog. List who you’ve nominated in the post.
Make sure to also attach the award itself! (You can do this by right-clicking, saving, and uploading the image in the right).
Comment on each blog and let them know you’ve nominated them. Provide a link to the award post you created.
Provide a link to the original post on Edge of Night. That way, anyone can find the original guidelines and post if needed, and we can keep it from mutating and becoming confusing! (It happens LOL).
The Origin:
It’s kind of boring actually… after a few months of being here in Barcelona, I started to watch Vampire Diares (of all things) and I wanted to talk about it to someone. There are a couple of people that I talked “shows” to, but lets just says that at the time we couldn’t have more different tastes… I was into Game of Thrones, Vampire Diaries, Supernatural and what not, and she was into Grey’s Anatomy and all the heavy dramas that I had quit some time ago.
I still needed to vent about it, so when I got home from Christmas vacations, on January 2013, I though: “why the hell not?!”. I wanted to keep it anonymous, you know, I didn’t want all of my facebook contacts to read what I thought about certain things. But I soon realized that if I wanted to spread the word, facebook would be a good start.
See?! Boring!
The (PRACTICAL) Advice:
Have fun. Sure, I’ll maintain my original advice, because I feel like it IS important. You should to it because you are enjoying it. Blogging should be fun, captivating, interesting, when you feel like it’s a chore or an obligation, take a breather!
Choose a theme well. You should obviously choose something you like and identify with, but some details will make it easier on the viewers, such as the contrast of the background and font colours, it should be easy to read, the lettering should not be very small (or very big, for that matter). More than anything, make it appealing.
Use images. I will tell you for my experience as a reader of other blogs, I’m more likely to read a post that has an image, a long block of text is kind of boring (even if the contents are amazing!). So, use a picture, in the header, on the side, in between the text… just use some visual graphics…
Don’t make extremely long paragraphs. Again, I’m speaking from my experience as a reader, use shorter sentences, a paragraph with 10 lines it’s already a challenge, make it easy on your readers.
When you are tagged by another blogger, or you tag someone, link back to their blog. Preferably, link it back to their About page or to a recent post, this way they’ll be notified right away that you mentioned them on your blog. You can also link back to their main page, but LET THEM KNOW you tagged them, by commenting somewhere on their blog. (If you don’t know how to link back to a link or post, ask! 🙂 )
Tags and Awards are important. They are a very important way to get to know other bloggers and to let other bloggers know you. Most of the blogs I’m following now, I found on other people’s tags and awards post.
Take time to interact with the community! This is a choice, obviously, but when you put something out there for the world to see, you want the world to actually see it, so it’s nice to have feedback. If you feel super awesome when you get comments and likes, take some time to read other blogs and share your thoughts on their content.
Have a search bar on your blog. It might not look important, but if another blogger wants to see, for instance, if you read “Fangirl”, it’s easy enough if you have a search bar, otherwise it is unlikely that they will lose time going through all your blog…
(I hope any of this helps somehow…)
The Nominees:
Now to you. I would love to read how you started blogging and what advices you have for fellow bloggers.
My Tiny Obsessions 